Riverhead Highway Department secures national award for innovative snow fence pole remover

An old golf cart wheel and a piece of box tubing turned out to be the perfect combination to earn the Riverhead Town Highway Department national recognition.

Highway Superintendent Mike Zaleski earned the Pioneer Award from the Federal Highway Administration’s 2026 Build a Better Mousetrap national competition for the department’s cost-effective invention made entirely from repurposed materials: the Snow Fence Pole Remover.

The award is given to a highway department that uses locally developed products or tools that create a first-of-its-kind, homegrown solution to maintenance challenges. For the Riverhead Highway Department, removing its snow fence — especially after a brutal winter — can be a tremendous task. 

Mr. Zaleski said the department manually installs miles of snow fence each year. At the end of the season, workers traditionally have to remove the poles by hand, which can lead to back strain or other injuries. The laborious task also takes a considerable amount of time.

“It’s strenuous, guys were getting hurt, it takes forever, [I thought] there’s gotta be an easier way,” Mr. Zaleski said. “I just decided to make something that can pull them out of the ground — it’s on a wheel, easy to maneuver, it uses leverage, and it was just a tremendous success.” 

Although it is simply a single wheel attached to a steel frame, the device works by sliding a piece of box tubing over each pole, securing it in place for easier lifting and removal.

Taking the poles down typically took the highway crew about three weeks to complete. With the Snow Fence Pole Remover, the job now takes about a week and a half, Mr. Zaleski said. Better yet, the device costs nothing to make.

“No one gets hurt anymore,” said Mr. Zaleski, who enjoys welding outside his work as highway superintendent. “You do the job twice as fast.” 

The clever device snagged first place in last year’s statewide Build a Better Mousetrap Competition, organized by the New York State Local Technical Assistance Program Center’s Cornell Local Roads Program. Winners of the statewide competitions are automatically entered into the national competition.

For the 2026 Build a Better Mousetrap national competition, the Federal Highway Administration evaluated a record number of more than 100 combined submissions from 2025 and 2026. 

Mr. Zaleski said he was “humbled” by the win, but the bonus is knowing highway departments across the country may make their own version to boost efficiency. 

“You make it just to do the job better, you’re not thinking one day this would happen,” Mr. Zaleski said. “I built this to make our job easier and safe, never did I expect to enter or even win a competition…as management we steer the ship, but never forget the workforce are the men and women on the oars moving it.”