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A wheel good deal

County approves tire disposal agreement

Brandon Johnson

Moffat County could be rid of 20,000 tires piled at the landfill as early as next summer.

County commissioners voted Tuesday to enter into a multi-county tire disposal agreement led by Alamosa County.

It will cost Moffat County $7,500 to join. The money will go toward the purchase of a tire-shredding machine called “Hogzilla,” which shreds about 1,750 tires per hour at 12 cents per tire.



The county’s $7,500 payment will be credited toward its use of the machine, which will cost about $2,500 per use.

Participating counties must provide 180 gallons of water and a loader or bulldozer to push tires into the machine, but the Department of Local Affairs will reimburse those costs through the state’s waste-tire-reimbursement program.



The shredded tires will be used as daily cover at the Moffat County landfill.

“This sounds like a really good deal to me,” Commissioner Darryl Steele said Tuesday.

Steele and Commissioner Tom Gray voted in favor of the agreement.

Commissioner Saed Tayyara was not at Tuesday’s meeting because he was at a Colorado River District meeting.

The county has been looking for a way to get rid of junk tires for a few years. They looked into paying a private company to shred tires, but at $4 a tire, it was too expensive.

Hogzilla will be stored in Alamosa County and will make the rounds to participating counties annually.

Commissioner Gray said that by sharing the cost of Hogzilla among a group of counties, small counties could afford to use a machine that would otherwise be far too expensive.

The commissioners hope the machine comes to the Moffat County landfill as early as next summer.

Road and Bridge Department director Bill Mack said the county will continue to charge $4 to leave a standard tire at the landfill.

The money from the tire disposal fee will pay for landfill space taken up by tires that still have rims on them and can’t be shredded, Mack said.

Landfill fees also will offset the cost to store tires at the landfill during Cleanup Craig days, when the landfill lets the city leave junk tires there for free.

Mack said the county won’t shred the tires they had baled a few years ago.

Ed Hardesty, a salesman for Hogzilla manufacturer CW Mill Equipment Company, said the majority of his customers are private businesses but that more governments are buying their own tire shredders.

“Governmental organizations are slowly becoming involved with it,” Hardesty said last week.

Cities and towns in Texas and New Jersey also have purchased Hogzillas.


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