Supes buy new motor graders
During their regular meeting on Monday evening, the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors voted to purchase new motor graders from Traxplus based out of Columbus through a reverse auction.
On July 16, the county set a time for 30 minutes for companies to come in and place bids electronically. Two companies participated, Stribling Equipment, LLC and Traxplus, who went back and forth nine times.
During the meeting, District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard kept specifying it doesn’t always have to be the lowest price when it comes to these auctions, but they want to get the best value one in terms of which will last longer and get the most work done.
Traxplus ended up having the lowest bid of $202,000.
After the auction was over, the Supes had the decision to pick which company to contract out to get three new motor graders from, and they decided to go with Traxplus.
When asked on how he felt about winning the reverse auction, Traxplus salesman Daniel Bounds remarked he feels really good about his company being chosen.
“I appreciate the opportunity of going to work and help the citizens of Oktibbeha County,” Bounds said.
Bounds said his company’s product
stands out from competitors, but it evens out with not many people knowing a lot about their product considering how new it is.
“If you start looking at the components of the product, they’re actually a premium product compared to what the other competitors are putting out,” said Bounds. “The only issue that we have against us is that it is so much of a newer product that people aren’t very familiar with it.”
As an Oktibbeha County resident, Bounds is excited to work for the county he resides in.
“Anything I can do, personally, to help the county, I’d be glad to do,” Bounds said.
Once a purchase order for the motor graders is issued, they will be in the hands of the county within ten days.
On the other side of the auction, Caterpillar Sales Manager Tom Simmons believes the decision-making process should have gone a different route.
“I feel like there were some things said unfairly, like whenever we were asked to present a bid to begin with,” said Simmons. “But a $44,000 difference, the warranty was different, the terms were different, we didn’t know when they wanted the machines to be delivered, so there was a lot of unknown out there at that point.”
Although the Supervisors
think
Traxplus’ products have a better value, Simmons said he wouldn’t work for Caterpillar if he didn’t think his company had the better value.
Caterpillar technically didn’t participate in the electronic reverse auction, but instead brought in a paper copy of their bid on Friday morning before the auction opened.
Because the auction hadn’t opened yet, the county was able to take that paper bid and consider it as well.
Where the confusion comes from is in the prior advertisements for the reverse auction, and it said you must participate electronically, no exceptions. However, even if there is a reverse auction and someone turns in a paper before the auction opens, it can still count, due to state law.