You wouldn’t think designing a snow shovel would be tough. I mean, it’s not like snow is a new thing. It has been around for a while. The need to move some of that snow has also been around for a while, but it seems like the perfect shovel has not yet come to be.
You have the pusher, which is not meant to be a shovel at all. Any attempt to actual pick snow up with one of these things will just end with the snow staying right where it is. The name is serious. You can only push the snow. Which means most pushers are only of use if there is less than a couple inches of snow and that snow has absolutely no moisture. Basically, it allows you to move snow you could also move with a leaf blower.
Then you have the one with the curved handle. This is supposedly more ergonomic, although I have yet to feel much difference in my back. My back simply recognizes I have been lifting something I generally don’t lift and becomes intent on punishing me with pain. You can try to tell it you used the curved handle shovel, but it won’t listen.
The there is the fact that most snow shovels are twice the size they should be. I can understand that people want to be done with the job of moving snow quickly, so a bigger shovel seems to make sense. Except out climate generally means we get heavy snow. The snow is wet and has a pretty good heft to it. That means that snow shovels are not really built for coastal snow.
As of yet, my search for the perfect snow shovel continues. In some ways, I hope I never find it. That would mean I’ve probably been shoveling far too much snow.
