By Zach Jensen,
Winneshiek County Road Superintendent Jeff Kuboushek in the cab of his county truck. (Photo by Zach Jensen)
Kuboushek reflects on 20 years of keeping Winneshiek County’s roads safe
The snowstorm began just before Jeff Kuboushek went to bed, and at midnight, after a couple hours of restlessness, he looked out the window to see how much had accumulated. Three hours later, his workday as the Winneshiek County Road Superintendent began as he and two road department foremen ventured out into a blizzard to assess conditions on more than 1,000 miles of county roads. A total of 29 drivers, supported by three mechanics ready for anything, were plowing the roads by 5 a.m. that day in an attempt to keep the morning commute safe for county residents — depending on the weather, those plow drivers might not clock out until 5 p.m., before heading home exhausted.
That’s a typical snow day for Kuboushek, who started as a driver for the county on Feb. 14, 2005.
“On some mornings, when you have a lot of snow fall overnight, you get on the road, and all you see is a white blanket,” Kuboushek said. “So, then I’m like ‘Where do I go to keep this truck on the road?’ If we get 6 inches of snow, everything looks the same. After a while, as you get more acclimated, you try to find a fence line, road signs or power lines, and you know the center line should be so many feet from those things. It’s more of an eyeball to get close to center, and that gets pretty hairy.”
Kuboushek switched from being a driver to being the county road superintendent on April 1, 2015, and he described his drivers as a great team of people dedicated to their work.
“It’s not a lot of fun when you go out there at 5 a.m., and it’s pitch dark with 30 mph winds and the snow is freezing on your windshield, and you turn on your wipers, and they just cause streaks across the window,” said Kuboushek, who lives just outside Ossian. “It’s very stressful, and people drive differently today than they did when I first started.”
Years ago, there was a lot less traffic on the roads, he said, because farmers and their wives often stayed home every day. But, today, many residents have jobs and other places to be.
“Everybody is in such a hurry these days,” Kuboushek said. “They want to drive at least 55 mph year round, but we need to drive for the conditions. If you know it’s going to snow, you need to leave earlier so you can drive slower. A lot of people just don’t want to get up any earlier, and they still drive fast, and that’s not good. When you’re in the truck, you’re concentrating on what you’re doing every second of that day and worrying about the public, because a lot of times, they’re on their phones and driving way too fast.”
The road superintendent said that when driving behind a plow truck, the public should slow down and give the truck plenty of room.
“I know it’s hard to do, but it needs to happen, and it’s for your own good,” he said. “A lot of times, when you’re in a plow, someone will be right on your butt, and all you see is their headlights in your mirrors, and that can be blinding for the plow driver — especially these new LED headlights. They’re nice at nighttime, but when they’re in your rearview mirror, they’re not nice at all.”
Kuboushek was raised on a farm in the Conover area east of Spillville and, before working for the county, he drove trucks and a Hi-Boy sprayer for the Farmers Union Cooperative in Fort Atkinson for 10 years. He said switching to driving a dump truck and plow for the county in 2005 wasn’t too big of a challenge, but he was a bit anxious starting out.
“I was very, very nervous,” he said. “I’d get in the truck at five in the morning, and I wasn’t used to the roads, because I’d never plowed them before. And, there are people on the roads at the same time, so that was a big change.”
Iowa typically has 4-8 inches of snow on the ground in the middle of January, according to the National Weather Service — making this year, with almost no snowfall, very unusual. But, Kuboushek said it’s better than the alternative — such as the spring of 2019.
“The last year it was as bad as 2019, which I call the Spring of Hell — when we had a wet fall, quite a bit of snow, late-season snow, and when spring came around, our gravel(roads) were horrendous,” he said. “It was bad enough, and as the road superintendent, the phone calls made it even more unpleasant. Understandably, the taxpayers called us, wanting us to do something, but the roads were so soft that driving dump trucks hauling 15 tons of rock just made things worse. That’s a spring I’d like to forget. You never know, coming out of winter, what the roads will be like. Last winter, they were great, and that makes everything a lot easier.”
Kuboushek said taxpayers can be thankful during winters like the one they’ve had so far this year, explaining the county saves money on overtime, salt, sand, fuel and maintenance. But, the public can also rest assured that when the snow falls, he and his team are ready to get the job done for everyone in the county.
“We have a good team with good people around us who work well together, and they help each other out, and that teamwork makes everything easier,” he said. “And, we take pride in our work, because we’re helping the public, and we feel good about our work for that reason. It makes you feel good to know you’re helping people be safer on the roads.”
This feature originally published in the January 16 Decorah Leader, see the full salute page here.
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