NYC Transit opened bids September 29 for a kit of MA9500 brake pads covering the SN7 and SB7 car classes, and eight vendors quoted. CBM US Inc. came in low at $940,000. The next bid up, from Gillig LLC, was $1,640,206 — already 74% higher.
That's the headline number: a $940,000 low against a $2,838,800 high from SSSoleil Co., a spread of better than 200%. In between sit Neopart Transit ($1,650,734), Campbell Freightliner ($1,786,000), Muncie Transit Supply ($1,984,904), NFI Parts ($2,004,080), and Gabrielli Truck Sales ($2,115,000) — a tight cluster of five bids all landing within about $460,000 of each other, none of them anywhere near CBM's number.
The strange part of this tab is CBM itself. The same firm shows up twice — once at $940,000, the low bid, and again at $2,522,020, the second-highest bid on the sheet. That's not a typo in the record; it reads as two separate quotes from the same vendor, on the same solicitation, more than $1.5 million apart. On brake-pad kits, pricing usually hinges on whether a vendor is quoting OEM parts, a certified equivalent, or a private-label match to the MTA's spec — a gap like that inside one company's own paperwork suggests two very different sourcing paths got quoted under one name.
For parts suppliers watching this program, the tab says the market for this kit is thin on true competitors and wide open on price. Six-figure line items like this rarely draw scrutiny the way a paving contract does, but a $1.9 million spread on a single SKU is real money for NYC Transit's Materials & Supply budget — and a reminder that on rolling-stock parts, the low bid isn't always obviously the cheap one once warranty and lead-time terms get compared line by line.
Award has not been posted; this is bid-opening data only, per NYC Transit's SSE results page.