Private plowing on some Routt County roads needs a permit

Snow piles up fast in the Yampa Valley, and the obvious move is to hire a plow truck. On some roads that simple winter chore is also a permit question. A plowing permit is required for private plowing on roads with public right-of-way that are county maintained, even if the county does not plow that particular section during the winter.

The setup gets one more wrinkle. There are also roads with public right-of-way that have never been accepted for county maintenance, and those are treated differently. The two categories look the same from the seat of a truck, so it is easy to assume your road falls in one bucket when it sits in the other.

This is where subdivisions, long rural approaches, shared roads, and homes near a county-maintained route need to slow down. A private plow does not just clear snow. It can reshape sight lines and road edges, pile snow where it blocks drainage, and complicate the work county crews do on that stretch later in the season.

Sorting it out comes down to one line: the driveway is your own affair, but the public road is a shared one. The Road and Bridge permit page spells out which roads carry the requirement, so you can arrange the plowing knowing it sits on the right side of that line.