Seamless Snow Removal at Pro Scapes

Because of its position inland from Lake Ontario, Syracuse, N.Y. is snow-belt city that receives about 120 inches of the white stuff every winter. Though hazardous and aggravating for commuters and pedestrians, the numerous annual snow events keep landscape contractors like Rick Kier plowing in profits during the normally slow season.

“Overall, about 26 percent of our sales comes from snow removal,” says Kier, president of Pro Scapes, Jamesville, N.Y. “It’s always been a service segment for our company. From the very beginning when I was 12 with my dad’s snowblower, I never thought of landscaping and snow removal as being separate. I always thought, ‘This is what you do in the winter when you’re a landscape contractor,’ and it went together automatically.”

Kier says that while the service was always part of Pro Scapes, getting involved in the Snow & Ice Management Association helped him realize that it would be a very profitable and rewarding part of the business. Since becoming a charter member of SIMA in June of 1996, Kier has refined the snow portion of Pro Scapes considerably with a level of organization that reflects the company’s systems-based operation.

The majority of Pro Scapes’ work comes from commercial maintenance, which can overlap with snow removal work, so preparedness is key. “When it gets late in the fall, it’s definitely multitasking at its finest,” Kier says. “In Syracuse, we have to be ready for both seasons at the same time, so in the spring and fall we go through a series of checklists to prepare the company for the change in season. We’ve refined the lists over the years and include dates when we anticipate having particular functions finished so we know we’re ready when the snow starts to fall.”

One list that Kier and his staff go over in the spring takes care of administrative tasks that need to be squared away before winter. These include setting up snow removal customer renewals, determining prices for services, establishing employee phone lists for when snow removal crews need to be activated and deciding when to follow-up with customers who have not yet renewed.

Closer to snow season, Kier says he and his staff start focusing on training and equipment to make sure everything is in working order by their Nov. 1 start date and all crewmembers know and understand their jobs. Around Nov. 1, the crews also begin visiting snow removal clients to put up wooden marker stakes at the sites.

“We need to be able to plow snow in full capacity by Nov. 1,” Kier says. “That’s the deadline we’ve set and over the last 20 years we’ve actually plowed snow on the morning of Nov. 1 five time – but we’ve never had to plow on Oct. 31.” He adds, however, that ending dates for the snow season in Syracuse is never predictable. “We’ve plowed as late as April 30 and one time we had a snowfall on Mothers’ Day. At that point, we have to be prepared to be doing snow and maintenance work at the same time again because we typically start spring clean-up the last week in March. For all of April we could be performing either service on a given day.”

When a winter storm does hit, Kier says he and Operations Manager Jeremy Oliver work together to make a decision on when to start plowing. “If it starts to snow and we’re not sure if there’s enough snow yet to make plowing worthwhile or if some parts of town got snow and others didn’t, I’ll send Jeremy out to scout the area,” Kier says. “Once we make the final decision that we need to plow, I call in the drivers and then Jeremy takes over.”

Oliver’s job at that point is to call in any subcontractors that may be needed, as well as the shovelers so they can report to their respective jobs, Kier explains. From there, Oliver maintains constant communication with all equipment operators in the field. “Any time that a site is completed, the crewmembers note it on their plow log and also call in on the two-way radio so Jeremy can check off the site on his dispatch sheet,” Kier says. “That way, he has a running scoreboard of who’s where, who’s finished and he can guage which crews are ahead and which crews may be falling behind and make an operational decision of which crews can start heading to other sites to help out.”

By going over reviewing contracts, routes, crew responsibilities and equipment wear and tear early on, Pro Scapes’ crews are able to move from season to season almost seamlessly and make snow removal a profitable business staple.