At the last town meeting the voters authorized the selectmen to pay $1 to the east Andover Fire Department for a 1989 Ford tanker that they were putting out of service. The fire department knew the town was looking at the truck to turn it into a six wheel dump truck for the town.

The use of the truck has many advantages for us. It can be used during the summer for doing road work and in the winter for plowing and sanding. At the Town Meeting the voters also approved a warrant article for the sum of $30,000 to retrofit the truck from a fire truck into a dump truck.

While trying to save the town money our road agent, John Thompson, went on an exploring campaign. In the process he found a Ford 8000 for sale in Maine for the sum of $4,200.  The truck itself was not in very good condition, but it had almost everything it needed for our plow and sander system.

John also found a dump body complete with carriage and piston assembly for $1,800.  Mr. Thompson went on to find a sander for the truck that was in excellent shape for the sum of $1,500.  With all this said, the road agent spent $7,500 dollars on components that would have cost up to, and probably more than, $25,000 if bought new.

The town crew tore the old fire system out of the truck and we began the conversion to a dump truck.  After they did this, they started stripping the truck we bought for parts of all the components we needed to convert our truck.

Jim Reed and Keith Blinn did an excellent job of doing this on top of their other duties for the town.  Keith found a person who sandblasted all of the plow parts from the truck we bought so they could be primed and painted.  The sum for this was $2,150, which also included the dump body and carriage.

While this was done Jim continued to strip the old truck of parts while Keith primed and painted the plow system. After all this was done, the frame had to be shortened and the rear wheels had to be moved forward.  This was done by Jim Thompson at no expense to the town.

The drive shaft had to be shortened and some welding had to be done on the front of the truck, plates had to be made so the plow would attach from one truck to the other.  This was done by Brendan Newton at a discounted price of $460.  Brendan did the work at a discounted price in order to save the town money.

When the assembly of the truck started taking place, we split up the town crew, Jim Reed continued to work on the truck while Keith Blinn took on the needs of the town.

Jim has done an outstanding job on the truck.  He ran all of the hydraulic lines from the front pump to all the plow components, installed the controls inside the truck that operate the plow and sander system, painted the plow frame and dump body, at times laying on his back with a matter of inches between himself and the bottom of the dump body.  Jim Thompson primed and painted the truck at no cost to the town.

Keith at this time was working on the town roads, cutting up fallen trees, plowing, and sanding our roads.

We thank Jim for all the work he did at no cost for the Town of Andover. The finished product should be viewable at our Town Meeting.   I want to thank all of those who either worked on the truck, or donated their time, well done to a foot note.  If the town had gone out and purchased a truck of this caliber it would have been well in excess of $30,000.

Jim Delaney