Lane General Services

About Lane General Services

You can walk the bed of the Arkansas River right through Lakin most winters without getting your boots wet — it runs dry more often than not out here, just sand and bare cottonwood roots under a skin of frost. Lane General Services works the streets on both sides of that dry channel, plowing driveways and clearing sidewalks for houses that back right up to the riverbank, then moving out to the county roads that lead toward the grain bins. Snow doesn't linger long in southwest Kansas — a bright sun and a dry wind can undo a storm inside a day — but the hours right after it falls are the hours that matter, before ice sets into a walkway. This crew starts in the dark, working the in-town grid first since it's short enough to finish before the rest of the county has even started plowing out. A cleared path here doesn't stay novel for long, but for that first hour it's the only way anyone's getting out the door.