The President of the BC Trucking Association was impressed with the swift cleanup of the highways during last weeks record snow storm.

Dave Earle says there weren’t any big long term or serious problems and there are a few reasons for that. One is the good work of the maintenance by contractors and two is that we knew the storm was coming. “When we see a lot of problems is when you see that freeze and thaw cycle move up and down the mountain. So you get that really bad packed glare ice on one part of the mountain, the cold air drops and freezes it, it moves up, it starts to half melt then it freezes it again. We didn’t see that. It was a pretty static, just one heck of a snow storm. But, we didn’t see that freeze-thaw.”

Environment Canada says the storm that started Thursday night dropped 97 centimetres of snow at the Coquihalla Summit and 103 at the Allison Pass in just under 48 hours. Earle was very impressed with the quick work to clean up the mess. “When you look at how much snow came down, how quickly it came down, and how the contractor was able to respond to manage it, I don’t think it could have been handled much better honestly. It’s just a phenomenal amount of snow.”

“It was really, really good to see. The ministry of transportation restructured how they interact with contractors over the past couple of years and have new service providers in a bunch of districts throughout the province and we’re really quite pleased” says Earle.