When you let a Snowplowing Noob in the seat of the Truck

All right. Just don't kill me. All right. So, today guys, we're going to be talking about the fundamentals of snow plowing. By the time you're done with this video, you should have everything that you need to know to go out and successfully plow your first parking lot. From the strategy and how you read a parking lot to also a few of the basic things that you need to avoid when you're snowplowing. This guys is Andy's very first time ever in a snow plow truck. And we're going to see how he does. And we're going to have a little bit of fun today, guys, because we're going to keep track of just how many mistakes he makes on his very first trip out. Start up on that side and get it all moved down this way with an angle about an angle. And that is the exact wrong thing to do. Why is that? Well, because if you start on the upward side, so what are we waiting for? Let's get into it. Andy. Yes, sir. Have you ever plowed snow before? Uh, in a ski, but not in the truck. Okay. It's kind of Andy's first time. Yeah. But it may be some of your guys' first time. So, today, what we're going to be talking about is the absolute fundamentals of snow plowing. The first thing that we always do, we have to understand that every single lot has a strategy. There is the absolute most efficient way that you can plow that parking lot possible. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Now, every lot's going to be different. the fundamentals remain the same. What you see Andy doing right now is the very first thing that has to be done whenever we come into a parking lot and that is clear the sidewalks first then we can move on to do the rest of the snow plowing. If you don't clear the sidewalks first, you'll you'll plow the entire lot and then the shovelers will come through and they inevitably toss the snow into your clean lot, leaving you another mess to come through. What'll happen is that rivlet almost inevitably is going to do one of two things. It's going to go back up onto the sidewalk you just cleared or it's going to go into the lot. So instead of shoveling that out, what you've got to do is we got to take the truck and we've got to come right in tight to that and kind of go by feel nice and slow. I mean, you can hand shovel it, Andy, but the best way to do it is if you've got 1,000 ft of curbs and sidewalks on a site is to use the truck and to feel that edge. You don't want to slam into it. You just want to go into it and you want to just kind of hover real close to that. Then you may have to do a little bit of hand touchup at the end of it. But that's going to be the best way to do it. First time plowing with the truck. Let's see how he does. [Music] So if he does if he comes up the hill like that, he's going to push snow right into the sidewalk. He's trying to figure out that western plow controller. No, I'm not coming down there. Isn't that controller simple enough? You can just intuitively figure it out. Said with no sarcasm at all. There we go. Hey, just pretend it's an Xbox. Yeah, I don't play video games. He's actually a hunter. What's wrong? I can't get it to go left. It's cuz you're hitting the curb now. Do it. Yeah, that's it. You're fully extended. That's it. It's all you got. Some people's children. Oh, let's see you plow. Got to feel that curb. Don't look at me. Don't look at me. All right. All right. In Andy's defense, he's not used to being on camera. And I've seen people get really nervous for some reason when you stick one of these in their face. All right. You didn't notice, I get really nervous. And not to mention in front of cameras. Now, a lot of times we're going to come into a site and we're not going to have a wide open parking lot like we have over here. We're going to have a parking lot that the engineers have put all of these little islands and things like that in it. And you know why the engineers put those islands in, Andy? Annoy us. Absolutely. Because don't have to plow the snow around. So, as we plow a a parking lot, the more we plow it, the better we get at it. And we always want to figure out where the drainage patterns are on a parking lot because inevitably snow is going to do what? Nope. And if we pile snow over the openings to the storm sewer inlets, water's going to get out. The water's going to go right into the parking lot and create an icy mess. The drainage pattern for this parking lot was actually altered by us because this parking lot had almost a foot of sheet ice every time it would melt because the existing drainage pattern was won right over here. Remember that building that was there? Did you see the building that was there? No. Okay. We literally just tore a building down on this site because the building was there and this entire parking lot drains straight through here when we're plowing. As we're plowing, we're trying to wing it this way, but you always get that mess that comes back on top of it. See? There you go. If you missed it, he had his blade up on the grass, which means that we would have been replacing sod or sprinkler heads. Hey, slow down. Slow down. Tighten it up. Tighten it up and go by feel. There you go. It's not a race. Even with a little bit of snow. Perfect. Now, next round, come through and be it and collect it. Even with the little bit of snow that we're plowing today, you can still see how it pushes it up onto the sidewalk. When you're plowing edges of sidewalks, curb lines, things like that, it's not a race. It's absolutely, you go slow, very slow, so you can feel that blade just touching that curb line and you'll feel it. It's like it's almost transmits right from the blade through the truck and right through the steering wheel into your hands. It's just a weird sensation. But when you're touching it, you can literally touch it and then pull away so that you can just skin it without actually touching it anymore. It's true. I'm a touchy feely guy. As he's scooping, what'll happen is that plow will get overwhelmed pretty fast. And you can see even on a light snowfall that it'll start to trail off and lose its load. Guys, there's nothing worse than losing your load too fast when you're snow plowing. But the reason why we're putting it all on to this side is because the drainage pattern is over here. And if we put it on to this side, the water's got to come all the way across the entire parking lot. meaning that as it's melting, it could flash freeze and then it could create more issues down the road. So, we just want to get it contained as close to where it's going to melt as possible. Does that make sense to you? Makes sense. Plowing in a truck is definitely different than plowing in a skid loader. Yep. With a skid loader, you have the ability to go down, back, down, back, down, back, and move snow the fastest, most efficient way. With a plow truck, you're best off just pushing one way or another way. Make sure that you think about that before you start to lay out the pattern. Now, the first time you plow in any piece of equipment is going to be the worst time, isn't it? Oh, yes. Second time is going to be the second worst time, and so on and so forth. About the fourth or fifth time that you've gone through a lot, get it down, you get it down, but don't expect to get it down before that. Now, here's something else that should be done before the season actually kicks in. If you know you're going to be plowing a certain parking lot and you haven't plowed it before, I'm going to recommend you take orange flags. You can see one over there. That's an orange flag. And mark all of your obstructions. The reason I say that is if your first snow plow of the season happens to be a really big one, you know what I mean? Run into a curb or an island. Yes. And you get like this massive 8 in snow plow, you're not going to see anything below the snow. And I have seen guys tear trucks apart. Another killer. I call them man killers or man holes. Those are the worst. And if you are familiar with the manholes on your lot, point it out to the new guys. If you're not familiar with the manholes on the lot, make sure that you look at them and look for any ridge ridges, anything that could catch the edge of a bucket. The difference is a snow plow. Truck has what's called a trip edge. Okay, that trip edge, as long as the obstruction isn't too big, is designed to save the plow. the operator. I still cracked my head on the steering wheel more than once. But 33 years of snowplowing, you do it once or twice. That's not bad. But but a skid loader has zero trip edge. Skid loader has zero tolerance. I've seen guys come out with big eggs on the top of their forehead cuz they're plowing in second gear. That's another thing we've got to talk about. If you have a two-speed skid loader, what speed do you plow in? Plow in first. Unless you're doing light loads, then you can do the rabbit. Well, you plow in first. Yeah. You travel in second. You plow in first. Okay. Because it doesn't hurt as much when you hit something without a trip edge when you're in first gear as it does when you're in second gear and you're going 12 m an hour and you knock the entire door off the front of the skid loader. Okay. I've seen it happen. Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of crap happen that I don't want to ever see again. Do you plow in a truck in four high or four low? I would honestly not know that cuz I four high. Four high. So four low. Maybe once a year I use four low in some extreme situation. Other than that, hands off. Four low. Watch your mirrors on the side post because they do stick out further than your blade. Okay. You got to tighten it up. You got to get closer in. There you go. Now, we don't have back blades on our snow plow. Do you know why? Nope. Because we have skills. I guess. Yeah. So that's why we don't need it. So, but if you don't have a skid loader to do all your back dragging for you, well, you know what? Whatever. Get a back drag blade. They make them specifically for them. So, let's do it. All right. He's looking at me like this. Right. Well, I just didn't know if you were saying all right. Like this. Oh. Oh. What are you doing? Okay. He doesn't even know. So, when you're back dragging, the most important thing you can look at is what the if you're back dragging next to a car is the car next to it. Because as you're back dragging the snow, it's going to want to flop and roll toward that car. So, he just did everything wrong. But remember, he's a nude. He's got his little training diapers on when it comes to snow plowing in a truck. He's a good sport. Okay. One of the tricks when you're back dragging so you don't release snow. Now you're not today, but a lot of times you are. If you want the snow to come one way or another, you'd actually angle that far blade in because it's a Vplow. What I'm talking about is this blade, angle that in toward you, not out, in. There you go. And now what you're doing is you're getting your wind row to come away from where you want the snow to go. If that made sense, which it does. I'm Polish, so not quite sure if that makes sense or not. If you get it, let me know in the comments down below. So now that blade is less likely to allow snow to flop out. It'll flop his way, the driver's way, than it will the other way. Okay. So now you got the entire rest of this parking lot to do. What's your strategy? Start up on that side and get it all moved down this way with an angle about an angle. And that is the exact wrong thing to do. Why is that? Well, because if you start on the upward side and you start plowing it this way, Yeah. down the hill, you're going to put put it on this sidewalk and you're going to end up stockpiling the majority of the snow right in our drainage path back up. It needs to be snowed down. Woo. Now, that is the inlet to our drainage pattern, and we want to keep that as open as possible for the entire year. Now, we're thinking ahead. What's going to happen after the 10th or 15th snowfall and we've got 68 plus inches of snow hitting. That's going to push its way out. Even pushing its way out, it's going to block our drainage pattern. Instead of piling it right there, just start to push the truck up and get it try to start piling it up there. That way, this area just stays completely clear. So now what he's doing clearing a spot so that as he's doing this straight line push he can literally back the truck up and when he stops he can stop on cleared snow. Okay. So what you're seeing is what he cleared out now gives him room to back up put his plow down and catch the snow in this. All right. You see that snow right there? Those are rivlet. So you can't let any of that go. You shouldn't have any rivets. If you feel like you're losing your load over and over again in the very beginning, you can take a bigger bite. And then as your snow is piling up on the front of your blade, make it smaller. Yes. Perfect. So Andy is going to put the plow in scoop position. Grab that. He's got that big giant. It's like dirty toilet paper on the front of your truck. He just dumped his load all over the lot. [Music] Hey, so you guys are learning what not to do just about as much as you're learning what to do. All right, guys. That's it for today's video. I think we've given you a lot of the fundamentals so that you guys can go out and figure out how to do your own snow plow or your own parking lot. We've also taught you quite a few things not to do. It's Andy's first time in a plow truck, so hopefully it's helped you guys and you can go out and be successful. Let me know in the comments down below what kind of stuff you'd like to see next. Hit the like button if this video's helped you out. God bless. Go get them.