Winter maintenance fleet savings from implementing specialty winter maintenance equipment

Abstract

This research analyzed the probability of snow plow trucks exceeding a 120-minute cycle time and the benefit-to-cost ratio of implementing one specialty hopper and one specialty plow compared to standard trucks. Route optimization analysis was conducted for the Ohio Department of Transportation's winter maintenance routes to determine the number of lane miles maintained by each type of truck. The failure probability was evaluated in two ways: 1) the garage is considered to fail if any one truck exceeds the cycle time and 2) the garage is considered to fail if the summation of the time used by all the trucks in the garage exceeds the total cycle time. Both failure probabilities increase as the number of trucks in a garage increases. However, the specialty equipment has a lower failure probability than the standard plow truck, which results in greater service provided to the motoring public. Benefit–cost analysis was conducted to determine the payback period for specialty equipment. The initial cost of the purchase of the equipment is considered to occur in the first year followed by the lower operational costs for the specialty equipment thereafter. To generalize the results, the analysis area consisting of Ohio was divided into three regions based on weather. For Regions I and II, the specialty hopper will be paid off by the second winter season in which it is utilized, while for Region III, it will be the third winter season. For the specialty plow, the expected pay off time is year 6, year 18, and year 25 for Regions I, II, and III, respectively.