Graders are still used for highway maintenance everywhere in Finland, though not as much as before. Graders are nowadays used primarily for the spring and autumn tilling of gravel roads and in winter maintenance to remove hard compressed snow layers. Nowadays the surfaces of gravel roads can be levelled with lorry underbody scrapers, which can also be used in winter maintenance to carry out tasks that used to require a grader. As a result, in winter maintenance graders are nowadays used almost exclusively for removing hard compressed snow layers. Because of this, graders are seen less frequently than before.

Public roads are maintained in accordance with the quality requirements corresponding to the roads’ maintenance classes. These quality requirements define, among other things, the condition that the road has to be maintained in, as well as how quickly measures have to be taken when the weather worsens or the quality level deteriorates. The quality requirements do not, however, define what kind of equipment should be used to maintain the road in the condition defined in the requirements. The contractor is free to decide what kind of equipment they use to carry out maintenance. From the perspective of ELY Centres, the most important thing is that the road is maintained in accordance with the quality requirements, not how this is achieved.

Read more:

• Winter maintenance (ELY Centre) in Finnish
• Winter maintenance of roads (Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency) in Finnish