City of North Battleford officials say a new snow blower is contributing to a big spike in efficiency and productivity.
It is a LM 220 loader-mounted snow blower that was purchased in the spring of 2015 and arrived in the fall.
City crews received training on the operation and maintainance the machine Jan. 14 and started using the new equipment over the past couple of weeks.
According to operations foreman Colin Carriere, they “started at 4 a.m. … and picked up the windrows on 100th, 102nd, 103rd Streets and on 11th and 10th Avenues within four hours.”
That normally would have taken two days, he said in a statement.
In the past, graders would push snow onto the sides of the streets, and these would be picked up by a front-end loader, tipped it into a truck and hauled the snow to the designated dump site.
The new loader-mounted snow blower will drive slowly through the snow windrows picking the snow up and transporting it through the telescopic chute onto the accompanying truck. The City says it allows crews to remove the snow with only minor disruption to traffic flow.
In a news release, City Manager Jim Puffalt says the arrival of the snow blower is improving productivity.
“Finding new ways to increase productivity of day to day tasks is one of our goals in the City,” said Puffalt.
“By putting new and equipment more suited to the task we were able to complete this task four times faster than before.”
City officials are saying the deployment of a new snow blower is speeding up removal operations. Photo submitted
