Despite some wishful and frankly conflicted thinking that maybe this year it just wouldn’t snow, that fantasy has rolled over and died out here in New England. We may have had an oddly warm and non-snowy first third of the winter, but as is often the case in these parts things change quickly. January brought snow and it seems as if there will be more of it throughout the rest of the winter. Ski resorts are struggling back from the brink (just like every year), and the snow plow guys are happy.
Except, are snow plow guys ever actually happy? While you ponder that existential question, I’ll note that it does seem that Plow Guys are getting harder and harder to find. Town departments of public works and the state Department of Transportation have taken to keeping these signboards out, advertising for plow contractors, about two-thirds of the year. On local social media groups, residents have kept up a pretty constant cry “ISO” (in search of) people to come plow their driveways. Most disheartening are the posts earlier this month (once the snow started falling) of hired contractors who “came once, got about halfway down the driveway, and then left and never came back”. Some people…
All of which gets me to thinking about my personal history with snow removal. Grab a warm beverage – or at least one that makes you feel warm as it goes down – and let’s see what the deal is with snow plowing. Let’s consider Plow Guys, their trucks, and…..well, we’ll find something else I’m sure.
It appears that I’ve been involved in moving snow for quite some time. Here I am looking not all that happy in the “historic” Baltimore, MD snow storm of January, 1966. That, according to the Internet, was more than a foot of snow over the course of several days. In some places, the drifts were supposedly 10 feet tall.
It’s just like the Shackleton expedition except in Baltimore with toddlers, and groceries.
The Blizzard of ’66 naturally challenged the (mostly) southern city’s snow-removal efforts. Schools were closed for a week. But as this was before I started school, all I can recall was that it was hella fun for the streets to be impassable and to therefore have to walk – or sled it seems – to the store with my dad for provisions.
Yes, this is still a photo of the February, 1966 storm. I should note that my mom had a kind of idiosyncratic approach to getting film developed. She’d pile up a bunch of exposed rolls and then forget when they were taken. Clearly some pictures of the February storm got developed in February, while some had to wait until October to get to the drugstore.
Family photos indicate that some of our neighbors must have figured out how to dig their cars out of the snowbanks. As I recall, we mostly left the Plymouth wagon (seen here in the background) buried until the snow melted off. Likewise our Simca. Well, there’s a good chance that neither was running, so a dad-powered sled would have been the preferred way for the Suns to get to the grocery store.
Another huge storm that I can recall impacting transportation was when we were living in Raleigh, NC. This storm of a bit less than a foot in January, 1973 closed schools for a week. While not exactly car-burying, it was still something. The blow to my family was somewhat lessened due to the fact that by this time we’d finally managed to get a house with off-street parking and a carport for the Simca! No more buried cars for us. By the way, for those of you keeping score, it should be noted that our Simca would have been a bit over 9 years old when this photo was taken… probably a record at the time for not-French people living in the U.S.
No, buried cars and a lack of driveway snowplowing did not present problems for my family during the Blizzard of ’73. Rather, according at the time to my mom, the problem during this blizzard was that the City of Raleigh pretty much threw in the towel so far as snow removal. The local streets stayed snow and ice covered for close to a week. Her summation of the situation was that she was not going to venture out in the giant Chrysler wagon with “all those idiots on the road”. In retrospect, I’m not sure who “all” those idiots were since I recall seeing very few Tarheels brave enough to try to drive on public roads that week. More than likely, they were definitely less “idiots” than just winter driving neophytes who – living in the flat and temperate North Carolina “piedmont” – had few reasons to ever learn how to drive in the snow.
Or in my mom’s characteristically not overly generous, sweeping generalization, “idiots”.
Not my family’s Simca 1000, but this does look like fun.
I will note that my dad that week easily made the short trip downtown to work in the Governor’s Office via the rear engined Simca. At the time, he was working on HUD grants overseeing land use and transportation planning issues for (the ultimately ill-fated) Soul City. As I recall the Simca by then had been equipped with a set of snow tires on the rear because he “had to get places”. In exchange, “all” my mom had to do was to keep the family in groceries… which she adamantly wasn’t going to do that week in the Town & Country given all the idiots (which may or may not at that point have included my dad).
Throughout my childhood (and beyond), my parents excelled in wedging themselves into these kinds of situations where their individual neuroses behaviors would periodically conflict and cause complete paralysis around accomplishing even the most basic household management/logistical tasks. So as was often the case, it fell to me to break the deadlock and actually do something… in this case, that something was to walk to the store during the day with the sled and bring home provisions. Fortunately, at the time I was heavily into the Little House on the Prairie books. I could only imagine my trek to the Colonial up at Cameron Village as being just what Pa, Laura and Mary (I was always more of a Mary-fan than a Laura-fan, particularly after the advent of the TV show, I’ll just say in highly unlikely case Melissa Sue Anderson is for some reason reading this) would be doing on foot from Walnut Grove to Mankato. In a blizzard.
Another relevant reference to me would have been Star Trek, which I was equally into at the time. In particular, the achingly sad All Our Yesterdays (the second to the last original series episode made) starring the pre-Polaroid commercials Mariette Hartley as Spock’s eventual love interest in a blizzard. Yes, Spock fell for a human woman in a snowstorm. Winter does strange things, even to Vulcans.
As an adult I am not about to let such things happen to me. In fact, I keep roughly a year’s worth of groceries on hand in my house at all times. The idea of getting stranded during the winter most certainly explains my obsession with snow tires as well as with keeping my driveway accessible and clear all winter. Fortunately, as a New England resident, I don’t have to deal with towns that cannot move snow and thereby keep the roads passable for all of the idiots out there.
So this brings me back – as I trust you knew it sooner or later would – to the subject of snow plowing and various attempts to get through a typical Massachusetts winter with a passable driveway. This turns out to be harder than it used to be, for me, mostly due to the aforementioned (a seemingly long time ago) lack of Plow Guys.
And because this is all about vehicles, we need to spend some time talking about the trucks, or lack thereof, for plowing snow.
It does seem that despite the fact that the top three selling vehicles in the United States in 2023 were the primary truck offerings from each of the big three (1 = Ford F Series, 2 = Chevy Silverado, 3 = Dodge Ram), folks in general – including those living in areas where it snows and where there are driveways to plow – aren’t keen on taking up the business of using their vehicles to remove snow. Even from their own driveways.
Of course, that may well be because they don’t want their (probably leased) truck to wind up looking like our lead photo of what clearly is a working plow truck. I found this particular example resting in a supermarket parking lot in a nearby town while its owner was no doubt inside loading up on whatever essentials he needed to keep awake and driving up and down driveways in the pre-dawn hours.
On many frosty mornings, there’s probably something of a breeze around the floors inside this Plow Guy’s truck. Exothermic foot warmers may be in order. I think they sell those in the grocery store.
Model by Empire of Ghosts as posted on https://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/33936
In keeping with my observation that it’s getting increasingly difficult to find an honest-to-goodness pickup set up to do residential plowing, it took some time to scrape up even an online image of a vintage plow truck. The best I found was actually a photo of a scale model.
This 1980s GMC looks amazingly like the vehicle used by the Plow Guy I kept employed 30 years ago. He was a great guy with an honest and hard working truck that had at least as much rust as that depicted on this model. His truck’s bed was likewise always filled with “stuff”… like giant hunks of tree (“Someone traded me these.”) waiting to be split into firewood and cardboard boxes in various states of disintegration. He worked for me over the five or six winters I lived in that house/town during the mid-to-late 1990s. Each winter was a bit touch and go as to whether he’d actually be able to plow us given the continuing decline of his truck. He finished out his tenure as my Plow Guy only because I had a circular driveway and he could accomplish the job at my house without the benefit of the reverse gear which his transmission no longer had. Or something like that. It was sad. I moved, not knowing if he was ever able to find another truck to use the following winter.
Even though my next (current) house was only in the adjoining town, the fact is that most Plow Guys back then – and I think now – have extremely local businesses. So it’s not as if he could have followed me (transmission willing) to my house in the next town. There are only so many driveways that one guy can do during each storm, and the goal would be to minimize the amount of driving around to get from customer to customer. Further, as a highly seasonal business, Plow Guys need to have something else to do besides plowing. I often found that their 9-month “day” jobs continued even during plowing season, further limiting their time available to focus on plowing. This makes sense as one never really knows if the plowing season will be busy and lucrative or mostly a bust. Vocationally, Plow Guy is not unlike “rock musician” or “ski instructor”; it’s a gamble to give up your day job to devote full time to something that is entirely dependent upon the whims of weather. All of this no doubt plays into the economics and thought processes surrounding the decision to take up being a Plow Guy.
Anyway, when I moved to my current house, I discovered that the only way to plow the last quarter of my 400′ driveway was to do something called “back dragging”. This is because the driveway leads directly to the garage and has 12′ stone retaining walls along both sides of that last quarter. It’s effectively a chute with no place to push off the snow. Well, no problem I’m told, because it turns out that the general contractor who built my house has a brother who runs an earth moving company and he spends the winter using his backhoe/bucket loader to plow the all-equally-impossible driveways located at all of his brother’s houses. And guess what? The first winter you live in the house, this service turns out to be free!
Nice.
Gotta love small town life.
Hi, I’m Larry. This is my brother…
Well, you get the point.
Having your driveway plowed via a big yellow loader is tremendously exciting. This is particularly – and perhaps only – the case if you’re aged 5 and 2 and absolutely massive fans of Bob the Builder. That summed up my kids for several winters. But soon enough they moved on to the Wiggles. Plus, I got a bit resentful of living in a real life Bob the Builder episode and being held hostage by the single person in town who plowed via loader. I tried a few standard pickup driving Plow Guys and each lasted at most one winter before a massive price increase was announced for the “next” winter and/or they flat out quit. There are easier ways I am told to make a plowing buck without all of the transmission torture and equipment stress caused by back dragging 75′ of pavement at 3 am.
There are actually 3 dogs; but the third is smaller and probably smarter than to run in snow that’s deeper than she is.
All of this of course is fine with the dogs, but it simply won’t do for me. This brings us to how come I am now a fan of the infernal machine.
Eight horsepower of CO2 (and CO and lord knows what all else) belching double-stage snow blowing goodness.
There are certainly newer versions of this particular Ariens – it’s the very standard 24″ model. Mine lacks most of the modern convenience features such as a headlight, heated hand grips, and an attached plastic stick for poking snow off the auger (because, lord knows you’d never find a wooden stick just laying around where you’re snow blowing), etc. It does have the electric start option which I will admit to using at times when I’m feeling old. Always fires right up on the first pull/button push. I purchased it for $200 from someone on the side of the road 10 years ago who had decided to give up taking care of their own driveway. This perfectly intersected with my own interest in getting rid of paying a contractor to do work that after half a century I’d finally figured out that I could do for myself.
I will note that most years – including this past Fall – I continue to request bids on plowing. Just to see what I get. This year, of the 6 contractors I contacted one wanted a $1500 retainer (payable in full whether or not the company ever plowed… because, weather, you know?), two wanted roughly $150 per storm with additional charges if they came more than once per storm (most would if there were more than 8″ of snow), and three came by to look and then never called back.
I’d say that my $200 investment 10 years ago has paid off handsomely.
Second pass during one of the minor snowfalls in the past month.
I therefore have integrated my relatively ancient Ariens into my constellation of machines that require regular maintenance but given that, will provide decades of service. I admit that the ministrations necessary for the snowblower and its nail-tough Tecumseh engine to keep operating are even more satisfying than what is required for the 25 year old Whirlpool washer. I prefer the smell of gasoline to that of Tide. And for what it’s worth, not that many ministrations are necessary. Just an annual check of the shear pins plus an oil change every couple of years. This coming Spring/Summer will probably bring a second-ever in my ownership belt change.
One thing that very nearly put the old Ariens out of operation was rusty handlebars. Right in the center of the above picture, you can see the two bolts where the lower handlebars attach to the machine’s body (there’s a similar attachment on the right side). On my machine, these handlebars cracked right around the aft bolt on both sides. This was due to rust, metal fatigue, and likely a combination of both. So naturally, these are the two parts for the Ariens 924 that are no longer available from the manufacturer. That they fail on many of these machines is supported by the fact that they’re nearly impossible to source from eBay. I couldn’t find any NOS, nothing turned up at the town dump transfer station or at the junk piles for local small equipment dealers. What few used examples I could find online were all the right side and priced well over $90 each. Another solution was in order.
Fortunately that solution was called “welding” and was accomplished by connecting with one of the several small welding shops in my area. “Oh yeah, I do those all the time!” was the Welding Guy’s statement. A week later, I had both handlebars fully repaired and repainted. $60. Which frankly was perfectly good money for something that I’m sure took him all of 20 minutes to do… because he knows what he’s doing and does it all of the time.
You’ve got to respect a professional. Something I try to communicate to my clients, except I don’t get to wear a helmet/hood when I apply my skills (which is ok since it would just scare the children and their teachers and besides my skills absolutely do not extend to joining metal together). Still, in a better world we would all be considered professionals and paid equivalently for applying our chosen and unique skills. Particularly when that comes to welding.
Most times, I get the driveway close enough down to the pavement such that the eventual sun takes care of the rest. This works even if temperatures remain below freezing as has been the case for the past couple of weeks. The end result allows me to proceed down to the actual street, where the professionals take over snow clearing. That’s assuming there are enough professionals who can be hired to handle the job. Right now, my town essentially conscripts the transfer station employees to take up the slack from the equally minimally-staffed highway department during plowing days. That seems to work. It gives the dump guys what is probably a welcome break from gratuitously smashing stuff up right before Jeff gets to it (yes, I’m still pissed about that 1960s Smith Corona…) and yelling at random people about emptying cardboard boxes before recycling them.
The conga line of DPW plows usually starts well before there’s actually any -or at least much – precipitation.
Of course, there’s more to the job of municipal snow removal than straightforward plowing. A good part of what the town (and the state, that takes care of the many roads around here that are designated state highways) does is the spreading of melting agents before, during, and after snow storms. In this regard, I’ll refer you to Jason Shafer’s wonderfully comprehensive article on snow removal from the professional’s perspective several years ago.
And I’ll let that also be a setup to my next article (next week) which explores the impact of some of that professional melting agent work, and how I wound up going back to North Carolina to effect a proper solution.
Stay warm out there.
I have a similar snowblower. It’s a lesser brand than an Ariens, but it features the same red and black color combination, and more importantly, an ancient Tecumseh “Snow King” engine. When I bought my snowblower at a Wal-Mart in New Hampshire almost 30 years ago I never would have guessed that it would turn out to one of the best purchases I ever made.
Yep, it’s rusty now. I have to replace the skid plates and the scraper blade that contacts the driveway every couple of years. I finally wound up replacing the drive and auger belts a year or two ago (a job that turned out much easier than expected thanks to the step-by-step instructional videos on YouTube).
But I’ll be damned if my snowblower’s Tecumseh engine has fired up on the first try just about every time I’ve needed it. Just turn the choke knob, set the throttle lever, prime it 2-3 times, and push the starter button – then run it hard until the snow is gone or the gas tank is empty; whatever comes first.
I was going to note in the article that Youtube is great for explaining the belt replacement job, and it’s also very easy to access the factory service manual for these Ariens machines. The job that seems more daunting for me…although it will someday be necessary…is replacing the friction disc. So far, so good though.
These are amazingly tough machines.
A local gentleman uses his Bobcat tracked skid steer to clear many private driveways, here in my neighbourhood. The Golden Triangle in Downtown Ottawa. He typically works his magic immediately after snowstorms, clearing most driveways before daybreak. The upside: He works efficiently, and gets to many homes fast. The downside: Bobcats are loud. And their sound pierces the exterior brickwork of the typical century-old homes, very easily.
Thanks for that clip. It reminds me that Ottawa is only 6 hours from me and there’s really no reason why I shouldn’t go. That skateway looks fantastic!
Another great article, made even better by the fact that I grew up in Winston-Salem, and lived in Cameron Village during grad school. I too remember the Triad roads basically being abandoned in those days, with any semblance of snow. Because my family had a place in the mountains, we were some of the only people I knew with a 4WD.
High Point born guy here 🙂
Just had to chime in to say that.
I’m not sure when you lived in Cameron Village (I lived down the road…Lake Boone Trail), but it was my go-to place from about 5th grade until my family left the area in 1974/5. I spent every cent I had at the hobby and photo shop there, buying darkroom chemicals and equipment as well as plastic scale models that I was terrible at assembling.
Something that has been in issues here in Ontario is liability. Used to be anybody with a truck and a blade could plow. But now, need insurance and I guess I understand that after new plow guy literally dropped blade and “furrowed” our lawn.
Its why I bought a truck and throwing blade on for next year: tired of spending days cleaning lawn of gravel, furrows etc. when a plow “shoe” would solve it all.
Never had issues with prior plow person (who retired)
Anyway, the insurance issue has made it hard to find the “little” guy to do rural driveways.
YMMV in the US
Insurance is probably an issue here too, as there’s nothing more that we here in the states like to do than to hire people to do work for us and then sue them; or at least that’s the fear.
That said, yeah, the gravel on the yard thing is a pain especially when it comes to mowing the yard in other seasons. I had a house where that nearly always happened.
We live in a snowy part of Ontario. We clear our driveway ourselves, but my sister in law has hers done. Her previous clearer retired 2 years ago, primarily because of the cost of insurance. He was a mostly retired mason, so he had experience with heavy duty equipment. Like most of snow removal people in town, he did not use his truck, but a medium sized tractor with a blower on the front and sort of a blade on the back that he could pull the snow back from a garage door. He said that the increase in insurance was not so much property damage claims, but liability (slip and fall). I think he did the snow removal because he got bored, but he certainly is missed.
No snowblowing or plowing needed here in the Twin Cities. February 9 and still no snow. The strangest winter ever.
Ottawa used to have guaranteed frigid winters, where waterways frozen rock solid, was never an issue. Last year, the Rideau Canal Skateway never opened all season, for the first time ever. Weather was consistently too mild all winter. This year, the world’s longest skating rink, has opened for only two days, since November.
Great article! And reading about your 400’ New England driveway hemmed in by retaining walls makes it hard for me to complain about by 160’ Virginia driveway, but I’ll complain anyway.
Our driveway is gravel – the main portion of it is also shared with our neighbors. Said neighbors are retired, and their method of snow removal is just to let it melt for a few days, which works when you’re retired, but it also means that my wife and I need to shovel the whole dang thing ourselves. And shoveling gravel takes much longer than shoveling blacktop since you need to carefully skim the surface. I’ve thought of a snowblower, but snowblowing gravel isn’t always a great idea, especially since the driveway winds close to our houses and cars… a loose rock shot through the snowblower can ruin your day. Anyway, we just deal with it, and are thankful that it doesn’t snow much in Virginia. The occasional blizzard (like in 2016 when we got 3’ of snow) isn’t fun.
Anyway, a few other random thoughts.
Growing Up: We lived in a Philadelphia neighborhood until I was 3 that resembled your Baltimore neighborhood. Then my folks moved to the suburbs, and didn’t have much experience shoveling, so they hired a plow guy. He was a crazy guy who drove a Jeep CJ – I always had fun watching him, and he’d plow out into the street without checking for approaching traffic. Eventually my folks took on the shoveling job themselves, and as a teenager that was mostly my job. Dad worked as a maintenance supervisor, so he never took a snow day, and I’d have to wake up in the middle of the night to make sure the driveway was plowed for Dad to leave at 6:30.
North Carolina: I lived in Durham in 2000 when the NC Piedmont got 2 ft. of snow. It’s hard to explain how much that region was paralyzed for weeks. Just one example: my boss’s BMW was stranded at RDU Airport for 2 weeks because they didn’t have anyone to plow their lots. Another example: Lots of NCDOT snowplows got stranded on I-40. Most parking lots remained unplowed, and 2’ of unplowed snow packs down into about 6” of glacial-like ice pretty quickly. That stuff took forever to melt, even in NC. Fortunately, I had my Mazda 323GTX at the time, so the 4wd and locking center differential got plenty of use. Most of my neighbors weren’t so lucky. I gave lots of people rides over those weeks.
Schools: Schools here of course close at the mere hint of snow, though occasionally they mess up. In about 2015 we had an unexpected 2-3” snowfall one morning. Schools throughout Northern Virginia were open. That morning I dressed my kids (then in elementary school) in their snow gear and we walked to school. School was chaotic since many teachers were stuck in gridlocked traffic. It was an odd day, but my girls had lots of fun, and still talk about walking to school once through the snow. It’s unlikely to happen again.
Well, thanks for the writeup. We’ve had two snowfalls here so far this year – I’m hoping that’s it. I’ve become a big fan of mild winters.
Thanks Eric!
There’s probably a whole other article to be written about the psychology of driving in the snow/adverse conditions. Having lived for many years in places that are inexperienced in dealing with adverse driving conditions (NC, MD, VA, GA) as well as places where one needs to be more flexible (all of New England), I continue to marvel at how a seasonal loss of traction can throw the majority of drivers entirely for a loop.
re. the school issue… It’s always instructive (or at least interesting) to think about school districts in places where snow is a fact of life during the winter. Here in MA, we fret constantly about whether snow will close schools or not, and often the same 3″ of snow across a region will result in schools closing in one town and not the neighboring town. It’s all about chance and politics (i.e., did the superintendent get yelled at a lot by parent for the last time she closed schools when “everyone” was able to still drive…ok, so she doesn’t THIS time, and then it all turns to ice at 6:30 am, the buses are late, and parents are ready to fire her).
On the other hand, through the course of my work, I’ve worked with school districts at the Canadian border in ND and VT and have found that the concept of “snow day” is non existent. There’s 8″ of snow overnight, and I call wondering if meetings are canceled the following morning…and am met with silence, broken by something like “Well, it’s Tuesday, of course there’s school.” 🙂
My favorite “Southerners driving in the snow” story from that 2000 blizzard was about a friend of mine who’d recently bought a 4Runner. He was a Florida native, and had never driven in snow, so he was anxious to try out his new off-roader.
When the snow stopped, my friend figured he’d barge the 4Runner straight out of his parking space and go for a ride. He got hopelessly stuck. Turns out his 4Runner was 2wd, an he didn’t realize that made a big difference. He managed to get the Toyota back into its parking space and waited a week before trying again.
Great tale, Jeff! As a lover of winter, cold, and snow….I must say I’m jealous! I detest heat and humidity, and if it could stay winter all year long, I’d be happy as a hog!
There’s something so inexplicably satisfying about looking at a set of neatly-cleared ‘before & after’ snowy driveway photos . We have a small driveway here in PA…more of a three-car parking lot, really…so I’ve stuck with shovels and haven’t had a need for snowblower. Particularly since we’ve had a pretty consistent run of weak winters for the last 5-6 years.
Love that Ariens snowblower! I have a 1968 model bought at a garage sale for $100. Replaced the engine 6 years ago with a modern electronic ignition model. First gear doesn’t engage, so you have to start in 2nd. My favorite, however, is the Toro 620. Light weight and easy to use. New spark plug every year and it’s ready to go.
I’ve used the neighborhood landscaper for snow removal the last 5 years. However, he doesn’t come out unless there’s more than 2″. That means you have to guess if and when he will come, or decide to shovel the snow before it gets too heavy to move as it melts and refreezes. Fun.
I’d guess that the 1968 model is not much different from my early 1990s model.
I do know that even snowblowers are moving to electrics, but right now, it’s hard to imagine how consumer-grade rechargeable devices (like what you can now kinda get for mowers, leaf blowers, etc.) would hold up to the kind of work that my gas snow blower handles with ease. I’m sure that the technology will catch up, and maybe there are already good commercial-grade solutions, but for now, it’s hard to beat that Tecumseh engine.
At our pre-retirement Middle West farm, we’d rarely get over a foot in one storm, but being out on the prairie, it would drift like crazy. Between my 2010 New Holland Boomer 8N loader tractor and my 1950 Ford 8N with a back blade, it was no issue to keep the driveways cleared (and sometimes the road if the plows hadn’t made it through yet).
Post-retirement in Middle TN, I still have the 8N, but with only a couple hundred feet of driveway to groom, I use an electric-lift blade on my garden tractor. We’ve had a few snows around 6″ since we moved here, that usually turns into very icy roads that locals don’t know how to navigate.
I so far have resisted the siren call of “garden tractor….” and therefore don’t have that to attach a blade to. But it has been pointed out over here that such an arrangement might work and be a bit less taxing than walking behind the snow blower.
Fact is, that business with the retaining walls on both sides of my driveway ALSO limits the size of my garage (I can barely get 2 cars into it), and it means that I have no good place for any kind of shed on the front/driveway side of my property. You can make out in one of the pictures in the article the 3rd car that has to live on a bit of gravel on the side of the driveway (under a cover in winter). All of which is to say that the reason why I don’t have a garden tractor is that I don’t have a place to put one. Which may be a good thing. Still, I like your solution for at least snow removal.
Lifetime Californian here so it’s fun to read about what’s mostly foreign to me, at least at home. Of course, up in the mountains we get a LOT of snow and my observation is that most parking lot and even a lot of crowded residential area clearing is done with bucket loaders. At some point there’s just no place to push the snow. When we had a vacation home in the Sierras, our HOA first had an old Oshkosh airport blower which was ill-suited to the roads, and in any case they didn’t even attempt our road so it was snowshoes (or skiis) and sleds after the first few snowfalls of the season, often until late Spring. At some point we upgraded to a loader with a blower attachment and that transformed access. They even started plowing our road – sometimes. For deck clearing and extracting the car I used my favorite snow shovel, the Grain Hog. I still have my plastic Grain Hog, I left the aluminum one at the cabin when we sold it, but it only gets used for leaves or compost now. Almost 30 years old and going strong with just a hose clamp repair to keep the loop handle secured.
I am fascinated by airport snow removal equipment. The combination of airports and specialized trucks (with attachments) is intoxicating (to me). Someone here at CC needs to do an article on that stuff!
The Grain Hog shovel is great. Despite all of this about mechanical snow removal, I do feel somewhat guilty about now just using a good shovel.
Living on a road that requires skis or snowshoes as the winter progresses? Sounds not unlike what Laura Ingalls Wilder would have dealt with. I.e….I could get with that for sure. (still)
Several months ago I flew from St. Louis to Denver. Somewhere along the way I learned that autonomous shadow vehicles work great for snow plows at airports. One driver, multiple trucks, no snow. While that is a simplistic explanation, seeing it in action would be great.
After last years snow here in the Sierra foothills, I’ve noticed a lot more plows on pickups and people advertising to do the job for you. I too finally succumbed to buying snow blower. Unfortunately snow has been light this year, so the investment in a plow may prove to be a mistake. I finally got to use my blower for the first time yesterday. What was a few hour job that would take almost all day because I stopped to rest my back took about 15 minutes. I still went out there with my shovel to finish the job
I remember the great Baltimore blizzard of 1966 well; I made a lot of money shoveling walks and driveways that week! I kept upping my prices and most folks kept saying “yes” to them. It was a deep lesson in economics that I’ve never forgotten.
All it takes is for a moderate snowfall in Eugene for the town to come to a standstill for days, even a week, as the city is simply not equipped to deal with these events that happen maybe every 2-3 years. And often ice rain is part of the equation, as it was a couple of weeks ago. Good thing I had chains for the Promaster; I had to keep them on for some 25 miles as I was trying to get out of town to sunnier locales.
Obviously if we’d lived closer to the Niedermeyers, we’d have found the Simca weeks earlier!
I have to admit that tire chains are one bit of automotive-related technology that I’ve never explored. I do live within driving distance of several roads (in NH) where one is advised that chains are mandatory for winter passage, but I’ve not actually ventured there this time of year. Believe it or not, that’s an experience I want to experience someday.
I was very glad to have the chains. There was a rock hard 2″ layer of ice on all the roads, including I-5, which turned into a parking lot for a couple of days. They don’t use salt here (obviously), so very few ventured out.
I figured that I’d take them off when I hit I-5; no way. The right lane was an endless line of big trucks, mostly not moving at all, and in the left lane were the few cars and trucks that had chains or were brave enough to drive on the sheer ice, at about 25-30 mph.
I’m just north of Boston, and I’ve been all over the map on this. I got a Baker snowblower back in 96, that was fine until it finally wore out a couple years ago. Along the way I had a half ton Ram with a 7.5 foot Fisher to plow my business parking lot, that was probably at its limits in that situation. Learned a lot about how not to get stuck plowing, but only after getting stuck at 3am with just me and my shovel to get unstuck.
Later I got a Chevy 2500 with an 8 footer, complete overkill for my driveway but I really did love that truck. The power is great but a small Jeep is probably better for sight and manuevering.
The winter of 2015 – 2′ every Tuesday – taught that the snowblower really is best for a driveway, as sooner or later you can only push so much and it’s better to be able to throw snow up and over things.
At this point it’s just me and my shovel. The winters are so mild, I can’t see storing equipment for 364 days a year. Shovel it or drive over it, either way it melts, so I’m done.
A small Jeep is exactly what I’ve felt would be perfect for my snow plowing needs. Just finding a place to put it the rest of the year is the problem.
Yes, the winter of 2015 was quite something. I recall the snowbanks in my area being well over 15 – 20 feet on some driveways where between snow blowing and plowing the snow just piled up. We had so much snow banked around the house that when it started melting, we had basement flooding from snow melting over the top of the foundation.
And now I’m kvetching about a simple 12″ of snow.
Not much snow here (Montreal) this winter, and most of that has turned to ice, with repeated rain and freezing rain events.
The following pictures of my house are from March 9, 2008, after a major snowfall accompanied by high winds. That’s the most snow I have seen in the 28 years I have lived here.
Note the cone-shaped mound in front of the window just to the left of the garage. It’s actually touching the window, as seen in the second picture, taken while standing at my kitchen sink. I just lowered my measuring tape out the window, and the top of that cone would be about 90 inches (2.3 m) above the ground. That’s drifting snow, not the result of snow removal.
Snow removal from residential driveways in my area is handled by tractors equipped with rear-mounted, PTO driven snow blowers. No one uses pickups with blades.
There are maybe six contractors operating in my neighbourhood. My contractor charges CA$325 (US$240) per winter for a 100ft (30m) driveway. He usually collects at the end of the season, and I’ve never had any reason to complain. I still shovel the walkway from my driveway to my front door by hand.
$240/winter! I wish that we could see prices like that down here.
I do love the picture of the drifting snow from inside your house. I never get tired of taking pictures of drifting snow like that. 🙂
On this island snow doesnt get as bad as that, the authorities close main highways to all but heavy trucks which do have powerdivider and diff locks, snow ploughs arent common road graders do the job, Cars rust just fine without added salt, you cant get far enough from the coast to avoid salt air and volcanic sulphur air rots cars even faster if you do, I buy galvanised cars these days no rust ever, I had to run a tap thru the captive nuts for the towbar mounts on my current car, they fit the captive nuts before they galvanise the body.
And of course it occurs to me that it’s the middle of the summer there, so my apologies for making our friends down under think of winter at all. 🙂
Thanks for a fun essay. By the time I arrived in Silver Spring Maryland on March 20, 1966, one would not have known that so much snow had fallen. As for the mention of SHACKLETON, the book entitled “The Endurance” by Caroline Alexander is worth reading. It is an almost forgotten expedition that failed to achieve the goal of crossing Antarctica commencing in 1914. There are plenty of photos to depict what the author describes. It was a terrible trip.
I am a fan of all media related to arctic expeditions (north pole or south). The Endurance expedition is particularly fascinating for the utter tragedy.
Occurring when they did, these also seem to me to be particularly interesting stories related to the history of technology. The use of motor transport figured into some of these as different explorers took different perspectives on whether they should rely upon dogs (generally a good idea it seems), airships (nope…), horses (also a big nope) or “motor sledges”. These were all equally valid transport technologies at the turn of the 20th century, and it’s interesting to see how all of that played out.
Not much snow here in the Baltimore area the past few years, but we actually got some this year. I was elated!
I for one, LOVE to shovel snow. I’m like a little kid when just thinking of the prospect.
How I deal with a larger storm it to get started once there’s about 6 inches on the ground, even if it’s still snowing. Then when more comes down, I can see the driveway, the sidewalks, etc. Shoveling a few poo areas for Molly is a must, as she’s a Cairn Terrier and pretty low to the ground. She’s almost 16 and still acts like a puppy in the snow, just not for as long of a duration.
But although I was 5.5 years old for the 1966 storm, I do not remember it. Those pictures however reminded me of some home movies my Dad shot of our old neighborhood in eastern Baltimore City. This storm was in the year of my birth, 1960 (I think) although it could’ve been when I was one or two.
The movie features an Old Look GMC Bus (in Baltimore Transit Company green livery – pre-MTA days) trying to make it up a hill in our Armstead Gardens neighborhood. Prior to the ’66 storm, this was one of the big ones that the older folks talked about when I was a kid.
But here in Baltimore County, the county is pretty good about clearing the roads, and we’re usually only down for a day if it’s a foot or less… well, most of us. The schools shut down at the mere threat of flurries!
I’ve mentioned Snowmageddon (2010) here a few times, so I’ll spare you the Mustang pics again, but in those two back to back storms, Baltimore City was completely crippled. A few elderly folks were living across a very narrow street on the side of the church when my wife used to work, and they could not get out for weeks as the plows either refused (or just couldn’t) come to deal with it. This was my only experience ever with a snowblower. It looked exactly like yours Jeff, but I don’t recall the make to be sure. The snow was actually higher than the intake for the blades. But using the church’s snowblower, we did what Baltimore City refused to do, we cleared that street so the neighbors could get out to the main road. It was quite an adventure! I was sore for 3 days!
I will say that “Snowmageddon” (2010) seems to have been the starting point in the public’s need to start identifying winter storms – as opposed to just hurricanes — as life-altering media events. This probably coincided with the maturity of social media and the ability of that to amplify just about any otherwise previously local occurrence or event. All I know is that now even here in New England, we seem compelled to obsess on any arriving winter weather, and even more ridiculously to NAME nearly every storm.
I lived in Baltimore in ’66 (West Towson actually) and vividly remember how thrilling it was to miss 10th Grade for an entire week! Much of that was spent sledding down the front hill that faced Charles St at Loyola (Blakefield) Catholic school right down the street, Good times!
Great article Jeff. I ran a plow at work for a number of years if I happened to be first in, until advancing positions caused some to suggest maybe I had better things to do. Also, apparently I was not setting a good example with reversing e-brake turns to get going in the other direction. That 86 Ford diesel (4 speed, that’s a bit of a challenge) was a workhorse and still does occasional duty in one of our operations with a big V plow on the front.
I use my 2007 Can Am 650 ATV at home, with a 5 foot blade. That unit has 15 winters of plow duty on it and consistently amazes me with what it can do. Sidewalks, 4 driveways plus my own and some days the whole neighborhood’s sidewalks. My wife refers to it as doing my “paper route”. I find it to be quite relaxing actually.
Our last big-big snow event about 8 years ago caused me to get that quad so stuck I had to chain up my truck to pull it out of small ditch with 4 feet of snow in it that I had inadvertantly driven into . . . .. .fun times not so much
I’ve not seen a Cam Am with a plow blade! That sounds like a great solution. (of course, I don’t have a place to park one of those either)
In the midst of the strangest winter I can remember out in BC. Cold and dry, warm and dry, warm and wet, then melt and freezes and snow again. I’m a winter fan and this makes me sad.
I like a shovel most days. By the time you get an old snowblower going it can be harder work than the shoveling is. I did get a new Toro 24 for Christmas last year and it really moves the snow. A fair bit better than most other snowblowers I have used, particularly with wetter snow,
I was hoping to see you chime in on this thread, since after reading your COAL and your many back country Canadian adventures (and numerous fantastic winter pictures), I’d expect that New England winters would be just so many flurries. 🙂
Yes, it’s been a strange winter all over weather-wise. I’m just glad we finally got some snow here, and that no matter what, it’s finally manged to get wet. We’ve had some very dry years lately (much less snow last winter than is turning out to be the case this winter), and that’s been hell on the vegetation.
Being a native Minnesotan all my life snow has been a central part of nearly my entire life.
Snow days in my youth, helping dad shovel snow using steel coal shovels.
My grandfather had a 40 acre hobby farm with a massive ridge line hill running across the property. With good snow conditions a taboggan ride would be over a 1/4 mile long. Flying down the hill, shooting thru the cattle yard, crossing the yard between the barn and house, if you had enough speed then catch the drive down to the road. Spent many many days out at the farm.
Driving started at 16 and started a new phase, snow tires, chains and digging out the car.
The first snow blower was purchased by my brother, an 8hp Gilson. That got trucked around doing family driveways. Definitely better than shoveling our plowing. You have to plan your space management when moving snow. Make sure you get it back way out of the way as there is more to come. I bought my first snow blower, a used 4hp Toro for $200.00. Served me faithfully for close to 30 years, despite the fact that the connecting rod punched a whole in the block the first time I used it. One new connecting rod and a patch over the hole, ran fine and didn’t leak.
Snowmobiles came into my life around 1970 and that was a new wonderful past time. It filled my need for speed. Still ride occasionally with my daughter and son-in-law.
As a truck mechanic I had my share of experiences with snow plow trucks, none of them were very good.
Despite my limited experience with plow truck my world was going to become fully immersed in the snow plow world. In 1992 I got a job with the Minnesota DOT.
The shop I worked at maintained around 450 pieces of equipment. The shop also built around 60 new plow trucks for the fleet every year. Oddly enough we only had two plow trucks and 5-6 pickups with plows to maintain. I was hired on for working on the fleet maintenance side of the business. About 6 months into the new job my boss asked me to do a fabrication job on 16 plow trucks. Apparently they were impressed with the job I did and I was asked to move to the plow truck side of the business. As a new employee I could hardly say no. Fast forward five years and I am now in charge of the whole shop, plow fabrication and fleet management and maintenance. My job duties continued to expand over the years. This carried me to retirement in 2016. The one thing that did not change over my career was the question I heard nearly everyday, where’s my new plow truck.
As the story mentioned plow drivers and mechanics are now hard to come by. When I first started hiring mechanics I might have 150 applications to comb thru. At the end it might be 15 applications. Our Metro division covering the Mpls/St Paul and surrounding metro area counties maybe short up to 60 drivers. Multiple problems with filling these positions. Pay, snow/ice events pulling you in regardless of your normal shift, not the type of jobs people want to do any more and lastly poaching. Work at MnDOT for a few years and get hired on by a county or a city and make way better money.
Now the irony part, I’m typing this while I’m sitting in Arizona. In the process of purchasing a winter home in AZ as the Minnesota winters are hard on my wife.
The irony of this is that winter has failed to appear, so far, in Minnesota this year. However I am planning on returning in mid-March so winter will still get a shot at me.
We’ve avoided snow here (mostly) but not ice. A really nasty ice storm hit on January 22 but it was short lived. The sub-zero air temps prior to the storm had the ground really cold so even 34 degree air temps made no difference as everything stuck to the ground.
No snow blower for me. However, in times past, I have shot the driveway with a little salt brine through a hand sprayer prior to the snow. Neighbors looked at me like I was crazy but they soon had covered driveways where I did not.
This was a fun article and thank you for the shout out.
I never thought about brining the driveway – that’s a great idea!
It has been a very mild winter in Michigan. Yesterday, we set a record at over 60 degrees, which is nuts. With that being said, we still have had one snowblower-type snowfall this year, and it reminded me that I really need to upgrade. I use my late grandmother’s very small orange “Snoburst” snowblower; she passed in 2009 and I have been using it ever since. It was old back then. But I do have a couple of neighbors with larger snowblowers who come over and help out when there’s a snowstorm, which is nice.
I experienced the 1978 blizzard in northern Indiana as a teen, so have owned a snow blower for as long as I have owned a driveway. I am still on the same 2 cycle Toro (single stage) that I have owned since about 1993 or so. The electric start died several years ago, but it starts right up with a rope. It is probably time to replace the rubber paddles again. I have been fortunate that I have not needed to use it this year.
My father owned property in the country and was responsible for a couple of short roads. In the 80s he bought a Datsun King Cab 4×4 pickup with a plow for the front, and had a blast everytime it snowed.
Around my area, every landscaping company seems to do plowing in the winter, but mostly for commercial parking lots. Small, maneuverable plow vehicles like Jeeps and International Scouts that were once so common seem to have gone extinct. Now it is always a standard-bed crew cab pickup.
1. NOBODY changes the gear lube in the auger drive of a snow blower. This is probably a mistake.
2. Your snow blower has a wonderful machined-metal worm-gear, and a metal gear to mesh with it, to aim the chute. Modern snow blowers use a plastic chute, with plastic “gear teeth”, and a wound-wire “worm gear”. This really stinks. OTOH, the plastic chute has molded-plastic gear teeth, and it’s real easy to cut another tooth on each end of the travel, so the chute rotates farther in each direction contrary to the Safety Nazis’ unreasonable limits on the chute angles left and right.
3. OTOH, you don’t have a remote handle for the chute discharge. That also stinks, but mildly. A remote handle for chute discharge can be VERY handy.
4. If you’re changing belts on the machine, it’s a really good idea to buy the heavy-duty “green” industrial belts rather than ordinary automotive belts. Nobody really wants to “split the machine” to access the belts more often than absolutely needed.
5. Yeah, the rubber “drive disc” is a real pain. I gotta do my Ariens next summer.
6. I don’t know about yours, but my 19-ish year-old Ariens 8526 was purchased because it had the biggest-diameter “second stage” impeller of all the machines I looked at. Depending on the fluffiness of the snow, it’ll throw it over the house and into the back-yard. I’m told that riveting some belting rubber onto the tips of the blades–so the rubber extends the blades to just scrape the ID of the housing–makes it even better. Haven’t done that yet.
7. I learned that if possible, “blowing” the snow is far preferable to “plowing” the snow, as it spreads the cleared snow so as to not leave a big drift. And–since we have a prevailing NW wind 95% of the time–for fook’s sake, do not plow the snow and leave a piled-up mess UPWIND of your driveway. Always plow–and blow–so the snow goes downwind. An upwind drift will cause rapid accumulation immediately downwind…all over your freshly-cleaned driveway.
8. Consider a set of tire chains for the drive wheels. Ideally, chains with V-bars, and T-I-G-H-T to the wheels. When I install chains, I pull the tire valve cores, install the chains as tight as I can get ’em, and then inflate the tires to whatever psi is recommended.
Most of my snow-clearing is now done with a cheap-junk “box store” John Deere D170 riding lawn mower, with the mower deck removed and a snow-blower attachment hung off the front. It works pretty good except for having no cab, and not near enough traction. The snow-blower works GREAT, but the machine won’t push it very well. Chains with V-bars on the rear wheels help, as does hanging a damaged Small-Block Chevy cylinder head off the rear as “traction weight”. A new set of chains lasts about one heavy-snowfall season and then the stupidly not-hardened V-bars on the Chinese chains have worn down to nubs.
Photo: Bomb Cyclone Vs. Deere
Good advice there! I actually am planning on changing the auger gear lube on mine as I’ve not done it and it seems inconceivable that it should not be necessary (e.g., I change the differential oil in my rwd cars every several years…why wouldn’t it be necessary to do essentially the same job in the snow blower at least once every 10 seasons or so?). On the other hand, it does seem to be a job that is rarely mentioned or documented.
The only issue I have with the worm gear to aim the chute is that with age it has developed a fair bit of play in the meshing and the linkage. It does tend to wobble in use and I have to re-aim the chute more than if it were more stable. I’ve periodically played with tightening up the whole thing, but it stays loose. Not a big deal, but maybe my only annoyance while actually using the machine. But yes, still quite preferable to something made of plastic. Particularly when a new one of these machines (with plastic parts) seems to cost around $2500 the last time I checked.
Love the Ayer Shop n Save
It’s a good little grocery.
I did like it better when the building was round and the whole thing looked like something from Outer Space that had landed in a parking lot in Ayer. I used to take visitors from out of town there just to see the wacky space age design. Now that it’s all renovated and squared off, it’s less remarkable. Although you do have to hand it to the renovators for finding a way to square the circle on the inside…where things are still decidedly not quite square.
I still see some contractor’s pickups with plows. The shopping centers prefer wheel loaders, skid steer loaders and the occasional grader for clearing snow around here.
On a micro scale, a few years ago somebody started selling a small plow that attached to a trailer hitch receiver. The idea was you parked in your garage, and when you backed out you cleared the driveway.
Growing up in the NYC suburbs we had a very long driveway and small Toro 2 stroke snowblower. Here in Central Oregon my driveway gets direct sunlight so half the time I don’t have to shovel.