Is it ever going to snow in Philly?

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Last year I purchased a used plow had it hooked up and whatever, no Salter because I didn’t have the money and most of the places I can just do with some walk behind spreaders. And between last season and this so far have only been called out one time, thanks to salting I have been out a lot more, and yes I still just salt with the walk behinds, but I am so sick of the Philly area weather men, that hype you up for like 7 days then all the sudden the storm turns into rain. It’s a real pain in the *** when you get your self all loaded up with salt maybe, maybe not throw on the plow dependent on how many inches and then you don’t even get to work. I say that the weather people should just keep their mouths shut, but I also think that they are influenced to hype up storms to get consumers out to the stores...
The other thing about this weather is that its now like 20 degrees and it will be below freezing for like a week then when a storm comes around it somehow gets up to like 40 degrees... and of course its rain, everyone who lives north or around the great lakes are lucky you know your going to get a winter and you can work, for us its like not enough to work all the time and not enough snow to bank on. It’s just like cold enough to make you slow for 3 months then when you’re getting started in the spring, here comes the snow we always get like one storm when you’re ready for Spring Clean-ups.

[Steve]

Have you ever done a look up and checked out how many winter storms your area gets on average?

Is it possible to sell winter plowing/salting contracts based on an average amount of winter snow falls over say the last 5 or 10 winters?

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I have lived here all my life, and sometimes we don’t really get much snow like under a foot for the whole year, and other times we get hit and it may snow for like 3 days straight and well get like 3 feet. If we get real snow it’s like a blizzard or Nor Easter. But we usually get something throughout the winter and it seems that since I started snow removal we haven’t gotten anything. Is it a jinks? Yeah I am sure I can sell contracts but I need some more experience until I get to that point, that way I know what I am getting into. And I can make money and not loose money on the deals.

[Steve]

We had a discussion in another post (http://www.gopherforum.com/showthread.php?t=6409)about this concept where Ken "Hotwired" gave us a great insight on how he crafts his snowplow contracts. See if this gives you some ideas.