CHICAGO (WLS) -- The bitter cold temperatures are especially brutal if you have to work in them, and they can quickly become dangerous in situations such as being stranded with car trouble.
Wells Automotive tow truck driver Bryant Miller really earned his paycheck Wednesday night.
"There's no way to warm up, no way to stay warm. You just get out, do your job quick, get back in the truck," Miller said.
Wells Automotive was working around the clock. The garage filled, with many of the problems caused by dead batteries - including one that was frozen solid.
"You can see the ice. You can feel it's hard as a rock," said Frank Guske, Jr., owner at Wells Automotive.
"There's usually acid that's in the battery. But that acid gets weak as the battery gets older, and part of it is kind of water," Guske said.
Whatever you do, don't try to jump it.
"It can explode because it can't dissipate the gas. And it'll explode because it's hydrogen gas that it gives off when you jump it," Guske said.
If you are on the expressways and you run into car trouble, it's recommended that you stay in your vehicle if the engine is still running, rather than leave for help. Idling in your vehicle burns about a gallon per hour.
Furnace repair requests stack up
Bitterly cold weather is causing furnaces in many homes and buildings to work a little harder - meaning outages and lots of calls for local furnace repair companies.
Budd Mechanical systems has been serving northern Indiana for almost 100 years. Their warehouse - which is normally busy - is almost empty because of the amount of calls the company has received.
From one no-heat call to the next, heating technician Alvin Riffe is a busy guy this week. One stop Wednesday was to a Hammond, Ind., firehouse, where firefighters are dealing with a thermostat down to 55 degrees.
"Commercial places have problems too, and we get called out because one side doesn't have heat," Riffe said.
While Riffe tries to figure out what is wrong with the firehouse boiler, back at Budd Mechanical Systems, the phone keeps ringing.
This 90-year-old, family-owned Hammond business has a stack of service requests.
"Mostly emergencies take priority over installations at this point," said Budd President Dana Booth.
Open 24 hours, many of Budd's calls are residential furnaces that finally gave out after working overtime trying to heat a house in frigid temperatures.
"Woke up at 5 a.m., felt a chill in house, sometime during the night the furnace stopped working," said Rob Davis, a customer.
Davis and others were told some preventative furnace maintenance is the key to keeping your furnace working all winter.
"It's usually nuisance things like flame sensors being dirty, filters being dirty and that can be avoided," Booth said.
Booth wants to remind customers a once-a-year furnace cleaning is much cheaper than an emergency call on a cold night.
"We are like at the bottom of the food chain, most people just don't like spending money on these things, we're not aesthetically pleasing," Booth said.
Budd recommends keeping homes between 68-72 degrees so that the furnace is not always running.