The road salt cannot be obtained from the salt depot in Breda and the drivers who drive back and forth have small eyes. With their snow spreaders and sliders, they have been doing everything they can for days to keep our roads passable. And then the most exciting day is yet to come: the busy Monday morning rush hour after the holidays.
The largest salt warehouse in the Benelux is located in Breda. All spreaders are supplied from here and Rijkswaterstaat drivers drive all the highways. In the meantime, the enormous salt mountain is continuously replenished, because that is desperately needed.
“A total of one million kilos of salt is stored here and you use it up completely on days like these,” says smoothness coordinator Tim Olsthoorn. “In Brabant we now drive 275 vehicles every day. Of these, 75 are spreading and the rest are driving around with plows to push the snow off the road.”
The trucks drive back and forth to supply their vehicles with salt. “We have been working non-stop since Friday, when it started to snow,” says Tim. “That happens in the afternoon, in the evening and very early in the morning.” In the meantime, he’s on the phone all day to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Grateful road users
“We have to work a lot of hours,” says driver Patrick van Nijnatten, who comes to fill up his truck. “This morning we left at half past five. Last night it was twelve o’clock. So I sleep very little, but that’s part of it,” he says with a smile.
He likes to do his bit and gets that back from the drivers on the road. “I can see that they are very happy. They wave, smile or give a thumbs up. It’s nice work.”
When the sun breaks through on Sunday afternoon, the men can take it easy. But in the meantime they are already preparing for Monday. In recent days, most people did not necessarily have to leave the house, but that will be different tomorrow. It will snow again and slippery roads are predicted again.
Will it be the busiest rush hour of the year?
Should we fear a horror rush? “Between 3 and 5 centimeters of snow is expected. That’s quite a lot,” says Tim.
“If that falls during rush hour, a lot of traffic will come to a standstill. But the weather is difficult to predict. We hope to have a layer of salt on the road before then, so that the snow melts quickly enough and we can keep traffic moving.”