Commercial vehicle design and styling exists in a parallel universe to cars. It’s not uncommon for a model to run for 20 years with minor revisions to trim pieces. Highly specialized trucks can have 20-30 year lives in revenue service and another 10-20 years on the parts pile before mini-mill reincarnation.
This 1970 OshKosh 4WD Dual Cummins Powered Sicard Thrower is a great example of the rugged utilitarian appearance of vocational makes. Sicard can trace its roots back to the 1920s in Quebec. This unit was most likely made at their Watertown, NY facility.
While this picture was taken in mid-summer, it’s ready to rumble with Old Man Winter shod with a compete set of ladder cam-lock snow chains.
Note the Hydraulic Steering on the rear axle. This allows the operator to crab steer the thrower intake chute into snow bank being cut back.
Amenties? THIS IS SPARTA! Real Drivers don’t need frou-frou such as padding to sit on or insulation. Note the mechanical Wig Wag low air indicator hanging from the ceiling.
Here we see its modern equivalent throwing snow in upstate NY.
Thats quite a weapon not something we have here not enough snow I guess.
These are the silent heroes that make the rust belt and other northern areas inhabitable for more than 6 months of the year. To be honest, I always took them for granted. When living there, you just assume that at 4.30am, you’ll hear an almighty clammor drive past, and then when you get in your car, the road is clear (although if you don’t have a driveway, all of that snow will now be a hardened ice encrusted coating on your car). Its only their absence in the UK that has made me appreciate North American snowblowing technology. Here, all they have are salt trucks without a blade. This means that our 2″ of snow turns into a slush that is slipperier than anything Dupont could spray on a frypan. I live on a 25 percent incline, and remember in one of our ‘storms of the century’ when we had a truly terrifying 3 inches of snow, the salt truck decided to descend the hill from the top, and slid into three parked cars. He didn’t even have chains on.
I lived for four years in southwestern New York State’s snow country…NYDOT and the counties all had units of this sort. Those were for the big blizzards, where snowfall was measured in feet, not inches. Not that uncommon in an area which would get almost 300 inches of snow on average each winter…not including drifts.
The plow drivers preferred a wing-plow to the rotary…first, a rotary was as lethal an instrument as anything they’d find outside of an armory. Those things could and occasionally did scoop up playing children or the unwary.
Second…I never worked with or rode on one; but my understanding was, a rotary was a two-man operation. One guy to work the rotary and diesel, another to keep that four-way steer system in the snow and away from any Chevettes. Accidents, as I say, could be pretty dramatic.
…was that Watertown? Or one of the many hamlets inside the Adirondack Park?
I love it. Reminds me of home. I do love the styling or lack thereof of commercial vehicles. I drive a commercial vehicle everyday and the lack of amenities never bothers me a bit. I like it simple and functional, I guess it makes one feel like they are getting paid for something as opposed to sitting in an air conditioned, air sprung cab with a radio and all.
I’m pretty sure that seat originally had cushions on it, looks like a standard Bostrom Air suspension seat. Yes the cushion just a piece of plywood with a inch or less of foam wrapped in vinyl. But at least it would be better then sitting on a sub freezing piece of sheetmetal.
When you have enough warm weather gear on you don’t really need much padding, do you?
Oh yeah, you better bet that seat had padding on it.
I never drove an Oshkosh. But the small-town DPW I worked for had one…a 1958, made before Oshkosh adopted that negative-canted windshield. But one salient feature, which took out another young employee’s knee…was the cartilage-killer clutch. He literally sprained his knee on that thing, using it to move dirt. And he was no wimpy lightweight, either; nor the only one to have aftereffects from driving it.
So yeah…when you’re standing on that clutch with all your might, you are going to want padding. Probably, if the seat was any good, it was taken out before the truck was surped; and a crude wooden-seat frame put in its place.
Its state DOT trucks so it looks like it could be 81 that goes through Watertown or maybe someplace in western NY. I mostly see local municipalities using blades to clear snow. Never have I seen a thrower on the road. Its almost comforting to hear/eel the rumble of the plow driving past your house and to see the light reflect off the snow. That and the noise from the back up alarms from the tractors and trucks clearing snow from sidewalks after a big storm.
Ah, haven’t seen a rotary plow since last winter… Oregon DOT uses them in the Cascades, but on the relatively flatter lands on the eastside (Klamath Falls on east, down here), they’ll use conventional plows. County rigs use a plow blade on a dump body, with cinder scatterers. Not much salt on our roads–ODOT will use something on the highway–I’m still getting the residue off from our last winter trip to Medford.
I heard a person actually mention using salt-type solution for Portland. Nothing for us over here, which is why studded tires are really popular in the icy areas.
A rotary is definitely the heavy-duty backup attack squad.
Even in Southwestern New York, they’d only have the rotaries out one or two times a season. Thing is, when you need it, you REALLY need it…the alternative is to scour the countryside looking for front-loaders from five states, to clean up after a storm. A vee-plow can sometimes do the job…sometimes. With more time and equipment failure.
That’s probably why it’s lasted so long. State trucks are seldom kept more than ten years.
I would have to agree with you there. Most times the DOT or counties will plow as the storm goes otherwise they will be spending days using front end loaders and throwers to clean up. I remember shoveling snow on a Christmas a few years back were we got 2+ feet and for a good portion of the second half of the day the trucks were out. How much that cost in overtime is beyond me but it must have been a kings ransom.
Having my grown up in a place where snow is a once in a lifetime event, it wasn’t until fairly late in life that I learned about road salt and its resultant effect on sheetmetal.
Now, my understanding is that deicing roadways with salt really took off in the years following WWII.
What I don’t understand is why, after people started realizing that it was causing cars to melt and bridges to disintegrate, it was (and is) allowed to continue. And that doesn’t even touch the environmenatal issues of wholesale salting the groundwater.
Because – and I say this having just driven 30 miles home in the first major blizzard of the year, with no salt trucks out…
…with a snow covering, the road becomes very, very slippery. With light traffic, that’s tolerable. With a lot of people around, not so much. You’ll have the tailgaters, who’ll run you down if you try to stop. You have the panicked older drivers, doing 15 miles an hour. You have people driving too fast…they tend to spin out somewhere, especially during the first storm of the year.
On an empty road, that’s no problem – often, not even for the idiot driver. In traffic? It’s the stuff that makes the national nightly news, with deaths in two figures.
On Interstates, tractor-trailers need bare pavement, even if wet, to safely proceed. Just shut down for the storm? MOST food and consumer goods are shipped by truck. And a lot of the groceries in transit, are perishable. And the days of truckers making big bucks, is pretty much gone. They can’t shut down for weather, not on a regular basis – both for the sake of the goods and shipper and because they can’t afford to.
So…like it or not, melting agents are going to be with us, as long as auto travel is.
I didn’t propose doing away with deicing. I proposed doing away with salting.
What would you have them use? And how would you answer cost/benefit and environmental arguments? As well as outrage from salt vendors, who may or may not be getting kickbacks…if they are, and the agency then stiffs them, they could turn State’s Evidence and put a few government-types in for a long-term stay at the Crossbar Hotel.
I’d welcome a non-corrosive alternative; but I think if there was one that was affordable and not barred by the EPA weenies…we’d have seen it a long time ago.
I know there are other deicing materials out there and some localities are experimenting with them in Upstate NY, salt is probably cheaper though. And while it can do damage to cars it shouldn’t do damage to properly maintained bridges and roads. Having lived in NH and NY I would say its a must. It would be nice to find something else that wasn’t so harmful/destructive.
I saw units of this type used in Milwaukee in the 70’s. One very bad winter (’78?) there was a lot of snow and these units would be seen trawling the streets. One very real hazard was that occasionally an abandoned car would be encountered in the street – those blades could inflict very real damage to the car before the driver could stop.
These are for REAL snow country. I live in central Indiana, which is the worst of all worlds – enough snow that our cars rust from the salt but not enough for municipalities to spring for the really big rigs like this, so that our snow removal is less than stellar. But it builds character, though (as my children get sick of hearing).