Winter gritting plan
Councillor Zahoor Ahmed, Sandwell Council's cabinet member for
environment services, with Frozie Lawrence Sandwell Council’s team of gritting staff are ready for cold weather, with drivers prepared to keep Sandwell moving, night and day.
The council’s gritting crew have now been ready to go since from Monday 7 November and will be on the road as needed until April should temperatures fall close to zero or below in the coming weeks and months. Last year, the team completed 38 gritting runs using around 1,445 tonnes of salt covering around 9880 miles which is the equivalent of the distance from Sandwell to Australia. Overall with the replenishment of grit bins and footway treatments around 1,800 tonnes was used in total. We are ready for whatever the winter brings us as there is now 6,000 tonnes of salt available to start the season with.
Every time the gritters go out, they cover around 260 miles of Sandwell's roads, each time putting down around 55 tonnes of salt. Sandwell Council's cabinet member for environment services,
Councillor Zahoor Ahmed, said: “Our gritting crew do a fantastic by keeping our streets open, moving and safe. I would like to thank the crews for their work, which often is unnoticed as it takes place primarily at night.” Sandwell’s gritting trucks all have names so if you're out and about once temperatures fall in winter, look out for the trucks and give them a wave.
The trucks are called: • Ice One, Cyrille •
Dame Julie Salters
• The Greatest Snow Van
• Spread Zeppelin
• Frozie Lawrence
• Frosty the Snow Van
• Melt-on John
• Rule Gritannia
• Ctrl+Salt+Delete