The country around Urbana is laid out in one-mile squares, and at midnight in January those section roads run straight into the dark with nothing to interrupt them but a farmyard light. PLUSULTRA TRADERS, LLC keeps its winter hours out in that stillness: plowing driveways and parking areas, clearing walkways and doorways, and treating ice on the approaches where a slope meets the street. Cold here has a clean mineral smell, and the snow squeaks underfoot when the thermometer really drops. The job is done when a stranger can pull in at seven, park, and never once think about the ground beneath the tires. Then the truck heads back down the grid with the eastern sky just starting to gray.