Jodi Summit

KUGLER TWP – St. Louis County’s new maintenance garage in Kugler Township looks huge from the outside, but it’s even bigger on the inside, underscoring the county’s commitment to keeping the 182 miles of county roads in Tower/Embarrass County safe for traffic year-round.
At an open house on August 26, many community members took the time to tour the facility, ask questions and talk to county employees who maintain the roads no matter the weather.
Chad Skelton, the county’s fleet and property manager, was on hand to talk about the new facility, state-of-the-art road equipment and the commitment to cutting costs and considering the environmental impact of their work, particularly the use of road salt.
To prevent roads from icing, the district has largely switched to using a salt solution.
“We try to reduce our salt usage as much as possible,” Skelton said. “We spend $2 million a year on salt.” He pointed out that the salt solution uses less salt than directly applying salt grains and immediately begins to reduce ice on the roads. It can also be effective over a wider range of temperatures.
The brine is produced at a county plant in Ely, and the new Kugler garage can store enough salt for about three major snowfalls.
The brand new 425-horsepower snow plow, one of two the county recently purchased, features a two-way plow, heated headlight lenses, three video cameras with displays in the cab and high-tech accessories that allow the driver to read the temperature of the air and asphalt surface in real time. The cutting edge of the plow blade will be equipped with friction sensors that will tell the driver how slippery the road is. The truck will even record how many miles the plow’s cutting blade has traveled so it can be replaced if necessary.
“They can adjust their spread rate in real time,” Skelton said.
In addition, there is an integrated data analysis that adjusts the application of the salt solution based on data from previous snowfalls.
The new truck is actually a prototype and took two years to build, Skelton said. It can hold enough brine and granular material for an entire shift, meaning less time wasted refilling in the shop. Additionally, the new shop is large enough to fit all the snow plow trucks in without having to remove the snow plow itself, which was not possible at the previous facilities in Tower and Embarrass. This gives maintenance personnel an extra two hours a day on the road if needed.
A truck washing system will also be installed in the new facility over the next year so that the trucks can be washed every time they return to the garage.
“So we won’t be parking dirty trucks inside,” Skelton said.
The new truck cost about $330,000 and Skelton said it is one of the most sophisticated snow plow trucks in the country. Skelton expects the truck to last at least 12 years. He said the county buys about 10 new snow plow trucks a year.
“We have about 3,000 miles of roads to clear,” said Public Works Director Jim Foldesi, “and 116 clearing routes.”
The county has also upgraded other dump trucks with removable bodies so they can be used on different types of roads. This new county facility will house eight dump trucks and two bulldozers, enough to cover the seven snow removal routes. Nine employees are housed in the building, which covers 299 square miles, including 88 miles of gravel roads and 94 miles of paved roads.
This is one of three new buildings recently constructed at a cost of $34 million. Each new facility includes a main building, storage buildings, salt/sand domes, brine storage system, fuel system, truck wash, and paved drive and parking areas, all of which allow for efficient and cost-effective operations. The buildings at Kugler, Culver and Makinen were built with energy efficiency, ease of maintenance and durability in mind. They replace five smaller garages at Tower, Embarrass, Brookston, Brimson and the Town of White that had lost their utility due to age, lack of space or both.