Barnsley Chronicle reporter Mike Cotton rode with a Barnsley gritter crew amid heavy snow on Tuesday January 5 2010 to see what the job entails. This is a video report of the journey.
Below is the story which appeared in the Chronicle on January 8 2010 - unfortunately the camera was not running when the first incident described occured:
"OH DEAR" is an approximate translation of what the driver said as his 17-tonne grit lorry slid sideways towards a parked car near the Ship Inn at Worsbrough.
The seven tonnes of grit stored above the back wheels decided it didn't want to go in the same direction as the front wheels, and as I sat in the middle seat between driver Rob Hewlett and driver's mate John Allott, that was quite scary for about three seconds.
Rob, a council driver of 23 years experience, took a 'stood up' stance at the wheel so he had a better view of the snow plough, which sticks out a foot at either side of his truck, as he came closer to the parked Rover.
He had his body almost flat across the steering wheel as he steered his lorry back on course.
The crisis was quickly averted with Rob hardly batting an eyelid.
He said: "We're out in these conditions all the time when it's like this so we're used to this sort of driving. But for a lot of road users, it can be quite scary."
Rob said his 12 hour shifts - which were sometimes up to 27 hours in the old days before the European Time Directive curbed long hours - are a thankless task.
He said: "People don't realise salt isn't a miracle powder that's going to instantly melt all the snow. We can do a heavy grit for snow on a road, but until the traffic churns it up and dissolve it, it's not going to melt.
"If it's snowing heavily within an hour it's completely covered again. But you'd definitely know about it if we hadn't been gritting."
Every year there are scores of complaints roads haven't been gritted. But Rob says in terms of main roads, they almost always have.
On Tuesday morning lorries stuck going up what appeared to be an ungritted Harborough Hill Road - "we had comprehensively gritted it just 90 minutes earlier. "
Gritters are fitted with snow ploughs only when snow is more than two inches deep, and when they are, two men are needed on each vehicle because it is so wide.
Driver's mate John said: "We'll drive through somewhere and someone will shout 'where've you been'. They don't seem to understand not everybody can be first. We've probably already gritted before it started snowing anyway.
"We'd love to be gritting every bit of road all the time, but we haven't got the man hours and the vehicles. We don't get enough of this weather to justify it.
"If we'd got hundreds of gritters parked up doing nothing ten months of the year, everyone would be saying 'what a waste of money'.
"It's a balance."
There were ten gritters working on Monday and Tuesday - four from the Penistone depot, six from Smithies. It takes then less than four hours to grit all 320 miles of main roads.
Rob added: "If we were in Canada, we'd need the extra resources, but when it happens here, we just need to do the best we can."
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Snowplough Fitting.aviby EconEngineering3,403 views
excellent.......i drive a gritter/snowplough over the north yorkshire moor roads.......all we seem to get is abuse from stupid drivers who are stupid enough to try and drive on a road that has 4 foot of snow on it.......well done lads........
REID525 1 year ago
Fantastic video!
I live in Cudworth and I got my new car on monday 4th...was well annoyed lol.
The lads did us all proud by doing as much as they possibly could out of a real tricky situation!
TheGodfatherUk 2 years ago
Personally I think ya did us well & made most outa a bad situation... I live on a steep hill wo pretty bad 4 ages but what can ya do?? End of day no1 cud ev predicted it ad b that bad but it wo... I actually think ya get alot of s**t ova nowt when all ya can do is try ya best like every 1 else. Well done ya did us proud
13VER 2 years ago