Hiring snow removal is unusual: you pay in October and find out whether it was a good decision in January, when switching is no longer possible. These are the questions that actually predict the answer, and what we say to each.
1. What is your trigger depth?
The depth of new snow that sends you out. Ours is one inch. A company that says "when it needs it" is telling you the decision gets made storm by storm, by someone with an incentive.
2. Do you come back after the city plow?
On any storm over two inches, yes. This is the single most common complaint about the previous company, and it is worth hearing an unambiguous answer before you sign.
3. How many driveways are on a route, and what happens when it is full?
A real answer sounds like a number and a boundary. Ours: routes are drawn tight and contiguous, they have a fixed size, and when one is full we stop selling on it rather than stretch it.
4. Plow or blower?
A plow pushes snow into a pile somewhere on your property. An inverted blower throws it across the lawn. Ask where the snow ends up in March, not in December.
5. What am I paying, exactly, for the whole winter?
One number, or a number per visit? If it is per visit, ask what counts as a visit during a two-day storm.
6. What happens if you cannot service my driveway?
Ours: if your address is outside the routes we run, we say so before you pay — the checkout stops. We would rather lose the sale in September than refund it in December after telling somebody they were covered.
7. Who is actually going to be in my driveway?
Employees or a subcontractor who bid the street? This one decides whether the answers to the first six survive contact with a bad February.
Ask us all seven. If our answers do not suit what you need — and for some households they will not; we do driveways only, we do not salt, and we are not on call — that is a good outcome in September and an expensive one to discover in January.