Monterey Improves Brush Pickups By Purchasing New Brush Truck

Monterey has purchased a new brush truck that would improve services for residents.

Mayor JJ Reels said town currently uses a backhoe placed on the back of a truck to conduct pickups

“Operator in the backhoe, operator in the truck and a person on the ground, so you’re talking going from three people to one person doing a job,” Reels said. “So it reduces greatly the amount of workload.”

Reels said the $176,000 truck should be in operation in about six months. Reels said a Knoxville-based company is building the vehicle.

“It was only about $5,000 more than the original bid, which is not bad considering the way the price of everything is going up right now,” Reels said.

Monterey has bid out the truck purchase twice. The town restarted the process last year when the initial bid winner could not complete the purchase contract. Reels said the same company that was approved for the first bid also got second bid.

“We bid it out before and selected a merchant to provide the brush truck, but they couldn’t get the truck that they had submitted the bid for,” Reels said. “They came back and said we could get that truck but it’s going to cost $20,000 more than what we approved as the bid. We rebid it and had two bids come in.”