DIXFIELD — With two older trucks failing, public works foreman Craig Woods told the Select Board that a new vehicle is needed to keep up with snowplowing.

The board voted Feb. 23 to lease a 2027 Freightliner for five years for snowplowing, Town Manager Alicia Conn said Feb. 24.

“As of right now, we only have three trucks — the two big new ones, the 2025 Western Star and 2026 Freightliner, and the one-ton, which is a 2025,” Woods said Feb. 9. “I have five runs, five trucks, five guys. I need five trucks — four big ones, one little one. If I don’t, it’s going to take longer (to plow).”

Two of the department’s older trucks are failing, including a fourth plow truck, which has considerable maintenance costs. The town needs that fourth truck to get plowing done on a timely basis, Woods said.

He said the town has put between $50,000 and $60,000 into the 2016 International over the past two years.

“We can plow flat roads with it,” he said, but, “it won’t make it uphill. It needs to be gone.”

Board Chairman Dick Pickett said the town has been keeping vehicles until they get to “where there’s nothing left and we can’t get anything for them.”

He said the town put together a schedule a few years ago for replacing equipment, but between 2016 to 2023 the town did not have an equipment schedule.

Woods said the town was under no obligation, but he put his name in to reserve a 2027 Freightliner plow truck that would be ready by next fall. The purchase price is $224,000, he said.

Conn said there is $143,733 in the public works equipment reserve account.

Woods said they have a 2014 pickup and the 2013 and 2016 trucks that could be put up for auction and the money put in the reserve account as well.

In other business, Conn said there will be a public information session March 9 on the proposed Common Road Reconstruction Project. The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. downstairs at Ludden Library.