This year's winter season in Lincolnshire has been described as one of the strangest in a generation - however, this did not stop the council from continuing to drive efficiency gains.
While many in the sector complain about the increase in marginal nights in recent years, this season Lincolnshire dealt with several bitterly cold spells followed by unseasonably mild conditions.
Lincolnshire County Council network resilience manager, Darrell Redford, described it as one of the strangest he has encountered in 23 years of winter maintenance and highways experience.
'It’s been feast or famine in the oddest winter season I can recall. We have had periods in December and January, and again in March, when we have been doing full salt runs across 3,000km of our roads and in between we’ve had mild conditions when we haven’t had to go out at all,' said Mr Redford.
In total, Lincolnshire's network covers 9,000km of roads and stretches from the low-lying Fens in the east to the rolling hills of the Wolds in the North.
This winter season required the winter team to make 66 runs so far using 18,200 tons of salt, compared to 63 runs and 15,000 tons of salt in 2021/22.
Despite this, the council has continued its drive for efficiency and this year would have made a six-figure saving in salting costs compared to historic results.
The service improvements in recent years have come from two main sources: automated spreading using AutoLogic, Aebi Schmidt’s automated spreading system, and from molasses-treated salt which sticks to road surfaces and cuts the volume of salt required.
The largest single factor in the winter team’s salt usage efficiency has been the use of molasses in treated salt, which the team now uses instead of brine or pre-wet and has done for the last three to four years.
'Basically, this is dry salt that has been sprayed with molasses which we find sticks to the roads better and which has allowed us to use smaller, lighter granules. We have had very good feedback from residents regarding its use and typically it saves us around 3,500 tonnes of salt a year,' Mr Redford said.
The Lincolnshire team are also plugged into the use of Aebi Schmidt's AutoLogic GPS-guided navigational routing system.
Mr Redford explained: 'Schmidt technicians work with us during the summer months to drive our routes which we then load directly into the control panel. All the driver has to do then is follow the pre-designated route so that lack of previous route knowledge no longer poses a problem when assigning drivers.
'It allows maximum efficiency in only using salt where it is required using optimal spreading settings. However, the driver can override the system if the prevailing conditions change.'
Mr Redford twinned the AutoLogic system with the latest Stratos III spreaders which employ a larger 10cu metre hopper and allow greater spreading distances and longer periods to be driven.
'We cover a lot of rural miles and the Stratos III is our rural workhorse, allowing us to go on longer runs and treat more mileages on each shift. We are also now using route-based weather forecasting to allow us to be more accurate in our spreading,' he said.
Mr Redford is responsible for a winter maintenance team that includes over 80 drivers and a growing fleet of Schmidt Stratos spreaders, with 43 units expected by this October, covering 43 different routes.
