The tight budgets for county highway department in recent years in Iowa affected not only road construction.
The Winneshiek County Highway Department has 17 trucks--and the last time it bought a new truck for that fleet was six years ago--in 2010.
Now the department will be buying two new trucks to replace two of their oldest trucks--although County Engineer Lee Bjerke hasn't waded through all of the bids and alternate bids yet to figure out which bid makes the most sense.
However, Bjerke does know that the two new trucks will replace new trucks bought in 1997--which now both have over 200,000 miles on them.