Rock Rapids, Iowa — The Lyon County Board of Supervisors recently okayed the purchase of ten road graders (known as motor graders in the industry).
According to Lyon County Engineer Daryl Albertson, in the past, the county has purchased basically one road grader at a time, similar to the way sheriff cruisers are purchased.
The ten road graders will be purchased from Zeigler Cat at a total price of over three million dollars. He says they will be Caterpillar brand units. Albertson tells us that the old graders’ trade-in value was 981,000. He says they will take out a seven-year loan with American State Bank in Alvord at 1.74% interest.
Albertson says they will keep two of their current graders. He says the nice thing about having so many of the same type of grader is that they are all on the same maintenance schedule, it’s easy for operators to switch machines, and probably the biggest advantage is the locked-in trade-in values. Plus, he says with new graders, everything is under warranty, and the county won’t have to pay for out-of-warranty parts or labor, which, over the last seven years has run about $42,000 per year. He tells us he learned of the program when he was working in Hardin County.
