<story><title>A salt monopoly could spike car accidents in the Midwest</title><url>https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-a-salt-monopoly-could-spike-car</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CivBase</author><text>Many places in the midwest have actually switched away from using salt to melt snow because it does a lot of damage to concrete and vehicles.  Sand is a popular alternative, but frequent ploughing is often enough to keep main roads clear.  Raised vehicles like trucks and SUVs are also much more common in the midwest to avoid getting stuck in the snow.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; America tends to operate in just-in-time style inventory models instead of managing risk by storing surpluses of critical commodities&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think this a particularly fair criticism.  Deicing salt works by absorbing moisture as it lands, before it can form a sheet of ice.  It&amp;#x27;s useless if it gets wet before you use it.  It&amp;#x27;s pretty dry in the midwest during the winter, but humidity spikes in the summer making deicing salt difficult to store in the off-season.  Climate-controlled storage is expensive and deicing salt is quite heavy and bulky.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ink_13</author><text>&amp;gt; Deicing salt works by absorbing moisture as it lands, before it can form a sheet of ice.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s...false?   Salt gets spread on existing ice to melt it all the time.  Where does the absorbed water go in this model?  This assertion is so confusing.&lt;p&gt;As someone who grew up in a cold climate, the way I recall it is that the salt lowers the freezing point of water by forming a brine, allowing it to run off the road and&amp;#x2F;or be evaporated by the sun.</text></comment>
<story><title>A salt monopoly could spike car accidents in the Midwest</title><url>https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-a-salt-monopoly-could-spike-car</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CivBase</author><text>Many places in the midwest have actually switched away from using salt to melt snow because it does a lot of damage to concrete and vehicles.  Sand is a popular alternative, but frequent ploughing is often enough to keep main roads clear.  Raised vehicles like trucks and SUVs are also much more common in the midwest to avoid getting stuck in the snow.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; America tends to operate in just-in-time style inventory models instead of managing risk by storing surpluses of critical commodities&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think this a particularly fair criticism.  Deicing salt works by absorbing moisture as it lands, before it can form a sheet of ice.  It&amp;#x27;s useless if it gets wet before you use it.  It&amp;#x27;s pretty dry in the midwest during the winter, but humidity spikes in the summer making deicing salt difficult to store in the off-season.  Climate-controlled storage is expensive and deicing salt is quite heavy and bulky.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Loughla</author><text>&amp;gt;Many places in the midwest have actually switched away from using salt to melt snow&lt;p&gt;They use salt to melt ice. They plow snow. The only times I&amp;#x27;ve seen the midwest US use sand instead of salt is when the temperatures are below where salt is still effective.&lt;p&gt;Do you have a citation for this statement, because it is 100% the opposite of what I see in my day-to-day life.</text></comment>