Sprayer Depot Blog

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has the responsibility to plan, construct and maintain the state highway system. The state reported 45,881 total public road mileage, including state, county, city, forest service, national park service, native American and other roadways. That’s a lot of surfaces for the 13th largest state by size in the United States. To keep those roadways in tip top shape, UDOT uses a variety of equipment including, as you may have assumed, sprayers.

So we asked the Urban Area Supervisor for his insight on how sprayers are use in his line of work.

1. What type of spray equipment does the UDOT use?
We have several types of equipment that are used here from 250-350 gallon tanks in urban areas and up to 2,000 gallon tanks in rural areas. Smaller tanks are operated from our maintenance one-ton trucks with the large tanks mounted in our ten-wheeler trucks. We also use an ATV mounted sprayer with a small tank to get the areas that are not accessible by trucks. Plus, we have hose reels, side bar sprayers, and boom buster sprayers that spray up to 35'.

2. What is typically being sprayed?
We are using pesticides and herbicides for weed control and vegetative management. We are targeting our areas that have noxious weeds like Kochia, Thistles, White Top and nuisance weeds.

3. Who is in charge of maintaining the spray equipment?
Our station maintenance personnel who hold an applicators license take care of the equipment that they are using. If it is a major repair, then we have our region maintenance shop fix the problem.

4. What months of the year do you use spray equipment?
We start using our equipment in March and will spray into June. Then we have areas that spray in September and October.

5. What are the general responsibilities of the DOT?
Our general responsibilities are preserving infrastructure, maintaining our roadways, and keeping roads and interstates clean and safe for our traveling public. Doing all we can to help with zero fatalities.

6. Are there custom-sprayers in your fleet?
Yes, we have built custom over the years.

7. How often is the spray equipment used? (Daily? Weekly?)
It’s used weekly in our peak seasons. We have also used these sprayers for maintenance operations where water is need to help the activity.

8. Do you typically place orders for sprayer parts and accessories on the website? Or is the order phoned in?
Prefer to phone the order in.