02/05/2018
I recently had a long-time customer inquire about our residential plowing practices. It occurred to me that, if they had questions, others may as well.
Our standard contracts, be it seasonal or per push, are for a trigger depth between 2-3”. We do have contracts with additional trigger depths of 4” or more and some as a ‘will call’ client. For clients who wish for service at lesser amounts (below 2-3”) or icy situations, we offer salting services.
In the determination of whether or not plowing meets the 2-3” trigger depth for operations, we rely on three components collectively. First is the NWS forecast models for the area. The second is the NOAA station (Streetsboro) hourly observation logs, and the third (since lake effect snow can skew both of the first two data sets) is verification of two residential accounts in each zone where physical measurements are taken.
In today’s case, our commercial driver checked two accounts in zones #1, and two accounts in zones #2 and #4. All six measurements were below 2” as of 1:45am when the snow had stopped.
Obviously, conditions differ from location to location. We will continue to make every reasonable attempt to abide by the contracts we have with our clients. This is explicitly stated in our agreements. When we have situations such as today, we will have people complain when we do not plow and an equal amount complaining if we did plow.
As we have been in the industry for 15 years, We have yet to find another reasonable solution to this scenario. We have already gone well above and beyond the standard operating practices of other providers, and pride ourselves in doing do. Should we receive more snowfall tonight, as is predicted, we will begin residential service.