What’s it Like To Drive a 54,000 Pound Snow Plow Through The City?

With the first big chill of winter taking hold of most of the country, there’s snow falling for the first time in a lot of places this week. While most places that get snow regularly are used to it, there are some places forecast to get a little ice and snow that are not as well prepared, such as my home in Huntsville, Alabama.

While we do the best we can to deal with the inch or two being predicted for us, other parts of the country will get one or 2 feet and will go on with life as usual, once the plows get on the roads and handle their business. That’s what this video is all about, finding out more about the task of clearing the roads that plows and their operators have to handle each time a new layer of snow falls on the roadways.

While some of you are liable to know exactly what goes on inside a snow plow’s cab, the vast majority of us probably don’t know much more about them than the role they play in getting the citizens to work on time. So this news feature takes a camera inside the plow to watch the operator at work, and it is actually pretty cool to see how things work from this view.

There are obviously some buttons, dials and switches to learn to operate while keeping the plow plow centered up in the lane and paying attention to the roads carefully. Remember, if the snow is more than a couple of inches deep the lines on the road aren’t visible and the plow operator has to feel his way through the snow to keep the lanes clear.

Unfortunately, the timing of the newscast meant the plow had stopped under and overpass to allow the other members of the team time to stop and clear their windshield, meaning the news team was unable to actually watch live from the plow.