Ron Tackles The Hills

“You can’t let go of the throttle,” said Ron Esposito as truck number 31 crested the top of snowy Farnsworth Street.

You just have to keep going.

Esposito, a Hamden public works employee, was on hour six of a 12-hour shift in truck 31 during Tuesday afternoon’s snowstorm, his left hand on the steering wheel, his right on the tall black knobs that control the plow. His assignment: plow a portion of southern Hamden rife with Hills.

It’s best to go up the hills first, he said. Going uphill is safer, so if you can clear out the road going up first, that makes going down a little easier.

Another tip heas learned: Always plow with the truck at least half full of salt. The extra weight makes the traction better.

Esposito turned left onto Blake Road, then slowed at Giles Street. It was time to go down.

He took it slow, as he takes every road. Generally he drives about 20 miles per hour, he said. That’s safer both for him and for other drivers on the road.

The plow scraped its way down the hill, the snow flying out onto the curb on the right-hand side of the truck.

Esposito was still in the process of ​“opening the roads.” When it’s snowing, he first has to make sure that the roads in his part of Hamden are at least passable. When you open roads, said Esposito, you ​“hug the middle a little bit.” Once the roads are opened, he can come back to push the snow off of the sides to completely clear the road and ​“clean it up” a bit.

When it’s still snowing, Esposito has to keep making passes on the same roads just to keep them open. By around 4 p.m., the snow had slowed enough that he could start cleaning up some of the roads he had already plowed and he wouldn’t return to find them adrift with snow again.

Some roads take priority.

“We try to stay on top of our trouble spots,” Esposito said, explaining that trouble spots include hills and main drags. If you get behind on a hill, it’s hard to recuperate. The main drags need to be well maintained because they get the most use.

Driving up Armory Street, Esposito said he considers it a main drag because a lot of people use it to get home coming off of Whitney Avenue

When he got to Prospect Street, he turned left, plowing until the New Haven border, at which point he turned left to take Ogden Street to Edgehill Road and then back to Armory to do the loop again.

Esposito, 28, has lived in Hamden his whole life, though he just bought a house just over the border in Cheshire. In July, he will have been with Hamden Public Works for six years.

He said he enjoys going out to plow, though sometimes he would rather be home with his family, maybe going out sledding. ​“That’s what I’ll do when I retire,” he imagined aloud.

The shifts are long. When there’s a storm, the town has 17 plows out at once. Two crews switch off working 12-hour shifts so that there are plows out around the clock until the storm is over.

Crew two, of which Esposito is a part, began Tuesday’s plowing at 10 a.m. The rest of crew two is scheduled to get off at 10 p.m. But Esposito’s counterpart counterpart on crew one was sick. That meant Esposito might end up working 24 hours straight if no one else could fill in.

Esposito sometimes listens to music to pass the time, but not too loudly. He needs to be able to hear the truck and the plow in case something goes wrong. His tricks for staying alert: Stay hydrated, stay fed, and get out of the truck from time to time to stretch his legs.

He also keeps his window open, partly so he can hear, and partly because the fresh air helps him pay attention.

In the large gray lunchbox next to his chair, Esposito had the lunch meats and homemade pasta salad his girlfriend had sent him with. Sometimes, though, he said, it can be hard to eat.

“Your adrenaline is rushing through the storm,” he explained. That can kill his appetite. It can also be hard to take a break and eat because there’s so much work to do.

Plowing is a stressful job. It can be dangerous — Esposito goes out driving in conditions that keep most people home. He maneuvers a large truck around small roads where other cars are driving. He constantly checks his mirrors.

Then sometimes he hits a ​“banger” — a pothole or a manhole cover that makes the plow jump up. When he hit one going west on Mill Rock Road, the plow jumped into the air with a loud bang that shook the whole truck.

Each plow is outfitted with two metal blades on the bottom that are bolted in. Having two, Esposito said, makes them last longer. But the bolts still fall out, and they still crack, so he has to check them whenever he goes back to fill up on salt.

When there’s a parking ban, it makes Esposito’s job easier. There was no ban in effect Tuesday. So on most roads, Esposito had to weave Tuesday around cars parked on the side of the road. In a few places, the plow came inches from trash cans that people had left out at the bottom of their driveways. Esposito said he has simply learned to have a sense of where the truck and plow are in space.

“It’s almost like you’re a robot, and you kind of just know what to do,” he explained.

Still, there are times when there’s not much that can be done. Sometimes, Esposito finds himself slipping backwards down a hill.

“What do you do if that happens?” he asked aloud. ​“Pray.”