Letter to the Editor, Posted: 5/26/04
To the editor:
The Nessel Township Board, at the May monthly meeting, took bids for graveling some of the roads and felt that they should get 50 cents a yard from the contractor if they allow him to use our loader and our employee to load the gravel. They will begin with 2,000 yards and our employee says they can do about 500 yards a day working 10 hours a day.Ý So there would be 2 hours of overtime per day. In checking with a business that rents heavy equipment like loaders, they have a small loader for $470 a day, then a medium one for $550, and a large for $750.Ý Our loader is pretty big, but let us say it is a small.ÝOur employeeís wages, something more than $160 a day, plus benefits, and $60 for the 2 hours of overtime, and you are in the neighborhood of $700 a day.Ý All this time he is in the gravel pit up north.ÝFour days of use gets you to $2,800 instead of the $1,000 that the board is figuring for 2,000 yards of gravel.Ý So you would need to get around $1.25 a yard to come close to the rental cost.ÝThey plan on doing another 8,000 yards this summer, so you figure how much it will cost the taxpayer.ÝIt would be more cost effective to have the gravel delivered, rather than have our employee sitting up in the gravel pit for four days. Ray Henderson is the only supervisor who did not vote for the deal as he did not like the set up.ÝÝ Ý
Thomas L. Hennemann
Rush City
Editorís note: Nessel Township Clerk Helen Leier was asked to clarify the gravel issue. She said, ìThe township received 3 bids for gravel hauling from our gravel pile
located at the Kylander Pit, and had requested that the bids include the price of both them doing the loading vs. us providing our loader and operator. The quoted price was 50 cents a yard cheaper using our loader and operator, which the board decided to do as they felt we had more control over the size of the loads going into each of the belly dump trucks.
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