The short answer. If you run an excavation, land clearing, or septic company north of about the 40th parallel, snow removal is the winter line that keeps your equipment paying for itself and your crew on the payroll. You already own most of what you need. The work is sold in late summer and fall, priced by the season or by the push, and won or lost on whether you show up at 4 a.m. every time. This guide covers how to price it, what to plow with, how to sell it before the first storm, and how to keep it from swallowing the spring.
It is written for the contractor who already has machines and is trying to fill four dead months. If you are starting a snow-only business from scratch, most of it still applies, but the equipment section will read differently.
Why snow is the right winter line for dirt work
Every northern excavation owner faces the same math. The machine payment is $3,000 a month in January just like it is in July. The good operator you trained all summer needs a paycheck or he finds one somewhere else. And the ground is frozen.
You have three choices. Lay everyone off and eat the payments. Find indoor work, which usually means becoming a different company. Or plow.
Snow fits because it uses what you have. A skid steer with a pusher box clears a parking lot faster than a pickup with a blade. A wheel loader with a 12-foot pusher clears a big lot faster than three pickups. A tri-axle with a plow and a sander handles the roads and the long driveways. The operators who ran those machines all summer already know them. And the customers who need it, businesses, property managers, churches, and rural homeowners with long driveways, are the same people who need dirt work in the summer.
Shepard Excavating carries snow removal for that reason, and so does a current client in the Twin Cities south metro whose redesign is under way. It is the retention hedge. It is also the reason a client can afford website care and a phone system twelve months a year instead of eight.
Two ways to price it, and when to use each
Seasonal contracts
The customer pays a fixed amount for the season, usually in monthly installments from November through March or April, and you plow every time it snows more than your trigger depth, typically 1 or 2 inches. They know their cost. You know your revenue.
Seasonal is the right structure for commercial lots, property managers, and anyone who needs to budget. It is also the right structure for you, because it turns winter into predictable monthly income and you can plan a crew around it.
The risk is a heavy winter. If you priced for 18 events and get 30, you lose. Two ways to manage that: price from your area’s average snowfall plus a margin, and put a cap in the contract, for example 25 events or 60 inches, after which pushes are billed per event.
Per push, per event, or per inch
The customer pays every time you plow. Per push is one price per visit. Per event is one price per storm regardless of how many times you return. Per inch scales the price with depth.
Per push is right for residential driveways and for customers who will not sign a season. It is easy to understand. The risk is a light winter, where you have crew and equipment committed and eight billable nights.
Most established snow operations run a mix: seasonal contracts for the commercial base that pays the fixed costs, and per-push residential on top for the upside.
Hourly
Hourly is for subcontracting your loader to a bigger snow contractor, or for cleanup and hauling after a big storm. Published hourly rates in 2026 for a skid steer with operator run $100 to $175, a loader with a pusher $150 to $300, and a plow truck $85 to $150, varying widely by market. Hourly is fine for sub work and bad for customers, because they cannot budget and they argue about the clock.
Building the price
The method is the same as pricing any dirt-work job: cost per hour, hours per event, events per season.
Cost per hour. Take your machine’s real cost per hour from the summer, then adjust. Fuel is higher in idle-heavy winter work. Wear parts change: cutting edges, pusher shoes, hydraulic hoses that crack in the cold. Labor is expensive because it is 3 a.m. and you pay a shift premium. Insurance goes up, covered below. A skid steer that costs you $95 an hour to run in July might be $115 in January.
Time per event. Walk every lot in the fall with a wheel and a notepad. Measure the square footage. Note where the snow can go, because a lot with nowhere to pile costs twice as long. Note obstacles: islands, light poles, curbs, drains, loading docks, the dumpster enclosure. Then estimate. A rule many operators use for a skid steer with an 8-foot pusher is about 30,000 to 40,000 square feet an hour on an open lot with 2 to 4 inches, and half that on a tight lot with a lot of backing up. A loader with a 14-foot pusher does two to three times that. Plow it once and you will know.
Events per season. Your area’s average, from the National Weather Service or your state climatology office, counting storms over your trigger depth. Add 15 to 20 percent for a margin and set the cap there.
The formula. Cost per hour times hours per event times events, plus salting and sanding as a separate line, plus a margin of 25 to 35 percent. Snow margins run higher than dirt because the risk is higher and the nights are worse.
Worked example, illustrative. A 60,000-square-foot grocery lot. Loader with a 12-foot pusher, 1.5 hours per event including sidewalks by hand. Cost $185 an hour loaded for night work. 22 events average, priced at 25. 25 events times 1.5 hours times $185 is $6,938. Salt, 6 applications at $280 material and labor, $1,680. Margin at 30 percent, $2,585. Seasonal price about $11,200, billed at $2,240 a month for five months. Cap at 28 events, then $325 per push.
Put your own numbers in. The point is that you know why the number is what it is, and you can explain it to the property manager who got a $7,500 quote from a guy with a pickup.
Salt, sand, and ice control
Plowing moves the snow. Ice control is what keeps the customer from getting sued when someone slips, and it is where a lot of the margin lives. Rock salt, treated salt, sand-salt mix, liquid brine. Each has a temperature range where it works and a price per ton that moves with the market.
Price it separately from plowing, by application, so the customer sees what they are paying for. Keep records of every application: date, time, product, amount, temperature. If someone falls in that lot in February, the record is your defense.
Buy salt early. It is cheapest in August and unavailable in January.
Equipment: what you have and what you add
Skid steer or compact track loader. The workhorse of commercial snow. Add a snow pusher box, 8 to 10 feet, or a snow blade with a trip edge. Tracks are fine on snow and bad on ice; a wheeled skid steer with snow tires is often the better plow machine. Cost of a pusher: $3,000 to $6,000.
Wheel loader. If you have one, it is your big-lot machine with a 12- to 16-foot pusher. Nothing clears a large lot faster. Pusher cost $6,000 to $12,000.
Pickup with a plow. Fast to move between residential driveways and small lots. A commercial-grade plow with mount and controls is $5,000 to $8,000 installed. Add a tailgate salt spreader for $2,000 to $4,000.
Dump truck with plow and sander. Roads, long rural driveways, and hauling snow when the piles get too big. If you have the truck, the plow and sander setup is $15,000 to $30,000.
Sidewalks. A walk-behind blower and a stand-on spreader, or a small tractor with a broom and blower. Sidewalk work is slow, labor-heavy, and usually the first thing the customer complains about. Price it accordingly or decline it.
What you do not need. A new machine. The first winter, plow with what you have and see what the contracts support. Buy the second pusher when the second lot is signed.
Equipment prices are published ranges as of September 2026 and move every year. Call your dealer in July, not October.
Insurance and the paperwork nobody wants to read
Snow is a liability business more than a plowing business. The slip-and-fall lawsuit is real, and general liability policies written for excavation sometimes exclude snow and ice management. Ask your agent directly, in writing, before the season.
- General liability with snow and ice coverage. Non-negotiable. Some carriers write it as a separate policy or endorsement. Expect the premium to go up meaningfully.
- Commercial auto covering the plow trucks and the trailers moving machines at night.
- Workers’ comp for every person on a shift.
- Contracts that limit your liability. Your seasonal contract should say what you plow, when, to what trigger, that you are not responsible for conditions between visits or for refreeze, and that ice control is applied as contracted, not continuously. Have a lawyer read it once. Then use the same contract for everyone.
- Service logs. Time in, time out, what was done, product applied, weather. Every visit. A GPS-tracked truck or a simple phone app works. This is your defense and it is also your invoice backup.
Selling it before the first storm
Snow is sold in August, September, and October. By November the good lots are signed and you are picking up the customers whose last guy quit.
Start with your summer customers. Every business, church, and property manager you did dirt work for this year gets a call in August. “We plowed for a few customers last year and we’re adding a couple of lots this winter. Want me to walk yours and give you a season price?” Your summer work is the reference.
Walk the lots you want. Pick 20 commercial lots in your radius that look like they get plowed badly. Ruts, piles in the wrong place, a driveway with the snow pushed into the road. Find the owner or the property manager and ask for the site walk.
Put snow on the website. A page called Snow Removal, with your machines in the snow, the towns you cover, seasonal versus per push explained in plain words, and a form that asks for the property address. In September 2026 “snow removal business” runs 390 searches a month and “snow removal near me” runs many times that once the first storm hits. If the page is not up in October, you are not in that search in December.
Put snow on the Google profile. Add “Snow removal service” as a category, add the service, post a photo of the loader with the pusher. See Google Business Profile for contractors.
Answer the phone during the storm. This is the whole business. A property manager whose lot is not cleared at 6 a.m. calls once. If it rings out, she calls the next company, and she signs with them for next year. A text back that says “We’re out plowing. Text your address and we’ll add you to the route” saves that account. See missed call text back.
Running the night
A few things every experienced snow operator knows and every first-year operator learns the hard way.
- Route the lots by priority and geography, and write it down. Hospitals, grocery, and anything open at 6 a.m. first. Then the rest in a loop that does not cross itself.
- Set the trigger and honor it. If the contract says 2 inches, plow at 2 inches. Not 3 because it was late. Not 1 because you wanted the push.
- Pre-treat before the storm when the forecast is confident. It saves an hour of plowing later and the customer notices.
- Stage equipment at the lots when a big one is coming. A loader that is already on site at midnight is worth two that are on trailers.
- Sleep in the day. The crew that plowed all night and dug all day is the crew that has an accident.
- Photograph the finished lot before you leave. Timestamped. Every time.
Keeping it from eating the spring
The trap with snow is that it works. By March you have twenty seasonal contracts, tired operators, and equipment that has been running nights for four months. Then the ground thaws and the excavation phone starts ringing.
Plan for it. Service the machines in March. Give the crew a week off in April. Do not sign snow contracts that run into the season your excavation work starts. And decide in advance whether snow is a hedge, a second business, or the main business, because the equipment and the people you buy for each are different.
For most dirt-work companies it is a hedge, and a good one. It pays the winter payments, keeps the crew, and gives you twenty commercial customers who already trust you when they need a lot graded in June.
The website part
A company that does excavation in summer and snow in winter is a twelve-month company, and it should look like one online. That means a snow page that is live by October with real photos of your machines in real snow, the towns listed, and a form. It means a home page that changes with the season, so the person who finds you in January sees a loader with a pusher, not a mini ex in a green field.
Shepard Excavating runs snow as a winter line, and it is part of why the site lists the towns it covers instead of “surrounding areas.” The property manager searching in November wants to know if you come to her lot.
If your site does not show your winter work, or does not show up at all when someone searches for plowing in your town, I will look at it and tell you the three things I would fix first. Two business days, no charge. Show me what you would fix.