“It’s been a good year for snow,” says Bob Ransier (pictured on home page), in what could be the understatement of the season.
Bob should know. He blows snow from the driveways of 150 of Creemore’s houses and businesses these days.
“What I like about snow is it makes me money,” says Bob. “It’s liquid gold! Pennies from heaven!”
Bob, who runs a handyman business, has been clearing snow in Creemore for the past 29 years. This winter, he has been known to plow from 5 am to 7 pm.
“It’s a long day. By the time you get to the end of it, you could [drive] to Cashtown and back.”
Bob says he has loved clearing snow since he was a seven-year-old kid, growing up on 10 Hill. In his day, Bob says students would miss two or three days of school at a time during the winter because the buses couldn’t get through.
Back then, when the main roads were closed, snowplows weren’t allowed to drive either. Bob recalls that once, in the middle of a snowstorm in the early 1960s, he was asked to deliver medication from the Creemore Pharmacy to the hospital in Collingwood by snowmobile, which was the only way to get around.
“You’d dress warmly enough and have your pockets full of food and water,” Bob said. “There were no cell phones back then and you didn’t know where you were going. But if the snowmobile quit, you could walk to the nearest farm. These days, people don’t live at every farm any more, so you wouldn’t know if you could get anyone.”
To clear snow, Bob rides in one of two Kubota snowblowers, which he keeps in a garage behind his house. One of them, which he calls “Lemonade,” has a chute that is painted with brightly coloured lemons (courtesy of darci-que) because the original, a “lemon,” kept breaking down.
But the snowblowers, which cost $30,000 to $50,000, usually don’t require much maintenance, says Bob.
“The number one problem is shear pins,” he says. A shear pin is a safety device designed to separate if there is mechanical overload, preventing other parts from being damaged. “If you get something caught in the cross auger or chain, the pin gets sheared off. Newspapers [in driveways] are the worst. You have to stop and get out and replace the shear pin.”
To overcome this problem, Bob puts a zamboni blade at the bottom of the chute, so the blade can chew up the newspaper and spray it out without the paper getting caught.
These days, even Bob says he has seen enough snow for one winter. “I’m waiting for summer now. Even I’ve had enough of blowing snow.”