How many snowplows does the department have?
The department has 901 snowplows available throughout the state. These plows are real workhorses when you look at how much snow they actually push during a normal winter. Iowa averages about 32 – 34 inches of snow each year and if you consider that an average cubic foot of snow weighs about 8 pounds (varies between 6-12 depending on moisture content) this means that each truck in the fleet pushes 18,700 tons of snow each year and statewide they push 18.5 million tons. For comparisons, the Panama Canal was constructed over a 33 year period removing 400 million tons of rock and earth while the same amount of snow is removed by the department in a little over 20 years.
