Each year officials with the state Department of Transportation hire around 75 to 100 seasonal workers to drive snowplows on highways and interstates. Officials want the local shops to be fully staffed by November first, but several are still looking to fill positions.
Craig Smith is the Engineer for the Mitchell Region of the South Dakota Department of Transportation. He says he starts preparing for winter while it’s still summer.
“Our goal is to be fully staffed sometime in October,” Smith says. “We typically start in late August, early September start planning for winter and start calling up the drivers we’ve had the previous years and start running ads for new drivers that we need.”
But Smith says over the past few years finding those drivers has become more difficult.
“We usually have a lot more people who are coming in and looking for that seasonal type of work,” Smith says. “This year we’re finding them but it’s taken a lot more effort in trying to get the word out to try to find those drivers.”
Smith says that could be because of the low unemployment rate in South Dakota. He says it’s possible there aren’t many people looking for this type of work. Right now, Smith says there are about 12 to 15 openings across the state. He says if there aren’t enough snowplow drivers, it may take longer to clear the roads.
“It may result in a truck not being used during that event,” Smith says. “If that’s the case what we try to do though is rotate drivers from other shops that maybe aren’t having those events, or we’ve got some other staff that are capable of driving that we rotate in to try to recover those. But certainly if we’re short drivers it could result in those trucks sitting in the shop.”
Smith says most travelers shouldn’t see too much of a difference if the department remains short on staff, especially if officials are able to manage their resources well.
He says the Aberdeen region is experiencing the most need for more drivers, but there are openings in other parts of the state as well.
To see the openings for snowplow drivers, click here.