Like last month, last year’s winter brought mild weather in Wyoming, but not mild enough to reduce vehicle-versus-snowplow crashes back to the single-digits like they were before 2019.
The odds of someone crashing into snowplow drivers factored into a discussion Monday at the Wyoming Capitol between the Wyoming Department of Transportation and members of the legislative Joint Appropriations Committee.
Over the last five winters, 97 snowplows have been hit by vehicles, accoding to WYDOT data.
That includes last winter, 2024-25, when 15 snowplow collisions were logged, agency Director Darin Westby told lawmakers during the meeting.
“Our entire industry is not a safe industry,” said Westby. “What we do is highly important, but also relatively dangerous, whether it’s a trooper, whether it’s road maintenance … contractors on the job site themselves.”
WYDOT spokesman Jordan Young confirmed the 15-strike figure in a later phone interview with Cowboy State Daily.
It’s not the best number historically, but it’s not the worst.
She recalled 13 plows being hit in the 2023-24 winter and 25 plows being hit in the winter of 2022-23.
Westby had called the 2022-23 winter months “Snowmageddon,” in the meeting.
Westby became director in the weeks after Snowmageddon, he added.
“And the look on (snowplow drivers’) faces as I was traveling the state, introducing myself — it was wrought with ‘I’m done. I just need a break,’” Westby recalled.
Keeping drivers’ pay competitive and hiring enough qualified people can ease that, he added over the course of the meeting.
Back Into Single Digits Please
Before the winter of 2021-22, continued Young, annual plow strikes totaled 18.
And in 2020-21, the agency saw a record high 26 snowplow strikes — so many that it put out a February 2021 press release pleading with the public to stop hitting snowplows.
Twenty-three plows weathered hits in the 2019-2020 season, Young added.
Before that from 2014-2019, she said, the agency saw an average “of like eight a winter.”
“One is too many, for sure, but we’d love to get back to single digits,” Young said, adding that so far the numbers correlate roughly to the harshness of the winter – but the agency also is “hoping folks are slowing down, paying attention around plows.”
WYDOT is also trying a new strategy, of switching the blue lights on the machines to green, due to evidence the green permeates blizzards and fog better, Young said. The amber lights on the machines will remain, however.
Sugary
Westby called pushing snow a “science” with differing strategies for interstates and other types of roads.
Young echoed that.
Wyoming skies yield dry sugary snowfalls, which the state’s fierce winds roil.
“A lot of our plow drivers have to make sure they’re plowing in a way that the wind is to their advantage, rather than disadvantage – not blowing back onto the road,” she said. “Making sure we try to fight the wind is probably our biggest challenge.”
Farmers, Maybe
Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, asked Westby about whether the agency has tapped into “some more local, ag help,” as in, hired farmers to move snow during their slow work months.
A prior conversation with Haroldson on that topic has pushed the agency toward some different recruitment styles, including targeting local farmers and ranchers, said Westby.
“We’ve seen some pretty significant benefits from some of those farmers and ranchers,” he said.
But summer brings a problem, he added, because normally, WYDOT snowplow drivers serve as road maintainers through the summertime. And ranchers and farmers have their own work to do during those months.
It’s also tough to test the caliber of the new drivers with so little snow in the past winter and the current, he said.
“Our snow removal budget is looking really good right now,” said Westby.
The Vacancies …
As of Dec. 30, said Young in a follow-up email, WYDOT has 36 vacant full-time highway maintenance positions.
The agency is allotted 457 total fulltime highway maintenance positions statewide, meaning the vacancy is about 10% of the total, she added.
“Vacant positions in rural areas tend to be harder to fill,” said Young; “right now we're seeing the most vacancies in Pinedale, Torrington, Wamsutter and Cody.”
She added, “WYDOT strongly supports Governor Gordon's proposed market adjustment to make all state positions more competitive. It takes an entire agency of dedicated public servants to be successful in our mission, so we would not single out individual groups within the department.”
Plow driver starting wage now starts at a little more than $20 per hour, depending on experience, she said.
Gordon’s proposed market adjustment, which he funneled through the Administration and Information agency rather than every executive-branch agency as part of his own request, would boost WYDOT employee wages by about 10.8%.
That’s $13 million agency-wide per year, said Young.
The Crashes
Last winter’s 15 crashes were as follows, according to WYDOT narratives:
- An Oct. 30, 2024, semitruck hit that hurt the truck’s sander the most, on Interstate 80
- A BMW rear-ending a plow so hard the car spun three times, faced the wrong direction and blocked both lanes of travel on Interstate 25, on Dec. 9, 2024
- A Ford Ranger’s Dec. 26, 2024, loss of control on US 16 near Ten Sleep, striking the front of the plow but injuring no one. The Ranger suffered extensive damage but the plow was fine.
- A semitruck driving too fast Dec. 30, 2024, hitting a plow that was sanding a bridge on I-80, ripping parts of the plow off.
- A car hitting a plow on I-80, Dec. 30, 2024.
- An SUV hitting a plow head-on, Jan. 4, 2025 on US 14.
- A pickup striking a plow as the latter made a left-hand turn, Jan. 20, 2025 on Wyoming Highway 132.
- A passenger vehicle driving in the wrong lane, hitting a plow head-on, Jan. 25, 2025 on US 30/287.
- A semitruck rear-ending a snow plow on I-80, Jan. 25, 2025.
- A passenger vehicle rear-ending a plow on Wyoming Highway 130, Feb. 19, 2025.
- An SUV crossing the centerline, then grazing a plow’s passenger side door before descending into t he ditch, on Wyoming Highway 387 on March 6, 2025.
- A passenger vehicle sliding down a hill into an intersection in Dubois, hitting and damaging the wing plow on March 6, 2025.
- An SUV striking a plow at a high rate of speed, sending the SUV’s passenger through the windshield, causing injuries – on I-80, April 1, 2025.
- A semitruck drifting into the back of a plow, on I-25 May 6, 2025.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
