Lincoln County’s solid waste coordinator will get the keys to a shiny new truck this year, but it won’t be clean for long.

Bob Knight expects the new Ram 5500 to get dirty quickly since he’ll be using it to canvass the county looking for illegal dump sites.

“I don’t even wait for nobody to call me about a dump. I just go riding and looking because I know where they’re going to dump,” Knight said Thursday.

Knight was hopeful Tuesday that the Lincoln County Board of Supervisors would vote to send him off with a truck and a new trailer, too. But only one of the five favored that solution.

The Ram on state contract will cost $43,114. The upfitting for tool boxes, trailer hitch, tanks for the crane and the pneumatics is $16,149 for a total of $59,263.

A new trailer with a grappling arm is $59,033. Together, that’s a $118,296 investment of taxpayer money.

Supervisors in past months have discussed replacing the truck, but have hesitated about buying a trailer, too.

Knight said the current trailer needs about $800 in repairs including a fix for a 3-foot-by-3-foot hole in the bed.

“That will keep it going for right now, but you’ve still got a 20-, 21-year-old trailer. Eventually it’s going to have to be replaced, whether we change it now or change it later, it’s going to have to be replaced,” he said.

District 5 Supervisor Doug Falvey wanted to take care of both together.

“I make the motion we go ahead and buy the truck and the trailer now and be done with it,” he said Tuesday. “Like he said, we’re going to have to replace the trailer later if we don’t do it now. If we do that now, we’ve got stuff we don’t have to worry about for the next 10 years or whatever.”

Falvey’s motion died for lack of a second.

District 3 Supervisor Nolan Williamson made a motion to purchase just the truck with the upfitting and it passed 4-1.