March 15th, 2021
To the Town of Embden Select Board & Town Residents,
Nitram Excavation has been plowing Maine roads for over 20 years and have been plowing the Town of Embden for the past nine years. We currently plow over 175 miles of roads across four towns and have nearly 30 plows trucks at our disposal to provide such services. We write this letter to shed some light on the reasons for the increase to the plowing contract for the next three years.
The increase to our bid was largely due to the cost of labor that it requires to perform the quality job that we hold ourselves to and that you have grown accustom to over the past decade. What some of you might not realize is the amount of time we dedicate to keeping the roads safe for travel. Our employees are on call 24/7 during the winter, including holidays and weekends which often keeps them away from home for days. We take pride in the fact that the residents of Embden can commute daily without concern for what we all know can be harsh winter conditions. To keep the roads safer, we have also increased the amount of salt in our budget to give us the ability to bare the roads as quickly as possible during storm events but also in between storms when the roads become icy. Another important point we believe to note is that we keep multiple spare plow trucks and loaders available at all times. This allows us to provide continuous service without interruption as we have learned over time that plow trucks always seem to breakdown at the most inconvenient times.
We thank you for the opportunity to provide you with our winter plowing services as your safety is our number one concern and we will be grateful if we are able to continue this going forward. We understand the increase is substantial compared to the last contract we performed under, and we hope the information within this letter helps understand why. This increase however, is within the current going rate for many towns that have rebid their plowing contracts within the past two years. In a “normal” year we would have attended the town meeting and answered any questions you folks would have had for us but since we are far from normal right now, we hope this letter can clear up some of the questions you might have had.
Thank you,
Scott Martin
President