"Have not seen this": CDOT struggles to retain, hire more plow drivers

The Colorado Department of Transportation has been struggling with getting and keeping snowplow drivers across the state for a few years now. CDOT Director John Lorme said because of the massive demand for drivers licensed to operate vehicles like plows, the agency is facing significant vacancies, including areas where they simply have no crews locally. 

"The Highway 82 corridor, the road in the Roaring Fork Valley corridor, it's especially difficult to staff for that, and it has been that way for some time," Lorme said. 

The area has its own housing supply issues, coupled with high rental costs seen generally throughout mountain resort communities. Lorme said the area is simply covered by other crews coming in when the snow falls, but he'd much prefer if they had teams nearby.

"I think a guy or gal who's working on the highway or plowing snow gives it a little bit more effort when their own family is commuting or driving on those roads every day," Lorme said. 

"Maintainers are required to be on call sometimes for extended periods of time. And they need to be able to respond to emergencies like the bomb cyclone or the Glenwood Canyon fires and Glenwood's subsequent mudslides. Those maintenance crews work around the clock and having them live and work close to those areas is just beneficial to everybody."

So how are they tackling the issue?

Housing stipends, bonuses for crews willing to cover more remote or difficult areas, and even building employee housing and handing over a key. All are projects either currently offered or in the works, like the two housing developments already bought and paid for (but not built yet) in Frisco and Fairplay. 

"It's a backdoor into the high country," Lorme said about Fairplay. "It's an alternate route when I-70 gets jammed up for one reason or the other. So we want to have 285 and Highway 9 and 24 open and able to handle those overflows if you will."

CDOT is also working with young high school graduates, hoping to create a pipeline to dedicated workers who will join their family as public servants keeping the roads safe. 

"We're putting them through our in-house CDL training program, which has been amazingly successful since we started the program," Lorme said. "We've created 100 new CDLs, but actually we issued 100 new class licenses to trainees. And now we have 100 maintainers that we normally wouldn't have by having these training programs."

One of the big issues Lorme is fighting in keeping staff is demand. He said companies like Walmart are offering jobs paying $110,000 a year right now to transport goods, and while he said it doesn't have the control and stability that CDOT can offer, the money has a massive pull. 

"Not in my almost decade with CDOT I have not seen this. I have not seen CDL operators in this demand," Lorme admitted. He added that it's fantastic that they are being so valued, and he hopes he can show the value of joining their team as well. 

So far, CDOT has seen some marked success in its efforts to staff up spots. 

"The Eisenhower Tunnel is a shift in the tunnel, which works, you know, four days on, four days off," Lorme explained. "It's staffed at 100% and it hasn't been that way in 25 years. We're rapidly filling up our positions and we attribute that to the word's getting out about the housing stipends so that $25,000 extra a year is a big deal."