Some Good Advice…from me to you.

I left work around 6:30 after warming up the truck and battling my way through the muck and mire of the parking lot…wasn’t that bad really. Snow was coming down hard with a two inch build up on the asphalt, and dusting on my truck, a 1994 Ford Ranger. It is a compact, Cardinal red, rear drive, not a four by four. I’ve had it nine years now. Love it. I carry five, fifty pound bags of sand in the bag for traction…that and prayer I hoped would get me home. I scrapped the ice off the windshield and off I went. 

A trucker never stops being a trucker, once a trucker always a trucker. I quit because of my eye, others stop driving a rig for all sorts of reasons but most seem to remember the lesson they learned. In being so, there are things you never forget, one is never ever use the defrost in a snow storm. It heats up the windshield and melts the ice and snow alright, but does nothing for your wiper blades or the edges of your windshield. Ice builds up on each making those wipers useless. Your windshield streaks and you have to pull over to knock the ice off. 

The secret is keeping the windshield as cold as possible. Snow sticks to a warm or hot surface. Change the direction of the heat to the floor board and keep it barely warm. You are not going to freeze to death, besides you already have on a coat, scarf, and gloves, or at least I hope you do. By doing so the snow will blow right on by. 

Thus was the case this morning as I was driving through white-out conditions all the way from O’Fallon to St. Charles. Not once did I use my windshield wipers and I kept warm the whole way. 

Be careful out there boys and girls, they are calling for blizzard conditions to last through Monday morning with sub-zero temps…