Simplifying snow and ice removal
Bridge maintenance department easily handles Mother Nature’s worst with Bobcat equipment
Dennis Thoreson manages the bridge maintenance department and its fleet of Bobcat tool carriers and attachments.
Making sure that bridges are passable is a demanding, full-time job in the winter for Dennis Thoreson, general foreman with the City of Minneapolis bridge maintenance department. He is responsible for overseeing snow and ice removal for 636 bridges in Hennepin County, where the annual snowfall is roughly 55 inches.
Thoreson’s department depends on reliable Bobcat® compact loaders and attachments to ensure the bridge decks are clear of snow and ice. The department’s skid-steer loader lineup includes two 463s, two 773s, three S185s and one S130 — all equipped with enclosed cabs and heaters. These compact loaders play an important role in the snow removal process because they can access areas that larger snow removal equipment can’t.
“We use Bobcat loaders with snow buckets and snowblowers for clearing snow off the bridge decks,” Thoreson says. “With the snowblower attachment, we’ll blow the snow into the back of a truck or we blow it off the end of the bridge. A lot of our bridges go over paths, so we can shoot it over them onto an embankment. When we’re done with that phase, we have another attachment that drops salt and sand to keep the sidewalks passable.”
The bridge maintenance department has devised a plan to efficiently clear snow from the county’s bridges through 10 routes, which has been simplified over the years with more Bobcat equipment.
“We previously only owned one Bobcat loader until the late 1980s, and it would take us a week to 10 days to make the sidewalks passable for pedestrians after a major snowfall,” he says. “Now we can clear the snow with the Bobcat loaders with fewer employees in a day and a half at most. We used to spend as much as a day on one bridge, but now we can clear 50 or 60 bridges a day after the plows pass by.”
Angle brooms clear snow, salt and sand
After a light, fluffy snowfall, the bridge maintenance department utilizes Bobcat angle broom attachments to quickly sweep the snow from the bridges. They are even more critical once spring arrives.
“We use a lot of salt and sand in Minneapolis,” Thoreson says. “In the spring, the car and truck traffic pushes the salt and sand on the sidewalk. We use three angle broom attachments and loaders to push it into the streets where another Bobcat loader will pick it up with a sweeper attachment.”
Bobcat compact loaders and attachments have simplified the snow removal process in Minneapolis, in an age when city budgets are pressed to their limits and officials are constantly looking for ways to streamline processes. Thoreson says having Bobcat machines in his fleet cuts his labor needs in half, not to mention the machines never call in sick or complain about the cold.
Continue reading about the many snow removal attachments available for Bobcat compact loaders, Toolcat™ utility work machines and utility vehicles at www.bobcat.com/snow.
City still depends on Bobcat loaders 30 years later
A March 1979 article from Rural and Urban Roads magazine — the previous name for today’s Roads and Bridges magazine — titled “City’s skid-steer loaders do big work at small sites,” highlighted the City of Minneapolis and how the public works department had purchased a skid-steer loader to “help reduce crew hand-labor.” The article went on to say that “soon, six more skid-steer units were put into service and eventually a new public works plan evolved.” The city used their skid-steer loaders for street cleaning, sweeping, snow removal, pavement repairs, and boulevard and secondary street paving and rehabilitation.
Nearly 30 years later, the bridge maintenance department still relies on dependable Bobcat compact equipment for a variety of vital yearround tasks. The bridge department owns a fleet of Bobcat machines to minimize labor needs at a time when finding good employees is particularly difficult.
You can read the full story from the March 1979 issue of Rural and Urban Roads at www.bobcat.com/roads.