Better Roads Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85913
Applications&Innovations FOUR SEASONS OF WORK Keep your winter weather operation in top shape year round. says Jeffrey Tews, CPFP, fleet operations manager for the City of Milwaukee. "If you try to mount a plow on a piece of equipment that hasn't seen it for nine or 10 months, you'll be in for some surprises." To keep surprises at bay, Tews suggests a four-stage plan for prepping equipment and keeping it in shape – a process that starts as soon as the last snow of the season has fallen. For Tews' agency, the timeline begins in April. The City of Milwaukee DPW has about 386 pieces of equipment plus 475 plow blades. Availability, of course, var- ies. This includes 108 dump trucks with salters and about 170 refuse and recycling packers used for snow. "We are proud of the fact that we use our refuse pack- ers for plowing snow," Tews notes. "The dumps are primarily used first." The city also has 36 sidewalk tractors that can be equipped with a plow or blower, and a salter K that holds about 1 ⁄2 -cubic-yard. Tews says there are eeping the equipment used for snow removal in tip-top shape is a year-round job if you do it right. "A lot of people think you just mount and go," four stages of fleet maintenance, a year-round process, to keep the winter maintenance operation running smoothly. Stage 1: Equipment Preparation This stage begins right after the snow removal season ends. All of the equipment used in the winter should be dis- mounted. This means "taking a lot of time" to remove all quick disconnects, sealing them and placing a plastic bag over them, Tews says. "We prep them for storage by bathing them in grease and storing them in plastic bags to keep the weather out," he says. "We make sure we give every piece of equipment a thorough cleaning and lubrication before put- ting it in storage." This is also the time to find anything that needs to be re- paired during the course of the summer. All tailgate linkages should also be freed up, and the tail- gate should be put back on the truck so it can be put back to work for any agency employee who needs to use it. "We use it for ice control in the winter, and then the dump goes to a department for the summer," Tews says. "All of our equipment is multipurpose." Stage 1 is also the time to begin operator training. The winter maintenance season is too busy for training, but from April through mid-October operators can be put through obstacle courses and taught more about what can and cannot be done with equipment. "We also update poli- cies during this time and make sure the equipment opera- tors learn the proper operating procedures and pre-trip inspection procedures, Tews adds." Better Roads April 2012 29 Better Roads April 2012 29 By Tina Grady Barbaccia