Plowing roads a thankless job for tired crews

Without them, a typical snowstorm howling through the night would stop a city like Bangor dead in its tracks by morning.

Yet we rarely think about them, the faceless plow-truck drivers, except when we’re roused from sleep at 3 in the morning by their familiar rumblings and their yellow lights flashing in our windows as they scrape past our homes. Then we pull up the covers and go back to sleep, grateful that we’re not the poor guys who have to be out there in the nasty storm. If we think about them at all, it’s often with a sense of resentment that the driveway we shoveled for two back-breaking hours before going to bed is, as we head to work in the morning, thoroughly blocked by a wall of snow, or that a winged plow managed to catch our mailbox in its 12-foot swath.

After 16 years of plowing the streets of Bangor, Dana Wardwell understands what it’s like to do a crucial though largely thankless job in winter. Being taken for granted goes with the territory, he says with a shrug. Wardwell doesn’t expect pats on the back for what he does, nor does he get many. Just knowing that the rest of us couldn’t get through a winter without him and his crew is satisfaction enough for the 18-hour shifts alone in the truck, the slogging through icy water to clear clogged catch basins, and even the angry looks that so often greet a driver along his route.

“I really like plowing, and there’s never a dull moment,” Wardwell said with a weary smile Wednesday morning at the Bangor Public Works Department. As the department’s West Side foreman, Wardwell already had put in 28 straight hours coordinating the snow-removal efforts of 40 drivers during the second big storm of the week. Sunday’s storm kept him on the job for 27 hours in a row.

“Between keeping the fleet going and dealing with all the crazy people who feel they have to be out there driving around in storms, it’s a challenge,” he said when I asked him about his years on the job. “The worst is when people get impatient at night and pass you on the right and wind up running into the wing because they didn’t see it. That can put a truck out of commission for a few hours, which you really can’t afford during a storm.”

Regardless of what some people might think, Wardwell said, plow-truck drivers really don’t enjoy making life miserable for Bangor residents by filling the mouths of their driveways with snow. Drivers try to minimize the inconvenience when they can. When they can’t, they often hear about it.

“Yeah, we get a lot of these salutes from people,” Wardwell said, holding up his middle finger. “We get people turning their snowblowers on us or throwing shovels at the truck. But I don’t think there’s a driver who actually wants to fill a driveway with snow. We’ve got driveways waiting for us, too, when we get home after a shift.”

There are people who can’t understand why drivers refuse to plow their driveways for them. There are people who complain that the plows pass too close to their driveways, and others who complain that the plows don’t pass close enough. The department already has received complaints from people who say the plows have chewed up their lawns, taken out their hedges, or clipped their trees. All Wardwell can do is apologize and promise to fix the damage in the spring.

But spring is still such a long way off. The drivers can be sure of at least a few more round-the-clock shifts to plow through this winter, out there in the nasty storms with their Thermos bottles and the local crazies, while the rest of the world sleeps.

“We don’t get a lot of credit from people for what we do, which are things no one else wants to do, but that’s OK,” Wardwell said. “Our job is to try to get the roads cleared by 7 a.m., whatever it takes. I’d just like to think that people feel we’re serving them well.”