On Friday, July 4, 2014 1:19:45 PM UTC-4, TomR wrote:
In ,

trader_4 typed:

On Friday, July 4, 2014 11:10:01 AM UTC-4, TomR wrote:

In ,



DannyD. typed:

By way of comparison, I just got a quote from this water company

for $225 to $250 for 3,800 gallons from a stainless steel truck:

Bay Area Water Trucking, 408-683-0500



Well, if I am not mistaken, that seems to be the answer to your

original question -- how to truck 1,000 gallons of potable water to a

residence.



For 250 bucks you can get almost 4 times the original 1,000 gallons

you were looking for -- and that's the delivered price. So, no meters to

buy

or rent, no tanks to buy, no trucks or trailers to rent, etc. If your

neighbors asked you to figure this out, it looks like you just did

that for them.



My vote would be, call Bay Area Water Trucking, write the check, and

it's over.



In fairness to Danny, from the original post, it's obvious it's not

a one time, 1000 gallon problem. CA is in a long term drought, his

wells are running dry and so are his neighbors. The idea was to see

if they could come up with some lower cost solution to span months.



Yes, but he was trying to figure out the best plan or solution for each

1,000 gallons of water that they need to get up to their location. At $250

for each 3,800 gallon transport, that's way less than any of the other

options that he was looking at, and it involves virtually no labor or

rentals or anything else on their part. At $250 per 3,800 gallon trip,

that's even less than the cost for them to just rent a tank truck and then

they would have to find a commercially licensed driver to drive the rental

truck, do the pumping and metering, etc.

He said that with a 1000 gallon tank, they could rent a truck and do
it without a CDL. I don't see how it's less than the cost of a truck.
I don't remember the numbers, but it seems the truck should be $250 for
a day. You could then make many trips to many houses and I would think
it would net out to a lot less than $250 per house. The water itself didn't
cost much, as I recall.

I guess it also depends on how many folks he has in on this, and
how large their tanks are. If he has enough folks and they have big
tanks, eg 5,000 gallons, which it sounded like they do, then renting
a truck could be cheap. You just keep the truck busy all day,
fill a lot of tanks up. But the flip side of that is somebody still
has to do the work. And IDK how long the water lasts before it has
to be done again, etc. You definitely avoid a lot of problems by paying
for the delivery.



I think that he originally thought

that it would cost a lot more than $250 to even get just 1,000 gallons up to

them. So, to me, $250 total for each 3,800 gallon delivery sounds like the

easiest and cheapest option that any of us has come up with. It certainly

beats my "buy 55-gallon drums and make 10 trips of 2 drums at a time in a

pickup truck" idea; or my get a fire truck idea, etc.



I didn't follow the whole thing. Did he try the local fire dept? A lot
of times when there are emergencies like this, they will help out. I
guess it depends on how many people there are, how long, etc. If it's
not that many people, they might be willing to do something.

Or, he could go to the municipal govt. They might have eqpt or be willing
to work to come up with a solution. Another factor he might want to
consider is getting something in place soon. If enough wells go dry,
that water truck might be fully booked, rates might go up, etc.




I think he found his best option, and that's what his neighbors apparently

asked him to do.

If they want to go that route, he should get together the neighbors and
see how many are interested at that price point. Then Danny could go to
the water truckers and negotiate a deal for all of them, ie a volume deal.
Danny should bring all his spreadsheets and analytics to the water guy's
office. After an hour or two, the water guy will probably be willing to
give them the water for free just to be done with it. LOL