7d • General discussion
Acreage Doesn't Determine Timing...
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?
Those questions matter just as much as the acreage.
Here is something you can do right now with the properties you are bidding:
Take your site map and stop looking at it as one big number.
Mark the easy areas.
Mark the slow areas.
Mark the areas that will probably require cleanup after the storm.
Mark the stacking locations. AND mark backup storage locations, you may need them!
Then decide what piece of equipment should actually be doing each part of the property.
That is a much different way to estimate than taking 3 acres and multiplying it by some price you heard another contractor charges.
The acreage gives you a starting point.
The production rate tells you what the property is going to do to your business.
And if you really want to get better at estimating, compare what you THOUGHT the production rate would be against what actually happened after every storm.
That is how your estimating gets better year after year.
Don’t just ask:
“How many acres is it?”
Ask:
“How quickly can we actually service those acres with the equipment we plan to put there?”
That is the number that starts telling you what the job is really worth.
PS - splitting out larger properties by what equipment is best for each section of the property, what works the most efficiently for the section, then coordinate your crew to complete their section and move on to the next site. This works great when well planned and especially on a large anchor site (highest priority or first on your route/ largest site), the team typically splits off from this site to work the rest of the route.
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Acreage Doesn't Determine Timing...
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