INDIANAPOLIS, IN – At the Indianapolis DPW garage, they’re preparing to fight the same old snow with a new tool. The steel plow and salt spreaders will still play their major roles, but now a small plastic box is designed to help them do their job much better, according to the Web site www.wthr.com. It’s part of an $800,000 system — called AVL: Automated Vehicle Locator System — going into 91 snow plows and trash trucks.

The tracking system plots every truck’s location on a map in real time.

“The dispatcher can see if the driver has hit his actual streets that he’s supposed to be hitting,” said Assistant Administrator John Workman, according to www.wthr.com.

The salt spreader on the back will have a sensor too, which will tell managers how much salt is being put down on the ground and even whether the plow is down on the road and which direction it’s throwing the snow. In the future, more truck sensors may be able to report back road temperatures and conditions, which could one day be available on the home PC.