Gerald recently sold his snow plow.  Through a few email exchanges, I learned snow plowing was always an adventure, but not always fun ….

Geralds writes, “Plowing was fun as long as it was just for me. The Jeep did a great job. One of the odder experiences occured when plowing long lanes and roads:  the jeep would go silent.  After spending some time wondering why this occurred, I finally figured out that so much water was coming into the engine compartment that the belt would just slip and then the motor would go quiet.  It seems that most of the noise from a stock Willys comes from the fan, especially in low range it is the steel blade that makes the most noise.

Seems like everyone would call and want me to plow their places out with “that Jeep” I had.  It was hairy out on the road with the plow.  The weight would come off the back wheels and the jeep wanted to turn around.  And the roads would always be bad since that is when the snow came.  I ended up putting about 300 pounds of sand bags in the bed.  Here is a pic of me plowing one day.

The biggest frustrations I had was that sometimes old ladies (and men) would bitch about how I pushed the snow and ask if I could move it over about 2 feet or so, or complain that I was digging up the grass at the edges of their yard and driveways; all this after almost killing myself getting to their place to make a couple bucks.  And I wasn’t the only ones who had a problem with the slick roads, as you can see from the picture I took below …

Also, it would be hard on the old girl;  when going to the neighbors or misc old folks who needed a plow, salt on the road became the enemy.  It isn’t even the plowing so much as the tons of salt that would find there ways into every nook and cranny on the jeep.  Since there was no chance to wash a jeep in freezing temperatures, the salt caused rust to invade the original body on my 3B.  So, when I rebuilt her I had to replace the body.

But, like the picture above shows, it was fun some times too.  My jeep was a plow jeep its whole life until the restoration in 2006.  No more work for it as my driveway is only about 300 feet; So, if I need to plow, I just get out in the snow with my 84 John Deere 318 (or my neighbors bobcat when things get really bad). (See more pics of Gerald’s 3B, before and after the rebuild)”