Ya it's sounds crazy but this is the rule numero uno of the game : Never let someone be prisoner of the storm.
If the city go under a "shutdown", too many service need to operate, and may be some of your client will need to go out to work for that. In 1997, one of our customer got a heart stroke during a storm hopefully he was at home and is wife call the 911, hoppefully we had plowed the driveway 2 times before so the rescue can reach easyly his house.( the old man is still alive and he is still customer). Sometimes if the driveway is clear is enought to get a speed and face the snowly street for the customer. (it's nice to plow during a major shutdown because you usually have a lot of collaboration from the customers beeing in "holydays", they will move the car, etc.)
and the worst if you wait until the end of storm to plow, this deep snow will be your worst nightmare, you will need to plow each lot or driveway 2-3 times, back to back, to do a clean job and each will time be longer than usual. It will be not too long to get a nice sunrise and still a lot of customer to do on your list. The next nightmare will be the phone and complaints. this is the morning they need the most from you, cou can fail on a small event and they will be able to open the shop or go to the shop in few inches and be mad about you only for the days and forget it the next week, but in a storm they pay you to handle the problem not to give your customer a headache because he can have a cab to go work or employed or wathever can use the lot because they are prisoner from the storm.
and beeing set to deal with the storm ( rental or sub added) will pay because you may be able to handle some extra work for a very good rates. So it will pay the storm expense and bring you new contract for the next season.
With all this hardwork you can have also to deal with equipment mechanical problem downtime.
Sorry for the long post but it's to easy to go out of control during an event like that to go out without a strategy.
Denis
[Edited by 4 Saisons on 03-02-2001 at 04:34 AM]