In the fiscal year 2025 Equipment Replacement Fund, Public Works has planned and budgeted $225,000 for a purpose-built boom tractor bushhog, which is used to rough-cut along roadways, cut steep hillsides, and straight face vegetation along various roadways throughout Brentwood. Although this work has historically been done using a New Holland farm tractor with a boom attachment, the nature of the aftermarket add-on makes the tractor very unstable and creates excessive wear on certain parts of the machine. In researching various options, we learned that there are purpose-built machines that offer many of the same features, with greater stability and functional design for roughly the same cost.
The Public Works Department has refined its search to include a hands-on demonstration of three different machines that would best serve our needs, fairly evaluating the Mantis by Alamo, the MowerMax by Atmax Equipment, and the Aspen by Energreen. These machines were compared in real world scenarios, by a selection committee made up of a few Public Works Equipment Operators and Supervisors. While the MowerMax and Aspen were both clear leaders in our evaluation, the Aspen machine offers greater versatility through designed attachments for different types of tasks. Furthermore, the vendor Plateau Truck & Tractor offers the demonstration machine for sale ($195,000) with a full warranty, for an approximate 9% discount, as compared to new.
Public Works is requesting to use the money saved by purchasing the lightly used (51 hours of run time) demo machine, to acquire two additional attachments to benefit their work. These attachments include an "Extra Trunk" tree pruning attachment ($16,545.26) that will allow us to reach up to 26' in the air, grab and cut tree limbs up to 8" in diameter, and then lower them down in a safe and controlled manner. Additionally, we request the approval to purchase the "Tree Pincher" attachment ($7,834.36), which will allow us to use the Aspen and its versatile 26' boom to help remove fallen trees from the river. The compact size of the Aspen combined with the wide tires for maximum weight distribution would allow us to easily get the machine to many of the areas that we routinely fight to remove fallen trees from the river.
The total expense is $219,379.61, with the demo Aspen Machine available through Tennessee State Contract #71675 for $195,000. The Extra Trunk is $16,545.26 and the Tree Pincher is $7,834.36. While these two attachments are not on the statewide contract, they are offered at these government discount prices and are proprietary to the Aspen machine, sold through Plateau Truck & Tractor. This purchase price represents a discount of $31,192 (9%) off the price of a new unit. |