The falling Saturday snow performed to a soundtrack of metal clangs by Belleville’s snowplow orchestra. The industrial tone of their blades and gears echoed through the city as a warning alarm to their presence in the streets.

“Lots of banging. I don’t even notice it now, I’ve gotten so used to it,” said Terry Raycroft

Inside the salty metal monster, Raycroft plays his plow’s levers and switches like the keys on a piano. The performance is now easily done since the earlier years of his 23 year career.

“Trucks are easier now, everything is automatic,” explained Raycroft.

When jack frost attacks, Raycroft and his fellow operators awake their fleet of armored defenders to battle. Manning their positions for 12 hours, the operators rotate shifts so that their fight can continue 24 hours until the snow is repelled.

For Raycroft, pushing the snow around is the easy part. The challenge lies with navigating the hulking beast around the claustrophobic narrow downtown streets. Adding onto the pressure are  parked cars protruding into his path around buildings which do much of the same.

“When they design these new buildings they don't think about how it would be to plow them,” he said.

As Raycroft steers his monstrosity down the road hurling the snow and slush in front of him, pedestrians back away in fear, others run and some even attempt to fight.

“People throw shovels at ya,” said Raycroft, “cause you fill up their driveways. What they don't realize is that after we're done plowing for 12 hours, we gotta go home and shovel our driveways.”

While it may be misunderstood, the fear and sometimes hatred gotten by the imposing cold brute should be aimed at what's in front of it, the snow. The trails it blazes through the snow provide safe passage to its smaller relatives on the road. Those who are impatient might decide to break from its security only to be found later swallowed by the white maw.

“Always gotta watch for people trying to snake by ‘ya, no one likes to wait,” said Raycroft. “You get a car that passes ‘ya and a few ways up the road you see ‘em in a ditch.”

The enveloping snow may be hazardous for many, but it's easy fare for the snowplow’s blades which cut an asphalt trail through the sea of white. There is one thing that the blades are bested by, the freezing rain that slips by their edge.

“I'd rather have a foot of snow than freezing rain,” said Raycroft. “The road would be a skating rink.”

After hours out in the trenches, battling more than just the snow, Raycroft steers his diesel powered steed into it’s pen for a break.

“That's the exciting life of plowing”