Snow, ice, and plow trucks tear roads and
street signs to shreds. Meet one of the men
who make things right again.
/ BY JIM LORENZO /The Winter
Fix-It Crew
HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS
E DON’T GET hurri-
canes or tornadoes,
but we do get snow. I
supervise sign fabrica-
tion, sign installation,
and pavement mark-
ings for the Monroe County DOT in
upstate New York.
We are in charge of more than
80,000 signs. The problem in the win-
ter is when a sliding car or plow hits
one. By law, we have to get that sign
back up within 24 hours. Especially
if it’s a stop sign or school crossing.
Last year we had 770 downed signs.
We averaged two-hour responses.
We have to be careful. Downedsigns are in dangerous spots—that’s
why cars were sliding. So we position
our trucks to shield us. We then dig
through the snow to the curb. You
don’t want to accidentally put a sign
in the road. We also check for utilities.
When I started 34 years ago, there
was only gas, electric, telephone, and
cable. Now there are 17 fiber-optic
cables alone. The work is important to
every one of us. We have friends and
family on these roads and we want
them to be as safe as possible.
I’m also in charge of pavement
markings on about 660 miles of road.
We have an extremely limited window
to paint because of the snow. Last yearW
was even tougher: It rained on 44 per-
cent of our summer work days as well.
The winter wreaks havoc on our
markings. After big snowstorms, the
plows go dow n the center of the road.
Over time they’ll tear off the glass
beads embedded in the top layer of
paint to make it reflective. We repaint
a lot of lines that look all right dur-
ing the day to make sure they reflect
at night. Last year we used 24,
gallons of yellow, 22,275 gallons of
white, and 399,000 pounds of reflec-
tive glass beads.
The striper truck we use is an
amazing machine. It has more
plumbing than ten houses. It carries
hundreds of gallons of paint and fuel.
The guy driving the truck has to keep
it lined up, watch out for traffic, check
the paint gun and beads, make sure
the computer is working, and keep an
eye on impatient drivers who peek out
to see what’s going on and run over the
wet paint. Two trucks accompany him
to put cones down, then pick them
up. The work zone moves in traffic.
It’s a symphony, often at four in the
morning to avoid rush hour. Every-
thing has to be tight and right. There
is no eraser.The author with
“Stripe-us Maxi-
mus,” a painting
truck that tracks
road temp, humid-
ity, truck speed,
and bead and
paint thickness.16 March 2019 _ PopularMechanics.comPHOTOGRAPHBYSHANE^LAVALETTE