End Of Summer – Time To Winterize GSE

The chill in the air this past week was a refreshing change from the sweltering heat this summer brought to the Northeast. As the temperatures dipped into the 40s overnight in Boston, my thoughts turned to the importance of preparing for winter. For those of us who live in northern climates, it's important to plan ahead. By the end of August, preliminary steps for winterizing GSE should be under way. While most GSE operators will have formal winterization programs, I have seen far too many put off their winterizing due to the pressure of routine, daily operations. This is certainly understandable, but problems happen when winter comes earlier than we might have hoped. Then there's the inconvenient – and sometimes haphazard – rush to get all the checks done and winterizing work completed. The most important checks I found were to make sure the belts and hoses were in good condition and the antifreeze protection levels were where they're supposed to be. I don't know about all of you, but it was always a mystery to me how equipment with perfect levels of antifreeze at the beginning of the summer were suddenly short by the end of the summer. Of course, I suspected that the vehicles overheated and when they cooled off, someone on the ramp just added water – without ever reporting it to maintenance. Not a big deal – unless you have an unexpected freeze. I chalked this up to just another "phantom" occurrence on the ramp – like all that equipment damage that occurs which no one ever sees or hears about when it happens.