Michigan’s Winter Heroes: MDOT’s Snowplow Names For This Year

It's not the list of this year's Oscar nominees, but it's pretty close. The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) has just unveiled its list of the most creatively named snowplows that are ready to conquer the winter in Michigan for this year.

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Get ready to meet the stars of the snow-clearing show, where each plow brings its own personality to local streets and expressways across the state. The tradition of giving names to these winter beasts was inspired by the creativity other locations around the world were embracing with naming their equipment.

"About three years ago now, we put it out to the public. We asked, 'If you could name our snowplows, what would you call them?' And we got thousands upon thousands of suggestions, and once we got those we divided them by our seven MDOT regions,” MDOT Communications Representative James Lake said. “Then we put it to the drivers, the operators of these snowplows, and we said, 'Okay, here are the suggestions, what would you like your plow to be named?' And so now all of our plows in our fleet have funny names."

Names were submitted by residents with the final list being selected by MDOT.

"The creativity that was unlocked in this naming competition is really amazing. As you can imagine, a lot of the names have snow in them or salt, but a lot that I never would have thought of myself, but really clever,” Lake said.

Hitting the roads this winter in the Genesee County area will be "stars" such
as "Gordie Plow', 'The Abominable Snowplow', 'Pillsbury Plowboy', and 'Rock Salt Renegade' to name a few. Genesee County falls in the Bay Region for the list of plows, and you can see all of the 2023 fleet names here. 

You can also visit Mi Drive at www.Michigan.gov/Drive and activate the MDOT snowplow tracker map layer and see a description of what your favorite truck is doing, as well as a driver's seat view of current road conditions through the snowplow cameras.