Prepping for the First Blizzard of the Year & we break down in the middle of the Storm 4 k video

all right you guys we've got a massive snowstorm coming our way and today we're gonna be going behind the scenes to show you what we do to prepare what we have a blizzard when mother nature basically is gonna take a big dump on us so without wasting any more time let's get into today's video better late than never this guy's three hours late with my delivery three hours it's like I don't know if they have time where he lives but it's a three-hour tour like yeah I'm watching Gilligan's Island and we got a hand unload this thing and it's 550 pounds all right let's see what treasures in the truck [Applause] like can you get it to the back gate and get to the back gate well slide it into our bucket pray here just get it to the back and we'll slide it in our bucket you get a pallet jack right there huh yeah yeah we you want me to sign a piece of paper or something [Applause] last year I ordered a set of cutting edges for my Western snowplows from a company called winter equipment just wanted to try them out and after putting in a few probably one of the most brutal snow plow years we've had in a long time those winter equipment cutting edges proved to be the best cutting edges I've ever had period hands down in my life and winter equipment has just recently came out with new cutting edges that will go fit on my Arctic sectional protec pushers all sorts of different pushers and so I jumped on it right away when we were going up to along the curbs we're lifting these to the side the side mow boards up there taking a whole lot of damage and these are a modular system so when you look at it you can see that you can replace each section modular Li versus like the whole thing yeah so that'll be that's a definite up grabbing the stuff that's on the art that Arctic already puts on is just I mean I love these snow plows but the winter equipment snowfalls are the best there's ever been I mean edges are the best there's ever been period want to get your nose picker out of there you actually have a favorite you just use them all equally I got a few Molitor 550 pounds of pure beef pure bee I mean it's low now so if you go up a bit it's gonna come up to that bolt right so if you bring this up and sit it on here so the reason I'm so excited about this system it's a modular cutting-edge system for the sideboards of your pusher here's the thing if you ever have an operator that runs toe down or heel down then we're out one section of their pusher blade faster than another section this system allows you just to replace those sections it's actually really cool so the shoes get installed before the plate gets installed on the box so yeah they are a lot heavier than standard cutting edges but these guys from winter equipment actually make the cutting edges for the do teams and they use 400% more carbide for hundred percent more than a normal cutting edge thing what I do know about these shoes is that there's some operators that like to heel down and then there's some that like to toe down when they're operating meaning they like to some guys like to keep their back of their pusher up in the air and lose all the snow off the sides and some guys like to put the front down and anyway you get uneven wear and so they made those systems modular so that a guy that has the back wore out instead of replacing the whole side board can actually just pop those pieces off and just replace the pieces that are wore so that was that was the concept behind having this modular system so it's actually pretty cool so we're gonna look at exactly I'm talking about on my old one you can see the back here is wore down a lot more than the front is wore down so whoever was running this picture was running it with the back it's up in the air even brought it up one side never it out so what we're trying to prep for is a five-day Blizzard the first part is gonna hit on Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving and deliver anywhere from three to nine inches of snow the second third fourth and fifth part comes the day after Thanksgiving or Friday Saturday and into Sunday and that's going to be the bigger part of the system and that can deliver anywhere from six inches of snow up to 24 inches up in North and South Dakota so we've got a lot of work to do before that system hits okay so it's that time of year I'm gonna be prepping the Volvo for snow here today so what that entails is swapping out the tires we got to get these solid rubber demo tires off because that's gonna be slipping and sliding in the snow here I took the took the hockey mask off the front with the front here we can lift the front off of the ground with the with the bucket so that's no problem then drop it Jack the back up when you're jacking the back up you want either the attachment off or lift it up a little bit because if it's touching the ground the jack on the back is going to be lifted in the whole weight plus the weight of whatever attachment is on there okay so each one of these tires weighs about 250 ish pounds here so got the man handle these suckers off of here yeah when I'm putting these lug nuts back on I do it like how you do it on a you know a truck or a car kind of star pattern things just so that guarantee everything's seated up how it's supposed to be so so what you don't see happening is although Sam has putting the lug bolts on in the right pattern he's actually flipping them around so the he's putting them on bass-ackwards a lug bolt has a beveled side and a flat side and one of the mistakes that's going on right now is he's putting a flat side up to the rim the beveled side has to go into the rim that's what snugs everything up you're gonna see what happens when you put them on the wrong way in just a moment we didn't catch this until after the fact and you know what don't be beating up on Sam and everybody makes mistakes let's not make it a bigger deal than it is but I do want to point out how it can impact your equipment day before this storm came through it was 35 degrees and sunny that meant that the asphalt was nice and warm and then it snowed on it when all this snow hit that asphalt it created a frozen slick layer below the snow and right above the asphalt meaning almost all of our equipment was slipping and sliding but these pro cleats bipro tech made a huge difference and you can see how this bauble come coupled with this arctic sectional pusher and those tires could just keep going until this happened how bad is it rim shot all right holy look at how that hollowed them home don't put your lug nuts on back Oh [Laughter] 450 bucks but you can't buy the rim by yourself we were able to find a rim but finding lug nuts for the Volvo was an entirely separate challenge see this the lug nuts themselves got stripped out and so we had to drive an hour and a half up to northern Minnesota to find the one person that actually had ball ball lug nuts that's one of the things I'm finding that I'm not really too fond about with this ball ball although it's got some amazing push power having parts on hand is a huge part of the equation and a lot of times when we need something we're finding that they don't have a hand I mean lug nuts if it was a bobcat we would have had lug nuts in 30 minutes with this ball ball it wasn't more of a challenge I don't even know what to say about these Arctic sectional pushers they're just beast eyed they handle so much snow and scrape so nice to the ground I would have never if you just said to me hey you know what the pusher you use in the front of your piece of equipment will make a huge difference for productivity I would have said no but after using them I've totally changed my mind and above all with that Arctic I mean just now another one of our absolute favorite pieces of equipment for a plow truck is a back drag blade we own two different kinds we own a short iron and a snow power the short iron that you see here allows you to keep your tailgate on the short iron is also less expensive than the snow power the snow power on the other hand has a hundred and eighty degree reversible wings which comes in handy you will literally use those 180-degree wings more often than you think so it's almost like comparing apples to oranges there's advantages to the short iron guys some guys need their tailgate on want their tailgate on the short iron allows you to do that and cost you less the snow power on the other hand is more versatile and allows you to push snow going backwards which honestly comes in really handy at times one of my favorite things about both the short iron ants no power is how you handling your curved lines in your sidewalks with both plates well you can go right on top of the sidewalk like I'm doing here pull forward she'll settle down and keep going right into the parking lot I couldn't run a snowplow trunk without one of these things you guys we don't run all Arctic for our pushers we still have some of the standard pushers and it's just because of cost I have not gotten around yet to buying Arctic's for every piece of equipment if I could afford to I would I straight forward what Arctic doesn't pay me to say this but I just we definitely inside our company have a have a preference these pushers are okay but an Arctic on here would make this machine much more so one of the new things we're gonna try out this year is heated windshield wipers I can't tell you how many times I've gotten ice snow you're out plowing in the middle of a blizzard and you got to jump out of your truck and bang your windshield wipers I heard from more than a couple of you guys try heated windshield wipers and I'm going to do it because you guys told me to and I'm gonna run it through this first snowstorm and give you some feedback here in just a moment I'll let you know if you guys were right wrong or in between all right got all the wires ran through the firewall there go inside and pull them out so they take about an hour to install and in a difficulty level from one to ten they're probably about a three or a four you do have to pull apart your dash depending on what truck you have for dodge Chevy GMC they're not all gonna be the same and you do need to wire in and cut in a toggle switch so that you can turn them on and off separately from the heated part separately from the actual windshield wiper working again not very difficult but just some of those things you want to take into consideration before you go and stick them on they don't just snap in place like a regular windshield wiper it takes a little bit more work the first time to do it when you want to replace them you don't have to go through all the wiring you can then just snap them apart and put a new set in alright so we got everything all hooked up there's juice running a cigarette lighter and all that so all we have to do just hook the grounds up out here probably just gonna ground it right to the battery yeah I'm just gonna crown those right on the battery there right there and tuck the rest of wires in all right heated wiper blades that are all set up we got our switch it's kind of dark right down here and all of our wires are tucked in ran so there we go interesting to see how it does how they do in the Minnesota winter here don't know how much you guys are gonna be able to see but the heated windshield wipers when it's like this and it's snowing and the snows coming up under the windshield what a game-changer seriously you guys I would have never guessed never guess they'd be this good no ice I should have ice built up underneath my windshield wipers right now I probably have streaks going across here nothing simple but effective all right you guys well that's all we got for you today and we were thankful we got a one-day break in between blizzards but now I'm sitting here prepping for the Browns two three four and five coming up right down the pipeline so I can't wait to see what happens during those snowstorm I don't know yet gone through but while I got you here do me a favor you guys check out the two videos and I'm gonna pop up on the screen for you on the bottom left and the bottom right god bless you guys go get them and head stay safe out there stay warm and I hope this videos helped y'all let me know what you think of it in the comments down below or we will catch you guys on the next one