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Winter will be here soon enough indeed. Once, Winter is in full swing there are serious issues for school buses and school bus safety. The key is preventative maintenance. Many buses blow exhaust underneath either one or both back tires to keep warm and melt ice and snow after they stop to get traction. School Buses Must Be Prepared For Winter Driving otherwise buses get stuck in route or accidents can occur. Many times there is no sense in using buses on some days meaning if no one can get there, why have school that day at all; All the children Left Behind?

School districts are taking the threat of snow and ice seriously during winter, preparing the buses for winter driving conditions in Oregon.

http://www.koin.com/webnews/2004/20040105_buspreps.shtml

One of the most important things you can do of course is to wash these buses and to do it correctly. Many times a good pressure washing company can assist in routine maintenance cleaning of frames to make sure the road salt and such get off the buses which can cause excessive wear to things like brakes. Magnesium Chloride is a huge issue on winter roads: This years Winter will cost government agencies 2 Billion in plowing and spreading salt and chemicals on roads for safety.

It will cost the environmental clean-up and corrosion damage to the trucking Industry 5 million. Some of that will be spent in Truck detailing centers in places like Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Green Bay, Cleveland, New York and Boston. What do they put on the roads? Under 25 degrees Fahrenheit, they use Calcium Chloride, it generates heat when it hits moisture and melts ice and snow, giving off a little advection fog. Calcium Magnesium Acetate 20 degrees-Liquid deicer, limestone and acetic, best for bridges and other areas to reduce corrosion to prevent loss of structural integrity.

Calcium Magnesium Propionate-Powder form made from farm products, cheap and only $300 per ton. Still undergoing tests due to environmental problems, which may be associated with it. Magnesium Chloride 5 degrees to negative twenty-Does not hurt concrete, 40% less chloride into environment, comes in either solid or liquid, liquid preferred, Potassium Chloride- 25 degrees to 12 degrees-Similar to urea. Good deicer and fertilizer. Smells terrible later. Sand-good traction; but major mess later. Environmentally okay, after all it is only sand, sand blasts trucks and screws up paint. Sodium Chloride-15 to negative six degrees-deices, often mixed with sand and salt applications. They call it road salt or you have heard the term rock salt. Urea is used in -25 degrees to 11 degrees- Looks like small white pellets, used usually as a mixture to save costs with other de-icers. Note the freezing temperature is often a factor of altitude and wind chill. What is the trucking Industry doing about this problem?

Manufacturers such as freightliner is using robots to put on special adhesive to prevent corrosion between parts. More stainless steels are being used and other alloys with nickel content. New primers and coatings are being used available from PPG as well as new glass and ceramic coatings such as the NASA formula used and sold by Adsil.

Resins and sealers are used by some to seal components and body parts. Anti-static discharge points are put in strategic parts on trucks. PeterBuilts all come with underbody splash shields now. Mack has galvanized cabs and undercoating on fuel tanks. Transport Topics in another related article in 2004 quoted fleet managers as saying increased washing frequency was by for the best preventative maintenance and was the main advise of fleet owners and managers to prevent corrosion. Many times part of the strategy of a deicer application is to allow the trucks to spread it around and mix it correctly. So the application means just dumping it on the ground and letting the trucks mix it. And the buses and trucks are not alone in this problem. Think on it.

# posted by Medical Information : 1:14 AM