CLEARFIELD – On Tuesday the Lawrence Township Supervisors debated on getting a new medium duty dump truck.
Supervisor William Lawhead reported the downtime and cost of four trucks from 2011. Truck LT4 spent fifteen days unusable and cost $9.8 thousand in repairs. LT10 was rendered unusable for 6 days last year, and cost $9 thousand. LT11 was unable to be used for 11 days and cost the township $9 thousand. LT11 and 10 are 2006 models. LT4 is a 2004 model dump truck.
“I know snow plowing is very hard on vehicles,” said Supervisor Chairman Glenn Johnston.
It was said that most of the problems were correlated with early 2011’s snow season.
“It is time we start paying attention to other departments than the police department,” said Johnston.
Thompson linked the problems with the trucks as part of a collection of issues due to cutting corners everywhere else to pay the police department. He recommended that the township get two new trucks. He would later admit he liked Supervisor Edward Brown’s idea instead.
Brown suggested that only one truck be purchased immediately with a reevaluation made in the Fall. One of the three with the worst record would be pulled and used as a back-up vehicle for the time being.
Lawhead suggested paying in cash to avoid interest on the new truck as the interest earned in the township’s reserve account was “not that much”.
There was a $115 surplus in the general fund from 2011. When discussed prior to the trucks, the supervisors were going to place this money into the reserve fund to help towards paying the increased police department’s wages and possibly some road equipment.
Lawhead contacted Ford and Dodge for information. According to Lawhead, General Motors no longer sells this style of truck. Ford sold more than estimated for the year and Dodge sold less trucks than expected. Due to pre-existing contracted orders for tires combined with this, a truck ordered from Ford will have a six month lead time. A truck ordered from Dodge could be delivered in six to eight weeks.
A Dodge truck would cost around $74 thousand, according to Lawhead. He still needed to get a quote from Ford.