Mechanics who repair small engines have picked up some extra work over the last week. The foot or more of snow dumped on half of the state proved to be too much for some snowblowers to handle. Radio Iowa’s Pat Curtis visited one of those repair shops:
Tony James says he can’t remember being this busy during his 38 years as a mechanic. He’s currently working on a lot of smaller size snowblowers. “Those are the ones that are coming in tore up…they get into those big clods at the end of the driveway that the snowplow pushes up. That’s a big problem, plus they’re just underpowered…it’s really tough to get through some of those drifts, let alone a 12 inch snow,” James said.
The business where James works, Beaver Mower in Des Moines, has a large fenced-in lot that’s crowded with dozens of snowblowers waiting for repair. James encourages people to use a shovel, rather than a snowblower, on some portions of their driveway.
“The ice balls should be shoveled or kicked out of the way because that’s tough on a snowblower,” James said. Most of the snowblowers James is fixing have fuel-related problems. He says a lot of people forget to drain the gas in their machine at the end of the season and it fails to start the following winter.