February 23, 2014
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Midwest Snow Exports
Platteville, WI
Near record snowfalls in the Midwestern United States has caused many denizens to throw in the towel against Mother Nature, which is saying something for people of the frozen tundra from the yesteryears of Super Bowl long past. Some people are so fed up, they just stay indoors and watch as mountains of snow build along their sidewalks and roads.
“Well, that just means more snow for me,” chirped a ruddy Leau Baumgartner. The door jingled and as he entered his office, a swirl of snow following him in, as if it was a part of an imaginary cape. He sported a Green Bay Packers hat that oddly looked more like a green version of what Santa Clause would wear, and he had a twinkle in his eyes that spoke of something he knew that I didn’t. Jesterly, like he was a cousin of Jack Frost himself. I had to check his shoes to see if it didn’t have any bells. He flashed a minty smile, cool as the frosty Wisconsin air.Baumgartner is one of the few who loves this weather, but it wasn’t always that way.
“I used to hate winter. I mean, it’s cold, windy, and there’s endless shoveling. On days like this one, you sometimes had to wonder if the skies were infested with crazy moths looking for some kind of flame. It made me feel so…blah. Or I suppose bleu, he said with a wink. I hated winter that much.”
Now he’s bemused when people give him quizzical looks as he uses a Bobcat to shovel snow into a large truck to haul away. In fact, he sometimes hauls away whole towns’ worth of snow to a depot just outside Platteville, Wisconsin, his headquarters for his business It’s Snow Time. Platteville is one of his “supply depots” all around the Midwest, and what started out as a simple project has turned into a global multimillion dollar business.Several years ago Baumgartner got the idea of snow transportation while carrying out the odious duty of shoveling his sidewalk. As the snow piled up in his yard, he thought it might be a good idea to build a small hill so that the kids in the neighborhood could go sledding. He took his old Ford pickup and cleared the entire street’s worth of snow and built the hill over by Stumptown Road, west of town.
“People were giving me weird looks, like I was Noah or something. More than a few came out of their homes to see what was going on, and I told them to come on by to go sledding in a few days. Most people just laughed, but a few neighbors and their families came out. We all had a blast. We set up grills, cooked brats, drank beer. Well, the adults drank, the kids got juice boxes. So did some of the adults. Pretty soon, word spread and the whole community was out having a….snowball.”
Then he got a call from nearby Chestnut Mountain Ski Resort. Apparently they had heard about this wondrous deed of community building and wanted something of the same. It also helped that all their snow-making machines had failed and they desperately needed some snow to patch up their trails, having scoured the countryside for all its snow already. Baumgartner was more than happy to oblige, for a small fee of course. He had to rent some massive trucks and call in a few trucker friends with semis to haul the fluffy stuff across state lines. Now, the ski resort has a little annex off the Old Main trail where they sell beer and brats, recommended by Baumgartner himself.
Pretty soon, other ski resorts were giving him calls for advice and other towns in the area were building their own little mountains of snow. Baumgartner had found himself in the middle of the new business of snow transportation and consulting. What had started out as somewhat of a flaky idea, now commanded a small army of snow removal equipment….and planes.“Turns out that in some places, particularly the warmer climates, people are desperate for snow. They hold these winter festivals but would like a few flakes in the air. So we load a few planes up and do a fly by to dust towns with a bit of snow. It’s not much, but the people seem to love it. For bigger projects though, we have to have a commercial shipper to do the job.”
By this he means the recent call he got from the Russian government, requesting his help in transporting snow to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. He was surprised that he got the call since the Russians do have the technology to make their own snow, even in temperatures as high as 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They were unsure however just how well their machines were going to be able to hold up to the spring like weather, so they gave Baumgartner the call after seeing an internet advertisement for “used snow” at Thissnowsforyou.com.
“You have to realize that not all snow is in pristine condition. A lot of the time, it’s just plain dirty, especially after harvesting it from the streets, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build stuff with it. You just need to layer clean snow on top, so we sell “used snow” at a discounted price.” We also sell “aged” snow, you know, the kind that people call “packy” snow. We use temperature and humidity controlled cold boxes to get the texture just right. Hell, if you can do it with beef, why not snow?”
Turns out the Russians did make a purchase from Baumgartner, but he couldn’t reveal exactly what they bought. Suffice it to say that there are planes in the air that are flying snow to the Olympics. What next for Baumgartner? He’s got some interesting ideas.
“We tried a Valentine’s Day promotion this year,” he said, pulling out a red box with pink bow from his desk drawer. He opened it to show me some special insulation that kept the box cold.
“These was moderate success. We would pack snow into heart shapes. When the box was opened, the heart would slowly melt. Inside the cover of the box we included a card with the slogan “My Heart Melts for You. Alternatively, we also sold ones that looked more like a brick saying, “You’re as Cold as Ice.” Chuckling, Baumgartner said, “Not everyone is happy on Valentine’s Day.” Stopping, he started to write something on paper. “Maybe next year I’ll add “This Snow Goes Out to the One I Love.”“Seriously though, I think the next venture for the company is in the water business. We plan to melt the snow, purify it, and then sell it as an all-natural bottled water. Maybe with a name like DeCiel to make it sound francy. I mean, if you think about it, with a name like mine, how could I not be in the water business right?”
I was just about to say that he should then consider the tree business when his phone rang. From a furrowed brow and tense discussion, he became jovial and animated. Soon he was laughing. I was beginning to wonder if he really did have some family connection to a Winter celebrity of sorts. Nodding his head, he wrote down some numbers and promised to call back.“You’ll never guess who that was,” Baumgartner said as he looked directly into my eyes. That was some head scientist up at the North Pole. He wants to try some innovative glacier and ice cap repairing. It’ll take some special ice, but he wants to see if we can prevent huge chunks of polar ice cap from crashing into the ocean.”
Then Baumgartner smiled and with that same twinkle in his eye said, “I suppose they don’t want desalinization of the ocean to happen so quickly. Cause you know, we wouldn’t want THAT to happen.”No, I thought. I suppose not. We wouldn’t want a real polar vortex to happen, would we?
