snowplow
 

buzzed by a plow truck today. Dropped his plow on dry pavement as he swung past me.
disappointed, but not surprised.

Was this a municipal plow truck or a private truck?

Either way did you get any information off the so that you can file a report with the proper individuals?

The same thing happened to me a few days ago. It is most scary because I witnessed the minimal training they receive. They learn how to use the machinery, but have no clue where the back of their truck is.

Not a city truck, but i think it had commercial plates, based on # of digits, so probably a contractor or from a local college.
Only got the last two letters of the plate - I was in the middle of a long climb, full load of groceries, and he was probably doing fifty.


Not sure that anyone is concerned about reports of aggressive driving, anyway.

RedRider: did you get the impression that he was simply trying to intimidate you? It's strange how (especially on city periphery),
professional drivers can be quite aggressive; I would imagine that they might take pride in doing their job respectfully. This certainly
not universal, though.

Are you talking about a pickup with a blade, or a proper plow truck?
Here's what I think of as a snow plow:
http://local4traffic.files.wordpress.../snow-plow.jpg

^^ looks to me like he needs another axle and 2 more feet of blade to be a real plow truck

Is Yehuda Moon in our midst?

-Kurt

yeah, it's not a real plow truck, but it's the minimum that I consider to be a proper road service vehicle doing plowing. When I lived where there was real snow, they used road graders with wing attachments to push the roadside snowbanks down to only 3 or 4 feet high, and they had snow blowers mounted on very heavy, dedicated diesel rigs with 7-by-7 foot multi-auger intakes and a 4 foot impeller, throwing snow about 60 feet (because when you get 250+ inches of snow a year, you can't just keep pushing it to the side - eventually there's nowhere left to push it).

Does it matter what a "real plow is" ? Having relocated in the south, I don't miss the NE at all. The winter's not fun; the snow and moreover all that goes with it is why.
That's why the "real" aspect matters more with the driver than the equipment. Any ol' fool can be plowing when it snows; landscapers have lawn rakers W/O licenses do it ; municipal workers, those who normally clean or maintain the garage are put behind the wheel of the plow truck as well as pro- drivers.
The rusults are the same mostly. Too many nitwits on the road who can't plow with correct equip. or not.

It matters what a real plow is because a guy in a pickup with a blade on the front really has no excuse; he's basically driving a passenger vehicle, and if he drops the blade next to you, he's probably intentionally trying to intimidate you.

A guy driving a 3 axle heavy truck with a blade that could toss some cars aside is probably just doing his job, and may not even have been that aware of you specifically.

Up in the UP, if you're trying to drive around between 3 and 6 AM, you are just on your own. The snowplows and tractors (they use front end loaders with car-sized buckets to remove snow from downtown streets) OWN the road - they're going to be driving the wrong way up one-way streets, be crosswise in the road as they're cleaning parallel parking spots, etc. No matter what you're driving, you better just wait and HOPE you can get by safely soon.

If it's a pickup with a blade, that's not a problem, though they sometimes drive across the road without much warning if they're trying to clear their driveways too.

Any truck with air brakes and more then 10 tonnes capacity is a real plow, around here many of them have dump buckets that can be raised either way, and spreaders behind the cab so they can dump chemical snow remover on the road (read salt). You often need a special licence for a larger truck with air brakes, which would include the truck pictured above.

Well, by "real plow" I guess I meant a truck that is designed ground up to be a plow. I haven't seen any of them around here (lower peninsula of Michigan) and few farther north. Most road commissions have multipurpose trucks that they mount snow blades on as required.

For the purpose of this exercise though, mutipurpose trucks with large snow blades on them count as "real plows".

You may have seen trucks designed for plows and not realized it. My brother works for a state highway department and says the major difference between regular trucks and plows is the frame. Plows need a stronger, possibly stiffer frame to take the shock of hitting wind packed snowdrifts. My brother said they tried some regular trucks and had problems with the frames bending when hitting those snowdrifts.

hah, nope, but I at the time I was riding a bike set up a lot like the Van Sweringen. I don't particularly enjoy the dark tone the comic has taken, though...


This was not a real snow plow. It was a pickup truck with (i think) commercial plates and a blade up front. The road was completely dry, and there hadn't been persistent accumulation yet this year, so now plowing had taken place yet this year. Our first real accumulation was not due until the next morning, so plows were moving into place (this was at midnight). He dropped the plow behind me and kept it down until he passed, raising it shortly after. I'm pretty sure this was simply intimidation.

It really depends, on what the real difference is, a designed from the ground up truck for snow plowing may look like a regular general purpose truck, because the differences are all under the sheet metal, heavier duty frame, bigger engine, lower gearing, winter tires, etc. Considering that such trucks can be a half million dollar a piece investment and they are likely to try and make them usable outside of winter as well. I've seen graders and front end loaders, used to move snow around, 4wd pickups are sometimes used by private plowers, it's a good way to shorten the life of the transmission though from the constant shifting.

We actually use a lot of garbage trucks for plowing, they're big and heavy. Most Govt entitiies want their trucks to be useful year round. Our "sensor" salters are dumps that have a front blade and belly blade and the salters slide in to the bed. The only dedicated stuff that stays on all year is the wing plows and that's just the side lift for the wing. My brother who lives @ 9000 ft on the divide in CO bought a surplus snowblower from the corp of Eng. It's 7 ft high on a1959 FWD flatbed and is powered by a 8cly diesel on the flatbed.

You should see some of the snow clearing equipment they use for railroads, back in '81 I was on a train going to school in another city, was a 3 car Budd RDC (take a bus 1960's style bus, stretch in out to 80' and stick railway trucks under it), the snow drifts in places were about 4' deep. The train got stuck, they sent a plow after us, the plow itself was about 8' high, 25' long, had a blade that looked like it would cut cement truck cleanly in half. Had 2 5000HP locomotives pushing it. Once they got us plowed out, they hooked up, and hauled those RDCs out of there at top speed, still managed to take a 2 hour trip and turn it into a 6½ hour trip though.....

RDC-1's, 2's, or 3's?

;)

-Kurt

Well, regardless, if you see a phalanx of "real" plows coming upon you from behind--be prepared to jump over the snow bank on the side of the road, drag your bike with you, and hope you don't lose your new bike computer like i did last winter. :(

Too bad you did not get a plate number. Bet the city would not be real happy with a jerk tearing up the roads just to harass a cyclist.

I hope they would care, but I'm not sure they would.

No computer, no problem!
But really, that's a bummer man.