By Madeline Baker, Times Chronicle
Oliver and Osoyoos both shored up their vehicle fleets recently, with Oliver awarding a contract for a service utility truck and Osoyoos agreeing to purchase a crane truck and a dump truck with snow and ice control equipment.
Nor-Mar Industries beat out five other proposals to provide the town of Oliver with a new service utility truck for their Operations Department, as their offer ranked most favourably in price, suitability, warranty, manufacturer’s experience, and the length of time between purchase and delivery of the unit.
Due to additional costs that come with procurement of large equipment, the approximately $182,000 purchase will require an increase of almost almost $8,000 to the 2022-2026 capital budget of $180,000, which will be taken from the town’s equipment reserve.
Council can also choose to add a hydraulic upgrade, which would allow the truck to use a wider variety of tools such as impact wrenches, chainsaws, drills and grinders, for a further cost of $12,500 at a later date.
In Osoyoos, council approved a purchasing agreement with Falcon Equipment for a new dump truck that will see to snow and ice control and a new crane truck. Falcon’s proposal won out over four vendors offering crane trucks and two offering dump trucks.
The current vehicles were both earmarked for replacement in the Vehicle Fleet Assessment and Replacement Strategy completed in January which found the cost of operating and maintaining aging equipment to be unacceptably high. The maximum budget for this purchase is approximately $543,000, which is within the allotment that council approved in March.
Even with the council’s vote to take immediate action, Osoyoos likely will not see the vehicles delivered until 2024 despite the delivery time from date of agreement initially being stated as 52 weeks.
