(Radio Iowa) – If you’ve ever seen one of those big orange snowplows carving a path through the drifts and thought, “That’s the job for me!,” now is your time. The Iowa D-O-T is in need of several hundred snowplow drivers for the upcoming winter season, which could be upon us faster than you’d expect. Craig Bargfrede, the D-O-T’s winter operations administrator, says the agency needs to hire a lot of bodies, pronto.

“From a statewide perspective,” Bargfrede says, “we have just over 600 open winter seasonal positions that are used to augment our full-time staff during winter operations.” One qualification is having a C-D-L, or a commercial driver’s license, and Bargfrede says it’s a demanding job to maneuver those snowplows when an Iowa blizzard is blowing.

It’s not just like hopping in a truck and away you go. There’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of things to be observing and paying attention to while you’re in the cab,” Bargfrede says, “not only the traffic around you, but monitoring your spreader control, monitoring everything going around that plow.” The job of snowplow driver is critically important to Iowa’s transportation infrastructure, and while it can be highly challenging, Bargfrede says it also has its rewards.

“It can be kind of a tense situation at times, but yet at the end of the day, it’s one that we say can be very gratifying,” Bargfrede says, “and the fact that you’re helping the traveling public get around to their destinations in a safe manner.” New hires will start at 22-dollars an hour, while returning workers will make 23-50, and Bargfrede says they’re especially low on drivers in one region of the state.

“Specifically in the Des Moines/central Iowa area, we still have a number of openings that we’re trying to fill, and yes, we’d be looking at trying to fill those as soon as possible,” Bargfrede says. “You never know when Mother Nature is going to decide to start teasing us or treating us with the white snow, so we need those folks ready to go.” The D-O-T is holding an open house-style hiring event to recruit temporary snowplow drivers on Thursday from 5 to 7 P-M at the agency’s Des Moines North Garage in Des Moines.