3 minutes is pretty long to do a driveway.

 

I've got some on "live roads"
Just trying to back up a few times to push the pile left/right of the drive way seems to "take forever"... it seems 5-8 minutes is forever... but OMG! I lose my mind if I ever have to do that route.

 

Most of my driveways are +10 minutes.
We might need to define driveway..

 

I've got some I'm seriously thinking might be faster to shovel, just because of complexity.

 

Right tool for the job is the key. 4' snow plow shovel and +/-2" most of my residential accounts can be shoveled by hand in <20 minutes many <10. My sub is getting better with the tractor. Now our banks are so high shoveling is out of the question.
We have used a " pre shovel" plan that works very well. It's not a new concept, we didn't invent the wheel here. Just took the idea of smaller equipment moving snow from confined areas to where a loader can get it.
The shoveler goes out about an hour ahead of the tractor, he does the small walks and shovels away from the garage doors. If it's about 2" he will push the entire drive to one side, so when the tractor comes he only makes 1 or 2 passes instead of the whole drive.

 

that thing... I hate it. seems like the majority of my jobs have complexities.

 

This builder was whacked...

 

One drive I do is 1/8 mile. 800 ft is on a class 4 road that is a snowmobile trail also. When it gets packed by the groomer I have to back up/hill as far as I can get and plow down hill. Real pia. Took over 2 hours the other day. Charged him $300. He lives in Boston I take care of the property . Time before it was like $600. Had to have a tracked ranger to Bust it first. Had to get fuel up there. Sand etc

 

my minimum is at least 50.00 and goes up

 

I'm from ct. Moved to vt in 92. $50 sound right. Enjoy the snow tonight.

 

With shoveling and salting we average about five to seven houses per hour

 

I try not to shovel or salt are your accounts near each other i

 

Every other guy around here has a truck with a snow plow on it. You can find seasonal contracts for snow removal around the $300 mark. These are guys who scrape and go and offer no shoveling or salting and will not answer any phone calls during or after the storm. I'm charging nearly double that for the premium of providing salting and shoveling. Yes a lot of my houses are close together in subdivisions.

 

I will salt or shovel way more money

 

I plow, no shoveling, rarely salt or sand.

 

Is that your per driveway amount?

 

this is where the "20" comes from
Say you need $10,000 to cover your winter overhead (no one knows this number but you).
10,000/20 = 500. You need to make minimum $500 per storm to cover your overhead.
If you can get 25 driveways -- 500/25 = $20 per driveway to cover your overhead.
If each driveway takes your 20 minutes... 60(minutes in an hour)/20 = 4 driveways per hour.
25(driveways per storm)/4 = 6.25 hours in your route

but his numbers are off at 20 minutes/drive you can only do 3 an hour, not 4, so that's 8.33 hours to do the route

yes the 20=12.50 or $32.50 is the break even. I also calculated the 1/20 profit to be $39, not $41, but why would you want to go down? It's plowing,we're dealing in round numbers. From this you would want to be at $45 minimum for a 2" push to allow for drive time,coffee breaks etc.

 

Thanks.
If I advertise for 3 small villages 5 miles apart, I'm in the middle one, 2 is 5 miles west and 3 is 5 miles east.
If I get a nice tight route in 1 of them I should be able to do more than 4 an hour if I'm just plowing.

 

SKWPB

 

Seeing as how the VP is such a VIP, shouldn't we keep the PC on the QT? 'Cause if it leaks to the VC he could end up MIA, and then we'd all be put on KP.

 

My first date we went to Good Morning Viet Nam. 1987