Winter Thoughts: Consider, Please, The Plight Of The Snowplow Driver

Last winter was hard on everybody who lived through it. It was especially tough, though, on the people tasked with clearing off our roads, driveways and parking lots. And now, with another winter looming, some local plow drivers sound distinctly unenthused about doing it all over again.

Rob Drake runs a landscaping business out of his home in Sharon. When the weather turns cold, he plows snow for 125 clients. During last year’s Snowpocalypse, Drake says that work took a toll.

“When we do a normal storm, we need like a week to rest after that storm,” Drake said. “So when we didn’t get those week rest times — you’re not you. You change. It’s like doing the graveyard shift 24-7. Those graveyard people, they’re not the same person they’d be if they did day shift."

“It hurts you,” Drake added. “And my family knows it. All the the guys that you’re with know it.”

Ordinarily, Drake packs on a few extra pounds in the winter. Last year, he actually lost weight. And his mental equilibrium shifted.

“It makes you, like, a little shaky,” he explained. “On edge.”

Case in point: the time Drake plowing, mid-storm, confronted a woman he thought was driving recklessly.

“This lady’s driving down the road, she didn’t brush off her car, she cleared a hole in the window,” he recalls. “And I dropped my plow, I stopped my truck right in front of her in the middle of the road — this is the lack of patience — and I got out and I put my arms up in the air and I said, ‘Really?’"

“And she looks at me and she says: ‘Oh my God, you’re Rob Drake!’ I had my broom, I brushed off her entire car, and she said, Now will you come and plow my driveway? And I said”—here, Drake yells with a volume that suggests he’s right back in that moment—“NO!”

The grind of that winter is still fresh on Bruce Maurer’s mind, too.

“The toughest part of plowing is between 2 and daylight,” said Maurer, who co-owns Sudbury’s Frank Maurer Company with his brother. “Your eyes are completely tired, because there’s snow coming at you. That really tires you out.

“You get so tired — you’re just on the verge," he said. "You want to pull over and take a nap. And sometimes I’ve done that."

The Frank Maurer Company used to plow Route 2 for the state. Now, they do a mix of residential and commercial work. But as Maurer tells it, that didn’t make last winter any easier.

“The storms were so big, and they lasted so long,” Maurer recalled. “Some of the storms, we were putting in 28 hours straight. You know, it wears you down. We were all burnt out by the end of the year, the end of the season."

When it was finally over, Maurer crashed. Hard.

“We just slept,” he said. “My family, we have a place on Marco Island. So came April, my brother and I went down, I think it was the second or third week of April. The two of us, which was the first time we left the company without one of us staying there—it was the first vacation we had together in 30 years."

“Me, it took me two days," he said. "I just wanted to sleep. Didn’t want go on beach, I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to sleep.”

While Maurer and Drake both hope this winter isn’t as intense as the last one, they say they’re ready to plow whatever snow ends up falling. But some plow drivers may be ready to walk away.

“If it snows again like it did last winter, I will quit,” vowed Jason Gardner, an employee of Drake’s who pulled up during our interview and made his burnout abundantly clear. “You will find the truck on the side of the road running, and I will be done, never to be seen again."

“Plowing is awful,” he added. “It’s absolutely awful. I don’t like it one bit. People out there, they think you’re out there getting rich, and you’re not. You’re out there—you’re making an honest living, but try sitting in one of these trucks for 35 or 40 hours at a time with no sleep."

“I like to tuck my kids in at night!" he said. "I got two beautiful little girls. Not seeing them for a couple days, it stinks. And it’s just not worth it to me. Not at all."

So remember that lament during our next snowstorm. If the driver shoved some snow into your driveway or onto your car, consider giving them a pass. And if they did their job well, here’s a gentle request from Drake.

“Everybody likes attaboys,” Drake said. “Just a wave, a smile, a thank you. I can be your hero on one storm and I can suck the next storm. I can only get there so fast. So yeah, any attaboy’s good. We all like to feel appreciated.”