I have young kids at home. Every night, they eat dinner. Sometimes they eat their dinner early and sometimes it’s late. But every night they eat. So what would happen if I waited until they were starving to feed them. And at that point I said, “Okay, just spot me a few hours. I have to go to the market, buy some ingredients, come home, look up a recipe and then cook you dinner. Sound good, kids?” Just the thought of the ensuing tantrums is enough to ensure that this scenario never unfolds in my home.

If you’re bored one day, type “ice cleats” into your preferred search engine. How many results do you get? Hundreds of thousands. So why does this matter? Well, it means ice cleats are popular. Would they be as prevalent today if they didn’t work? Interesting question. Let’s look into this: If you analyze the 800,000 results you’ll find from your Google search, you will quickly uncover two major obstacles that make investing in ice cleats a difficult decision for any safety professional:

If a fireman asks you to check your smoke detectors, would you consider responding with: “We haven’t had any fires this year, so I’ll test them the next time we do.” Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? What if I told you that I hear tales of similar scenarios when I call a new contact and ask if they’ve tested their ice cleats yet? What many people don’t realize is that you don’t actually need ice and snow on the ground in order to conduct an ice cleat test. All ice cleats are built to increase traction on ice and snow – that part is easy. If they didn’t work, they wouldn’t exist.

Driving to work one day, I was thinking about a customer of mine who has been buying our shoe ice cleats and winter traction aids for over 15 years. (Several years ago, I was honored to be invited to their corporate safety meeting to talk about their slip and fall prevention program.) When I think about this company, I appreciate how they continue to promote our ice traction slip-ons before and during winter. They always remind employees about the current, approved shoe ice cleats and safety footwear available. And corporate EHS always educates their employees about the benefits of wearing the[…]

As a safety professional, you most likely hear your share of employee complaints. The one we hear about frequently is this: "My ice cleats fall off all the time." It’s true that ice cleats and other traction aids can be a little complicated. Sometimes you wear one size in a specific brand and a completely different size in another. It’s a fairly common occurrence in regular shoes. Well, ice cleats and snow traction for shoes are no different. With the many styles of traction devices available, sometimes getting the optimal fit seems impossible.

On my way into the city one day last year, the skies began to grow dark and by the time I pulled into the parking lot, the heavens had opened up and were dumping buckets of water all around me. From inside my car, I could see that some enterprising young fellow had opened up a makeshift umbrella sales stand on the corner. Not wanting to arrive to my appointment soaking wet, I parked my car, made a mad dash to his stand and gladly forked over the $20 for the small black umbrella.