Third time’s the charm: Richland County secures state winter road salt contract

MANSFIELD — The third time was the charm in terms of winter road salt for Richland County.

County Engineer Adam Gove said Tuesday the state sought salt bids for a third time for a dozen counties around Ohio, none of which had received offers during two prior attempts.

This time, Richland County was successful and will receive 3,500 tons of salt through the state contract, albeit at more than $90 per ton, Gove said.

Under the terms of the contract, the salt will be off-loaded at the Ohio Dept. of Transportation outpost near the intersection of I-71 and Ohio 97.

Gove said the county will be responsible for picking it up and moving it to various locations.

“We will have to either truck it or hire a trucking company to take it to our locations in Bellville, Mansfield and Shiloh,” Gove said.

Shortages and rising prices have been an issue in recent years in terms of inflating salt prices and also its availability. Published reports blame a myriad of factors, including systemic supply chain disruptions, localized terminal closures, and low carryover inventory resulting from a severe winter.

County commissioners on Tuesday approved Gove’s request to advertise a second time for salt through a local bidding process. The county received no offers in July when it sought a local contract.

All 3,500 tons through the state contract are for the 347 miles of county roads, according to Gove.

“That’s why we are rebidding the county contract because I’m trying not to leave townships and villages hanging out to dry. We want to try to help them find some salt, so we did make some changes to our usual county contract.

“We’re requiring a 90 percent minimum purchase of the salt each entity has requested,” the engineer said.

“I did ask everybody that takes part in our (county) contract to look at what they have on hand and what they think they would need to get through the winter to hopefully reduce the amount.

“We did reduce our (contracted) request. First time, we were at 18,000 tons and this time we’re going to be in the 7,200 ton range, so we more than cut it in half,” Gove said.

In July, Gove estimated the county has about 1,500 to 2,000 tons on hand, which is “not enough to get us through a full (normal winter) season.

“We pretty much used everything we ordered last year. We had some on hand from the year before, but we probably used 5,500 tons last winter,” he said at the time.

The additional 3,500 tons may be enough for this winter, Gove said.

“With what we have on hand, that state contract (salt) should get us pretty close to what we need, depending obviously on the winter (weather).”