Special Feature — Snow Removal Winter 2021-22
Edge Down, Profit Up What’s the standard for profitability in
snowremoval? Efficiency, or clearing more snow faster with less manpower and equipment. And what’s the standard for efficiency? Hint: It’s not containment capacity, anymore. The new standard for efficiency is “cutting-edge downtime,” thanks to technological advances in snow removal attachments and machines. It refers to the amount of time your cutting edge is on the surface being plowed in relation to the total time required to complete a job. The greater your cutting-edge downtime, the faster you get jobs done and the more money you make. Edge down, profit up. It’s really that simple. Upside Down The opposite of cutting-edge downtime is cutting-edge uptime, which refers to any time your cutting edge is not on the surface moving snow. It’s all nonproductive time. You get cutting-edge uptime when you lift your snow pusher, a.k.a. box pusher, off the ground to back up for another pass, to chase after and clean up trickles of snow that came off during earlier passes or to travel to the other side of a lot. Let’s say a job takes your operator two hours with a box pusher. During that time, his cutting edge is only on the surface for one hour; the cutting-edge downtime is only 50 percent. That’s fairly typical for clearing a lot with a snow pusher because of time spent backing up and chasing trickles. In this example, for every two hours your operator is working he’s actually only moving snow for one hour. Edge up, profit down. The New Standard in Snow Removal The box pusher was invented more than 25 years ago. It revolutionized the snow removal industry at the time due to its capacity for containing and carrying snow; operators could clear more in one pass than with a standard or snow bucket. Over the years, this has led to what has become the greatest misconception in our industry. Just because you can contain more snow in one pass with a box pusher compared to any other attachment, that no longer 24
means using a box pusher is the most efficient way to clear snow. Note the emphasis: in one pass. We all understand one pass doesn’t equate to efficiency on an entire job. Here’s why: Box pushers can’t angle or windrow. At the end of every pass, the operator has to lift the box (and the cutting edge) off of the ground, back up all the way to where he started the previous pass, lower the box and commence the next pass. Over and over. And somewhere in there he has to go back and clean up snow trickles. All of that is nonproductive, cutting-edge uptime; no snow is being moved. Now, for the first time in more than a quarter of a century, technology has given us a more efficient, and therefore profitable, tool for clearing snow: the autowing plow. An autowing is a straight plow with wings that move automatically depending on which way the blade is angled. Whether it’s on a small skid steer or a huge loader, an operator with an autowing plow can angle the blade and windrow every pass. When he reaches the end, he simply turns the machine around and heads back the way he came, angling the blade the opposite way and moving snow all the way. Because the auto -wing plow angles and has a wing on the leading edge, trickles off the wrong side of the plow are greatly reduced, if not eliminated altogether. That’s all productive, efficient, money-making time. The snow pusher has served us well for a long time, but its time is past. The time for autowing plows as our primary tool has come. Head-to-Head Productivity Consider the difference Box – Make a pass. Lift the attachment off the ground. Back up. Align the machine. Make another pass. Back up again. Catch trickles. Back up again. Repeat. Over and over, moving snow about 50 percent of the time. (continued on page 26)
The Landscape Contractor September 2021
