Winter weather is returning to the Western and Midwestern United States today. So in the spirit of this hopefully being Mother Nature’s last hurrah for 2013, let’s take a gander at this most unique of snow plows, the Tow Plow.
Invented in Missouri, it is being implemented throughout the United States. Having seen it in action, its sheer awesomeness cannot be fully captured on video. It is a sight to behold. Enjoy!
Holy bat guano, Batman! We need these things out west.
There are TowPLows at Reno, Elko, Donner pass and several around Salt Lake
Why didn’t I think of that?
That’s one way to keep people from passing the plow truck.
Missouri has over 70 in service and a couple on I-44 are now clearing 2 lanes wide up to 55 MPH…. WHEN conditions allow safe plowing speeds. Blocking traffic is no problem when one is running with it, but speeders are an accident about to happen in an snow storm.
I’d pay real money to see a Tow Plow race.
My grand father actually tried to do somthing like this behind his lada niva. using two front axels from a toyota, some hydraulic rams and a huge power pac mounted on the back half of a five ton international box truck frame. he could never get the steer in perfect unison figured out and moved on to a self powered snow blower that was almost the size of his poor niva. It was much too heavy and was also scrapped. he reffered back to an old green snowsuit and his trusty 1950 (IIRC) massy with a homemade 10 foot plow. I wish I was old enough back then to have been smart enough to take pics of this suff. He was a mechanical marvel maker.
Similiar equipment is starting to show up on the mountain passes here in BC. It’ll be interesting to see how well they work here, given our steep, narrow and winding roads.
Clever as it looks, let’s not forget the single reason for its existence: It cuts labor costs. One rig like that can do the work of two conventional plow trucks.
And that’s well and good…except to have a trailing unit stretched out that way; with varying resistance to its movement…to have to have it whip around to stage it for working…that stretches the limits of physics. Suppose it dug into packed snow, got whipped back in line behind the truck, and then the wheels catch and it suddenly swings back…TOO far…wagging the dog, spinning the truck around?
I know money’s tight, but there’s such a thing as false economy. And as an idiotic idea nobody had the courage to kill.
I’m always torn on this sort of stuff. As a taxpayer, I like to see the savings, but I also hate to see the loss of decent jobs. Naturally, government being what it is, those savings will be blown on something that has nothing to do with lower taxes or more jobs, so everyone loses.
I had to search the web to make sure I wasn’t being had, and I’ll be darned, this thing is real. Yikes. Driving to work one morning, I glanced in my rear view mirror and noticed that a trailer had come unhitched from the DOT truck I just passed, changed lanes, and started following me. That’ll wake you up better than a cup of coffee. Seeing one of these plows behind me would probably scare me to death.
Having worked in fleet maintenance, I can tell you that highway departments don’t hire people to plow snow. When it snows, road maintenance crews step away from their normal jobs and waste time pushing frozen water around. Crew staffing is determined by overall maintenance needs, and in most places snow removal represents a small percentage of the yearly workload.
As I see it, the Tow Plow has NO impact on jobs, but it does improve the effectiveness of each employee. This rig should clear roads faster, get commuters to work quicker, and free up road crews to get back to guardrail and pothole repair.
I’m going to try to say this without getting political, but I’m sure you know that total employee compensation costs (wages, benefits, retirement) for pretty much all public employees has been growing faster than inflation for years. Solutions that increase productivity are essential, otherwise either services have to be cut or taxes raised, neither of which is generally a very popular solution.
What a great idea. As far as reduced labor and staffing, you gotta be kidding me. Where does that argument end? Think of all the ditch diggers out of work because of those Gradall ditch excavators, or how much labor Cyrus McCormick wiped out with his harvester, or all the file clerks hoofin’ it because of digital storage. Can you say “Luddite”?
I followed one of those last night on my way home. The private company that takes care of the highway in our part of New Brunswick, Canada started using it this year. I’m not sure how many they have, but it’s a good idea. It’s pretty disorienting when you come up behind it not knowing what it is.
As for cutting costs, it’s certainly a benefit. You have to remember that if there is only one truck hauling this thing and plowing both lanes, that frees up another plow to work somewhere else. Around here, it doesn’t mean job losses at all. It means they are able to spread out the plows more. This company has over 120 miles of 4-lane highway to maintain, most of it out in the woods with no one around.
I have to say that despite the amount of snow we have gotten this year, the main highway has been in great shape through it all. You can tell when you drive onto the part of the highway that the DOT takes care of. It’s much worse and traffic moves a lot slower because of it.
This is an interesting idea. However, I wonder why they are plowing a road that has no snow on it. Here in Ontario, they only plow when there is more than a few inches of snow on the road. And then they don’t plow right down to the pavement. The rest is just sanded and salted.
Yikes. Driving to work one morning, I glanced in my rear view mirror and noticed that a trailer had come unhitched from the DOT truck I just passed, changed lanes, and started following me. That’ll wake you up better than a cup of coffee. Seeing one of these plows behind me would probably scare me to death.
Driving to work today and I glanced in my rear view mirror and noticed that a tow plow had come unhitched from the Carillion truck I was in front of sure glad I was in front of him