With nearly 5,000 hours of use, the county will exercise a buyback option on three motor graders and advertise for new ones.
During the Warren County Board of Supervisors meeting Monday road department manager Buddy Poole gave an update on road conditions and easements for the month of February and then requested permission to exercise the buyback option for the county’s motor graders.
“Four years ago we purchased three motor graders with the option from Caterpillar to buy them back after four years,” Poole said. “Caterpillar will come look at them and if they are in good enough shape they will give us the buyback price they offered when we initially bought them.”
“The current motor graders were received in June 2011 purchased for $190,451each and the buyback value for each is $132,000,” Warren County’s purchasing agent Tonga Vinson said. “Every four years we usually get new motor graders and we ask for buyback options.”
“We setup the lease payment to have a balloon payment due at the same time as the buyback option, that way we don’t have so much invested up front,” she said. “We usually try to time it where we let the machines go back and we take that money from the vendor we bought them from and retire that balloon note.”
The county utilizes similar arrangements on other heavy equipment and benefits from not having to provide extensive maintenance and repairs on that equipment.
“By doing this buyback we’ve been able to keep equipment out on the road and of the shop,” board president Bill Lauderdale said. “I found out early on that when it’s in the shop it doesn’t do you any good.”