×

Rough start to winter for road crews

ESCANABA — The Delta County Road Commission (DCRC) was tested in winter preparedness by the recent snow storm on Dec. 1. DCRC Managing Director Jody Norman and his crew prepare to reduce hazardous road conditions for motorists during the winter season long before one snowflake hits the ground.

“There’s a lot of things that we never do this early in the year that we’re doing right now,” said Norman. “It presents a challenge, but you take it as it comes.”

A multitude of events tested the DCRC. They couldn’t plow where power lines were down across roadways. It was very slippery and a wrecker was called five times to pull plows out of a ditch. A plow truck rolled over and another truck was damaged after digging into the soft road twice.

“One of the biggest problems we have right now is all of the roads are so soft that a lot of the turnarounds aren’t frozen so we can’t turn the trucks around, so we have to drive in, back out, back-back in, and plow the other lane. A lot of our roads right now are still very narrow cause all we did Monday was get in everything to get it open and we left,” Norman said.

Currently Norman’s crew is getting each road and turnaround opened up, graters are pushing back banks on the highway, two loaders are opening up turnarounds where trucks cannot. Crews spent the majority of one day cutting trees to get down the roads to plow.

“In Rapid River alone, they figure they cut well over 200 trees out of roads. That’s just in that district … we still have two guys out cutting trees today,” noted Norman.

During a normal snowfall, a plow can travel 25 to 30 miles per hour to get snow up and over mailboxes. With the latest storm that wasn’t the case.

“Because the snow was so wet we couldn’t go fast enough to get the snow up and over,” said Norman.

Norman said snow is the main reason mailboxes come down. When the roads are plowed, snow is pushed and it exerts force on the mailboxes.

“I wish that more people would put deflectors, or a shield up … if everybody would put up a board by their mailbox, it would help tremendously,” said Norman.

The DCRC maintains approximately 1,100 miles of state, primary, and local roadways with an average winter budget between $500,000 to $1,100,000.

“Every winter is different,” said Norman. “If it keeps going the way it is, we’ll probably hit a million pretty easy. This storm alone is probably going to be about $100,000 to $120,000.”

Each year one or two trucks are replaced to keep the fleet running efficiently. According to Norman, it costs $180,000 to set up one truck to plow. Typically there are six spare trucks in the garage. During the storm Dec. 1, the garage was empty four continuous days.

“Everything was on the road non-stop,” said Norman.

Twenty-seven full time truck drivers work Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Each driver has a normal route, but at times they are called to other areas of Delta County when needed. Three to six part-time drivers can be called in when required. During the winter season, four employees work from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., seven days a week for five months. Before the night shift crew leave for the night, they contact the supervisor of the area and give an update on road conditions.

“Our night crew keeps everybody informed on what’s going on all night long,” said Norman.

Last weekend the dayshift started their shift at 3 a.m. and left at 7-8 p.m. Sunday and Monday.

“We don’t like to make them go more than 16 hours,” said Norman. “(There’s) a possibility of injuries or destroying equipment. You just don’t focus after that many hours being behind the wheel doing that, so we have to go home … we just can’t keep going,” said Norman.

Road priority and weather are taken into consideration before plowing and treating roadways. The DCRC has a contract with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) to maintain approximately 355 miles of state roadways in Delta County that are class I, first priority. The majority of drivers in Delta County have a portion of class I roads in route to work. US 2 and US 41 are main arteries the state wants open, at least one lane, at all times.

Second priority roads are class II and class III. Class II roads are state roads with lighter traffic that pass schools, hospitals, or public safety buildings. M-69 and M-35 just past Gladstone High School are examples. M-35 south of Escanaba is plowed once a night when it is snowing hard. Class III roads, primary county roads with a hard surface, are included under the second priority. Third priority covers class III and class IV roads, county roads with a gravel surface and all remaining roads except seasonal roads.

Weather is observed before treating roadways. A heavy snowfall will consume chemicals on the road and dilute them until the treatment has no affect. Wind can move chemicals, and the temperature can affect how well treatments work.

“… we’ll salt it heavy so hopefully it’ll last more than half an hour, otherwise we really don’t treat anything,” said Norman. “There are a lot of different factors that determine how, where, what, when, why.”

The DCRC always treat main hills, the highway, intersections, stop lights on the highway, and main arteries with a lot of traffic, according to Norman.

Cost is considered daily when salt is $82.68 per ton. The DCRC has 2,000 tons of salt stored in Escanaba, and 1,500 tons in Rapid River. MDOT has about 3,500 tons of salt in the DCRC’s shed. There is 2,500 tons of salt stored in a separate location if salt gets low. Plow trucks carry between 12 to 20 tons of salt per truck.

“That’s a lot of money in each truck. We’re trying some different things to eliminate some of the cost,” said Norman.

Last year Norman and his crew started mixing a mineral brine, a watered down version of calcium chloride water, with sand. The cost of the treatment is 35 cents per gallon, less than a third of the cost. Sand is pre-wet and it does not freeze in the box.

“Once the mineral brine hits the road it sticks to the road and doesn’t get blown off with the traffic,” said Norman. “It’s cheap, it’s very effective, it doesn’t melt the ice the way that sand and salt do, but it definitely helps with the traction much faster then what sand-salt does.”

The DCRC is normally prepared 24 hours in advance before a storm. During the storm Dec. 1, they had two emergency calls for assistance. Norman says people should stay home during a storm, it is safer, and roads would be much cleaner. Every time a vehicle drives over snow it is packed down and has to be peeled away from the road.

“This is going to take us a long time to get this cleaned up and get everything opened up and get back to where, if we were to get another storm like that on top of this — we’d be in trouble, we’d be in big trouble,” Norman noted. “It’s way too early to tell what this is going to do to our summer projects. We have some already scheduled and planned and they’ll go through no matter what.”

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today