Clearing the ridge the city plow leaves

You blow a driveway out at 2 a.m. and move on. At 3 a.m. the city plow comes down the street and leaves a wall of heavy, wet snow across the end of it. The driveway you finished an hour ago is blocked again, and on a paper route sheet it still says “done.”

That ridge is one of the biggest sources of angry calls in residential snow removal. It’s also easy to miss, because a route sheet treats “done” as permanent.

Why a checked-off list can’t show it

A route sheet is a list of things to do once. When a driveway is checked off, it leaves the list, and nothing on the sheet says “done, but the city plow undid part of it.” So the ridge usually gets handled the slow way: the customer calls to complain, and you send someone back in a hurry.

The ridge isn’t the problem. It happens every storm. The problem is that a fixed list can’t know about it until the customer tells you.

Plan the return trip while you’re still there

Often the operator knows. If you got to a street before the city plow did, you can expect it to leave a ridge across the end of the driveway you’re clearing. In Snowmass the operator turns on Flag for recheck right there, at that driveway. It comes back on the list after a cooldown, 45 minutes by default, long enough for the plow to get by and short enough that the customer isn’t stuck. Then a tractor goes back for it. A driveway can come back like this up to four times within 24 hours of the first clear. If the city has already plowed the street, you clear the driveway and the ridge together and there’s nothing to flag.

Your office can add a recheck too, to a driveway that’s already finished. That covers the customer who calls to say the city plow buried theirs.

Notice the driveways that keep coming back

Once return trips are recorded instead of remembered, you can see them. Every visit keeps its arrival and finish times, and reports export to CSV and PDF. Look back over a few storms and the pattern shows up.

• The same driveways. Some keep needing a second visit. The reason is usually where they sit on the city plow’s route.
• The gap between visits. It shows whether your timing is working against the city’s.
• The extra trips. The labor nobody budgets for, and it never shows up in an estimate built from a route sheet.

Turning that into decisions

A driveway that needs a recheck every storm is telling you something. Maybe the contract should price in the second visit. Without the record you’re guessing. With it you can charge fairly for the driveways that cost more to keep clear.

Key takeaways

• The ridge the city plow leaves is a top source of complaints, and a “done means done” route sheet can’t show it.
• When you beat the city plow to a street, the operator turns on Flag for recheck at the driveway they’re clearing. It comes back after a cooldown, 45 minutes by default, up to four times within 24 hours.
• Your office can add a recheck to a finished driveway too.
• Every visit keeps its arrival and finish times. Look back over a few storms to see which driveways keep needing a second visit, and price them accordingly.