• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

A day in the life of a snowplow driver

You can still see my knee-deep tracks that I left in the drifted sidewalks on my journey home last night after nearly 12 hours of writing about the weather.

I left my car at work, and digging it out will be a project at some point. Welcome to Wisconsin.

How will you remember the biggest storm in years? Snow totals vary depending on who you ask—the National Weather Service says Evansville either got 16 or 20 inches.

The Evansville School District will make up at least one snow day, likely by adding additional minutes onto the end of each school day. Today is the district’s fourth snow day, but 17 extra instructional hours were built in to the high school’s calendar. My adventures Wednesday included a ride-along with a city of Janesville snowplow driver, Tracy Engstrom. After climbing into the “tank” and Engstrom declaring, “Don’t worry, I don’t crash,” I knew we were going to have fun.

Engstrom and her partner plower Dave Schuler were tasked with keeping two main streets open on the city's east side. After witnessing what it takes to get the job done, I have a lot more respect and insight for their job.

The drivers said they wished every resident could do a ride-along. The irate people that plow drivers deal with is no doubt frustrating, but quite humorous at times.

We had one man shaking his broken mailbox (knocked over by a different driver earlier) at us, and another man stood with his shovel at the end of his clean driveway refusing to move as we approached. Plenty of other cars just didn’t have the patience to wait a few more seconds while Engstrom cleared out intersections.

Here’s what I learned about the biggest frustrations we hear:

-- “The snowplow pushed all the snow in my clean driveway.”

The consensus from plow drivers, “Sorry, but I’m just doing my job. Where do you expect the snow to go?”

Drivers need to clear along the curb so you can get your mail.

-- “The plow broke my mailbox.”

First, don’t worry, the city will replace it.

Most of the time it’s the power of the flying snow that knocks the box off the stand, Engstrom said, not the actual plow. And the more expensive plastic mailboxes break much easier than cheaper metal ones, Engstrom said.

-- “My street isn’t plowed!”

In Janesville, the goal is to keep all the main streets open, but the rate and amount of snowfall was too hard to keep up with. So no, your residential street probably didn’t see a plow until at least midnight, officials said.

People just need to realize there isn’t an infinite number of snowplows to cover all the main streets and residential streets at once, the drivers said. Nor is there the number of fresh drivers—these people put in some really long hours over the last couple days.

When it comes down to it, I saw these people doing the best they could on little sleep to fight Mother Nature. Things always look a little different when you “walk a mile” in someone else’s shoes.