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Nebraska Department of Roads is aiming to save $250,000 a year by installing GPS tracking devices into their snowplows. They hope to reduce by at least 10%, the huge cost of removing snow. GPS technology will be used not only to track plows and record where snow has been removed, but also to better manage the application of salt and other expensive ice-melting chemicals.
Currently, GPS devices have only been installed in 100 of the state’s 600 snowplows as part of a 5-year pilot project and some snowplow drivers wonder whether the cash-strapped state can afford this experiment. Iowa tested and rejected this type of technology 18 years ago, but recent developments have meant that it is now so likely to pay for itself from just a 10% saving on the cost of winter operations that smarter snowplow operations will likely become commonplace.
Investment in GPS tracking becomes all the more practical as the cost of salt soars so that now, even Iowa is once again looking into the possibility of adopting the much improved system for relaying information directly, in real time, by satellite to the Roads Department’s computer screens. Pilot projects will be put into operation first to establish the scale of savings which can be made.
