Time on The Road

[GeoffD]

How long do you guys have your drivers or shoverlers on the road?<p>Record Time for me is 42 Hours<p>Average is 12-26<p>Note my road trucks are the first to start first to finish, then the go to work on plowing lots. The Big Road trucks generally see the 267 hours.<p>Geoff

 

[guido]

When I was on my own I remember those 24-48 hours in a truck!!<p>Now in the Air Force, because their push on safety, they even frown upon us keeping guys out for 12 hour shifts! You should hear some of these guys cry! You can tell wich ones plowed before they joined the service cause they're the ones (like me) That cry about having to get out of the truck!! Imagine no speed limit on a wide open airfield/runway environment with a rollover!! God called last winter cause He got some slush on his feet! I'll have to take some pic this year now that I got my digital camera.<p><p>----------<br>&lt;a href=&quot;http://communities.msn.com/guidosequipmentpics/&quot;&gt;&quot;Guido&quot;&lt;/a&gt;<br>David M. Famiglietti

 

[firedog]

Average 9-12 hours.<p>Longest was 18 or 20 I think.<p>----------<br>Rob S.<br>

 

[n y snow pros]

We average about 14 to 18 hours, although sometimes we get those 36 hour days just to wear us down a little.The president of SIMA who is from Erie Pennsylvania doesnt count in hours but rather in days. They average 24 days straight plowing. The longest strecth they have gone is 36 days of straight plowing.Now thats a lot of snow plowing.We only average 36 to 40 inches a year and he gets 260 to 300 inches of snow a year.<p>----------<br>J PARKER<br>914-485-4200

 

[Alan]

Our average is probably around 14 hours. That last storm we got in April kept us out 16 with a few hours the next morning to clean up. If all goes as planned (HAH!) we'll have more trucks on the road this winter so we may be able to cut the hours down some.

 

[steveair]

Hey guido,<p>what kind of runways you got/distances. We only have tiny ones.... 6400 ft by 150ft and 4500ft by 150, plus parallel taxiways and stub taxis. Was figuring in the air force you have those 12,000 plus by 200ft jobbers, especially for those HUGE air force heavies.<p>Where I work, we may plow all night, but we have a lot of breaks. We may be up for 20-30 hrs, but get a lot of 'naps' in between. We have our airfield 'priortized', so we are never out for more than a hr or so at a time. Plus, with the big 20 ft plows, we can move the snow fast.<p>Guido, I'd imagine you run a lot of osh kosh's up there. What kind of equip you got?<br>I now military runs mainly osh kosh, but just wondering if you have anything diff't.<p>steveair<br>

 

[guido]

Steve, all the times I read your posts I never read your profile until now. I would have got with you sooner! Wht airport do you work at? I'm from CT so I fly into Bradley or Newark a couple times a year. In fact I just bought my fiancee plane tickits yesterday to come see me and she's got to stop over in Newark. Well I just got here to Germany so I don't really know the exact sizes of the runways and taxiways ( and shouldn't really tell ya anyway) But I'll say its very large! <p>We set our plowing up in 3 priority levels<p>1) Primary runway, taxiways (only the ones needed to access the runway and alert facilities , fire, ambulance, police, fuel, and munitions)<p>2) secondary runways, overruns and taxiways, aircraft parking areas and PRIMARY base roads ( main roads to get on and off base, to the clinic and to the 24 hour shoppette for emergency stuff)<p>3) All other streets on base and family housing, parking lots, low priority stuff.<p>We plow in that order, but keeping the runway open is always are main concern!<p>We use multipurpose snow removal units (MSRU's) or (MULTI'S) wich have 4 wheel steering and can be fitted with a plow or high speed ribbon blower (snow blower!) They take about 30 minutes to change out attatchments. We also use a lot of osh kosh plows (rollovers to be correct) and some regualr reversible plows. We have clearway brand deicer trucks and trailers for the airfield, we use sweepster front mounted brooms on our 5 ton dump trucks and farm tractors. We also use graders for scraping ice and front end loaders for heavy cleanup, parking lots and loading snow to haul points.<p>Steve, once I get into the snow removal season here I could comapare notes with you a lot more on what they use here as compared to in the states in the Air Force. A lot of our equipment is in maintenance right now, but as soon as its out I'm going to put a lot more pictures on my web site. If you'd like I'd love to make a folder for you there to post some pictures of the equipment you use so we can compare. Check it out and let me know or drop me an e-mail, I'd love to talk more about this.<p>Guys, sorry I got off track!<p><p>----------<br>&lt;a href=&quot;http://communities.msn.com/guidosequipmentpics/&quot;&gt;&quot;Guido&quot;&lt;/a&gt;<br>David M. Famiglietti

 

[Deere John]

When I logged in Smithers, B.C., one of my contractors had a Caterpillar 16G grader with a 16' mouldboard and 14' rollover wing. All chained up, it could sure move the snow to open the logging roads and switchbacks.<p>Anyway, I checked our records and we have been out 22 hours as the longest SINGLE storm, but we have had several back-to-back events over the years that have had us going for longer than that. We installed 2-way radios, switched to vee plows and are looking at a back plow to make life easier and more profitable. Ha<p>----------<br>John<br>

 

[plowking35]

One side point to what J Parker wrote of Allen and Co's in Erie Penn. They start plowing around mid night maybe a little later. They will plow plow to 8 am or so with the full compliment of equip. At that time most subs are let loose and they keep a skelaton crew on during the day. They do NO PLOWING at all from 7 pm to midnight, and then they will start all over again. So even tho they plow 25 days in a row, they have plenty of rest in between. Yes they do have occasions when they need to plow 24-48 hrs straight but they will rotate crews as much a spossible to keep fatigue to a minimum.<br>They most we have ever done is about 48 hrs straight, with maybe an hour or two of sleep in a lot. We now rotate drivers at about the 16-20hr mark and let them get a good 5 hrs of sleep and then rotate out to new drivers again. That is why extra subs/drivers and trucks are a neccesity.<br>Dino <p>----------<br> Professional Ice and Snow Management <br>Products:Services:Equipment www.sima.org

 

[Lazer]

Our contracts provide for 1x/day service between 12:00am & 8:00am. Routes take 6 hours, almost regardless of snow amount. <br>(Sloppy, on-time service with major snows with re-plow the following night and perfect detail with light snows.)<p>We can start at midnight and get done at 6:00 or until 2:00 and take until 8:00. Then we maintain trucks and sleep in the afetrnoon/evening in preparation of the next trip.<p>There are the 5:00am snows that mess up this schedule, but that's only 2-3 times year for us. Our contract states we do not plow during daytime hours because of traffic conjestion and liability concerns.<p>Salt truck and 1 commercial truck run during the day, other 10 are parked during daylight hours.

 

[cutntrim]

33hrs is the longest without sleep for us. We only run three trucks though. I like the way your contracts are set-up Lazer, but there's alot of competition in our area and I'd be afraid to lose too much business to guys who will plow during the day. Having said that, most of our storms we can get done in 8 hrs (12:00am-8:00am). Alot of times we then go out the next nite and salt which we bill additionally for. <p>BTW my partner mailed-off a membership app. for SIMA a week-or-so-ago so you can add C&C Lawn Maintenance to the growing list of members.<p>----------<br>Dave in S.Ontario<br>www.cutntrim.com