Why so liberal with the road salt – especially when it’s not even snowing?
Last week, there was a rumor of snow. The possibility – 60 percent chance – of “up to an inch” that never materialized resulted in a hosing down of every road with a salty brine carried by huge tanker trucks followed – for saaaaaaaaafety – by a smaller truck with flashing yellow lights.
The sign on the back of the truck reads: Pre-Storm Treatment.
The “pre” part is accurate.
But the storm? Not one weather prognosticator had predicted anything more than a light dusting. If that. But it was enough to literally hose down the roads with an environmentally toxic salt brine (technically, magnesium chloride) that’s also exceptionally caustic to cars.
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This liquid brine – which appears to have replaced the solid salt scattered on roads when it snows and while it’s snowing – is a guaranteed rust-enhancer. You literally drive through a salt bath, untempered (undiluted) by the melting snow – because there isn’t any. The dry road is awash with liquid salt and if you’re on the road, you have no option but to bathe your car in it.
If you don’t wash it off that day, the progression of rust will alarm you – or would, if you were aware of it.
I became aware of it this time because I happened to have the bad luck to be driving my personal truck a couple of weeks back rather than someone else’s press car when I got caught in the Brine Orgy on my way home. My truck got soaked, top to bottom.
And then it sat for a couple of weeks because I was too busy to get out the pressure washer and de-brine the underside.
I regret that I did not.
