WAVE Country road crews prepare for first snowfall of the year

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Area public works and road departments are watching the winter weather very carefully while trying to manage COVID staffing issues.

Crews from Louisville Metro Public Works were attaching plows to their heavy trucks on Wednesday ahead of expected snowfall on Thursday. Louisville Metro Public Works will answer questions regarding winter weather plans on Thursday. Public Works suspended yard waste pickup due to staffing shortages due to COVID, but a spokesperson said snow removal is not expected to be impacted.

A nearby county’s deputy judge executive said it won’t be able to run its dump trucks as usual at the first sight of snow.

“We are very concerned it can even run long enough,” Hardin County Deputy Judge Executive Daniel Leonard said.

He said Hardin County leaders ordered six news trucks after a snow removal fiasco last year.

“We, in fact, had a skid steer on our roads last year because we had so many breakdowns,” Leonard said.

Those new trucks have yet to arrive; Leonard stated that the supplier is still awaiting computer chips from overseas in order to finish building the trucks.

“We’re going to receive one hopefully tomorrow before it starts snowing, three more the next week, and then we’ll see when the other two come out,” he said.

Leonard also said that Hardin County competes with other companies that pay CDL drivers $7 per hour more than them.

Nelson County Engineer Brad Spalding said equipment is not an issue, and they should have enough workers even with omicron running wild.

“We’ve got everyone available to us,” Spalding said. “We do have another department that we can pull from employees that have worked for us in the past.”

They won’t know what the situation will be until the snow starts falling, and Spalding said the low temperature is the main concern.

“We’re kind of waiting to see what we get,” he said. “That’s the big question right now, and the temperatures, they’re going to come into play. As cold as it is, as everybody knows, salt does not work as good when it gets below 20 degrees.”

Copyright 2022 WAVE 3 News. All rights reserved.