5 Paths To Peace With Your Snowplow Driver

or, how to survive winter with a nice, clean driveway and no hassles…

This piece originally ran on my Substack page, which has many of my Fish Wrap subscribers, so I apologize for any crossposts. If you received this twice, thanks for reading it twice. My intention was to offer some advice from a perspective many have never experienced or considered. Driving a truck with a giant steel plow all night in the worst conditions, weary and wired from caffeine, is difficult, at minimum. At its worst, it is an exhausting profession offering little, save for a few overtime paychecks and some satisfaction for keeping roads open for first responders and early risers who must, at any expense or risk, keep their blacktop black. Want to make peace with snow plow drivers? It’s pretty easy, actually.

For the first time in several years, winter is full on. Ponds have fishable ice, kids are thankfully setting down game controllers in exchange for lightning fast plastic saucers to challenge friends for the fastest plunge down hills of all angles and snow is starting to fill up intersection corners. With all this joy comes a burden of shoveling driveways, shadowed by an inevitable, always poorly timed plow truck. It doesn’t take John Ghiorse or an annually evicted rodent to understand that winter does, occasionally, deliver. And please, for the hundredth time, let’s not connect specific weather events with larger concern of climate change. Because we just received 6″ of snow does not prove the liberals wrong. Weather, climate. Related, singular.

Few folks outside the industry have seen the inside of, let alone driven a six or ten wheel plow truck. Plow truck drivers manage a horde of switches, gears, lights, knobs and levers inside the cab. They work long hours operating 11′ wide front plows, wing plows, sanders governed by augers and spinners, variable flow brine tanks systems, road speed controls for all of that and drivers, moving like drummers around their orbit, grow tired just like you. Many storms require them to plow through the night then wrestle with fatigue’s grip at sunrise because their work is not done. However you feel about municipal workers, I speak with great confidence that when snow flies or hurricanes tear neighborhoods apart, the men and women in local public services bond like nobody’s business to get roads, beaches and properties back in shape. To improve you relationship between road and driveway, I offer you five tips to safeguard your passion for a slick black driveway at all hours and a plow driver who is driven to maintain safe roads all over town. Let’s approach this relationship with the understanding that no one likes to shovel driveways and we all despise that snowy mountain at the end where yours meets ours.

One: Don’t throw driveway snow back into your street.  Most drivers have a dedicated route, which they drive before winter to better understand who leaves out garbage cans three days after trash day; they mentally map cul de sacs, scheming where to put snow with five houses and mailboxes, two basketball hoops, one fire hydrant and that five car driveway guy who leaves his two cars in the road. They remember where the nice elderly lady lives so they can try as much as possible to minimize how much snow she gets. They take great pride in their work, they want their routes to look good after a storm; they don’t want to hear that they missed a charge of snow or an intersection is not safe. That said, when you take out your frustrations about six inches of snow impeding you from getting to Starbucks and shovel it all back in the road, it is an old school insult to the driver. After all the plowing and coffee and 30 hour stretches, those same drivers quite often go home and shovel their own driveways, often plowed in by their town’s trucks.

Leave that little bit at the end for the end of the storm

Two:  Please don’t shovel your driveway at 3am. Unless you are a first responder or actually go to work at 3am, please stay in bed. Plow truck drivers navigate around parked cars, utility poles, deer, snarky kids firing snowballs from quickly crafted igloo forts and drifting drivers all day and night so when you appear at the end of your blacktop in a track suit, four hours before sunup, it’s unnerving. And dangerous. If you are shoveling it all back into the road because, “They gave it to me, they can have it back,” you are just going to get it back the next time they come around. It’s what plows do. Shovel your blacktop until your heart is overworked and you are content, just leave that last few feet, the ones plows will continue to push up until storms subside, then go back out in a clean, dry reflective sweatsuit and have at it.

Help a driver, stay in bed

Three: Please don’t wear black. If you absolutely must go for a jog or walk the pooch, or be that 3am girl, please wear something bright and reflective. It’s not that hard. Drivers, inside warm trucks, are wearing reflective vests and have reflective jackets for when they get out. Few moments are more jarring for a driver pushing a foot of snow tight to sidewalks than someone jogging through a nighttime storm in dark sweatpants and black hoodie and you know those folks are never on sidewalks.

Four: Please don’t turn your back. peace with snowplow drivers comes when you recognize that plows throw snow and that drivers try quite hard to not negatively impact your property or schedule. When they roll up your road and you are shoveling or checking the mail, please don’t turn away like they are some seasonal pariah. Even a quick wave will be remembered and very much appreciated. Municipal workers can’t accept gratutities but it’s fine to ask if they need a bottle of water or a shot of hot coffee. In this shockingly divisive country, the power of a simple gesture has significantly more meaning just now. They provide a service you expect and they pay taxes just like you and I speak from experience when I say, they care about keeping roads safe.

Make Peace, Not Insults…

Five: Don’t flip off the plow driver. Do I really need to say this? Amongst all the interior and exterior responsibilities, drivers have excellent memories. They are doing their best to keep roads clear so when they round a corner or squint through a bright second workday straightaway, to see you telling them they are number one, it’s a flat out, unacceptable insult. And not for nothing, these are the people who control where snow goes. Do you really want to express some level of hatred or misplaced anger to someone you don’t know because you chose to live in New England where, wait for it, it snows? Why would you insult someone you don’t even know? If you went to the drive through ATM and the machine asked you to proceed in English or Spanish, would you move up a few feet to flip off the nice woman working behind the window? I would hope not.

Snow, driveways, shovels, plow truck drivers, they are all related. Plow truck drivers push through all sorts of harsh conditions to protect people they don’t know. It’s the job. It’s a difficult job that gets harder as drivers get older and days behind the wheel and plow turn to nights. We all benefit when municipal workers are allowed to do their job well and the public allows them to do it safely. We can coexist, safely. I have a few extra fluorescent yellow vests, let me know if you need one.