Transportation officials paid more for road salt and sand this year due mostly to higher fuel costs for delivery, they said. That is, unless they bought sand during the spring, before the jump in fuel prices.
Prices for the winter road maintenance staples depended on where municipalities are located and how they bought it.
The prices are all over the place, Bob Spencer, the Region 3 supervisor of the Maine Department of Transportation, said Monday.
In late October when the state was still negotiating contracts, Spencer had predicted an average price increase of $1 to $1.50 per cubic yard of sand. The average increase turned out to be about $1.25, he said, with some contracts still not wrapped up.
The state handles about 50 percent of its own trucking of sand to its sites and pays vendors sand stumpage, which means state workers dig the sand out of a pile or ground, Spencer said. The state also does 50 percent of the processing or screening.
The costs that the Department of Transportation paid for stumpage of screened sand were: $2.55 per cubic yard for the Stratton/Eustis area; $2.75 for Salem Township area; $3.19, Avon area; $5.25, Turner area; $2.25, Canton; and $5, Bethel.
Spencer attributed this year’s price increases to higher fuel costs, higher labor costs and, in some areas, the fact that sand is becoming harder to get due to ongoing development.
By the time the contracts are completed for Region 3 towns, Spencer said the state will purchase about 18,000 cubic yards of sand and will re-screen about 4,000 cubic yards of sand it had left over.
It cost the state an average of $10 for each cubic yard piled at a state site. That includes sand premixed with salt to prevent freezing, sand stumpage, processing and transportation, Spencer said. Region 3 includes most of Androscoggin County, northern Oxford County and all of Franklin County.
Salt shakes out: 7% more
In addition to higher sand prices, the state paid about 5 percent more for salt.
Last year, Spencer said it cost the state $48.98 per ton for salt compared to this year’s $52.39 per ton.
The state has 20,000 tons of salt under contract, he said.
Lewiston Public Works Director Paul Boudreau recently said that salt increased $4 a ton from $41.13 per ton to $45.13 a ton this year.
He said the city has purchased 6,000 to 7,000 tons of salt and 3,500 cubic yards of sand.
Lewiston is getting away from using sand, Boudreau said, and instead has a salt priority due to rising costs of cleaning up the sand.
“You have to clean it out of catch basins. You have to sweep it up. … It gets in our streams and waterways, plus it’s very dusty when sweeping,” Boudreau said.
Sand costs were about the same as last year, he said, staying at $6 a cubic yard, including processing and delivery. The city bought its sand before the fuel price spike.
Jay did the same and bought its sand screened this spring at $1.85 per cubic yard, about the same as last year’s price, Jay Highway Foreman John Johnson said Monday.
“It turned out to be a good thing,” Johnson said.
On rainy days, Johnson said, the crew hauled sand to the Highway Department’s sand and salt storage building.
Purchasing together
The town participated in a joint bid for salt and liquid calcium organized by Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments. Even so, the bid for salt for the group was $49.49 per ton, an increase of about $4 from last year.
Rumford was among the towns in the joint bid for salt and paid $49.49 this year compared to $45.96 last year, garage clerk Pam Duguay said Monday.
The town paid $5.25 a cubic yard for sand this year, compared to $4.14 a cubic yard last year, she said.
“You expect an increase,” Duguay said. “You don’t expect it to be so much.”
Bethel Public Works Director Scott Sumner said his town paid $5 per cubic yard of sand delivered this year, compared to $4.25 a cubic yard last year.
This year, it paid $49 a ton for salt, which increased $6 from $43 a ton last year, Sumner said.
It wasn’t development that drove the cost, Sumner said; it was the cost of fuel.
In Rangeley, highway foreman Everett Quimby said recently that the town paid $7.19 per cubic yard for sand delivered, compared to $5 per cubic yard last year. The town crew put up 3,500 yards of sand and bought 219 tons of salt at $49.49 a ton.
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