Minnesota is setting an unwise precedent

St Paul MN - The most recent report out of St. Paul indicates that the politicians are about to set an unwise precedent in the transit industry. The Minnesota House of Representatives approved an amendment that would force the Metro Council to reverse the awarding of a bid to Gillig Corporation and award it to New Flyer Industries (NFI) who, by the way, couldn't bother itself to follow the bidding procedure and are whining about it.

By politically forcing the reversal, it will set a precedent that in Minnesota, all buses will be NFI since NFI can now low ball every bid in the state, not meet the bidding criteria and then invoke the new state law to get awarded the contract. As I mentioned in an earlier Laurels and Lances article, "Warranty? What warranty? There's no stinkin' warranty".

The approved bill, submitted by Representative Loren Solberg (D) must be reconciled to a similar bill in the State Senate that was introduced by Senator Tarryl Clark (D) before being signed into law by the governor.

The main issue is the warranty. A warranty on a transit bus is no trivial matter as they all have problems when new. I have not seen a bus order since the days of the GM New look that didn't have tons of warranty related problems and even they weren't immune to problems.

Gillig, who followed the bidding procedure, will provide a 2 year warranty as per the bid terms. NFI's grand plan is to offer a 1 year warranty and then only if a problem effects 30% or more of the order based on their assessment of the problem. That's like buying a car that is known to have problems and having the warranty only going into effect if 30% of the cars sold at that particular dealership have the same problem. No sane person would take a car they know will have problems with that type of warranty.

The cost to the transit system under NFI's offer will ultimately cost the transit system millions of dollars more over the 2 year period that the bid required since the transit system will be left to pick up the tab. Even though the initial outlay is more if the contract went to Gillig, the long term costs are less.

In my personal opinion, NFI's warranty offer is done in such a way that they won't have to provide warranty service. What a way to do business. It's the proverbial non-warranty warranty. You get a piece of paper saying your covered but when there's a problem, don't bother them with it.

Both Representative Loren Solberg and Senator Tarryl Clark earn the Lance for failing to understand what they are about to do but then, Democrat politicians only understand knee jerk reactions while never understanding the long term implications of their actions. Transit in Minnesota will suffer in the long term over the politician's desire hand NFI a free pass to get the business without meeting the bidding criteria.