We sell one price for the whole winter. You pay it once, and we clear your driveway for every snowfall over an inch from November through mid-April. No per-visit charge, no surge pricing in a bad week, and nothing to call in.

The obvious question is what happens in a light winter. The honest answer: you pay for snow that never fell. The less obvious question — the one worth asking — is what a per-visit price does to the incentives.

Per-visit pays the contractor to come out

If a company earns money per visit, every marginal storm is revenue. Two inches overnight is a reason to roll. So is an inch and a half. So, sometimes, is a driveway that would have been fine.

If a company is paid once for the season, every visit is a cost. That sounds worse for you until you follow it through: our incentive is to clear your driveway correctly the first time, because coming back is our expense, not yours. It is also why we run a second pass after the city plow instead of arguing about whether the ridge across your apron counts as a separate visit. It does not. It is the same storm.

Where the risk sits

A flat price moves weather risk from you to us. In a 60-inch winter we lose the argument and go out far more than the price assumed. In a 30-inch winter we come out ahead. Averaged over the seasons that is a business; in any single winter it is a bet, and we are the ones making it.

What you buy with that is a number you can plan around in October and never think about again — and a company that has no financial reason to leave you until Tuesday.

What it does not buy

It does not buy on-call service. We are not a company you ring during a storm to move up the list; the route is the route, and everybody on it gets the same answer. It does not buy shovelled walks or salted steps — we do driveways, and we do them with a machine that is wrong for a front step. And it does not buy a plow at 4am for a half-inch dusting, because we do not launch under an inch.

If what you actually want is somebody on call for the one storm a year that catches you out, we are the wrong company, and it is better for both of us that you know that in September.