Three numbers set a plow route and only one of them is the truck
Effective swath, ground speed and the time that is not plowing. The first two look like the whole answer and produce the acres-per-hour figure everybody quotes. The third is where routes actually go wrong.
Start with the swath, because it is smaller than the blade. An eight foot straight blade angled thirty degrees off square covers eight times the cosine of thirty, which is 6.93 feet of ground. Take fifteen percent off for overlap and you are working a 5.89 foot swath with an eight foot blade. At four miles an hour, which is 352 feet a minute, that is 2,073 square feet a minute, or 2.86 acres an hour with the blade down and moving.
A 46,000 square foot strip mall lot is therefore 7,811 feet of driving, which is 22.2 minutes at that speed. The calculator then adds forty percent for carrying snow to the pile and six minutes of walking the lot, which lands at 37 minutes, and then seven minutes of driving to get there. The 22 minutes was the part the geometry knew about. The other 22 is the part that decides whether the route fits.
Angle costs width, and a box plow does not have the problem
| Blade angle | Share of width covered | An 8 ft blade covers |
|---|---|---|
| 0 degrees — straight, or a box | 100% | 8.00 ft |
| 15 degrees | 96.6% | 7.73 ft |
| 30 degrees | 86.6% | 6.93 ft |
| 45 degrees | 70.7% | 5.66 ft |
Angling is not waste, it is what lets snow roll off the end instead of building a wall in front of the truck. But it is a trade and it is worth seeing the size of it: at forty five degrees you are running a five and a half foot machine and paying for an eight foot one. A box or a pusher keeps the full width and gives up the ability to cast, which is why lots with a long carry to one corner get boxes and lots with somewhere to throw snow at every edge get angled blades.
The window is the constraint, not the season
Nobody signs a contract that says the lot will be clear eventually. It says open by a time, and that time is the same for most accounts because most accounts open in the morning. The route is therefore not a list of hours, it is a list of hours that all have to fit before one deadline, and the last stop on the list is the one that is late.
This is why the marginal account is a different question from the average account. A route running 2.5 hours in a 6 hour window has room and the next account is pure margin. A route running 5.9 hours in the same window has no room, and the next account either pushes a stop past its deadline or needs a second truck, which is a step change in cost rather than a gradual one. The dollars-per-hour figure hides this completely, and it is the reason the calculator shows the running clock stop by stop rather than only the total.
What this model does not know
Depth is absent from the arithmetic, deliberately. The same lot at two inches and at nine inches is not the same job, and the difference does not show up as a proportional multiplier because the constraint changes: at two inches the truck is travel-limited and at nine it is limited by how much snow the blade can carry before it spills. What the calculator gives is a route clock at a stated speed. If your speed drops from four to two and a half in deep snow, put in two and a half and read the route again. That is the honest way to use it.
The stack allowance covers the carry, and it is the field most worth arguing with. A lot where snow goes over a curb at the nearest edge behaves very differently from one where everything ends up in a single corner two hundred feet away, and by February the pile is in the way of the approach to itself. Where that snow ends up going is worked out on the snow stacking space calculator. What the pricing structure over a whole season looks like is on the snow contract pricing calculator, and the single-driveway version of the time question, with shovels and blowers in it, is the snow removal time calculator.
Cost per hour is the number to get right
The hourly cost field is where most of the error in a plowing business lives. It is not the payment on the truck. It is the truck, the blade and its wear parts, fuel at winter idle, commercial insurance, the operator at a night rate, and the share of the year the truck earns nothing. Contractors who work it out honestly usually find the figure is higher than they assumed, which changes which accounts are worth keeping. The own versus rent calculator takes the equipment half of that apart, and job cost and markup handles the step from cost to a priced bid.
Questions people ask
How long does it take to plow an acre?
At the default settings on this page — an eight foot blade angled thirty degrees, fifteen percent overlap, four miles an hour — the blade covers 2.86 acres an hour while it is moving. Add the carry allowance and the walking and a real acre lands closer to 1.9 acres an hour. Published production figures vary by more than a factor of two because they are quoting different things: some are blade-down rates, some include the stack, and almost none include the drive between accounts.
Why does my route take longer than the square footage suggests?
Because most of the extra time is not plowing. On the default five-stop route, 2 hours 34 minutes of clock contains about 1 hour 22 minutes of blade-down driving. The rest is 35 minutes of driving between stops, 30 minutes of walking lots and clearing corrals, and the carry allowance that covers pushing snow to the pile instead of assuming it disappears.
Should I add another account to the route?
That depends entirely on whether the window has room. Run the route as it stands and look at the clock on the last stop. If it finishes well inside the deadline, another stop is close to pure margin because the truck and the operator are already paid for. If it finishes near the deadline, the next account either makes an existing one late or needs a second truck, and a second truck is a step in cost that one account will not usually cover.
What blade angle should I run?
That is a question about where the snow has to end up, not about production. Angling casts snow to one side, which is what keeps a windrow from building in front of the truck on a long push, and it costs width: 30 degrees leaves you 86.6 percent of the blade, 45 degrees leaves 70.7 percent. Lots with an open edge to throw against reward angling. Lots where everything has to travel to one corner are why box plows exist.
Does this include salting time?
No. This page is the plowing clock only. Spreading is a separate pass at a different speed with its own refill stops, and the material side of it belongs on the ice melt page, where the spread rate is an input because product labels differ enormously and no default is worth trusting. Add your spreading minutes to the fixed-minutes field per stop if you want one combined route time.