County work crews and the general public should benefit from an investment by the Bartholomew County Highway Department into what has been described as the latest land excavation technology.
By a unanimous vote, the Bartholomew County commissioners approved the purchase of a vacuum truck for the highway department. While a new 2023 Aquatech model has been priced at $563,987, MacAllister Machinery of Indianapolis agreed to sell a used 2013 Aquatech truck to the county for $185,926. The highway department will use its own budget to pay for the machinery, local officials said.
There were four bids received to supply the truck, with one bid about $900 cheaper than the accepted offer. But Bartholomew County Highway engineer Danny Hollander said the cheapest truck had considerably more miles, blower hours and pump hours than the one that was unanimously approved.
The truck will give county highway crews the ability to undertake vacuum excavation, which uses kinetic energy in a high velocity air stream to penetrate, expand and break up soil for underground utility excavation, according to an industry website. Suction is then used to lift the loose dirt up and deposit it into a storage or holding tank, the website states.
“Right now, we have to hand-dig it all in locating utilities,” Hollander said. “When it ends up under (a pile of debris), that is quite the endeavor.”
One problem with conventional excavating machines is that they leave operators with no choice but to frequently dump their load, commissioner Larry Kleinhenz said.
“You can either dump it in a truck, which is a dirty and messy undertaking,” Kleinhenz said. “Or you dump it in a field or right of way. Then, you have to go back and clean it up and reseed it.”
Backhoes and hydraulic excavators can also accidentally damage underground pipes and buried utility lines. The result could be a disruption of water, gas or electrical service to homes and businesses, as well as widespread boil water advisories.
In contrast, vacuum excavation allow crews to complete jobs with greater speed and efficiency at a reduced cost, the website states.
Residents of Columbus are already benefiting from the use of vacuum excavating, Hollander said.
“City utilities don’t even use a backhoe anymore,” the highway engineer said. “They vacuum everything anytime they are digging around their lines.”
For the highway department, the vacuum truck will be utilized for relocating utilities, as well as for cleaning out inlets and pipes, according to Hollander. But the truck can also be utilized to clean out ditches in the public right-of-way, Kleinhenz said.
Vacuum trucks, which are also called vacuum tankers, are also used often in larger communities to handle large-scale liquid and sludge clean-up that can occur during sewer and septic system maintenance.
