One of the biggest mistakes I see when contractors are bidding snow work is getting an address, an acreage, and immediately trying to come up with a number. Before you price the property, you need to know exactly what you are being asked to provide. What is the plow trigger? Are sidewalks included? Who determines when deicing happens? Are loading docks, fire lanes, entrances and dumpster areas included? Where does the snow get stacked? What happens when those areas fill up? Are return visits expected during business hours? What changes when the storm is 2", 6", 10" or more? These sound like simple questions, but they can completely change the cost of servicing a property. Two contractors can look at the exact same site, submit completely different prices, and both believe they are bidding the same job. They may not be. One may be pricing three pushes during a larger storm while the other assumes they will wait until the storm is over. One may include sidewalks and property inspections (daily, when frost/ snow is anticipated, etc.). The other may not. One may be planning to keep entrances open throughout the storm while the other is planning one final cleanup. This is also where the conversation with the client becomes important. Don't just ask, "What did the last contractor do?" Ask what they actually need. What caused problems last year? What areas matter most? What does good service look like to them? Defining "Good" is critical to determining true scope! Now you aren't just bidding snow removal. You are figuring out the problem they are hiring you to solve. And really, you are not bidding snow removal and deicing, you are bidding Risk Management! Get the scope clear first. Then figure out the labor, equipment, material and time required to deliver it. Then price it. The scope should determine the price. Never let the price determine how much service you can afford to provide after you already won the job.

One of the easiest ways to get upside down on a snow bid is using the best production rate you know your equipment can hit. Maybe your truck can plow an acre in 45 minutes on a wide-open lot. That’s great. But that does not mean every acre should be bid at 45 minutes. There is a difference between what your equipment CAN do and what that property is actually going to allow it to do. Traffic, parked cars, islands, loading areas, snow stacking, backing, cleanup and tight areas all eat away at production. An open one-acre lot might be close to an hour. A one-acre gas station or heavily landscaped commercial site might take an hour and a half or more. Same acreage. Completely different job. Before you finish your bids, go back through each property and ask one simple question: What is going to slow us down here? Then build your time around that. Acreage tells you how big the property is. Difficulty tells you how long it is really going to take. And if your time is wrong, your margin usually is too. Allow Margin to drive the ship, stick to your guns and make sure the contracts you are bidding fit your business model and how you see the direction of your business going. Future you will thank past you for doing so!

If most of your snow work is still per push or per event, this is a good time to start having a different conversation with your clients. Before I get into this, I know there will be many who say, "I can't get seasonal contracts to hit in my market, or that there aren't enough clients who will take them." I get it, it can be hard to sell, but there have been many markets that were that way and converted, not overnight, but over a period of time with contractors building up a better understanding of what the value is to both sides and sharing this with the client. It isn't selling them on it, it is a matter of showing the value and budgeting benefit it can bring, then they decide. In reality, if you are billing per push or hourly, it would make sense that that came at a higher cost than a seasonal contract, you are carrying the risk 100%. The goal does not need to be moving every account to seasonal. But I would be looking hard at whether 50–70% of your client base could be moved into some type of seasonal agreement. Why? Because predictable revenue changes the way you run the business. You can plan labor better. You can make equipment decisions with more confidence. You can forecast cash flow. And your client gets a much more predictable snow budget. After a light winter, though, I understand why some clients are hesitant. They remember paying for snow service in months when not much happened. That is where the conversation needs to change. A seasonal contract should not feel like the contractor and client are betting against each other on the weather. It should be a way to create predictability for both sides. One option is building a floor and ceiling into the agreement. Maybe your seasonal price covers an expected range of plowing events, deicing applications, or snowfall. If the winter finishes below an agreed floor, the client receives a predetermined credit toward the following season. If the winter goes beyond the agreed ceiling, additional events or applications are billed at a predetermined rate.

One of the easiest ways to get yourself in trouble estimating snow work is treating acreage like it tells you how long a property will take. It doesn’t. Acreage tells you how much pavement is there. It does NOT tell you how efficiently you can clear it. Take two 3-acre properties. Property #1 is a mostly open parking lot. Long pushes. Few islands. Good stacking areas. Minimal overnight parking. Room to keep the truck moving. Property #2 is also 3 acres. But now we have islands everywhere. Cart corrals. Loading docks. Dumpster areas. Tight corners. Multiple entrances. Cars left overnight. Short pushes. And snow has to be carried or pushed farther to get it somewhere useful. Same 3 acres. Those are not even close to the same job. This is where production rate becomes much more important than acreage. Let’s say your truck, equipment and operator are costing you $125 per hour. If the open property lets you average 2 acres per hour, your truck and labor cost is roughly: $62.50 per acre If the more difficult property knocks you down to 3/4 of an acre per hour: You are now around $167 per acre. Same truck. Same operator. Same snowfall. Almost THREE TIMES the cost per acre. This is why “What do you charge per acre?” has always bothered me as a stand-alone question. My answer has to be: What kind of acre? Before you price a property, look at what is going to affect production. How many times are you going to have to stop and back up? How far are your pushes? Where can the snow actually go? Will parked cars force a return cleanup visit? Can a truck handle the property efficiently, or would a skid steer or loader change the entire production rate? Also, ask yourself and verify the math of whether the cost associated with the skid steer or loader, blade, route, etc. justifies a piece of equipment of that size. Are there sidewalks to be treated? How wide? How long? Shoveling/ sidewalk equipment/ blade/ blower/ broom? What happens when you have three storms worth of snow stacked onsite?

We have spent the last week talking about knowing your numbers. Fun Right?! Mobilization. Truck cost. Labor cost. Markup versus margin. Now let’s put those pieces together and look at something that should feel pretty familiar. What does it actually cost you to service a property one time? Not what you charge. Not what the guy down the road charges. What does it cost YOU? Think about almost any other equipment-based business. If you hire an excavator, you are probably going to pay to get that excavator to the job. If you hire a dump truck, travel or mobilization is built into that rate somewhere. A landscaper moving a skid steer or mini excavator across town understands that loading it, hauling it, unloading it and moving it again costs money. Nobody expects a lowboy, excavator, truck and operator to magically appear on the jobsite for free. We already understand this concept. So why do we sometimes forget it when we price snow? Let’s say you have a property that normally takes about 45 minutes to clear with one truck. That doesn’t mean one swipe with the blade. It means from the time you enter the property until you have completed the plowing that is required for that service and are ready to move on. Let’s say your truck, equipment and operator cost you $125 per hour. It would be really easy to say: 45 minutes at $125 per hour = about $94 in cost. Done. Except you aren’t done. Maybe it took you 15 minutes to get there. Maybe it takes another 10 minutes to get from that property to the next stop. Now that 45-minute property actually consumed 70 minutes of your route. At $125 per hour, you are already at about: $146 Now let’s say that property also gets 300 pounds of bagged ice melt. At $8 per 50-pound bag, your material cost is: $0.16 per pound 300 pounds x $0.16 = $48 Now you are at: $194 in cost And that is assuming everything goes pretty close to plan. Maybe cars were left in the lot and you have cleanup to do later. Maybe the snow keeps coming and the property takes longer than expected.