While doing some research on the internet recently I came upon a presentation done in 2008 about using trash trucks as a emergency back up snowplow for some secondary routes. I thought that this was a very interesting concept and contacted the Presenter Mick Mercer, Manager City of Loveland, CO USA.

Mick said,

Thanks for the inquiry.

Attached are some photos of our demo trash-truck plow that we pilot-tested last winter 2008-2009. It worked quite well once it was installed correctly. The plow driver averaged about 12 mph while pushing a wet 8-inch snow. We recently received the OK to install another 10 more plows onto other City trash/recycling trucks, for a total of 11. These plows will be installed prior to next winter 2010.

Our intent will be to deploy these 11 trash-truck plows only during the heavier, emergency-type snowfalls that would likely create problems for a 2WD vehicle trying to negotiate the residential street snow depths. We’ll plow the center third of our residential streets at the same time our Streets Division crews are clearing their priority snow routes, and hopefully before the snow gets so packed down and frozen that it becomes badly rutted and near-impossible to plow. Our Solid Waste Division employees know our residential street network better than anyone, and they also know how to drive these streets in the most efficient drive path, so no street should go unplowed.

We will not plow residentials during the more typical 2-5 inch snowfalls due to the negative impact this would have on daily trash and recycling collections, which of course still must take place. Our real challenge will be trying to communicate to our citizens why we sometimes plow residential streets and sometimes don’t….

However, I really won’t have a complete picture of how well this concept works until sometime next winter 2010-2011.

I should mention that we will not try to plow and pick up trash/recyclables at the same time. Our plan is to concentrate on plowing first and then perform collections, or vice versa, depending upon when the storm rolls in. We know we’ll need at least a partial load on the trucks for traction, or possibly some tire chains.

Tags: ideas, new, outside the box, snowplow, trash truck

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