The Flossmoor Public Works Department will now have an aerial bucket truck to use for street light maintenance, tree trimming and other projects around town.
that will be used by the village’s Public Works
Department. (Provided photo)
The Flossmoor Public Works Department will now have an aerial bucket truck to use for street light maintenance, tree trimming and other projects around town.
The village board approved the request for the truck at its Feb. 19 board meeting, telling Public Works Director John Brunke to move ahead with the purchase. The truck will be purchased from Landmark Ford in Springfield and will be retrofitted with the lift mechanism by Auto Truck Group of Bartlett for a total purchase of just more than $90,000.
Brunke also asked the board to approve an expense of $5,000 to place the village logos and other lettering on the truck, and to equip it with a safety cab cage. The height of the new bucket truck and the protective cage will allow public works to complete tree trimming and smaller tree removal around town.
“It’s going to allow us to save some money on contract tree removals,” Brunke told the board. “We’ll still have some tree removal work done by a contractor. There are situations where we need to do multiple trees at a time. That kind of specialty work we really want experts doing.”
Mostly the truck will be used for street light maintenance and putting up the village’s annual holiday lights. It would also be used in cases of building fascia repair or anything else that requires its height.
Public works crews have been getting by with a tow lift, first used in 2000, that’s pulled behind a pickup truck. It takes time to set up, doesn’t have the same height capabilities as the lift truck and is beginning to have frequent maintenance issues.
“This is a lift, so obviously safety is a huge issue with this piece of equipment,” Brunke said.
In addition to using the tow lift, the Public Works Department has been borrowing aerial bucket trucks from the Flossmoor Park District and neighboring towns. Now the department will have its own bucket truck, which Brunke said will get used two to three times per week. That level of use is the reason Brunke ruled out sharing the truck with another village, similar to the Flossmoor Fire Department sharing an engine with Park Forest.
“We did look into sharing this piece of equipment, like the fire department has done with their fire engine, but with the amount of use, it would be very difficult to balance the use with another agency,” Brunke said.
Brunke said he expects the truck to be delivered and be ready for action in five to six months. He said the old tow lift will be sold at auction and could net the village anywhere between $5,000 to $10,000.
The trustees unanimously approved the purchase which was included in the fiscal year 2018 budget.