Townships track road salt, sand like gold using modern technology
‘We’ve been experiencing an increase in freeze-and-thaw cycles and that’s driving our material usage,’ said Oro-Medonte Township official
Every autumn, Ontario municipalities prepare for winter’s onslaught by buying up thousands of tonnes of sand and salt that will eventually be used to keep roadways and highways clear and free of treacherous ice.
This winter, Oro-Medonte, Essa and Springwater townships will spend about three quarters of a million dollars, combined, on sand and salt.
They track it as if it were gold.
Using modern technology, virtually every ounce of material can be tracked and the efficiency of the sand and salt program can be evaluated at almost any time. Plows are equipped with either a global positioning system (GPS) or an automated vehicle location (AVL) system and electronically controlled spreaders.
“We use computerized spreader control, which allows us to manage how much material we are putting down and where we are