# How many hours to do a single route?



## 1BadHawk (Nov 14, 2004)

Im trying to slowly increase my work load to a manageable amount. Right now it takes me about 4-5 hours to do all my customers once. This includes a a few commercial lots and a couple residentials. Also includes travel time. Im not sure if I should take on more work or not. I look at it as if a big storm comes through, will I be able to keep up with it? I'd like to get about 2 or three more customers increasing my route time to 6 or 7 hours, but I think that might be too much.

How many hours would you all consider a safe and manageable schedule?


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## SCSIndust (Mar 4, 2003)

This past storm where we got 5", it took us 14 hours to just plow everyplace. Grant it, a lot of the places were first timers for us, so our times will go down naturally. But 14 hours is pushing it, especially since we had to go back out and salt. 14 hours with salting would be ideal for me, but I like those crazy hours.


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## Vaughn Schultz (Nov 18, 2004)

Takes me 10-14 hours on a good snow.


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## Makndust (Feb 6, 2004)

Takes us about 12 hours when we get about 1" snow to complete one round. Then we go back and sand if needed. At 3-4" its gonna take us about 20% longer. Most of my customers understand when we are running a little late. My biggest fear is a breakdown. Last time we were finished up and the reverse in the pickup went out. In the shop for about 3-4 days. I guess we lucked out. I want to find an old beater for a backup. My wife wants me to go into debt farther and buy a backup with all the bells and whistles that our blade pickup now has.


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## Mark Witcher (Feb 21, 2004)

It depends on your customer base. It takes us 12 hours to do our route on an average snow fall. We do our large comercial lots first , then small commercial , apartment complexes, and res are last. Got to keep the big payers happy. Luckily or maybe just smart on our part, we have everything lined up and start with the furthest away from the shop and work our way back.No traveling back and forth. It really helps to keep your plow route in a general area and not take on any jobs that would require more than 10 minutes of drive time out of your route.


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## badranman (Dec 22, 2003)

I agree with Mark. If you have 6 drives in 2 miles vs 6 drives each 2 miles apart the time is going to vary. Try and condense your route to maximize your plowing/hr. How long they can wait will vary with each customer. Some don't care if it's 10 hrs as long as you come and they don't have to shovel.


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## Robhollar (Dec 27, 2003)

Rite now Im doing some work for a buddy of mine and on my route I have 54 drives and 5 commercial properties, and on a 2 inch snow it takes me about 6 hours to finish....Rob


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## 1BadHawk (Nov 14, 2004)

Right now I have about 9 customers and 10 sites, a funeral home I do has me doing 2 of their properties, a third if I want it , but its about 10 miles out of the area I cover. Otherwise it takes me about 5 hours to do everyone once, on a light snowfall of 2-3 inches. Which works out good when we get a heavy snowfall over several hours, because by the time Im finished, I can return and start over without an excess of accumulation.

Id like to take on a few more accounts, perhaps ad another 2 or 3 hours to the route, but im afraid if I do that, then if we get a heavy storm the first guy will have 4 maybe more of snow by the time I get back to him. Id hate to make the customers mad so Im kinda undecided as to what I should do. Granted, it doesnt snow a lot for a long period of time here too often, so maybe I would be better taking on a few more customers and lengthening my route a couple hours. 

I thought I'd ask to see what you all do, and since some of you run 12 or more hours, i think i may be a little over cautious at 5 hours.


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## LB Landscaping (Sep 4, 2002)

41 Residentials, 2 parking lots and a private road take me about 8 hours, a little less if I really get moving.


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## 042500hd (Oct 10, 2004)

*3-4hours*

22 drives and 2 parking lots takes 3-4 hours depending on time of day. Three right next to each other on a main road can take 45min. if traffic is heavy.


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## gene gls (Dec 24, 1999)

*1BadHawk*

I have 11 customers in a 6 mile loop that take 5-6 hours depending on the storm. I wouldn't recomend a customer base that would take any longer. When I first started my route was 18 miles long,7-8 hours, and on a heavy storm I had a mess at the end of the run and a few unhappy customers.

Gene


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## Mark F (Dec 16, 2004)

I have 72 commercial accounts, 7 residential accounts.
Out of those accounts I plow/sand 23 commercial, 3 residential, the rest are just sanding accounts that other guys plow. My normal route takes about 18-21 hours. If I do everything it takes about 38-46 hours. I sleep in my truck alot. The last storm, I didn't turn of the truck for 4 1/2 days, used 240 gallons of fuel. Only went home to make coffee, eat, feed the copilot [dog].


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## Strongmd (Nov 30, 2000)

We aim to have our whole route done in 4-6 hours in a single visit, 4-5" storm. We plow 400 driveways and a few commercials.


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## tessdad (Jan 25, 2005)

I plow 37 residential drives, takes about 4 1/2- 5 hours for a 4" snowfall. During the blizzard we had a week ago, it took me more than 8 hours for the first run and more than ten for the second time. If I had maxed myself out with an 8-10 hours 4" run time, I would not have been able to handle my route. The phone was busy enough toward the end, wondering " where is my plow guy?"


The person I bought my route from groomed the customers to a one plow cleaning, done near the end of a storm. The minimum amount of snow was set at " if the town plows are out, we will plow your drive." my customers do not want to be plowed at 1" or even 2". We charge per plow (average $30) with 1/2 charged for a clean up. For the blizzard, it is being charged as two FULL plows. I don't have any prepaid or contracts. I do a good job, they pay, nice deal. Often they refer others, I gain a customer or two, nice deal.One or two get upset, leave, NICER DEAL.


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## SGLC (Jan 7, 2005)

Strongmd said:


> We aim to have our whole route done in 4-6 hours in a single visit, 4-5" storm. We plow 400 driveways and a few commercials.


Matt,

You're not a single operator are you?


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## jhook (Jan 24, 2004)

Takes us (us being me and one driver - 2 pickups) about 35 hours between us. I do about 2/3 of it.


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## Strongmd (Nov 30, 2000)

Hi Jeff,
I'm not a solo operator, we run 10-11 trucks each storm.


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## DJL (Oct 28, 2003)

1BadHawk said:


> Im trying to slowly increase my work load to a manageable amount. Right now it takes me about 4-5 hours to do all my customers once. This includes a a few commercial lots and a couple residentials. Also includes travel time. Im not sure if I should take on more work or not. I look at it as if a big storm comes through, will I be able to keep up with it? I'd like to get about 2 or three more customers increasing my route time to 6 or 7 hours, but I think that might be too much.
> 
> How many hours would you all consider a safe and manageable schedule?


Seems like you are a solo operation. Have you considered employees or subcontracting? Or subcontracting yourself when you are done with your route?


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## justme- (Dec 28, 2004)

You have to consider the area you live in. I have about 28 drives- takes me from 6-9 hours depending on time of day, traffic, road conditions, etc. When the city calls the plows in and I am driving through 8 inches of snow on the roads between drives it get's longer, as does trying to get around at 5:30 am when all the " I gotta get to work early" people are making nusenses of themselves.

My route time has dropped from 12 hours to the current and my route hasn;t changed much over the past couple of years (call it experiance I guess).
I personally don't want more than about 30 customers or less than 26 based on my past years plowing. If you regularly have heavy snow falls you may not be able to keep up- 2 inches/hour is very unusual here- noone can keep up. 1 inch/ hour happens often enough that I keep it in mind. Keep in mind to that many times you'll have to do your route more than 1 time per storm back to back- I am often doing my route 2x straight- then I am on call for the rest of the day for customers who the city cleans up the street and blocks them back in and such.

It's important to diferentiate the 1 man/1 truck people from the 5 man 5 truck and 10/10 guys and their route times. 400 customers with 10 guys in 4 hours is irelevent in comparison to 1 guy 1 truck for example. Each man/truck combination per route is the important answer.


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## Strongmd (Nov 30, 2000)

Justme,
I don't think it's quite as different as you think. If you wanted to break it down to a common denominator, it would be driveways per truck-hour or dollars per truck-hour. If 6-9 hours is acceptable to your customers, that is great! I like to shoot for 4-6 hours so that if it's a big storm, we can get to everyone in a reasonable amount of time and still be able to begin a second rotation. I add or subtract accts. from each driver's route to do what's necessary to have everyone finish in that time frame. Some guys do 40 drives in 6 hours while some do 50 in 4 hours. Everyone is doing between 6 to 16 driveways per hour. My goal is to continue making my routes as dense as possible. We don't make money if our plow isn't on the ground so I try to connect the dots if I have any accounts with significant drive time in between.


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## drplow (Nov 7, 2004)

five hours is our key, when we get 6-7 inches. not too long to be the last in line and not too short to be not worth it. we run 2 trucks and do around 65 drives with a couple commercial in there. if i did it myself it would take 8 to 9 hours and that would be too long to wait for many of my customers. next year i plan to add around 20 more because of the speed of my blizzard 810.


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## Triton Snow Systems (Aug 6, 2004)

*route time*

We are running three trucks about 7.5 hours for our entire route. One pass only


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## Jube (Nov 8, 2004)

Triton -

I bet it would take you a half hour less if you didn't get distracted by those Harley's.


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## qualitylawncare (Jan 16, 2004)

my route takes about 21-25hrs by myself. I have two subcontractors doing some work for me, so if I did it all it would be about 35hrs for an avg 3-4" snowfall.. Including time to salt..

Hours really don't bother me. I usually only get 2hrs of sleep every night anyway between paperwork and working at both of my offices and then working at the ski area.


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## pcs (May 23, 2001)

We only book 4 hrs per machine. We can go out at 3:00AM and have everything cleared and salted by 7:00AM before rush hour. We have been doing it this way for the past two years we have yet to have a phone call regarding a customers lot that was not cleared on time. 

In the past we would book everything soild. 8 - 10 hrs per route but the phone would not stop ringing with customers woundering were we are.

Do your phones ring off the hook?


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## mole (Oct 18, 2003)

I have 54 accounts one truck 53 are res one comm. only takes 4hrs with 6" granted my route is 3miles. out of the 53, 34 of them are on my street. the rest are a driver and a 8iron away. can't wait for summer. already working on getting my lawn contracts back.


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## DeereGuy (Dec 12, 2003)

I can't believe some of your route times. My customers would hang me by my thumbs if they didn't see me every 5-6 hrs in a fast (1"+/hr) storm system. Naturally, everyone wants to be plowed out right before work in the morning etc. No wonder I'm not making the $ some of you guys are. My route is only about 5 hrs with 4-6". I need some non-demanding accts.

I cleaned up a drive this morn. and the guy comes out and tells me that he appreciates the good job I've done. This is the third time I've been there for an 8" accumulation in 24 hrs. He then asks me if I'm going to buy myself a bigger truck with all the $ I've made this winter. Like this is all gravy money and I don't have a family to support or bills. Like the $35. he pays me for a 6"- storm, to plow his 100 ft drive w/ 3 stall garage, is going to put me on easy street. I'm telling you, I have to get out of these wealthy neighborhoods. After this year, I really have a bad taste in my mouth. I've been sensitized. I just don't have any more tolerance. :angry:


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## plowman777 (Dec 15, 2002)

last one took 9 hours to do 22 drives...im real spread out and do too nice a job.
i have many retired who arent in a hurry to get out. except to a dr or church etc. i do the ones who work or on hills first.

i am now starting 1-2 hours before the storm ends to get a jump. so that makes the last person 6-7 hour wait. not bad...depends what time of day the storm ends.


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## drplow (Nov 7, 2004)

some of you guys have very long routes which obviously equals very long wait times. if i was my own customer, i would want to get out of my driveway within 5 to 6 hours or have a set time in the morning. any longer and i would go with someone who could do it sooner.


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## salt shaker (Sep 10, 2004)

*I would almost agree*

DeereGuy,
We do 192 drives with a mixture of wealthy to mid class clients. I hear more complaints from the mid class than from the wealthy, and they all get the same service, no discrimination for a poor vs. rich person. They all pay the same amount of money depending on the size of their drive. We avg. 4- 5 hrs. a route during a 3-5 inch snowfall, and I still get complaints from people telling me we are not there soon enuff! :yow!: Are you kidding me, these people expect us to camp one truck in their drive for the entire storm and never leave. I had one guy tell me that our routes are to big and I should have more people to do the work, I told him if I did that his rates would definitely go through the roof. Rte.1 45 drives between 4 developments, all within 1 mi. radius, Rte.2 40 drives same development, Rte.3 37 drives in 2 developments right next to each other, Rte. 4 (my route) 36 drives in a 4 mi radius, 6 developments (but I manage the other routes so this keeps me close to all 4 operators in case of problems), Rte.5 24 drives (added this one because rtes. were to large at the beginning of the season. I get at least 7 diff. calls from clients and it the same seven all the time. I will uphold our contracts and deal with these people, but their names are in the red for next year. I to have very little patience left for stubborn people, though I will still do this again just like the past 14 years.  :crying:


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## JPMAKO (Dec 10, 2003)

I have 75 Residential driveways and 2 Commercial lots
Average time to complete the route depends on what time it stops snowing. Usually 4.5 - 6 hours with 3 trucks.
Bigger storms usually one pass to open everybody up 3-4 hours and then clean-up after it stops 6-8 hours with 3 trucks.

I have a pretty tight route
Here is the general layout of my route

Me 40 driveways and 1 lot. All within about 3 miles of each other (Many grouped together)
Employee does about 25 driveways and 1 lot. All within 4 miles of each other (some grouped, some scattered) 
Sub 1. does 10 driveways that are very scattered. 

I have had the same route for about 10 years so any new business that I get 
that is not in my immediate service area goes to another truck or gets subbed out.

Jason


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## DeereGuy (Dec 12, 2003)

Well, for me, the lesson is to have a more efficient route. I'm all over the place. Driving when I should be plowing. If I could line up more customers closer together I could effectively lower my price and make more money. This is easier said than done of course. Lots of competition. I'm also leaning towards just doing Commercial work as it lessens the hassle of billing ( and hopefully receivable collection).


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## jsaunders (Jan 28, 2003)

Salt shaker- what do you average per driveway? 192 is a good amount in 4-5 hrs. It must be nice to have that many so close together. Nice pay day per 3-4 inchs. Joel


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## salt shaker (Sep 10, 2004)

*In answer to your Question*

jsaunders,
We do these 192 drives with 5 drivers, myself included. I thuoght I stated that in my post but I guess I did not (sorry). Our times per drive vary with the amount of snowfall. Our smallest rte. takes about 3.5 hrs., and our largest rte. takes about 5 hrs. We make every effort to be done by 6:00 a.m and p.m., but if it accumulates to our trigger depth of 1.5" any time after 1:00 a.m and p.m. obvioiusly we cannot be done completely before 6:00. This has been a problem since most of our snowfalls this season have not cooperated with our game plan this year. So we have had to make a few adjustments. I would still like to fill in the gaps we have in our routes, just to consolidate them even closer for next season. I will tell you that I can not stand residential driveways but they do bring in some much needed cash flow as each customer had to pay in full before the season even started. That was nice.


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## jsaunders (Jan 28, 2003)

Salt shaker- I did understand you had 5 drivers- still alot of drivesways. Why a trigger of 1.5"? My min. is 2" yet I will wait for 4-6'' to be on the ground untill we go out, since everyone in NH can get in and out no problem. Joel


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## salt shaker (Sep 10, 2004)

*I wish...*

Joel, 
I wish I could wait for there to be 4-6", but my customers would freak. The 1.5" trigger depth is mainly what I use to manage my drivers. If I get 1.5" and it is still snowing I'm calling my guys out. On the avg. it takes all 4 of them 1.5 hrs. to be on site, by that time I could have 3-4" on the ground, but our actual trigger depth is 2" just like most people. I know of snow plowers around where I live, that have 4" triggers, but the area all my routes are in would never suport that much accumulation. Even though each and every one of them drives an suv. I do also have some customers that think their rear wheel drive BMW is a great winter vehicle, and I do get some calls from them more than the others. I've been thinking on getting t-shirts made up for all of our commercial and residential workers that might say on the back " We plow snow so you can drive your SUV." I don't know it sounds a little korny, any ideas.


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## DeereGuy (Dec 12, 2003)

Salt shaker, It seems that I'm not far off as far as route times. My route used to take me about 4.5-5 hrs. Now with no place to put snow, it's more like 6.5 hrs. even though I know exactly what to do after 12 events. 

I run a triangle route like this. 8 miles for 3 accts then 5 mi for 2 more and back 5 more miles to complete the other 10 and a Comm., which are spread out over 6 mi or so. Its pitiful. How do you get so many in one development? A mailing etc. I've only been doing this for a couple of yrs. and it seems that most the calls are the drives no one wants. I also didn't get a few because I wasn't willing to drop my price. Another problem I've noticed is that many developments here in town built homes with a descending drive with garage under ( read tall retaining walls) to utilize the house footprint and I won't even attempt to sign these folks. Most of them use a snow blower. In fact I would guess that more folks snow blow themselves, than retain plowing services. This doesn't include the 25% that shovel. In a 40 home subdivision, a reasonable number of potential customers would only be about 15-20. 10 of these are perfectly happy with their current snow contractor. 5 have their landscaper do it as part of the yearly pkg and the 5 that are left can't afford a landscaper so they beat your price down until you tell them to take a hike. These numbers aren't exact obviously but I will say that only one of my customers is in a subdivision. He has an 80 ft drive with a three stall garage at the end with a place 10 ft x 10ft for snow. He haggled me down to $35. per 6" and I always push at least twice. He has the best deal of any customer. Being coastal most storms are 4-6 inches. That said, Half of my customers are rural with long drives. 3 are rural with difficult stone drives that nobody wants and the rest are in town with small drives and no place to put snow. Regardless, I still like plowing. It's a nice break and I still make more money per hr expended after expenses than working wood!


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## salt shaker (Sep 10, 2004)

*You got the idea*

we did a mass mailing of about 2000 letters. Got almost 10% of them back, unfortunately some we did not want but did anyways. We try not to do gravel drives but did get a few signed up before we realized our mistake (won't do that again). Some of the developments we have done work in the past in, and others were unhappy with the new billing procedures of their last snowplower. We hope next year we will be doing more work in each development that we are in now, since I have heard some positive feedback from some of our current customers that have talked to their neighbors about us. We'll see what happens.

I would have to agree that most of our drives are the ones nobody wanted to tackle, but do a good job on those and the rest will fill in. Market yourself maybe by putting your name on the truck so their neighbors see who is doing such a good job, make sure you are there each snow and even go above the contract at certain times and the word will go around that you are the best.


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## DeereGuy (Dec 12, 2003)

Salt Shaker,

Mailing huh. Folks on this site don't tend to favor mailings, it seems, but you have done it successfully. It is something I will consider in the future as I may move to a different town. I like the idea of concentrating my marketing on those in the area I wish to serve. 

I do know that a newspaper ad did nothing for me. $220. out the window and not one call. A few of my current customers have asked around for me and have not come up with one new acct. It's the last time I spend that money on an ad. I've had the best luck with small signs made up by a sign shop with vinyl lettering. I ask customers if I can put them up on their lawn for a couple of weeks and move them around. My truck lettering has not sent me many calls but does look professional.

Thanks for that info


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## salt shaker (Sep 10, 2004)

*I guess it works*

I would say I hope 10% is acceptable for a return. I was doing the math and what we spent on our mailing was .02% of what we got in revenue from the accepted plow accounts. I think mailings work if they are done correctly. Watch out though, as I stated before, we did get some drives that I wish we had never had. My suggestion would be to drive around your target area in the off season and get an idea of the drives in that area, set your price that you need to receive to be profitable and check out the drives that you get a return from. Make it clear in your mailing though of what your stipulations are and be true to those. I received many phone calls from people that wanted me to see their drives before they signed up, and make sure that I could do their drive how they thought it should be done. This helped me see what kind of trouble we might get into , and allowed me to educate the customer as to what physically could be done in a real life situation. You would be surprised how many people have no clue what it takes to actually plow their drive. I believe 110% that if you educate the customer, you accomplish two things.

1. They know what to expect from whoever they hire.

2. Shows that you are professional and care about their property.

This allows them to compare your standards to someone else's standards, let's hope that you care more about their property than the other guy.


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## Lux Lawn (Jan 5, 2004)

salt shaker said:


> DeereGuy,
> We do 192 drives with a mixture of wealthy to mid class clients. I hear more complaints from the mid class than from the wealthy, and they all get the same service, no discrimination for a poor vs. rich person. They all pay the same amount of money depending on the size of their drive. We avg. 4- 5 hrs. a route during a 3-5 inch snowfall, and I still get complaints from people telling me we are not there soon enuff! :yow!: Are you kidding me, these people expect us to camp one truck in their drive for the entire storm and never leave. I had one guy tell me that our routes are to big and I should have more people to do the work  :crying:


I have the same problem,people telling me my routes are to long it takes to long for service.I run 3 trucks each truck is typically out 5 hours.It can be a little longer depending on traffic and whether its wet snow or not.But if these people think about it if you are out working and book yourself for a 5 hour route, they work an 8 hour day if they are still not happy and want you to cut back more you would never make any money,I have no problem telling them that.Also I told the one guy who said I was not there fast enough for him that if I booked my routes for a 2-3 hours I would be living in a cardboard box.

Salt Shaker---Where you from?


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## salt shaker (Sep 10, 2004)

Newbury,work in Auburn


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## salt shaker (Sep 10, 2004)

Newbury, 10 miles south of Chardon.


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## Lux Lawn (Jan 5, 2004)

salt shaker said:


> Newbury, 10 miles south of Chardon.


I'm not far from you i'm in Richmond Hts.


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## salt shaker (Sep 10, 2004)

*PM me*

I don't want to clutter this thread up with mindless banter so pm me and we'll talk more there if you want.


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