With fall in the air, Ohio Turnpike ensures its snowplows are ready for winter

Oct. 19—Snow, sleet, or freezing rain aren't the only conditions that get Ohio Turnpike maintenance trucks out on the road during the colder months.

Whenever frost is in the weather forecast, a few crews will head out and spray salt brine on overpasses so they don't get icy the next morning, Jeff Landel, the Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission's supervisor of maintenance for its 126-mile Western Division, said during a pre-season truck inspection Tuesday morning at the toll road's maintenance garage in Swanton.

"It doesn't take much — it can just be a frost event to get us out," Mr. Landel said.

But when the bigger snows come, the turnpike will call out qualified employees from other skilled trades to reinforce its plow-driver ranks.

"We'll put every truck out on the road if the storm warrants it," Mr. Landel said.

The turnpike commission, meanwhile, on Tuesday announced the start of a Name the Plow Contest through its ohioturnpike.org website. One winner will be selected for each of the toll road's eight maintenance districts and receive a $100 gift card while their suggestion is displayed on a plow truck during the upcoming winter.

Name suggestions may be no longer than 15 letters and not profane or "inappropriate," and must be submitted by Dec. 1. Entry information is available on the website in its Media section.

The 241-mile turnpike has 1,395 lane-miles, 31 interchanges, and 14 service plaza, with its maintenance divided into roughly 30-mile sections.

The Swanton garage covers 30 miles between the State Rt. 108 exit in Wauseon and I-75 in Rossford. A garage near Kunkle covers the westernmost 34 miles to the Indiana border, while similar facilities near Elmore and Castalia handle the next two sections to the east to round out Mr. Landel's territory.

The turnpike also has salt domes at selected interchanges in between the garages, where trucks can reload while running their routes rather than having to go back to their bases. Six remote brine tanks provide similar on-the-go function.

During pre-season inspections like Tuesday's, mechanical supervisors give every turnpike truck a thorough checkup to make sure nothing got missed during those vehicles' annual overhauls.

Division mechanics check brakes, lights, engine oil, and tire condition; look for worn hoses and hydraulic leaks; inspect the dump box, and watch the operation of the plow mechanisms, salt spreader, and pre-wetting system that adds brine to rock salt to make the latter stickier and more effective.

"It just affords us the opportunity to put some extra eyes on a truck that doesn't get that every day," said Rich Litten, the Western Division's chief mechanic.

"We're here to verify everything they've done" at the section garages, said Tibi Jovica, the turnpike's fleet manager. "It's hard to catch everything" for just one mechanic, he said.

With some of the older trucks, the time between the overhaul and the preseason inspection can also be an opportunity for pumps and other pressurized systems to get out of calibration, so a tweak here or there may also be needed.

And the Swanton garage's plow fleet is the turnpike's oldest, with nine of the 11 vehicles being 2009 models.

That's scheduled to change with the delivery of replacements next year, although Mr. Jovica said three of those replacement trucks are currently sitting in a lot in North Carolina waiting for computer chips before they can be shipped for installation of their dump beds.

The new trucks will have heated LED headlights, with the heating elements making up for the absence of heat from the light-emitting diodes, Mr. Landel said, and all trucks built in 2012 or newer have been retrofitted with such lights. All of the turnpike's trucks also now have heated windshield wipers and heating elements in the part of the windshield where the wipers rest.

All those features improve drivers' visibility by removing ice and snow accumulation. The turnpike also is starting to equip its trucks with flashing green and white lights, rather than just yellow, to make the plows more obvious to other drivers.

"We're hoping people are relating snowplows with those lights," Mr. Landel said. "They've seen it out on the [Ohio Department of Transportation] roadways, and now they'll see it on the turnpike too."

ODOT on Tuesday also issued a statement summarizing its winter preparations that said it is seeking 500 seasonal plow drivers. Its goal is to have primary highways up to speed within two hours of a snow event's end and secondary routes within four hours, but "that goal might be tougher to hit this winter" if it falls very short of its hiring goal.

The state agency also is inspecting its trucks now and has more than 770,000 tons of deicing salt on hand, according to its statement. Last year, ODOT crews spread 759,866 tons of salt and 20.6 million gallons of deicing liquids.

The turnpike, which is maintained separately from other Ohio roadways but which participates in ODOT's cooperative salt contract, used more than 346,000 gallons of liquid chemicals and spread about 62,000 tons of rock salt last winter to remove snow and ice from pavement and bridges. The liquid usage was 53,000 gallons more than the toll road's long-term average, while salt usage was 3,000 tons below normal.

While the current autumn has gotten to a very mild start, Mr. Landel said that could change at any time.

"If we don't need to use all this equipment, I guess that's a good thing," he said.