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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Mike2633, post: 9759102, member: 117804&quot;]During major snow fighting operations alerts are sent out. The department districts mobilize and department commanders hit the streets. DSNY rank and file employees work 12 hour shifts. </p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://farm9.static.flickr.com/8454/7979271957_2ae55a8e91_b.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>So the employees hit the streets and get moving usually a supervisor will be in a car around them giving orders or monitoring performance. This is one of the rare times where radios are actually given out to certain operators. The salt spreader trucks usually get a radio. </p><p><br /></p><p>There was one such instance where a broom operator because DSNY they cross train a lot of guys, normally broom operators are also cross trained on snow plowing and all that and some times garbage route drivers are also cross trained or broom certified. </p><p><br /></p><p>Anyhow there was an instance where a &quot;broomie&quot; that&#039;s DSNY slang for broom operator was put behind the wheel of a salt spreader truck. </p><p><img src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wJ32wgua2Ok/maxresdefault.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Some of the orange salt trucks do work alone and one of the keys to that job is you have to be able to drive backwards up hill in the snow in snowy areas. </p><p><br /></p><p>Well, a broom operator who wasn&#039;t quite sure of him self was sent alone in a salt spreader truck to work a section of town all by him self and usually salt trucks are given hand held radios so management can direct them where to go during a storm. </p><p><br /></p><p>Well, this fellow got to a part of town that was hilly and he didn&#039;t know it very well and got on the radio in some weak quiet timid voice and went &quot;I&#039;m just a poor broom operator in this salt truck that I don&#039;t know and I don&#039;t know this part of town and it&#039;s snowing please help me please!&quot; I guess the radio chatter fell silent for a minute and in typical trucking fashion they ignored him and I guess he got up there in an even more weak and pathetic voice pleaded for a hand, naturally he was ignored. I don&#039;t know why they thought he was qualified to work the salt truck, I think they threw him the keys and said go get em. </p><p><br /></p><p>Most of the time during a storm there&#039;s some department big shot riding around in a car on streets barking orders over the radio like: </p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;What the heck are you doing you&#039;re losing fifth street, why aren&#039;t there any units out that way.&quot; </p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Need more salt on the express way.&quot; </p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Jone&#039;s, where&#039;s the plow gang, over near 8th street?&quot; </p><p><br /></p><p>Then sometimes the trucks go into formation to do a highway and they plow along 4-5 trucks in a row. Sometime there is a low level foreman driving along side them. </p><p><br /></p><p>According to Mrs. Nagle&nbsp; who wrote the book riding driving down the highway in formation was something to really see and experience she said there were cars that would drive along and cut in between the trucks and try to pass while getting barraged by snow. </p><p><br /></p><p>Usually when they are done with there first pass they all park at a rally point at which point the foreman watching them and coaching them gives a profanity laced pep talk using a bunch of big words I am not allowed to even think of saying on here or else I&#039;ll be banned from the forum, but the problem with using collection trucks as snow plows is when they are out plowing snow, they aren&#039;t out collecting garbage. </p><p><br /></p><p>Now what happens is the big piles of garbage get piled up, but that&#039;s easy to manage. Where it gets hard is when the house to house routes have not had collection for a week or 2 and all the garbage is layered under snow and iced up and stuck to the ground. Usually at that point it takes 1-2 hours to do a street that would normally take 20 minutes, that&#039;s the cost of the snow. </p><p><br /></p><p>Plus equipment gets damaged and your in the truck driving for 12 hours people tend to get drowsy until you hit a manhole cover that&#039;s sticking up more then it should and it trips the plow and it sounds like World War 3 is going off, but sometimes the guys take a transistor radio with them to listen to music, which is generally against department policy, but during a snow storm management looks the other way on rules like that. So that&#039;s an brief over view of DSNY snow fighting operations.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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