Martell's Inc.

About Martell's Inc.

At two in the morning on the open ground around Wishek, a ground blizzard can wipe out the road while the stars stay needle-sharp overhead. Martell's Inc. handles snow removal in this south-central North Dakota town, a German-Russian prairie community that never expected winter to go easy on it. When the wind finally lies down, the blade goes low, headlights pushing through a haze of loose crystals, every corner turned square. By daybreak a lot that was one long white ridge is open pavement again, the snow heaped in a tidy mound off to the side. That is the deep satisfaction of a prairie night's work: the town wakes up and simply drives away.