By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
The City of Parsons Water and Sewer Department is having difficulties in finding a hauling service to handle the City’s vac truck. The truck has been out of commission with an issue with its transmission and due it is size and weight distribution, many companies are not equiped to handle it, Department Head Red Lipscomb informed the Parsons City Council March 18th.
Lipscomb said that he has been attempting to find a company to tow the truck to either the shop in Pennsylvania or Charleston. “The transmission is having an issue,” Lipscomb said. “I’ve been trying to get a wrecker service to come in and tow it to the shop,” Lipscomb said.
Lipscomb said he has contacted several companies on the issue, but none have been equipped to handle the truck. “We try to get a lowboy to get it on, nobody can haul it,” Lipscomb said. “Its going to be overheight if somebody puts it on a flatdeck and I’ve tried three wrecker companies and none of them could haul it.”
Lipscomb said to get by, he has borrowed a vac truck from the Town of Davis. “In the meantime, we borrowed the Town of Davis’ truck,” Lipscomb said.
Lipscomb said Davis was happy to help because of past cooperation between the municipalities. “I worked out a deal with the Town of Davis,” Lipscomb. “They said, you know you guys come up and helped us when we needed it, we’ll help you when you need it.”
According to Lipscomb, he offered to rent the truck from Davis, but was told that a favor may be needed later on. “I agreed to run the truck as if it was our own, take care of it, anything needed and they so graciously, I offered to pay for it, you know rent it from them, but they said just take I, we might need a favor down the line,” Lipscomb said.
Lipscomb thanked the Town of Davis for their cooperation in the loan of the vac truck. “I’d like to extend my thanks to the Town of Davis for doing that,” Lipscomb said. “The Mayor, Joni and all them guys.”
Should Davis have need of the vac truck in the interim, Lipscomb said he agreed to take the truck to Davis and assist to resolve the issue. “And I agreed with them that if they did have an issue, that we would bring the truck up and fix their issue,” Lipscomb said. “But they said they rarely ever have any.”
The transmission is out of warranty, according to Lipscomb, even though the truck only has 6,000 miles on it. “In the meantime, we are just trying to get our truck fixed,” Lipscomb said. “The transmission is out of warranty. It had a three year, unlimited mileage warranty on it.”
Lipscomb said he does not know how much it will cost to fix. A new transmission for the truck Lipscomb said could range between $15,000 to $20,000. “It could be a little or a lot,” Lipscomb said. “You are dealing with an Allison transmission in that truck. They’re probably $15,000 to $20,000, but I’m hoping for the best.”
A wiring harness recall will also be fixed at the shop once the truck can get there, Lipscomb said. Council Member Seth Rosenau offered to make some calls to help locate someone to haul the truck. Lipscomb said he was also awaiting the return of calls on transporting the truck, as well.
Lipscomb said he hoped to have it transported to the shop by the end of the week or sometime the following week at the latest.
