Snowplowing/blowing rates

[flushcut]

Plowing is fun for the first few times but that fades quickly. First year of us plowing when we were in Milwaukee we got dumped on with 22” of snow. It took us 6 hours to get out of our alley alone. The snow had drifted in the whole alley, every alley, chest deep. Everybody calling and bitching about the snow mountain they had after we plowed. Like we were supposed to magically teleport the hundreds of yards of snow off of their properties. I quickly realized people suck and like to bitch at you as if nature is your fault.
I still have a plow truck, mini has a plow, and a two stage Ariens serial number #000164. I only plow my house, my shop, my moms, my wife’s grandpa, and this elderly lady in my neighborhood who pays me in pies. The best damned apple pie on the planet. Old lady can bake!! That plowing/shoveling takes me just north of three hours.

 

[Mike H]

You can avoid the liability issues by plowing as a subcontractor. My friend pays me $100/hour doing mostly office and retail parking lots

 

[Matias]

Is it feasible to use the chip truck to do full snow removal? I don't have a lot of experience with snow

 

[TCtreeswinger]

Snow hauling and blowing back piles is a service but mostly must be done at night. I always hated plowing. Id suggest plowing just enough to get to the next day of tree work. A 6" dump of snow is no fun to go trudge through and navigate trucks/equipment either. Its all work...

 

[Bart_]

Beware ingesting random shit into your snowblower, hidden under the snow, and also targets (glass) for random shit ejected from your snowblower keep your chute down and appropriately aimed. You'll need an auger unjamming kit. paver brick and 2x3. Frozen newspaper is like cement. Shear bolts, lots. I use full threaded 5/16 IIRC stove bolts with about 8 wraps electrical tape - tool-less broken bolt changeout. flashlight(s).

If you're on the manual machine don't ignore frostbite in favour of production. The damage is cumulative.

Also consider redundancy in case an essential equipment goes down in the middle of your route.

 

[Daniel]

I plowed for 40 years. Got out 2 winters ago and glad I did. At one point I had 4 trucks and a shovel crew. Big snows back then. Many times been out over 30 hours my longest run was 85 hours without going home in 1996.

I enjoyed the actual work for most of that time, but when I started slowing down and was down to 2 trucks I had to back off the contracts. Then it just wasn't worth the trouble... making $4K on a snow event when I can do that in a day grinding stumps wasn't worth the aggravation.

I didn't want to be tied to home in winter anymore. Sit around waiting for it to snow because a chore.

The year I quit, we didn't get a dusting. Zero snow all winter. That was confirmation I did the right thing.

In 08 when the economy went south, I pushed the commercial snow contracts hard, knowing that snow is weather related and independent of economic conditions. We had a couple monster years that allowed me to pay for the bucket truck with cash. Not many small guys had a 75' elevator back then.

So that worked out. Glad to have done it, and glad to be out.