Who Plows a Private Road in Michigan
On a Michigan private road, plowing, grading, and repair fall on the owners who use it, not the county road commission — and the plow truck won't turn in.
The county plow truck reaches the end of the pavement, and the driver keeps going straight past your two-track. That’s not laziness or a snub. A county road commission’s repair duty runs to county roads, bridges, and culverts — the roads it certified and took jurisdiction over, most of them back in the 1930s under the McNitt Act. Your road, the one with a private easement running down the middle, was never on that list. Nobody at the road commission is coming to grade the washboard out of it either.
So who does? You do, along with everyone else whose driveway hangs off it. On most rural private roads that’s a handshake and a shared bill for a guy with a plow blade and a load of gravel. It works right up until one neighbor stops paying, or a new owner buys in and figures the road “comes with the house.”
Michigan built a tool for exactly that stalemate, back in 1972 under Act 139. A township board can create a special assessment district to maintain or improve a private road — but it takes a petition signed by at least 51 percent of the owners holding frontage along that road. Cross that threshold and the township can spread the cost across everyone who benefits, right onto the winter tax bill, either by frontage or split evenly. The assessment rides on the same township machinery as sidewalks and sewers under Public Act 188 of 1954, and it runs up to five years before it has to be renewed. Lawmakers freshened Act 139 up again in 2022, so it’s live law, not a dusty relic. It’s a real hammer for the neighbor who won’t chip in for grading, and it’s why a road maintenance agreement recorded against your deed is worth more than any handshake.
One thing that surprises people: the township can even hire the county road commission to do the work under contract. But the law makes that contract hold the county harmless from any damage claims first. The county will run a blade down your road — as a paid vendor, never as a duty.
If you’re closing on a place at the end of a gravel road, read the road maintenance agreement before the snow flies, not after. And for anything with real money or a feuding neighbor riding on it, a Michigan real estate attorney is cheaper than a lawsuit over a grader bill.
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Last reviewed against the listed sources: July 2, 2026.