By: Stephanie Harris
When nature throws more than 20 ft of snow at you each winter, you have to be ready for it. Houghton, Mich., a hilly town with a population of 7,000 on the state’s upper peninsula, is well prepared for its annual snowfall of more than 240 in.
The city uses a team of three Case wheel loaders (Circle 900) outfitted with 22-ft-wide snow blades and wing plows. Working in tandem with sand and salt trucks, the loaders clear 40 miles of local streets and state roads through a snow season that lasts from October through April.
Trial and error
Before settling on the Case loaders, Houghton Public Works tried other snow-removal equipment. “Until the early ’90s the city used plow trucks for snow removal, but they never did a complete job of clearing the snow, and we’d have a layer of residue at the end of the winter that was very labor intensive to clean up,” said Mark Zenner, Houghton Public Works director. “By late winter, the streets were pretty much impassable.”
After experimenting unsuccessfully for a few winters with all-wheel-drive trucks fitted with 12-ft multisection plows, Houghton acquired two Case wheel loaders fitted with plow blades.
“The operators initially were skeptical of the loaders, but once they became familiar with the controls, you couldn’t get them out of the machines,” Zenner said, noting that the loaders can push snow several feet off the street and stack it better than trucks or graders.
According to Zenner, the city of Houghton now uses only wheel loaders—no trucks—to plow snow. The city uses five sand- and salt-spreading trucks on a two-shift-per-day basis, two trucks per shift with the fifth truck as a spare. In a typical winter, Houghton uses 5,000 tons of sand and 1,300 tons of salt. Most of the work is done at night, but operations often continue around the clock during heavy snowstorms.
In a climate where temperatures frequently drop below zero during the winter, keeping equipment on the job can be a challenge.
“Fuel freezing is the biggest issue,” Zenner said, “but we take care of that with fuel additives to keep the fuel from jelling. We don’t have many maintenance issues with the loaders, other than replacing a hydraulic hose occasionally. We do change the cutting edges on the plow blades pretty frequently, but the design of the Case loaders lets us easily switch attachments. It’s just a matter of minutes to switch from a bucket to a blade.”
Work all year
Although the people of Houghton claim the town’s only two seasons are “winter’s coming” and “winter’s here,” Zenner’s public works team handles a variety of work during the spring, summer and fall each year. When winter is over, the city’s loaders trade plow blades for buckets and tackle projects ranging from sewer and water construction to street paving, land restoration and utility jobs around the town.
The city currently has two 721C and one 721D wheel loaders purchased from Miller, Bradford & Risberg of Negaunee, Mich. The plow blades and wings are designed and built by Henke Mfg. in Leavenworth, Kan.
“The Case loaders give us both the right snow-removal solution and the versatility to handle other projects throughout the year,” Zenner said. “That’s important in a small city with big needs and a limited budget.”
