[gellys 406]

manchester has had 8 inches of snow instead of rain ive been busy clearing private carparks with my snowplough
whats a ok rate to charge ??? sq m or hourly rate??
any help please

the bunce blade im running is a 8 foot ex landy one bit to small but good for getting in awkard places it has a rubber slush strip wich isnt much cop on ice or compacted snow wondering if the steel wear blades are better ,
????
rang bunce up this week there clean out of spares there steel edges are about £28 + vat a 2 foot section my local steel holder wanted £ 60 each for 150 mm X10MM stainless steel with 3 noles punched in it!!
any feed back please will post some pics of the mog at work

 

[b101uk]

FYI: if you are clearing private car parks etc (except your own) then you should be using DERV, only clearing public roads has the concession for red diesel, see HMRC notice 75 - section 8 excepted vehicles, thus snow clearing of private car parks etc attracts a higher rate than for roads.

Councils pay between £25 & £32 per hour inc fuel (red) for snowploughs though the former would be with a yearly retainer paid and the latter would be without a yearly retainer paid, however the council will also be picking up the parts, maintenance and the labour element for wearing edges, casters, bent A frames etc as most snowploughs are own by the council and farmers push them around for the council.

Red is ~£0.46 per 1L, DERV is ~£1.09 per 1L thus the fuel cost will be just over twice as much so if you were using e.g. ~10L/hour then your fuel cost would be ~£11/hour so you would need to add half that amount to the >£25 to<£32 per hour to account for the extra cost of DERV vs. red which would take the respective rates up to >£30.50 to <£37.50 per hour.

As you are paying for wearing edges etc then this cost needs to be factored on top of the >£30.50 to <£37.50 per hour, so you need to find the price for a 1-piece squeegee or £131.60 inc vat for steel wearing edges.

As for stainless steel wearing edges don’t bother, you can pick up 150mm X 10mm mild steel and cut it to 2ft lengths and drill the holes yourself, they wont last as long as SS or hardened steel but even hardened steel is not much more expensive than mild steel.

There are a number of configurations for blade edges including combining steel wearing edges with squeegee.

FYI: with the blade down on level ground the caster height should be set to give ~10mm of clearance under the wearing edges though that is for roads, car parks I guess are generally flatter than roads so you could reduce that however the plough weigh shouldn’t be taken by the wearing edges.

Do you need a snow blower for any of your jobs to move mounded snow over fences etc?

 

[rostige]

Get the stuff made for cutting edge it will wear longer. Rubber is good as long as the weather is warm. -5C and warmer. It cleans nicely but wears quicker. If you are bombing it with salt anyway and 'scratching the pavement' is not an issue go for steel. If you can get your hands on AR400 or similar (Abrasion Resistant) that might be best. I had sections cut for wear points on the Schmidt loader. It is harder than the back of God's head.
I do not mind you guys are getting all the snow...No plowing for me before the New Year and we have not had a single snowfall greater than 2cm...

rostrigger

 

[ACAD_Cowboy]

It's funny because i was just researching this same question.

Based on a lot of reading and question asking of those that do this here are some things to think about:

Hourly is a good way to slowly starve. If you work quick and hustle up to get a lot done, you short your self on pay. You work slow and milk it and they don't call you next time.

Per Plow, this is how most of the guys in my area do residential or "not commercial" accounts. If it snows 2" they come and plow. And they come and plow every 2" there after. This is a reasonable system but the question becomes "whos 2" is the measure". Where I live we have steep ridges, wide valleys and rolling hills in between so while my house may see 24", my job may only see 18" and coworkers from elsewhere may see only 8". Likewise I might get a dusting and my boss had a foot. It's not the best system but it works.

Lastly, the on-call service contract. To my mind this is the safest bet for all involved. Flat rate worked out in advance with a fee for on-demand work. Broken down weekly or monthly you can provide good service and steady income. They pay if it snows or not. The trick here is finding the balance between making income and running a not for profit. Seems to me I would calculate snowfalls for your area going back however long and develop an average fall and or accumulation for any given date and base the rate of charge around this. This way if the contractee wishes to buy more time in advance they effectively pay less per snow event versus doing it on demand. The benefit to the contractor is your income is mapped out and you have the margin of safety to look after your equipment when it is not snowing. Nothing is sadder than the look on the face of a guy running a small small truck that is now broken.

Just some thoughts to think about.

As for billing by area it becomes much like hourly. If you have light powdery snow that is dry and fluffy it plows up fast and the skim melts off roads once the sun comes out. What happens when you have a dense wet snowfall? That same area you quoted is now going to take 2 to 3 times longer plus all the attendant wear on the equipment and fuel costs.

Now, to the plow.

A plastic cutting edge is very gentle on roadways, very little chipping, chunking or the like. If the blade if sufficiently heavy they will scrape perhaps even better than a steel edge. The down side is they are not very abusive to ice and will float over it. They also wear quicker.

A steel edge on a heavy plow will find and level every pebble, rock & lip. This can be good and bad. At work I have a 10' western and a mostly compacted gravel/dirt parking area so once the ground is frozen I use it to grade and profile. Too bad this means turning the blacktop into gravel along the edges.

I would personally recommend steel because if you had to you can cut and weld to it with relative ease. Think window cutting the blade for curbs.

 

[LPGMOG]

Much like there is a forum for those who have Unimogs there is also a forum for those who plow snow. http://www.plowsite.com/
You might want to check it out...

 

[MR. MUD]

:

Hourly is a good way to slowly starve. If you work quick and hustle up to get a lot done, you short your self on pay. You work slow and milk it and they don't call you next time.

Per Plow, this is how most of the guys in my area do residential or "not commercial" accounts. If it snows 2" they come and plow. And they come and plow every 2" there after. This is a reasonable system but the question becomes "whos 2" is the measure". Where I live we have steep ridges, wide valleys and rolling hills in between so while my house may see 24", my job may only see 18" and coworkers from elsewhere may see only 8". Likewise I might get a dusting and my boss had a foot. It's not the best system but it works.

I have been plowing snow for over 20 years and this is how I do mine, but it may not work for you. I do my driveways at a flat rate, and I have calculated this from my experiance over the years by taking how many I can get done in an hour/versus what I have to make to offset fuel, insurance, repairs and the aggravation factor. Your time has to be worth something and it seems that the snow comes here when something else is happening also so you have to be willing to do it. I try and gross $150 per hour minimum so I can justify getting out of that cozy bed, but I am also saving most of it for the kids college fund.

I have a large customer base with around 74 stops, this does include some small parking lots, mostly drive ways. I try and do people 1 time but it doesn't work sometimes and they get billed for more. I explain to new customers(but I have not taken any for years) that I come when I feel there has been a 2" snow and if you want it more often I will come if you call. However I have people that try and be cheap and only want to be on the heavy snow list and this gets too complicated because what is a heavy snow? The best way is to get a route established and make the rounds so you don't waste fuel. I can do 7-10 drives in an hour easy with my plow truck(Boss 8'2" V on front and 8' Snow man on the rear) at $20.00 a pop, you do the math, parking lots I charge flat fee depending on the size. I can't find anyone dependable enough or crazy like me to do anymore when I'm working so I try and get them all done before the 8-5 grind starts. See what your maket will take and good luck!

I have seen alot of flunkies come and go and lost customers because somebody is going to under cut you, but they always come back. it is amazing the amount of new plows that get sold in my area every year and when the first snow comes the activity is incredible, you have to watch out for all the rookies that are trying to learn how and where to push the snow so you can get your route done, but by the 10th snow in the season those guy's are wore out and once again you will be the only one on the desolate roads at 3:00 a.m. plowing to make sure people can get to work or whatever.

As for the plows cutting edge- I use straight carbon steel and for the shoe adjustment, I take mine off and run the cutter right on the ground. MUD

 

[gellys 406]

snow

Thanks for the imfo lads will try the bunce steel edges when they come in stock , seems im the only one round here using a mog and plough for private work was kept busy keeping a dairy open when the snow was still falling the plough worked brill till i hit a out of view kerb ouch! bent the top of the plough at the swivel point soon fixed with big hammer lots of telehandlers out there working clearing compacted snow today i had a virgin snow school carpark easy peasy stayed clear of the kerb stones! once clear the sun soon melted the dust on top.
snow blower would be good but cant see were i could use it in a built up location ive noticed a couple on ebay recently they seem like big bits of kit we will probs not get snow for the next 20 years here if i got one,

any ideas on gritter bodys? could i use a fertilizer spreader they seem much cheaper than demountable gritters ??
big problem now is getting any salt wish id stockpiled 10 ton in the summer

 

[gellys 406]

snow

some good comments on the prices be realistic and fair thats my way, ive been told of some crazy claims of what people are charging with loading shovels, telehandlers even mini diggers i take most with a pinch of salt, thing is if you rip people off they wont get you back

looked on the web and found some claims of surrey council paying £70 hour nice work if you can get it, there was also news of a farmer being told not to plough the roads to his farm for milk wagons due to him not having health and saftey training even if he had been doing it for the last 20 year !!!

The bunce ploughs seem a good bit of kit thay seem a bit tougher than the econ ones, picked up two damaged eagle ploughs of mod air fields thay have 12volt powerd side rams to angle the blade may try fitting them to the bunce or make one good one out of the two will try and get some pics of the conversion.

 

[vmax29]

I am in the process of having a Fisher put on my 416 and it doesn't have shoes or the cutting edge. Will shoes help to keep it from digging into gravel drives? The fellow that is mounting it told me to run it with just the cutting edge but all the commercial plows where I work have the shoes mounted. Is there any advantage other than less wear on the trip plate?

Sean

 

[MogMountain]

Once the gravel drives are frozen, if the surface is flat shoes should not be required. Of course, a lot of plowing takes place before and after surfaces are frozen - depending on the temperatures.

In fact, I spent a good portion of the day opening a road that had not been plowed. Plow sank into some groves in the road and the Mog came to a dead stop several times, thoughts of "Oh Slitz!" raced through my head as I jumped out to inspect the plow (thankfully I never go to fast).

My two cents, if gravel you want, no make that need, shoes.

You also want the cutting edge, otherwise you'll be grinding away your plow (and not leaving as clean a surface).

Go to Napa, they have inexpensive shoes to fit most plows. Suspect the same for cutting edges.

 

[ACAD_Cowboy]

In a serious pinch you can make glide feet out of square or tube stock and some plate.

You need a cutting edge for sure. The cutting edge is what protects your mold board and is replaceable versus the mold board that forms about half the cost of the plow.

 

[rostige]

Gelly if you love your mog do not put a gritter box on it. I have one that I used for a while and after watching salt in solution run down into the mog fiddly bits I parked it at the end of the season. I do my salting with my little Holder sidewalk machine now but that is not a perfect answer either. No amount of Tectyl, rustproofing, etc. will protect a vehicle from a the effects of carrying a gritter box. If you can get your hands on a 'beater' vehicle that is dependable but you do not care if it rots...that is the one to put the gritter on. I have also been thinking about a unit that mounts out back or tows-like one of those Epoke towables or a 3 point unit. At least it gets it away from the mog when it is being loaded. My 2 on that.

rost

 

[gellys 406]

Yep rost it does concern me putting a demount on the back of the mog leading to lots of rot !! once looked at a ex gritter u900 the back end looked like it had been in out at sea! was thinking of a cheap second hand 3 point mounted spreader and carrying extra salt in a dumpy bag on the rear load bed?

one local weed killing guy nere us has just got a brand new small towable gritter with a donkey engine he runs it behind a landrover disco trouble is getting the salt at the moment in the uk

any body used the spraying brine method mixing 1lb of salt to 1 gallon of water ??