Special Feature: By Duncan Putman Unlike most of my friends, I love snow and winter. I love watching snow fall, skiing in it, playing with my dogs in it, and snow shoeing in the white stuff. Many of those same friends retired to the Carolinas or Florida area while my wife and I chose to retire in Western New York. With the warming climate, even Upstate New York is seeing milder temperatures and less snow even from only five or six years ago. Yes, the area around Erie, PA and Buffalo, NY still gets walloped with huge lake-effect snowstorms, often times dumping a couple of feet of snow in a single storm. The Buffalo Bills’ stadium gets piles of snow, and the local TV news will do reports of die-hard fans who line up with their snow shovels to clear it from the stands before some games. It’s easy to love snowy winters when one’s retired and doesn’t have to get to a daily job while driving through snow and ice. I was lucky as I was self-employed and when the roads got really bad and the car drivers showed no common sense, I just stayed home. But that’s not the case for so many workers who are either trying to get to their job or have a job which entails driving. Although I haven’t had a lot of truck driving experience, I’ve spent a lot of time in the passenger seats of many trucks attempting to get down the road in “iffy” conditions. Probably more so than many other professions, truck drivers are extremely vulnerable to changing weather and road conditions as part of the job of getting business done. This past December 2024, there were two or three incidents of quickly changing conditions which stranded many trucks and cars on the NY Thruway and other highways near the Erie-Buffalo area. More recently than that, there were large amounts of snow in some of the main, high passes in a Western state and, unfortunately, the mandatory truck chain warnings did not get posted in time, causing many 32 10-4 Magazine / February 2025 18-wheelers to start up steep, icy roads only to end up spinning out and sliding, which closed the roads for hours. A driver friend of mine recently battled the elements during a Midwest blizzard. After safely arriving at the drop point, he discovered that the facility was closed due to the snowstorm, and nobody was going to be there to accept the load until the local roads were cleared. But at least he made it to his destination! Even having clean, open roads, which makes driving easier, there are still problems in the bitter cold with frozen fuel and air lines and thick ice build-up on windshields and mirrors, making it TRUCKS AND SNOW!
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