The OCRC also relies on contracted crews to help maintain some township subdivisions.
This hardworking team of drivers can work long shifts of 16 hours in the worst weather
conditions. Each season our team will respond to as many as
50 winter maintenance events.
Road Commission staff have been hard at work making sure our drivers have the latest knowledge and training at their disposal ahead of the winter season.
The Road Commission conducted a fall/winter operations training session for all operations staff on Oct. 20.
All new plow drivers will also participate in a training event on Nov. 21 at our Coopersville maintenance facility. The new driver training is a collaborative effort with between Ottawa, Muskegon and Oceana counties.
Road Salt & Deicing Materials
The OCRC is seeing a modest increase in the cost of road salt and will be paying $64.91 per ton for an allocation of 20,000 tons.
This is a nearly $2 more per ton compared to what the OCRC paid during the 2022-23 winter season when it paid $63.08 per ton.
The OCRC also utilizes liquid products to help increase the effectiveness of our deicing process. We recently changed the product we use to increase cost efficiencies while keeping product effectiveness.
The product, De-Ice Master+, costs roughly 55 cents per gallon, with roughly 10,000 gallons ordered per winter season. This product is roughly half the cost of the previous product used by the Road Commission before it made the switch last season.
The OCRC uses the product to pre-wet the salt as it's distributed from the plow truck. Prewetting has benefits including:
- Minimizing bounce and scatter of material
- Keeping more material on road
- Activating the road salt quicker
- Reducing salt usage
The OCRC continues to look at additional ways to boost its efficiencies and provide expanded effectiveness while keeping costs down. This includes calibrating our salt spreaders on our trucks and outfitting new truck builds with double wing plows to clear more road width in a single pass.
Plowing Priorities
Our crews conduct winter maintenance in accordance with an established priority system based on traffic volume, road classification and location.
Priorities are, in order:
1. State Trunklines (i.e. I-96, I-196, US-31, M-45, M-231)
2. Multi-lane Primary Roads
3. Primary Roads
4. Local Paved Roads
5. Subdivision Streets
6. Local Gravel Roads
7. Dead End Streets and Cul-de-sacs
Please keep in mind that it can be upwards of 48 hours after the conclusion of a snow event for our team to make it all the way through our road network. We remind folks to be patient and use caution when out in all winter weather events.
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