I am a former MnDOT employee with many years of experience on Minnesota streets and roads. Myself and my coworkers from the past are long gone from highway plowing and sanding. The lessons we learned were not based on a couple of years of experience, but decades of interaction with each other and many different conditions of weather. The state has changed the methods of snow and ice removal. We used to use a sand-salt mixture of 10 percent salt in our sand. Now I see trucks with loads of 100 percent salt.

We need to return to more mechanical means to do the job. The state has out-lots for reloading sand-salt mixture at the other end of our routes. These are no longer in use. I don’t like pre-treating streets and highways with salt brine spray. I don’t like any use of calcium chloride on highway or street surfaces; it only makes problems later. Individual plow operators used to make decisions about how and when to apply sand-salt mix by consulting with their immediate supervisor and coworkers from their own truck station, not orders given from persons some distance from their local area.

Sometimes the older ways may be better?

Dexter Henschel

Albert Lea