Driving your vehicle lately may seem more like riding a rollercoaster.

This time of the year is notorious for bumpy roads, scattered with crevices and potholes.

Each day about five Marathon County highway crews tackle the battered and blemished roads. Filling dips and holes with patching material is the only quick fix, and one that doesn't last.

"The ice gets underneath the blacktop. Cars blow it out and we just keep on patching it for now to get through," said Gary Carr, a highway patroller for the county.

This is the time of year, when snow begins to melt, when roads act up.

"Then what happens in spring the frost is gonna be coming out of the road and that's even gonna make it worse you're gonna have even more water shooting out of the cracks," Carr said.

The busier the road, like well traveled Grand Avenue in Wausau, the worse the condition.

From March 2010 until now, Marathon County went through 480 tons of patching material. At $67 a ton, that equals more than $32,000.

Crews admit some roads are just too terrible to repair, but when roads are replaced is up to the state to decide.

"The state doesn't have that much money... that's the easiest fix right now to get the traffic through. But in time the state will have to do something different with the areas that we have the problems in," Carr said.

Each year the Wisconsin Department of Transportation pays for 350 to 400 state highway projects, each with an average cost of $1.5 million.