There's a lot happening between a snowflake hitting the ground and your driveway being clear. Most customers experience just the result — they wake up to a clean driveway and go about their day. Here's the process that makes that happen consistently.
Before the storm: monitoring and dispatch
We track weather forecasts starting 48–72 hours before any significant system. When accumulation models consistently show 4cm+, we pre-position trucks and send crew availability confirmations the night before. We use multiple weather sources — Environment Canada, Weather Underground, and Weather.com — because no single forecast is reliable enough for dispatch decisions.
If a storm looks significant (8cm+), we brief crews the afternoon before: start times, route assignments, equipment checks, backup contact procedures.
The start time decision
For a typical overnight snowfall that ends by 3–4 AM, we start routes at 3:30–4:00 AM. The goal is completing the full route by 7 AM — before most customers need to leave.
For a storm that doesn't stop until 7–8 AM (common with heavier systems), we make a judgment call: start partway through to do a first pass, then loop back for a cleanup pass. This keeps most customers passable, even if not perfectly cleared, before the storm ends.
On the route
Each truck covers a route of homes within a tightly defined geographic area. Smaller routes (20–30 homes per truck) allow us to move efficiently. Larger routes (80+ homes) almost always mean late completion on heavy snowfall nights — it's a structural problem, not a crew effort problem.
When we arrive at a property:
- Check for vehicles in the driveway — if blocking, we do what we can around them and note it
- Check for edge markers (snow stakes protect your lawn edges and tell us where the driveway ends)
- Plow in efficient passes: typically a center cut, then push snow to the edges
- Back-blade near the garage door to clear that final foot that the forward pass leaves
- Clear the apron (the area where your driveway meets the street — the city plow often fills it in)
After each stop: photo and text
Once a property is cleared, our crew triggers a notification — a text to the customer with a timestamp. This gives you a record of when service happened and confirmation without needing to check outside.
Post-storm follow-up
Heavy storms sometimes require a second pass 4–6 hours later as blowing and drifting recovers driveways. We build this into our storm protocols automatically — you don't need to call and request it.
After major storms, we do a route audit: any missed stops, any customer complaints about quality, any damage reports. These are addressed within 24 hours of the storm ending.
Why "before 7 AM" is a commitment, not a guarantee
We say "most properties cleared by 7 AM" deliberately. A 25cm overnight storm is a different job than a 5cm one. A customer at stop 28 of 30 on a 4 AM route will get cleared at 6:45 AM on a normal night and maybe 8:30 AM on a big storm night. Promising 7 AM every time, for every storm, is a promise no honest operator can keep.
What we do promise: you'll always be cleared before your neighbours who don't have a service, we'll communicate if we're running significantly late, and no storm will catch us unprepared.