Just curious, what’s with those weird looking snow plows in New York? They look like garbage trucks with itty bitty plow mounted on them. All I’m used to is dump trunks with large plows that go at the rate of 30+ MPH. If that is all they have to work with, no wonder they are having problems getting stuck and getting all the streets plowed.
That’s probably EXACTLY what they are, garbage trucks with snow plow blades. Cities that don’t get a lot of regular snow can’t afford to have a whole fleet of expensive snow plow and sanding trucks sitting around. Many European cities do this as well.
I cannot for the life of me imagine trying to maneuver a full size plow blade through some of those streets in NYC (or any other major city) when the sides of the streets are piled high with snow and people are parked…NYC style.
My guess is that those plows can go where regular plows cannot.
Where I grew up in suburban Chicago, the town used garbage trucks with snowplow blades. It worked pretty well. It took a foot of snow to close the elementary schools, and two feet to close the high school.
You mean like this?
Here is a frontend loader smashing into a ford explorer while being towed out.
http://www.asylum.com/2010/12/28/tow-truck-repeatedly-smashes-parked-car-while-rescuing-downed-sn/
When our city runs short of regular trucks, one may get a garbage truck with a plow attached. I did once, it was no fun(a sow with a plow) ie no offence to pigs intended!. A regular truck with a bed full of salt is fun. A wing plow in addition is not fun. A unimog might be fun but all ours have touchy transmissions. No greater joy than sending a plume of heavy snow with the pedal to the metal. The occasional lol (little old lady) on the sidewalk is something you have to watch for, but my favorite trick for making a great curb cut on the corners is to start the corner slow, hit the gas, spin the rear around while keeping the plow blade right on the face of the curb making it a perfect curb cut!
And, speaking of driving in the snow, take a look at this clueless (and dangerous) female BMW owner:
http://www.asylum.com/2010/12/23/driver-crashes-into-house-while-pushing-bmw/
I had no idea that any modern BMW was rear drive. I find that really surprising.
I know there are stupider videos out there. New thread coming up. How to get un stuck.
New York gets a major snowfall pretty much every year. Mayor Lindseed just isn’t up to the job.
That’s pretty standard in NYC. There aren’t that many days of standing snow in a year, but there’s always lots of garbage! So they use the trucks they have.
Western Germany (where I now live) has had unprecedented snow and cold this month, and the authorities here don’t go out of their way to get it cleared. I don’t think my street (in the middle of Cologne!) has been plowed once. Even the highways in the area are still covered in many places with hard pack. Here the onus is on the driver. We are required to run snow tires if we want to venture out in these conditions. Things slow down of course, but everyone adapts and you can still get to your destination by car if you’re sensible.
It’s not really a fair comparison, since Germany is a public transport state. Not everyone will be able to get to work on a big snow day, but most will, and no one will starve to death if they can’t use their car for a few days! Still, it’s refreshing that the country can just let Mother Nature run her course, and we don’t feel the need to bankrupt the budget on snow removal or destroy the watershed with salt when a blizzard comes along.
Besides, I love driving my classic Saab in these conditions. It’s almost as much fun as skiing Mont Blanc!
Dude, You have the best job ever. I tip my hat!
It is bad because we are not allowed to take anytime off after plowing. So I work till 4:30, a few hours of sleep, then am on the 12 to 7 am shift plowing, I have just enough time to freshen up and get to work at 8:00. Then I can go home at 4:30 do my own sidewalk and driveway and hope I do not have to go in again at midnight. It takes me a few days to recover from that!
There are no FWD BMWs–unless you count their Mini vehicles.
The Beemers that you see on the road are all either RWD or AWD.
You learn something every day. I live in Germany and didn’t know that!
Mercedes also.
How to get unstuck? remove the snow from the front tires of your RWD vehicle 
If you think that is stupid, I can recall, an incident that I observed back in the '70s involving an Olds Toronado in my neighborhood.
Despite the car’s FWD, it was stuck in the snow and the front wheels were spinning furiously when the woman gunned the engine in her futile attempt to get out of her parking space. She then began digging snow out from around her rear wheels.
I approached her and told her that she should be digging the snow from the area around her front wheels, and she indignantly told me, “the front ones are moving just fine. It’s the rear ones that won’t move sonny!”
I asked for her shovel in order to remove the snow from the area of her front wheels, and her response was something along the lines of, “unless you have something intelligent to offer, then I don’t need your help, sonny”.
I wished her a good day and continued my walk. This clueless woman was clearly ignorant of the fact that her Toronado had FWD.
Agree; you need a “snow removal” budget. Our city of 1 million spends $15-$20 million per year on snow removal, and has many pieces of equipment to do so. We have snow from early November to late April.
New York has a much shorter snow season, but could get real dumps, as has ben the case this year. The clip of the front end loader repeatedly hitting the parked car is on the national news, and smacks of poor training.
In spite of “global warming” these climate EXTREMES will continue or get worse. They are part of the earth’s climate cycle. It means higher insurance costs for all of us.
Last year I read a suspense novel by a well known author. The bad guy sensing the cops were gaining on him made a rapid getaway from the mountain cabin. This was a 70s Cadillac Eldorado with front wheel drive. Nevertheless, the driver threw “steams of gravel” from the REAR WHEELS!!