Oneida County waiting on nine new plow trucks

One of the items on the agenda for the April 3 meeting of the Oneida County board’s public works and solid waste committee was an equipment update.

Part of the update county highway commissioner Alex Hegeman provided included the news the highway department, as of April 3, has nine patrol trucks, or plow trucks, on order; four equipped with tri-axles, four with tandem axles and one single-axle truck.

“April 5 is my four-year anniversary,” he told The Lakeland Times. “Dating back to 2022, I’ve ordered nine trucks and I’ve yet to see one.”

As far as explanations for the delivery delays, Hegeman said the “first couple” of trucks ordered date back to the COVID-19 pandemic-era and shortages in getting steel for frame rails used for a truck’s chassis. 

“Couldn’t get the chassis,” he said. “Now we get some chassis rolling in and the body builders have some labor shortages.”

Hegeman said the ninth truck Oneida County has on order, a Western Star tandem axle, was ordered last month. 

“The chassis/cab they think they can get in three months but the attachments, all the plows, the box ... they figure that’s going to be over a year before that shows up,” he said. “It was nice that the county board approved the money for these purchases. We just can’t get them here ... every truck seems like it’s in a different phase of the process.”

As an example of the cost to Oneida County, Hegeman said the chassis/cabs for two tri-axle trucks ordered in 2024 were $425,000 apiece. 

“The tandem axle truck we just ordered was around $350,000,” he said. “There’s a lot of money sitting out there that came from different pots of money.”

Hegeman said over the course of the past five or six months, two of the department’s trucks were taken out of service. 

“On one, the cab was rotting off the frame,” he said. “Another truck we took out of the fleet because the dump box was rotting off it. We could have gotten a new box for it but it was six months out and we figured by the time June rolls around, some of these trucks that we’ve had on order will show up.” 

The Oneida County highway department has 17 snowplow routes it’s responsible for and Hegeman said with an aging truck fleet, the recent winters have been “touch and go.”

“We’re doing our best to make sure we have 17 trucks every time it snows,” he said. “We’re still relying on 25- and 26-year-old trucks to get us by and there have been a lot of repair expenses this winter just trying to keep some of those older trucks up and running.”

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].