JPS Outdoor Services LLC

About JPS Outdoor Services LLC

The strip of businesses along Grimes' highway corridor doesn't close for weather, and JPS Outdoor Services LLC is often out well before sunrise clearing the parking lots that need to be open by the time the first truck pulls in for coffee. Overnight is when a lot of Iowa storms finish their work, and this crew reads a lot by headlight — where the plow drifts pile against a curb, where black ice forms first in the shadow of a building. Grimes at four in the morning is mostly empty road and blinking traffic signals, the town's rapid growth on pause until daylight catches up to it. There's a discipline to finishing a commercial lot clean-edged and salted before anyone's alarm has gone off, no audience for the work except the next plow pass. By the time Grimes fills back up with its daytime traffic, the lots this crew handled are simply flat, dry, and forgotten about, which is the point.