Marion to buy a pair of utility trucks

Marion to buy a pair of utility trucks

Floyd outlines ‘ best deal I’ve found’ to city officials

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Marion has found a good deal on two used, high mileage semi trailer trucks which they plan to purchase and use as a replacement for their chipper truck.

Road Department Director Gordon Floyd said he shopped around and found two bob trucks that were previously used on liquor delivery routes.

Both trucks are 2007 Freightliners and have over 200,000 miles on them.

“They both have high mileage on them,” Floyd said. “But they have a maintenance record on them and have been taken care of.”

Floyd said the last chipper truck was old and caught on fire.

The two used trucks are being offered to the city for $23,000 by Brothers Truck and Trailer in Osceola.

“That’s the best deal I’ve found on used trucks,” Floyd said. “I’ve done a lot of shopping around. I went to Covington and looked at some trucks and this is probably the best deal I’ve found.”

Both are automatics and have diesel Mercedes en- gines, which Floyd said will be easy to work on.

“The 2007 is something we will be more able to mechanically work on than something brand new,” Floyd said. “Motor-wise, suspension-wise, brakewise — that stuff is relatively simple on that truck and something we are used to. They’re pretty clean for as old as they are. And the Mercedes engine is a real reliable motor.”

Councilman Cliff Wood, who works as operations manager at Helena Chemical Co., said his company has done business with Brothers Truck and Trailer before.

“Barrett (Brothers) is a customer of mine and we also sell him some trucks,” Wood said.

Wood agrees that Floyd found a good deal on the vehicles.

“I buy one truck a year and it is usually 600,000 to 800,000 miles on it,” Wood said. “And I pay more for it than that one.’ Councilman Kelly O’Neal expressed concern about the mileage.

“This is a lot of miles for this truck,” O’Neal said.

Floyd agreed but said the trucks are in great shape and will only be driven around Marion and not on the highway.

“It is a lot of miles like Kelly says,” Floyd said. “I crawled under them. I didn’t see any oil leaks.

They’ve had brake work done. They have decent tires. One of them had all new tires all the way around it. We’re just going to be hauling wood chips and leaf debris.”

Councilman Jim Spence asked Floyd if the trucks will work.

“Do you think this is what you need?” Spence said.

Floyd said he plans to use both trucks — one for the chipper and the other for a leaf truck. And if one of them breaks down or is no longer serviceable, they will use it for parts.

“We can take the box bed off of one and put our chipper bed on one and have the other one for spare parts in the future,” Floyd said.

“I think we can easily get a number of years out of it. These transmissions are set up with the same hydraulics

that we were running on the other chipper truck. If we had a major problem we could still make one truck out of two.

If we get five or six years out of it, we have made our money back on it.”

By Mark Randall