Global garbage truck shortage hits MODG budget
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.
Avery said that they are looking at shipping “by the end of the week.”
Alec Bruce, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Guysborough Journal
