It snowed Sunday night and most of Monday. As of 1pm Monday the town still hadn’t bothered to send out plow trucks or sand the roads. As we drove along, I saw several people with plows on their pickup trucks, which made me wonder…
Suppose one of these people got fed up with the conditions of the road and lowered their plow as they drove, what sort of trouble would they get into? Fines? Arrest? I assume there’s some sort of trouble they’d get into, or people would do it.
My WAG.
People with plows on their trucks get paid to plow parking lots, private roads, etc. The reason they don’t plow a public road is because nobody is paying them to do it. I don’t think it’s illegal to plow a public street out of the kindness of your heart. Yet, I wouldn’t be suprised to find out I was wrong about that.
I do it around here. But, it’s mostly just ‘my’ road (it is a County road, but we are on the last of the snow plow list).
I will also plow the ‘Main’ road to the highway if it gets bad enough. Say, 2 feet deep.
Hmmm. Lot’s of liability when you plow, especialy with other cars around.
Also, plowing puts a hellof a lot of punishment on the plow truck.
And, in my case, when the County does plow, they do it with graders with the swing off ‘shoulder’ blade. They can do 20’ feet of 3’ snow at a time. I sometimes wonder if my little 8’ blade piling it up near the ditch makes it harder for them.
The biggest concern, in my case, is that frankly, it’s not my job. If I start doing it on a regular basis, will the County start to ignore my road?
Around here, some of the private sector snowplow guys have contracts with the city. In addition, most private snow movers will plow their own neighborhoods. There’s no trouble. Mayors have lost elections over snow removal. Nobody turns down free help. Nobody.
As a funny twist on the subject my neighbor whom worked for the county, plowed our small out of the way, always gets plowed last street. Of course someone called his boss and complained that a county truck was plowing a city street. Needless to say he hasn’t done it since.
It used to be the same thing on my street only the guy worked for the state. Everyone loved it until one time he took the curve right behind our house too quick with the plow down, slammed into my mom’s little hatchback and crushed it between his truck and the telephone pole that was, when she parked, 6 feet away. Totaled the car, damaged the pole , and he came real close to loosing his job.
To this day he still acts like a whipped school boy around my mom