Spready Mercury is our favorite.
December is a wonderful month because of all the festive events that it brings. It’s also wintertime, and in countries close to the polar extremities of Earth like Scotland, temperatures drop enough to cause roads to be covered with snow. This can make driving extremely dangerous.
Snowplows, or gritters in the Highlands, are there to maintain roads safe and clear. Although this can seem like a boring topic to write about, the Scots found a way to inject some humor into the situation by giving the gritters funny names.
You can’t love Scottish humor. I Want to Break Freeze is our favorite. Spready Mercury must be cool with that.
According to the BBC the Scots started the tradition of naming their gritters in 2006. Transport for Scotland launched a competition for children to name their gritters. An online tracker for gritters launched in 2016. It is still available as of this writing.
Here’s a list of Scotland’s most famous gritters, as determined by Herald Scotland.