# Liquid Calcium Chloride



## Wiedmann (Oct 16, 2012)

Decided to offer a new service to my snow removal business by starting to apply liquid calcium chloride for pre and post treatments. Bought a new 300 gallon skid sprayer set up for it. Been searching all over plow site to get some sort of price scale for a cost "per gallon applied" but haven't seen much. Seeing this is becoming very popular for commeical properties. 

I can get the product at $.90 a gallon ready to spray. Still stumped on what a fair price to charge for a gallon is. If I was to use the 3x rule it would be nearly $3 a gallon. Not a huge fan of that pricing scale. Anyone have some suggestions on what companies or yourself charge in your areas? I figured charging by the gallon is a better way to price it as some events could require more areas to be treated.


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## trustyrusty (Dec 31, 2008)

$2.50 - $3 a gallon where I'm from.


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## Wiedmann (Oct 16, 2012)

Seems very profitable. the only numbers i seen on here was a guy who said something like $6 a gallon and everyone was giving him a hard time. I know that price all depends on the price you pay for your liquid. I thought $.90 a gallon mixed wasn't bad at all.


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## Wayne Volz (Mar 1, 2002)

*Liquid Ice Melter*

I believe that liquid ice melters are going to be like granular ice melt. The more people that get into the liquid business the more it will get prostituted down to nothing. Sell this service based on the value not the cost. Liquid applications offer you the opportunity to sell your clients maximum protection; including immediate melting, less bonding, faster plowing time, less ice melter on the back side, etc......

We charge a minimum of 7 times material cost. We use a product that only requires 25-30 gallons per acre. I'm not saying that's the right price for you or anyone on here. That's just what we decided to sell it for.

Let it snow.


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## Wiedmann (Oct 16, 2012)

Wayne Volz;1551425 said:


> We charge a minimum of 7 times material cost. We use a product that only requires 25-30 gallons per acre. I'm not saying that's the right price for you or anyone on here. That's just what we decided to sell it for.
> 
> Let it snow.


The liquid I priced was to be put down at 20-30 gallons per acre or 20-30 gallons per lane mile. Would you say you have a hard time selling this service to your clients at this price?

I have a parking lot that I used salt on with this last huge snow storm and after the snow has melted away, the parking lot is a mess... full of unused salt that people are tracking into the units. The previous snow removal company used liquid for pretreatment only. Seems its becoming more popular but prices aren't as know as such as "a ton of salt or bag of salt applied"


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## Wayne Volz (Mar 1, 2002)

*Pretreat*

We sell it as a pretreat service generally. The post applications generally require a higher application rate per acre or lane mile.

We have not ran into much resistance. We can generally get our liquid pretreat application down below our granular application cost.

I would be happy to talk to you personally about how we do it if you would like to talk. There are many different ideas that contractors have on liquid and best management practices.If you would like to talk, you can reach me at 800-845-0499 on Monday if its not snowing.payup


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## Fourbycb (Feb 12, 2009)

I Get my Liquid Calcium at 0.90 a gal too and I resale it to my customers applied at 2.50 a gal in my area hope this helps. I sell it as a pretreater and when the customers see the end result of clean Ice free property they dont mind. When you think about it, It's still cheaper than a gallon of Gas .


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## Wiedmann (Oct 16, 2012)

Fourbycb;1551771 said:


> I Get my Liquid Calcium at 0.90 a gal too and I resale it to my customers applied at 2.50 a gal in my area hope this helps. I sell it as a pretreater and when the customers see the end result of clean Ice free property they dont mind. When you think about it, It's still cheaper than a gallon of Gas .


You're not far from my area so I'm guessing that would be a good price to compare to. At one point I was thinking anywhere between $3 and $3.25 but maybe that won't sell if everyone is averaging $2.50 to $3 a gallon. I def don't want to overcharge but don't want to sell myself short on the deal. It's no easier than salt as you have to buy it and store it for awhile


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## szorno (Jan 3, 2002)

Here is another thought for you. Figure out how much your costs are per gallon including fuel and truck wear & tear. Then add that to your liquid cost. Then double it. (retail used to call it Keystoning) I round up to nearest $.25. 
I use liquid mag delivered to my bulk yard tank. The delivery costs me a flat $400, so i add that to my total gallons cost and divide by the gallons in the tank to get a true per gallon cost. Then the gov't allows almost $.50 per mile for mileage deduction. I travel 13 miles before I spray a drop. Then my route adds another couple miles. (small accounts close together) Then I figure my time based on $40/hr minimum. (ok I work cheap, this is rural Colorado) I put it all together to get a true per gallon on the ground cost. Then I doubled it and rounded. I get $4 per gallon on the ground retail, and do sub work at $3 per gallon on the ground.(wholesale)
Just a different way to look at it.


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## Turfnazi (Nov 15, 2008)

Where are you guys getting the Ca from at those prices? I just started looking into using liquids on a new account that has a little over an acre of concrete in their parking lot. So far I haven't found any that cheap.


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## Fourbycb (Feb 12, 2009)

I work for a company who is a dealer for Rock & Liquid deicing material and they sell to me at cost because I am such a good employee


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## ryanbatz (Jan 22, 2011)

Does anyone know where to find liquid Calcium in the NY/CT area?


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## the_snoman (Jan 6, 2013)

We just switched to a calcium chloride based product that boasts an organic corrosion inhibitor. The product is called Boost with Calcium Chloride. http://www.caclwithboost.com/ Our local distributor sells it in tote size quantities for $1.39/gal which obviously isn't cheap but if it works I can live with that price. I know if we take a large delivery of it then we can get the price down lower. I'm not sure this product would be a good idea on sidewalks though because it is a brown color which could possibly track or stain but I don't yet have any evidence of that. As for pricing it out to the customer, well thus far we only pre-wet with it so we just include it in our fixed salt price and apply it only when needed. Some days we make more money salting than others but it beats having to provide multiple prices to the customer, track when it's used, and get it all straight on the invoices.

We started out last year trying a product called Beet Heet. Unfortunately we never got temps low enough to put it to a good test but this season when we did it didn't work and plugged the strainer and flow meter on our pre-wet system repeatedly. After talking to the distributor we believe it separated and that's why I couldn't melt anything with it but since it was coagulating in my tanks I decided it was going to be more hassle than it was worth. I was told it shouldn't need agitating for 2-3 months however it was plugging the truck in much less than 2 months last season when I tried it. I can tell you that flushing the truck tanks wasn't fun and I never got all the chunks out so I'm expecting more issues before it's all said and done.

I've been told the calcium product should be fine with a light agitation at the beginning of the season so we'll see how it goes. I do know that when we put it on some ice a few days ago it began cracking and popping, much like salt does so that tells me it's doing something. I tried it out on some thick snow pack a couple of days ago and it did slime things up quite a bit but couldn't burn it down as a pre-wet agent (very little traffic to help). Snow pack is always the toughest thing to remove so I'm not terribly surprised by this. I believe the only way to cut through heavy snow pack would be a liquid deicer (salt brine, liquid calcium, etc.) sprayed with an anti-ice system directly at the surface.

As always, time will tell with this product. I would recommend a person buy a small quantity of a liquid deicer to test for these issues before you invest much time, effort, and money into them and don't believe all the hype until you see it actually work for yourself.


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## szorno (Jan 3, 2002)

Ryan & Turfnazi-
We have a list that may help. Go to www.highcountryis.com Then click on the contractors corner. Look for the download of Pre-mixed liquid sources. Most of the better, common suppliers are on the list.
It might also be helpful to check out our blog. link just above download. Just remember to read from the bottom.
Good luck.


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## jrs.landscaping (Nov 18, 2012)

szorno;1564193 said:


> Ryan & Turfnazi-
> We have a list that may help. Go to www.highcountryis.com Then click on the contractors corner. Look for the download of Pre-mixed liquid sources. Most of the better, common suppliers are on the list.
> It might also be helpful to check out our blog. link just above download. Just remember to read from the bottom.
> Good luck.


Thanks for the link :salute:


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