Anyone who’s tried to plow a gravel road before it has frozen knows the problem. Snowplows are designed with an aggressive angle of attack to peel packed snow from a road and roll it up and out of the way. If a road surface is soft, the plow doesn’t know where the snow stops and the gravel begins. Consequently, gravel often ends up in the side ditch or on lawns along with the snow. Not only does this mean damage to the road and a cleanup job for the spring, but it can also mean damage to the plowtruck, plow and even the operator.
Although plow shoes are designed to hold a cutting edge off the surface, they often prove inadequate when roads are soft.To provide extra support, some operators weld a cutting edge flat across the bottom of the plow (parallel to the road) to increase its surface area. Other operators simply lift the plow just enough to keep it off the road which works fine until the truck encounters uneven ground or a wheel falls into a pothole. In either case, the prudent operator goes slower than normal to reduce damage if the plow should happen to dig in. Continue reading “Those Early Winter Snowstorms…”