It's an appropriate outlook for a man whose working life is devoted to ensuring that England's highest motorway – and other motorways and trunk roads in a vast area from the Scottish border to Derbyshire – stay open in all winds and weathers.

John, of Vine Close, is the Highways Agency's regional winter service manager for the north of England and his dedication and hard work have been recognised with an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

But what does a winter service manager do in the summer? It's obviously a question John is frequently asked.

"I get asked that all the time. I like to joke that I drive an ice-cream van but, of course, the answer is that we spend the summer planning for the winter. I have just been developing the new winter fleet that will be coming into service on motorways and trunk roads this winter and we take delivery of the first 16 vehicles this week," he said.

"The weather is becoming a lot more changeable and unpredictable. We are getting a lot more heavy rain and strong winds – and that is not just confined to winter, as we've seen recently.

"We might not get the amount of snow we used to but the ice and increasing number of vehicles on the road makes the job equally challenging," he said.

John, aged 59, was educated at St Chad's Junior School, Hove Edge, and Rastrick Grammar before becoming a motor mechanic in Hipperholme. He had planned to become a vehicle examiner but was then asked if he was interested in joining the winter maintenance team.

"I think the public perception of winter maintenance is still that of a man on a back of truck throwing grit on to the road with a spade but it's a lot more sophisticated than that these days. We have very sophisticated monitoring equipment for predicting ice on the road network and measuring everything from the speed of rainfall to the temperature of the road surface."

John was part of a team which was responsible for developing the last three models of Highways Agency gritters and snowploughs and he has been to Ireland and Holland this year to see the new winter fleet in production.

It's a £45 million contract that will see state-of-the-art vehicles at work across the road network this winter. John will be involved in training drivers to use the new vehicles so that they are ready to face whatever the winter throws at them.

Each year from October to April, the Highways Agency is on full winter alert, with a fleet of salt spreaders, snowploughs and snowblowers on stand-by to keep the motorways and major routes clear of ice and snow. They work closely with the Met Office, the police and local authorities to keep roads open whenever freezing temperatures are forecast.

"Motorists on today's roads aren't very good at coping with bad weather and they like to be able to get wherever they want to go whatever the conditions," said John.

"There's a whole generation of young motorists who have grown up not knowing what it's like to cope with snow or severe weather. It's our job to make sure that roads in our patch stay open and safe. It is very rare that a motorway or trunk road is closed due to weather."

John's 'patch' includes some of the most notorious bad weather blackspots on the network – the M6 at Shap on the edge of the Lake District, the Woodhead Pass between Holmfirth and Glossop and the A66 across the north Pennines. It was here that one of worst incidents of last winter occurred when a lorry jack-knifed in snow and ice and blocked the road, trapping drivers in their vehicles as conditions worsened.

But one of John's toughest challenges came early on in his career during the 'winter of discontent' in 1979. "There were strikes and the depots were shut so we couldn't get the snowploughs out. It coincided with very severe snowfall so parts of the motorway network had to close," he recalls.

John's career has seen him working in the east Midlands, London, Leicestershire and Lancashire but he is now based in Leeds. He has seen many changes since he started in 1975, not least in the sheer volume of traffic on the roads. "Despite that, the number of accidents are on a downward trend, thanks to safer roads and safer vehicles," he said.

He admits he was 'pleased and embarrassed' to receive the letter from the Lord Chancellor's Office telling him about the MBE. "It is an honour but I consider myself lucky to have always worked as part of a dedicated team of specialists. I am delighted to receive the award – it recognises the hard work and efforts of all members of the winter teams.
"The real heroes are the gritter drivers who see it as a personal challenge to keep the roads open whatever the weather."

John and his wife Jean have two adult sons – Daniel and Adam – and three grandchildren with a fourth due in the New Year. His hobbies include renovating the home he has lived in for the past four years, walking – and driving!