How to Price a Seasonal Snow Plowing Contract With NOAA Data

Here is how to price a seasonal snow plowing contract: from the weather record, not from last winter. NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals give most airport stations an average count of days with 1 inch or more of snow and days with 3 inches or more; those become expected pushes, pushes times a costed per-push price make the season fee, and a cap on pushes protects the margin.

Seasonal vs per push snow removal: who carries the weather risk

A seasonal fee moves the weather risk onto you; per push leaves it with the customer; per inch (a price stepped by measured depth) and per event (one price per storm, whatever the trips) sit between. A customer on a fixed budget is the seasonal buyer. A contractor who cannot carry a 30-push winter at a 15-push price sells per push, or seasonal with a cap.

Find your town's real snow day count

Use NOAA's 1991 to 2020 climate normal for days with snowfall at or above a threshold, an average over 30 winters, not one bad winter.

The two numbers to write down

In NCEI's readme, AVGNDS means average number of days and the GEnnnTI suffix is a threshold in tenths of an inch, so ANN-SNOW-AVGNDS-GE010TI is days with 1 inch or more and GE030TI days with 3 inches or more.

Pulling them from the NCEI search tool

1. 1Step 1: Open NCEI's normals search and look up the nearest airport station.
2. 2Step 2: Download its CSV, or open it in the by-station directory (O'Hare is USW00094846.csv).
3. 3Step 3: Read ANN-SNOW-AVGNDS-GE010TI and GE030TI: 11.4 and 3.9 days a year at O'Hare.
4. 4Step 4: Check the comp_flag beside each: S means 24 or more years of data; R and P mean 10 or more, E as few as 2.

If the nearest station is short on data

Denver International's file has no snow normals, and Hartford Bradley's 12.5 days with 1 inch or more carries a P flag for 23 years; use the next airport in the same climate.

How many pushes in a snow season?

At a 1-inch trigger, expected pushes equal the 1-inch days plus the 3-inch days: every day with 1 inch or more is a push, and the formula counts a second trip for every day with 3 inches or more. O'Hare: 11.4 + 3.9 = 15.3, so 15. The normals count days with snowfall, not storms, so a storm that drops 2 inches Monday night and 4 more Tuesday is two 1-inch days and one 3-inch day, three pushes.

What one push costs you

A push costs minutes on site plus drive time at your loaded hourly cost; the per-acre post covers big lots.

Minutes per push from blade width and speed by depth

BOSS Snowplow's productivity guide puts plowing speed at 10 to 14 mph in 1 to 2 inches of snow, 8 to 12 mph in 2 to 4 inches, 5 to 10 mph in 4 to 6 inches, 3 to 7 mph in 6 to 10 inches and 1 to 5 mph over 10; an angled 98-inch blade clears about 85 inches, call it 7 ft; a turn adds 15 to 30 seconds; stacking takes 5 to 15 minutes per lot; it suggests a 20 to 25 percent buffer and a 60 to 80 percent efficiency factor. Blade minutes = sq ft ÷ (blade ft × mph × 88) ÷ efficiency, since 1 mph is 88 ft a minute; then add turns, stacking and the buffer.

Labor, fuel, salt and insurance per trip

Labor: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2025 median wage for landscaping and groundskeeping workers is $18.82 per hour (O*NET). Fuel: the US Energy Information Administration's weekly update put on-highway diesel at $6.199 per gallon for the week of October 5, 2026. Salt is its own line and rule, costed in the salt post. Insurance and the truck: divide the winter's share by expected plowing hours.

How to price a seasonal snow plowing contract: the formula

Season price = expected pushes × per-push price + a reserve, under a cap. The per-push price is cost divided by one minus your margin; the reserve is extra pushes absorbed before the cap, at cost.

How to price a seasonal snow removal contract with a bad-winter reserve

The example uses O'Hare's normals, the BOSS speeds, the BLS median wage and the EIA diesel price; its own inputs are a 40 percent margin, a $40 per hour truck rate, 2 gallons of diesel per plowing hour, 10 minutes of drive between stops, 70 percent efficiency, a 25 percent buffer, a 220 by 198 ft acre plowed the long way, a 3-push reserve, a 6-inch overage threshold and a 15 percent per-inch overage rounded from the deep-storm time ratio.

In MakeHay, the snow removal starter list prices "Seasonal contract, per month" and "Plowing, per push" as Each lines and "Hauling and stacking" as Flat price, so both models sit on one quote from the price book under Settings › Services.

Caps, per-inch overages and the clause that saves a seasonal contract

The clause that saves a seasonal contract is the cap: the fee covers a stated number of pushes (18 in the example), and pushes past it bill at the per-push price. Add a per-inch overage, since a deep storm at 3 to 7 mph takes about 1.7 times as long on site as a light one (62 against 36 minutes above); a 2013 Missouri DOT bid (tabulation 169, a US state bid) priced plowing with melting agents by depth: $600 per occasion for half an inch to 5 inches, $1,800 at 9 inches and up. Also state season dates, where the trigger is measured, and salting and hauling as separate lines.

Snow plowing trigger depth and the separate salting rule

Write the plow trigger as a depth you can price from the normals (NOAA counts days at 1, 2 and 3 inches) and salting as its own rule on conditions, not depth. SIMA's article Triggered defines a trigger as "a specific measurement of snow accumulation that must be reached before services are initiated", argues against depth thresholds for salting and says a contract should salt when surfaces are icy or freezing conditions are forecast; the salt post prices the salt line.

In MakeHay, every scheduled visit carries the National Weather Service forecast for the job site's own coordinates about a week ahead (weather-aware calendar, US addresses only), and the suggested "Snow event" rule in setup is max rain 50 percent and max temp 34°F (snow plowing software).

Deposits, stage invoices and the no-snow winter

Bill a seasonal contract as a deposit plus monthly stage invoices, so a no-snow winter is already paid. At O'Hare the normal first 1-inch snowfall is December 7 and the last March 20 (NWS Chicago), so December through March is four stages: the example lot's $1,529 as a $329 deposit and $400 on the first of January, February and March.

In MakeHay, a quote can require a deposit as a percent or a dollar amount; with Stripe connected the customer pays it by card as they approve (Approve & pay). January and February are stage invoices you send; March is the final invoice from the quote, its lines lowered by what the stages covered, since they are not taken off for you (bill a job in stages); there is no automatic monthly charge.

For per-push customers, a repeating job (Set up repeat) adds visits 60 days ahead (set up recurring service); each visit is marked Done or Skip, Bill after each visit makes one invoice per visit, and autopay charges the saved card or bank account on Done & charge.

Snow removal contract clauses that decide lawsuits

Two states limit hold-harmless and indemnity clauses in plow contracts. Illinois' 815 ILCS 675/10 voids a snow and ice contract provision requiring either side to indemnify, hold harmless or defend the other for the other's own acts or omissions, in contracts entered into on or after August 25, 2016, except those for public roads and public bodies, utilities and insurance. Colorado's Senate Bill 62 of 2018 (bill page), effective August 8, 2018, voids the same six clauses (codified section), but only where the contract or a written instruction prohibits the contractor from mitigating a specific snow, ice or mixed precipitation risk, with exceptions for public roads, utilities, airport deicing and insurance.

Massachusetts has a similar bill pending, voiding indemnity and hold-harmless clauses both ways (H.2100, reported favorably and referred to House Ways and Means on September 4, 2025). Other states have passed or proposed similar laws; read your own state's text.

Good to know: This is general information, not legal advice. Statutes and rules change; read the current text and ask your state licensing board or a lawyer before you rely on it.