PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa., (EYT) – During the winter months, many residents wake up wondering about the morning’s road conditions due to overnight weather. You can rest assured PennDOT’s Tina Szakelyhidi has been taking care of things while you were asleep.
(Photo: Tina Szakelyhidi is one of the PennDOT snowplow drivers out early to make the morning commute safe.)
Szakelyhidi may well be behind the wheel of the plow passing your home or business from 4:00 a.m. to noon, or if snow is falling, from midnight to noon.
Snow was falling Thursday, February 27, when exploreJefferson.com joined Szakelyhidi on her route. There was not enough accumulation to actually plow the road, but Szakelyhidi was in the cab of her snowplow and on the road at 1:00 a.m. to help make the streets safer for morning commuters.
“As you can see, there’s nothing on the road to put a plow on,” she noted as she looked at the light dusting of snow on the road ahead of her truck. “There needs to be an inch-and-a-half to two inches of snow.”
“If I put it (the plow) down right now, it’s not going to do anything but wear the cutting edge off. That’s considered dry-plowing when there’s not enough snow on the road.”
But, that doesn’t mean the plow wasn’t doing anything to help road conditions. Szakelyhidi’s truck was spreading what she calls “material” behind it.
Material is a 50/50 mix of salt and aggregate or small gravel chips. Heavy rain during the preceding days had washed any material from the road, so Szakelyhidi wanted to get a few layers down before the morning commute started.
Drivers on their way to work help push the material into any snow and ice on the road and accelerate the melting process.
(Photo: Tina Szakelyhidi loads material into her snowplow.)
It’s when the plow trucks are spreading material that they seem to go so painfully slow.
“We can’t do our job fast,” Szakelyhidi explained. “If I were going the speed limit, all of the material I’m dropping on the road would just be flying off. It does bounce when it hits the road, the slower you go, the less bounce it has. Plus, it’s safer.”
Just as Szakelyhidi explained the need for a slower speed, a car passed on an uphill stretch of road with a double yellow line.
“Then you get idiots like that,” she said as she shook her head. “Luckily, I have treated this whole road to the Indiana County line, so until they get to Indiana County, I know that idiot’s going to be safe.”
While residents count on the plows to be out in even the most inclement of weather Szakelyhidi said they’re not immune to dangerous road conditions.
She remembered one particularly bad ice storm. She was on a hill, and things turned tricky.
“In the middle of the hill, my truck completely turned sideways,” she remembered with a shake of her head. “I slid down the hill sideways. I got on the radio and called for my foreman and told him I was about to roll over. It was that close. It was really scary.”
She was able to slow the slide by putting down her plow and her wing plow – the plow on the passenger side of the truck that’s used on wider roads. The truck did not overturn.
Despite the need to be on-call and out on the road in conditions that keep most residents at home, Szakelyhidi said she loves driving in winter and especially driving the snowplow.
The main roads are her prime responsibility. She may only go over the secondary routes once per shift since policy allows a five-inch accumulation of snow on those roads before they get plowed.
Szakelyhidi has been clearing roads for PennDOT for seven years. She chuckled when she thought about the reaction some residents have when they see a woman behind the snowplow’s wheel. She’s used to the response.
She first got her Commercial Driver’s License, or CDL, and hit the road after getting a divorce.
“I knew I was going to have to support two kids, and I needed a man’s wage to do that. So, I put myself through truck driving school. I’ve had my CDL for 20 years now.”
Szakelyhidi spent eight years driving a cement mixer. She then moved on to hauling coal and driving a tri-axle before being hired by PennDOT.
“PennDOT had one of the big road signs up, looking for winter drivers, and there I was,” she said with a smile.
She’s clearly familiar with her route. She pointed to interesting landmarks along the way. The most notable being Gobbler’s Knob, home to that famous weather prognosticator, Punxsutawney Phil.
Not quite so easy to see, but still interesting is the small graveyard at the bottom of a steep hill. She also mentions an abandoned furnace.
Szakelyhidi stopped once during her route, donning the hard hat and safety vest required when exiting her truck, to remove trash cans from the middle of the road.
She has also stopped for the occasional stranded motorist.
She remembered one young woman trying to drive up the hill to the Wal Mart in Punxsutawney.
“She was just giving her car entirely too much gas. I had just been down through there, so I knew the road was treated.
“I got out of my truck, and I walked up to her and asked if she was okay. She said she was but that she couldn’t get her car to go.
“I told her to ease up on her gas a little bit, and I would follow her up the hill. Once she did that, she started going and was able to get to work.”
So, on those snowy mornings when you head out on your morning commute, wave at the snowplow you pass, it just may be Szakelyhidi waving back.
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