I started a website about two years ago that is free to help me (cause I like to sleep) and other plow companies in the area. I have tried to tell all of the local companies in my area, but I think it would be beneficial to everyone if plowsite offered the same thing for all regions of the snowbelt states. Please take a look and give me some ideas if plowsite can incorporate this or not. www.timetoplow.com
Not to beat up on your idea, but I like to swipe accounts from guys who are sleeping and miss their "time to plow". I recently met with a guy who manages five big retail locations and last year his guy missed their main distribution center because it didn't snow at another location about 15 miles away.
The bigger companies have someone watching the weather or running inspection routes... trusting no one other than their own people. Your site might help the smaller companies, but during an event do these guys have the time to log on and enter information that they already know? That to me is the question regarding the success of your site and service.
i have often thought about the idea of having a few friends get up at certain times, so at least i could sleep 3 hours straight , but really , honestly , its you accounts, do you trust some one ot wake you up ? i dont
plus we are zero t, on alot anyway, so really its a metter of how many guys work , not if we are going to
I give the overnight workers at a local gas station $20 to call me at 2am if it's snowing and I'm not around. My first stop when I head out is to the station to fill up a thermos (and to let them know that they don't need to call). It's a good arrangement.
It would be interesting to have the data to compare to the "official" snowfall totals, which are often under-reported. I believe they have changed the way they measure here in recent years. If I'm not mistaken, they used to clear the surface at every inch of accumulation and tally up the inches plus the last fraction. Now the measure the total depth after the fact.
Really not much of a difference, but the first method is more accurate for those that have zero-tolerance accounts that are plowed "with the storm" since the official total accumulation of unpacked snow would match our service logs better.
Say you have a one inch trigger, you hit it and plow. Then, you get another inch and plow again... billing twice. Customer wakes up to find the official data says 1.5 inches total, but they got billed twice. We would rather over-service and cut them a break on the bill if there is an issue than be known for under servicing, and once in a while I will go over a bill with a customer while matching it up with weather data.
I know a few different guys on either side of my routes, (one in the very east side of town and another on the west). We just call each other when it snows enough to plow.
As I was reading this I thought, "What a lazy plower." If you didn't want to wake up early then you probably shouldn't be plowing. Then I went to your site. I was surprised to find out that it is in my area and it occured to me that it could be usefull.
I left this morning from Schoolcraft and then drove to Portage. Only 1" or less. A friend of mine in Mattawan said it is a blizzard out side. I do try to keep my routes tight so most of the time it is the same amount where ever I go.
I bid on a job in Three Rivers and had a fear of not showing up if it had snowed there, but not where I live. These towns don't mean anything to anybody else, but you know where I'm talking about.
Have you called everyone in the phone book under Snow Plowing. Have you done a search for local companies on the web? Contact them and see if they want to get involved. What about the tv news and the paper. They all have people up and checking the weather.
I would suggest that you remove the posts from last season.
I wouldn't say that you like to sleep. I would say that you like to save gas. You were up alot more than I was. But when I went out, I drove around and didn't have to drop my blade.
I would not say that I am lazy either, but I don't like to get up and drive around town and not drop a plow. I have tried the gas stations but they always have different workers that could not measure what two inches is (because they are guys). Anyway, i am not a large plow company, I have five trucks and my guys, quite honestly, I don't trust to get up and tell me the truth about how much snow they have. I have contacted all the plow companies in my area, and I some have responded, but it is like somebody said, do you want to get up and get o the internet at night and post something. I think they would rather get up and drive around town and see for themselves. It has been useful to me when others have taken part, but on a site like this to offer region forums and all the tech tips and other great stuff this site offers would be perfect.
we used to have all navy blue trucks, but found it too hard to keep clean and wanted to add larger vehicles to the fleet that don't always come in Navy blue without special ordering it. We are all white trucks now. Actually we still have two navy trucks left though in Jackson, MI
i counter issues like these by grabbing 24-hour establishments, so i can call them. whatever it takes, no matter how low the bid is, i makesure i either have a 24-hour gas station or a hotel/motel in the area to call.
I give the overnight workers at a local gas station $20 to call me at 2am if it's snowing and I'm not around. My first stop when I head out is to the station to fill up a thermos (and to let them know that they don't need to call). It's a good arrangement.
I am assuming you do not live in a lake effect snow belt area. Kalamazoo is right at the dump point of lake effect snow. You might get 10 inches of snow in one area and one mile down the road 1 inch. It just happens like that here. It is very hard to gauge snow in our area, as with all other towns directly east of any large lake. I think most companies do not have 25 subs that they can depend on. Many plow guys are one to five trucks and have hourly employees.
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