Iowa averages between 20 and 40 inches of snowfall every year, and whether the winter ahead will be warmer than normal or cold and brutal, the winter operations administrator of the Iowa Department of Transportation vows his crews will be ready.
Craig Bargfrede says shortly after -last- winter was over, he started stockpiling the essentials.
“I have right at 265,000 ton approximately of salt sitting at our 100 garages, which is about 109% of our overall storage capacity,” Bargfrede says, “so from a storage perspective and an on-hand materials perspective, we’re sitting in a really good position going into the winter season.”
Mountains of sand and stacks of shiny-new snowplow blades are also at the ready, though Bargfrede says there’s one area where the COVID-era supply chain issues remain.
“We’re still behind the curve in getting some of the new trucks that we had forecasted and on order actually two to three years ago,” Bargfrede says. “We still have enough trucks in the fleet to handle what we need to do out on the system, it’s just a matter of, we have a number of trucks that are older that should have been rotated out of the fleet a couple years ago.”
The DOT has about a thousand full-time employees and also hires on some 500 to 600 seasonal workers every winter to tackle the challenges that lie ahead. Bargfrede says the hiring process is now underway.
“If you are interested in a seasonal position with the Iowa DOT, you can go to the Iowa DOT Careers page, and it will show the positions that are available across the state,” Bargfrede says, “or you can contact your local Iowa DOT maintenance garage.”
Many of the seasonal positions will be on-the-job for what’s considered the winter season, which Bargfrede says can stretch from mid-October through mid-April.