Global garbage truck shortage hits MODG budget

Local Journalism Initiative
·2 min read

GUYSBOROUGH — A North America-wide shortage of garbage trucks will cost the Municipality of the District of Guysborough (MODG) an additional $44,500 to keep its small fleet road-worthy.

“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” MODG Director of Public Works Glen Avery told council at its regular meeting April 17. “They are not making these trucks right now. We’re down a truck, and we’re using two guys, basically, to do pick up.”

Avery explained that one of the municipality’s two, two-stream collection trucks (it maintains a third for blue bags) has seen better days.

“There are severe problems with the engine, so it’s not worth fixing ... A little over a year ago we did the first tender [to replace it], and the tenderer told us that we would have [a new one] by this June. Things changed along the way and then they told us that they couldn’t supply the truck.”

Faced with few alternatives for made-to-order vehicles, Avery said MODG public works went to the Ontario office of Tampa Bay-based Big Truck Rentals and found a lease-to-own option on an existing one that fit its specifications.

“Basically, they asked us to pay $12,700 per month for the next five months for a total cost of $63,500, 25 per cent of which could be used against the purchase price” of a 2023 truck “with 2,000 hours on it,” he said.

He reminded councillors that the budget for a new truck this year was $425,000. The lease-to-own agreement with Big Truck Rentals, however, would push that by $44,500 to $469,500. He added that the shortage of new trucks is “a North America-wide issue.”

The problem – a holdover from international supply-chain shortages caused by the global pandemic in 2020-21 – seems to extend even farther, according to some accounts.

MODG approved the motion to purchase a new packer from Big Truck Rentals under its lease-to-own program, with the over-budget amount funded from the municipal equipment reserve fund.

Alec Bruce, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Guysborough Journal

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