Professional snow ploughs for UTVs, 4x4s, tractors and compact carriers.

Before we talk about machines

What the rest of this pack covers

Where winter duties actually sit, what a plan needs to contain, how to match the method to the fall, what to check before fitting equipment to your own vehicles, why precision spreading pays for itself, and a case study from a council doing exactly that.

Product recommendations come last, and only once we understand your sites.

Where the duty bites

Most winter service planning is written around the primary gritting network. The claims, the complaints and the reputational damage tend to arrive from everything else: the car park, the footway outside the leisure centre, the path to the depot door.

What a plan is expected to contain

Winter service plans are generally built on the Well-managed Highway Infrastructure code of practice — section 3.7 covers winter service — alongside National Winter Service Research Group guidance. Between them they point at treatment of transport interchanges, promoted facilities such as community and leisure centres, priority for emergency services and critical infrastructure, priority for vulnerable users, and the resilience of your winter service resources.

Every one of those headings describes ground a lorry-based route cannot reach. Each needs an owner, a method and a machine.

Seven ingredients of a winter plan

Preparing for winter is rarely a matter of getting the plough out. Most of the cost and most of the risk is settled in September, by decisions that take an afternoon. This is the checklist from our planning guide.

Rough guide to spread rates

Full guide, with the reasoning behind each step: kerstenuk.com/effective-winter-maintenance-planning

Prevention beats clearance

Treating key surfaces before temperatures fall makes snow far less likely to bond, and stops ice forming at all. It is cheaper in labour, in material and in claims than clearing a compacted surface two days later.

Two items worth adding to the seven: book pre-season servicing while the workshop is quiet, and decide now how you will record times, routes and materials. Recording costs nothing in September and is the whole case in March.

Match the method to the fall

One machine will not cover a British winter. The useful question is not which is best, but which of the four is right for the depth, the surface and the point in the event you are at.

Depths are practical guidance for method selection, not machine limits. Snow type, surface, gradient and carrier all change the picture.

Fitting to a vehicle you already own

Ride-on mowers, compact tractors, UTVs, pickups and pedestrian power units mostly sit idle from November to March. Most will take a blade, a brush or a spreader, which turns a winter purchase into an attachment rather than a vehicle.

What the DfT guidance says to check

Summarised from the Department for Transport guidance note on temporary snow ploughs, which also carries worked examples from Wiltshire Council, Renfrewshire and Tesco. Responsibility for compliance rests with the driver of the vehicle. Read it in full at gov.uk/government/publications/temporary-snow-plough-use

What will take what — a starting point

Indicative only. A mounted attachment is a complete system — linkage, power supply, bracket, controls and geometry all have to be confirmed against your exact model. Send us your vehicle list and we will check it: kerstenuk.com/Kersten-Machine-Attachment-Compatability-Centre

Why these ranges are built this way

Most winter attachments are specified on working width and hopper capacity. But on the vehicles a council actually has spare in January — pickups, UTVs, ride-on mowers, small tractors — the binding constraints are rarely width or capacity. They are weight on the front axle, and available electrical current. Both of our main ranges are engineered around those two limits, which is why they fit vehicles that other equipment rules out.

And three things that follow from both

The cost is in the salt

Salt is the recurring line in a winter budget, and the one most often spent without measurement. Over-application does not make a surface safer: it raises material cost, accelerates corrosion of vehicles and structures, and moves chloride into soft landscape and watercourses.

The variable you control is not how much salt exists in the store. It is how precisely it lands on the surface that needs it — which is a function of the spreader, not the operator's arm.

There is a second saving that rarely gets counted. A route that takes three hours instead of a full day can be finished before the site opens, which keeps the public off surfaces mid-treatment and takes a category of claim off the table entirely.

Spreaders and ice management

Capacity matters, but it comes after access, carrier type, spread pattern and control. Start with the way the machine has to work on your route, then size the hopper.

Choose the operating format before the hopper size

Lehner publishes the POLARO range as drawing around 30% of the current needed by other electric spreaders, which is what makes it workable on electric vans and utility vehicles where battery range is the constraint. Full range and live prices: kerstenuk.com/Salt-Spreaders-and-Ice-Management

New Forest District Council

New Forest District Council grits 54 car parks across a district of some 750km², from Martin to Ringwood, Milford-on-Sea and Calshot. The work was done with pedestrian salt spreaders until the council bought two Lehner Polaro 110 tailgate spreaders for the back of its pickups.

The range

Start with the carrier you already operate, then compare blade width, lift system and mounting route. We are happy to demonstrate any of it.

Snow ploughs · three families, chosen by carrier

Full range, 25 ploughs with widths and mounting routes: kerstenuk.com/Pedestrian-tractor-mounted-Snow-plough-series

Snow blowers · when the snow has to leave the route

A blade is faster for ordinary snowfall where there is room to windrow it. A blower earns its place when the snow has to leave the route entirely — when banks start eating the usable width, or when it cannot be stacked beside entrances and parking.

17 models. Horsepower alone is not enough — front linkage, PTO speed and height all have to match. Full range: kerstenuk.com/pedestrian-and-tractor-mounted-snow-blower-series