Snow pros clearing the way

Allen Dorantes empathizes with Utahns forced to spend part of their morning awkwardly hunched over their freezing vehicles to scour stubborn ice from their windows — but he doesn't feel too sorry.

That's because, after wiping the sleep from his own eyes and the snow from his own freezing car, the 21-year-old Sandy resident hustles to downtown Salt Lake to dig out and clean 170 more.

"It only takes about three or four hours," an upbeat Dorantes said Friday afternoon while working away in shin-deep snow at Ken Garff Mitsubishi Hyundai. "It's cold. And it can be tricky."

The trick is not necessarily scraping snow off cars but removing what's fallen between them.

Those who maneuver bulky, rusty-bladed snowplows mounted on one-ton trucks — on ice — through slim rows of new Jaguars must scoff at the ancient bull-in-a-china-shop simile.

And yet the potentially devastating procedure is needed every time a couple of inches of snow blanket the pavement. A typical car lot may spend $400 to $500 in combined resources after a large storm, said John Maher, service manager for Ken Garff Volvo Jaguar.

"Business slows, too. We usually have 40 cars to service a day. Today we have 16."

That's the last thing a recession-battered automotive company needs when U.S. automotive sales are already at a 26-year low.

But, as one salesman put it, if someone's going to stop in on a wintry day, "They're serious. They ain't just kickin' tires."

Cory Johnson, on the other hand, doesn't kick very many tires, but since the last couple of storms, the 51-year-old said he's been installing more of them. "We've sold out of quite a few different sizes of snow tires, and every time it snows like this our business will at least double or triple."

Kyle Wrigley, 19, at Discount Tires in Murray, said snow tires are a "very popular choice in Utah" and after a big storm they are backed up for six hours instead of the average 30 to 40 minutes.

"Regular tires don't work as well in temperatures below 45 degrees," Wrigley said.

It's not just tire chains that do well when the snow falls snorkel-deep. Taxi cab drivers who are willing to brave slushy roads for those who aren't as courageous behind the wheel do well, too.