Scotwood Industries Road Runner Ice Melt,50lb. Bag,Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium Chlorides

Why it's worth it

This 50-pound bag blends calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium chlorides, so it keeps working when a single-ingredient salt would stall out. It's the one to buy if you've got a driveway, a walk and a set of steps to clear and you'd rather not think about it twice.

A blend beats a single salt for most driveways. Road Runner mixes calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium chlorides into one bag, which is the combination guides like This Old House keep landing on. Each piece covers a weakness in the others. Sodium chloride is the cheap workhorse. Calcium chloride does the heavy lifting when it gets genuinely cold. Magnesium chloride is the easier one on concrete and metal. You end up with a generalist instead of a specialist.

Cold is where a cheap bag falls apart. Plain rock salt loses most of its bite somewhere around 15 to 20°F, according to The Spruce, and that's a normal night across a lot of the country. Calcium chloride keeps melting down to roughly -25°F, the lowest working range of the common deicers per the American Public Works Association. Having it in the mix is why this bag still does something on the ugly mornings.

From our review of 8 ice melt products

What we like

• +A blend beats a single salt for most driveways
• +Cold is where a cheap bag falls apart
• +The 50-pound size is the practical part
• +It isn't gentle. It's just less brutal than straight rock salt

What to know

• –This is still a chloride product, and chlorides go somewhere
• –Skip it on new concrete
• –And if you have a dog, this isn't what you want on the path it uses