Ken Chadwick, director of fleet services, told the Brazos County Commissioners Court on Aug. 11 that Fleet is prioritizing replacement of worn patrol and light vehicles, heavy-equipment maintenance, and several attachments and vehicles to improve road maintenance and herbicide operations.

Chadwick said Fleet currently supports roughly 550 vehicles and pieces of equipment. He described a priority list of light-duty patrol units (Tahoes and pickups) and road-and-bridge heavy equipment. "A fully built Tahoe, if someone was to ask for an addition to the fleet, it's almost $90,000 with the vehicle and the equipment," Chadwick said.

Requests discussed included a shoulder-up road-widener attachment (county estimate $74,000) intended to move material efficiently and reduce waste compared with current methods; a herbicide truck with a 1,000-gallon tank (estimated $148,000) to reduce downtime for refilling and increase daily coverage; and continued evaluation of a boom mower that has required major repairs and could need replacement if it fails. Chadwick said mechanics have rebuilt pumps and motors and that the boom mower currently has about 5,000 hours on it.

Chadwick also raised a software risk: Fleet and Road and Bridge currently use a locally hosted product called CompuLINK. The founder has died and the county does not know whether licensing will continue; IT and Fleet are evaluating migrating to ServiceNow or another fleet-management system. Chadwick said the county budget holds funds for fleet-software licensing in case IT requires additional license fees or integration work.

The supply chain and dealer "order bank" remain a constraint for ordering vehicles. Purchasing staff signaled they may seek to place orders this year to secure vehicles for next fiscal year, with purchase orders rolling into the new budget year since ordered units often arrive later.

Road and Bridge staff answered technical questions about the shoulder-up machine: Sean Eldrick said the crew logged about 833 hours of shoulder-up work this year and that the new attachment could nearly double production with lower material and labor per hour. Commissioners praised Fleet for extending vehicle life, rotating assets and upfitting in-house to save costs; no formal vote was taken on purchase requests during the session.