Filed under: Truck, Work



Driven To Work is a new Autoblog series exploring the vehicles that do the work of the world and telling the stories of the people who operate them.

2014 found us a nation obsessed with winter.

The first Polar Vortex - a thing non-meteorologists had never heard of until this year - gave birth to a second and a third generation. Temperatures fell so low in places that throwing perfectly good hot water into the frigid air became a video meme.

Snow fell in locations so southerly that their residents didn't have the requisite comforting wool socks, to say nothing of a good pair of Sorels to do the shoveling in. The snow choked Atlanta twice; Texans and Alabamians alike shared shocked Instagrams of snow on their front walks and backyards. Lions most certainly would have been lying down with lambs simply to stay warm, if only their zookeepers left them alfresco.

And of course, the snowfall in places that are normally pretty snowy was equally biblical. The fat, middle part of the US is still digging out from the load that has been dumped on us for the last four months.

In a year that's seen snow steal the headlines more often than not, it's still sometimes easy to forget that it's all got to get moved somewhere, and by someone. Around Ann Arbor, MI, moving a great deal of that snow falls to guys like Dan Clark, a snowplow driver for the Washtenaw County Road Commission (WCRC) on the Michigan State Trunk Line crew. I recently hitched a ride with Dan in his brand-spanking-new Freightliner 11SD plow truck to see just what it's taken to keep the roads clear during this snow season. In the process, I learned a truckload about pushing powder. Continue reading Snowplow Driver

Snowplow Driver originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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