Cleaning municipal equipment and vehicles the old-fashioned way is incredibly time-consuming. Metro areas like the Twin Cities’ Metro Transit has nearly 100 full-time employees dedicated solely to cleaning their hundreds of busses and 86 passenger cars. It takes one of their cleaners about three hours to clean just one single bus!
But regular, thorough vehicle cleaning is indispensable in cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul. This isn’t important just for sanitary reasons, but also because their heavily salted roads threaten serious corrosion to vehicles. Corrosion is an ever-present problem throughout the Midwest. City managers must choose between letting traffic grind to a halt or coating the roads with salt in the winter.
Public transport vehicles are only one part of the puzzle. Any decently sized city must clean and maintain a whole fleet of other vehicles including street sweepers, garbage trucks, snow plows and more. If any of these machines get dirty enough, expensive performance issues and service interruptions are certain to follow.
These specialized vehicles also happen to have many exposed moving parts, which further compounds the problem. If even one of a garbage truck’s hydraulic cylinders gets dirty enough to bind until it can no longer extend, an entire waste disposal route goes unserviced.
Dry Ice Blasting
But here is where things get a little poetic. Ice in particular is a major problem for municipal equipment and vehicles. Ice demands road salt, which in turn causes corrosion. But ice is also the solution! Dry ice, to be more specific. Dry ice is made out of carbon dioxide instead of water.
Ice Age Clean specializes in dry ice cleaning and blasting. The Cold Jet process we employ dramatically cuts down on cleaning time. A public vehicle, space or piece of equipment which might have taken a municipal employee hours to clean can be scoured in minutes.
Speed is far from dry ice blasting’s only benefit to municipal vehicles. Our Cold Jet process is also incredibly versatile. It is able to destroy a light film of grime which can impact the efficiency of generators and other delicate electrical equipment. Likewise, high-velocity dry ice particles eliminate thick grease, burnt carbon and obstinate salt residue. Dry ice blasting appreciably extends the lifespan of any type of vehicle or machinery. In short, dry ice blasting is able to restore optimal functionality to a broad range of public property whether it’s a bus engine or a bus stop.
Our municipal clients can also take comfort that they’re not jeopardizing the public they serve. Dry ice is made of the same exact substance which people exhale as they breathe. Carbon dioxide poses no health risks or environmental hazards. Furthermore, because dry ice vanishes into the atmosphere following impact, it eliminates the need for cleanup. When we perform dry ice blasting in a heavily traveled part of downtown Des Moines or Sioux Falls on a cold winter day, we won’t leave behind any slippery, dangerous ice patches.
Call our Experts
Ice Age Clean has already served dozens of municipalities throughout Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota for their varied cleaning needs. We are proud to have prevented service interruptions in all of these cities, as well as saved countless taxpayers’ dollars on needlessly long cleaning projects, mechanical repairs and brand new vehicles.
Please contact us today for all of your municipal and transportation cleaning needs. We make city managers’ cleaning problems vanish as quickly as dry ice itself!