Who Makes Salt Trucks & How Are They Refilled?

If you live anywhere it regularly snows in the United States, there's a good chance you've seen a few trucks spreading road salt to prepare before snowstorms in the winter. The salt is why your car tends to get a little dirtier and crustier when it's cold out. Like many municipal service trucks, salt trucks can sort of blend into the background and remain almost invisible (that is, until you hear it rumbling down your street early in the morning). 

But, like any self-respecting gear head, you've probably wondered who makes the trucks and equipment you see every day when the weather turns south, and just as importantly, how are the trucks refilled? 

For when it comes to manufacturing, salt trucks aren't that much different than other heavy duty dump trucks and plows. As such, the manufacturers are familiar names. International's MV and HV series of "Severe-Duty" trucks are popular choices for governments and municipalities. The International MV, for example, can be fitted with a Cummins turbodiesel inline-6, a dump bed, and a snowplow right from the factory. Freightliner's 114SD Plus is another popular choice. It's fitted with either a Detroit Diesel or Cummins engine. It too can be customized from the factory for winter weather use. Additionally, the Mack MD and Granite series trucks can be fitted for winter storms. 

As for the actual salt-spreading equipment, a company by the name of "SaltDogg" makes municipal salt-spreaders. Depending on the truck carrying the salt spreader, it can be ordered to run hydraulically or electrically. For larger trucks such as the International HV, the capacity of the individual spreader can be as low as 6.5 cubic yards or as high as 13.5 cubic yards. As with most large commercial trucks, there are a lot more customization options than your run of the mill Chevy Silverado, even with its many user-focused features.

But what do the trucks do when it isn't snowing? First, and perhaps most obviously, plowing snow is a primary use case of large government-owned trucks. The State of Maryland, for example, employs 2,700 individual pieces of equipment to fight snow, so there's a lot of hardware to use at any given time. 

For filling the trucks with salt, that depends on the individual state or municipality. Specifically, the state of Maryland maintains dozens of salt domes across the state with each dome holding a capacity of 1,000 to over 26,000 tons of salt. Trucks are refilled at the salt domes, which are houses at State Highway Administration facilities called "shops." As is evidenced by the dozens of pages of information and state memos online from local government sources, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes when the weather gets nasty.