To call the job demanding would be an understatement.
Operating heavy machinery, they log 15-, 24-, even 48-hour shifts. As dense snow blankets city streets and parking lots, these workers goggle up and hit the roads in the wee hours of the morning.
All in a day’s work for a snowplow operator.
“A lot of people look at snow plowing, and they say, ‘Wow, look, you’re making so much money, this is great,’ Anthony Pennella, owner of Polar Snow and Ice Solutions, based in Towaco, told NJ Advance Media. “But a lot of normal humans don’t understand how much effort and time and wear and tear on the body — we’ve been in the trucks almost every single day for the last three weeks.”
Plow trucks clear snow off the roads at Stephen R. Gregg Park in Bayonne during Thursday's winter storm.
This year has brought harsh winter conditions with a series of storms, including one that dropped more than 30 inches of snow in some parts of the state. As a result, plow crews have been working on and off for the past three weeks and are “exhausted,” Department of Transportation Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti said at Thursday’s storm briefing.
“It’s very important to give them room, let them do their work. They’re doing the very best they can. And they deserve, just like our frontline workers do, they deserve a lot of credit for continuing to come back,” she said.
Pennella, whose company evolved from plowing residential homes to corporate properties, detailed the toilsome work that goes into removing snow from large parking lots and warehouses.
A salt and plow truck is seen on Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City as snow falls in Hudson County on Thursday.
“It’s definitely lucrative, but it requires an excessive amount of work,” Pennella said. “There’s a lot of labor that’s involved … if you don’t want to put in the effort or the hard work, I would suggest you find a desk job.”
Plow operators work long hours which Pennella say “really beat up the body.” He and his crew members have started most days this month at 3 a.m., salting surfaces and checking for pesky patches of ice.
In the heart of a storm, like the one that walloped New Jersey at the start of the month, operators work from early morning until they finish the job. Sometimes shifts can last for days at a time.
A snow plow travels along Walnut Avenue in Cranford during the beginning of a snowstorm during the winter of 2020-21.John Jones | For NJ Advance Media
Pennella occasionally books hotel rooms for his workers, just so they can grab a few hours of sleep and some food before hitting the roads again. Away from their families and exhausted from the physical labor, sleep deprivation can become a real threat for the drivers without periodic breaks.
The coronavirus pandemic has also complicated an already challenging job. Pennella instituted a bring your own food policy, so workers wouldn’t have to rely on trying to find open restaurants and diners to fuel up while on the job. And literal fuel is hard to come by as well, with some gas stations closing earlier than usual.
Because of the numerous challenges plow operators face, the key to a successful plow is planning, Pennella said.
For each job, the company creates a snow response plan and decides what equipment and how much manpower to deploy. Now in its sixth season, Polar Snow employs about 75 operators and has 75 pieces of equipment, which range from plow trucks to backhoes and Ventrac sidewalk machines.
Bayonne Department of Public Works plow and salt trucks remove snow on Broadway in the Bergen Point neighborhood during the Feb. 1, 2021, winter storm.
“We don’t know when a snowstorm’s going to come,” Pennella said. “We only know maybe three days before. Even at 24 hours before a storm, the storm can fluctuate. It can go from north to south, it can go out east to west, or we might not get anything at all. In planning for this, we need to be prepared for the worst, and we can always scale back.”
That also means preparing for equipment to break or malfunction at a moment’s notice.
“Something can go wrong,” Pennella said. “It’s inevitable. We are taking a steel blade, rubbing it on an asphalt surface at 10-15 miles per hour plowing a parking lot — something can protrude from that parking lot and damage your plow.”
Still, on the toughest of days, Pennella maintains he enjoys snow “more than anything in the world,” and gleefully recalls watching the plows skate by his childhood street, honking their horns.
“Being able to get out of the truck, even when you’re tired, even when you’ve taken a long shift, you worked 15, 20, even 30 hours sometimes, and you can just step outside and just watch the snow fall and it’s just so peaceful,” Pennella said. “I think that’s the most amazing part.”
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Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
Snow plows spread salt along South Avenue in Cranford on Jan. 31, 2021.John Jones | For NJ Advance Media
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During 2021′s ceaseless snow, N.J.’s weary plow operators work marathon shifts - NJ.com
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