The figures are in for the stone crushing operation that the Road Agent ran at the Transfer Station in April, and the results look good for Andover taxpayers.

Road Agent Jon Champagne and his team rented the appropriate equipment and turned thousands of yards of natural fill from the land behind the Transfer Station into:

• 3,000 yards of ¾” finish grade gravel

• 3,000 yards of 1½” crushed gravel

• 1,000 yards of ¾” quarry pack

Using a municipal price schedule of about $10 per yard for ¾” finish grade, about $10.65 for 1½” crushed, and about $10.73 for ¾” quarry pack, the value of the materials produced comes to approximately $72,500. Subtract from that the cost for the crushing operation of about $29,300, and Andover taxpayers come out ahead by about $43,200 – about $32.40 on the tax bill of a $200,000 Andover home.

But the savings don’t stop there. If we had to buy the 7,000 yards of material from an out-of-town supplier and have it delivered, it could cost us about $65 per 14-yard load in delivery charges, or about $32,500 for the whole 7,000 yards.

It’s not reasonable to assume we would have paid $65 per load for the whole 7,000 yards; and there will still be some costs to move the crushed material from the Transfer Station where it’s stockpiled to whatever Andover road project it’s needed on. Nonetheless, there’s no question that besides the savings in material costs mentioned above, we’re also saving some significant dollars in the delivery column as well by making our own gravel right here in town.