Laser-beam technology helps steer snowplows away from obstacles, saving local governments millions.

A phone call from a friend in Washington state five years ago gave Bob Vanneman an idea.

The friend, who operated snow-removing wing plows, asked Vanneman, owner of tiny Redmond-based LaserLine Manufacturing Inc., if he could use the same laser-guidance system in his wing plows that LaserLine created to guide highway paint-striping machines.

"I said, ‘What is a wing plow?’" Vanneman says of the plows that are mounted on the right-hand side of snow-removing trucks. "We had never been in winter maintenance before, so I didn’t know what it was."

By using a front plow and wing plow on each snow-removing truck, highway agencies can double the production of one truck. The problem is that it is difficult for a driver, particularly inexperienced ones, to know where the edge of the wing plow is.

And that can lead to mailboxes getting knocked over or damage to highway guardrails, which can be expensive for a government agency to repair.

Vanneman, who has worked with lasers since the 1960s, was intrigued and tried the paint-striping laser on a wing plow, which is mounted on a truck’s right-hand side to help clear snow from the roads.

But the highway-striping laser did not work.

After two years of development, LaserLine finally created a laser-guidance system that can withstand the harsh environment in which wing plows generally operate.

"We ended up developing a system from the bottom up," Vanneman says. "We came up with this laser that not only projects a laser spot out for the driver where the trailing edge (of the wing plow) will be, but it also has a de-icer in it — which works to 35 below (zero) — as well as a pneumatic windshield wiper that keeps snow off the front of the lens with air."

The result is a bright-green laser that appears in heavy snow to be from a science-fiction film.

Despite the Star Wars-like appearance, the laser is actually a simple idea.

The gear is mounted on top of the truck’s cab. From there, the green laser beam is shot about 60 feet ahead of the truck, showing the driver exactly where the wing plow will clear the snow.

In clear weather, only a green dot, about 1 inch in diameter, can be seen. But in stormy weather, a bright green line can be seen by the driver, who uses the line as a guide.