While the wintery chill has most of us bundling up, municipalities and private contractors are stocking up on their salt reserves, getting ready for the snow.
Sifto's salt mine in Goderich is North America's largest. It pumps out nine million metric tonnes a year. This year, they're asking everyone to get it early.
Rob Tester, is the owner of TNT Property Maintenance, he’s an independent contractor, who says last year, getting salt was tough. His crew was on the road 133 days.
“Supply and demand throughout North America was just brutal. The southern states that don’t normally use salt, they used a lot of salt last year.”
He says municipal and government contracts always take precedence.
“If a city needs their salt or the MTO for their yards we get bumped down and we don’t get trucks until they are available, once their orders are filled.”
Last year the city of Kitchener spread around 21,000 tonnes of road salt, in an average winter they use about 15,000.
The manager of maintenance for City of Kitchener Scott Berry says this year they have already stockpiled nearly 4,000 tonnes.
“It’s a big building, we carry a lot of stock in here and it'll last us probably about 25 per cent of the season.”
Other municipalities are following suit. Waterloo has 12,000 metric tonnes in stock, Cambridge has 8,000 tonnes. When municipalities run out they get first dibs on the salt supply.
