Three structures, one winter, three different numbers
Take the twelve storm season loaded by default: depths of 1.5, 3, 4, 2.5, 8, 6, 2, 11, 3.5, 5, 1 and 4.5 inches. Two of those are under a two inch trigger, so ten are billable.
At $65 a push that is $650. Under a schedule of $55 for the first three inches and $12 for each inch after that, rounded up to whole inches, the same ten events bill $814 — the eleven inch storm alone is $151. A seasonal flat of $725 sits between them. Same winter, same work, a $164 spread between the highest and lowest structure, and none of the three is wrong.
| Structure | What it charges for | Who carries the risk |
|---|---|---|
| Per push | Each visit, whatever the depth | Client — a heavy winter costs them more |
| Per inch, banded | Depth, in increments that round up | Client, and more sharply on big storms |
| Seasonal flat | The winter, whatever it does | Contractor — a heavy winter is on you |
| Time and materials | Hours actually spent | Client, with no ceiling |
The crossover is a count, not a price
Set the seasonal flat against the per-push rate and the question stops being about money and becomes about how many storms arrive. A $725 flat against a $65 push crosses over at 11.15 events: below that the flat earns more, above it the pushes do. This winter had ten billable events, so the flat would have been the better side of that particular bet.
What that arithmetic hides is the reason the flat exists. A contractor holding a seasonal contract in a market averaging eleven events is not pricing eleven events. They are pricing the possibility of nineteen, and the client is paying to not have a nineteen event invoice. The average is where the two structures meet; the tails are what is being traded. This is why one bad season can end a plowing business that priced its flats off an average and never looked at the distribution.
The practical version: pull ten or fifteen winters of snowfall for your own location, count events over your trigger in each one, and look at the worst year rather than the mean. If the flat still works in the worst year, it is priced. If it only works in an average year, half the outcomes lose money.
Trigger depth does more than it looks
The trigger is the depth at which a billable event exists. Set it at two inches and a one inch morning is not a push, which means under per-push billing it produces no revenue. Under a seasonal flat it produces no extra revenue either, but the client can reasonably expect somebody to deal with it, and that expectation is the part that is easy to price at zero and expensive to service.
Lowering the trigger raises the event count under per-push billing, which is why triggers get negotiated harder than the rates. Going from a two inch trigger to a one inch trigger on the default season adds two events, or $130 at $65 a push, and it also adds two nights of somebody being out. Whether that is good business depends on the drive to the account, which the route capacity calculator puts a number on.
Rounding is a rate, quietly
A per-inch schedule that rounds up to whole inches charges a 3.5 inch storm as if it were four, and a 4.1 inch storm as if it were five. Over the default season that rounding adds a little over one inch of billing across ten events, which is not enormous, but it is real and it always runs one way. A half inch increment halves the effect. The increment field is in this calculator precisely so it can be seen rather than assumed, because it is a term people agree to without noticing they have set a rate.
Costs, and the number most people leave out
The cost per event field wants the full cost of one visit to this account: the truck and the blade, fuel, the operator at whatever a 3 a.m. hour costs, and the share of insurance and storage the account carries. At $38 a visit, the default season costs $380 to service, and the three structures leave $270, $434 and $345. It is normal for the structure that bills most to also be the one whose margin looks best, because the cost side barely moves between them — the same truck does the same work regardless of how it is invoiced.
Where cost does move is the trigger and the return trips, and neither is on this page. If you build the hourly figure honestly, job cost and markup and the own versus rent calculator are where the truck side of it gets worked out, and ice melt handles the material that goes down after the plowing is finished.
Questions people ask
Is a seasonal snow contract better than per push?
Neither is better in general, and which one wins depends on the number of storms in a specific winter. With a $725 flat and a $65 push, the crossover is 11.15 billable events. Fewer than that and the flat earns more; more and the pushes do. The point of the flat is not the average, it is that the contractor absorbs the variance, and that is a service with real value to a client who needs a predictable budget line.
How many snow events are in a normal season?
That is entirely local and this page does not guess. What it does is let you paste the actual depths from your own records, so the answer comes from your market rather than from a national figure that describes nowhere. If you are pricing a seasonal flat, the number worth finding is not the average count over ten winters but the worst one, because that is the year the contract has to survive.
What is a trigger depth?
The accumulation at which a billable event exists. Below the trigger, per-push and per-inch structures bill nothing. It is one of the most negotiated terms in a snow contract because it moves the event count directly: dropping a two inch trigger to one inch added two events and $130 to the default season on this page, along with two more nights of work.
Should per-inch pricing round up?
Most published tier schedules do, and rounding up to whole inches is a rate in itself — always favouring the contractor, by roughly half an inch per event on average. The increment field lets you price it at a half inch or any other step so the effect is visible. What your contract actually says about rounding is between you and the other party; this page just computes whichever rule you enter.
Why does the calculator not tell me what to charge?
Because market rates for plowing vary by region, by lot type, by how far the account is from your yard and by what your insurance costs, and a number picked by a calculator would be worse than the one you already have. Every rate on this page is an input. What the arithmetic adds is the comparison between structures on the same winter and the crossover count between them, which is the part that is genuinely hard to do in your head.