# Columbus Landscaper Seeking Snow Removal in Cleveland



## Mid-Ohio Scaper (Aug 17, 2008)

I'm looking to get hooked up with a large/small local/national landscape maintenance/snow removal company that subcontracts plow trucks for properties they maintain. I would like to stay busy nonstop this coming winter, so when it's not snowing in Columbus 9 times out of 10 it's snowing in NE Ohio!


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## MickiRig1 (Dec 5, 2003)

Try Naragon 330- 745-4778. tell them snow plowing. They have a boat load of contracts in N.E. Ohio.


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## Mid-Ohio Scaper (Aug 17, 2008)

have you worked with this company before? Good people?


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## MickiRig1 (Dec 5, 2003)

I talked to a guy that worked for them last winter. He liked the company. He drove a company plow truck for them. They paid him cash at the end of the night. Which is unusual for a plow contractor.


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## ice-eater (Nov 12, 2006)

Hey You Buckeye Fan you!

It's that time of year, and we are about to start submitting bids on request that are coming in on our yellow pages advertising line, but are leery about doing so until we know we have at least one more good, COMMITTED driver to help handle the extra work load before we get "too aggressive" in adding more work. I see where you are looking for work OUTSIDE of the Columbus area, but maybe the problem isn't that Columbus has over the last 20 years or so only received sporadically deep snowfalls, maybe it's that you weren't aware of the few companies here IN central Ohio, that provide "red carpet service" to those clients that don't make us wait instill it gets "knee deep". Our's are customers that allow and NEED is to provide work when it's even less than one inch believe it or not!

We're a relatively small company now, much smaller than what we used to be back in the 90's, with about a half dozen to ten trucks max, all subs. Just large enough to provide the security of "back up" for one another, while still being small enough to compete in price and offer the professional but very personal service and communication to and with our customer base that they expect and deserve.

All of our drivers started with us by way of first having their own accounts, but then realizing sooner or later, that there are advantages to being part of "a larger team". But not one that is TOO large! Rather one that can show you how and why it's worth while to retain your share of a reasonable profit from what you have already built up, but then also enables you to gain even more by having the extra work load provided to you by and through the company. Sort of a "snow plower's union", made up of "once was independents", now joined together for once common cause: To have the benefits of a larger company structure and the advantages such as a constant access to salt and supplies and repair parts when no one else can get them, while still knowing that what you are offering is something that not only will forever be well cared for, it's also something that you are personally rewarded for. As in additional commissions paid on top of your hourly earnings!

It's a good business model that quite frankly, I'm surprised other companies haven't followed, as it has been proven to work well for customers and drivers alike. Therein, being what makes it work for everyone, along with simply understanding that it's the salt sales that allow the company that holds it all together, to exist, in order to earn some profit and continue, while passing on the plowing profits, nearly ALL of them, right back to the drivers that helped to bring in the business to begin with!

Any how, I used to operate the company back in the 80's and 90's under the company name of "Property Care Investments", but in 2000, changed it to "Ice Eaters Snow Removal, Inc." This coming week, and of course all next month, we will be submitting bids for additional work, and will need more help once again if we intend to grow. If I am confident that we can add some good drivers to our ranks, just one or two likely is all we will be looking to add, we would be able to bid more aggressively knowing that we can for sure handle the extra work load along with whatever you bring in as well. Hence, the reason I'd like to hear from you.

All of the business we have now, is boiled down to the "cream of the crop" customers. "Red Carpet Customers" if you will. Everyone we provide service for allows us here in this "bubble" of an "ecosystem" here in Central Ohio, where rain turns to slush and slush turns to ice, to begin plowing whenever we see fit and in their best interest! Meaning at a depth of not two, but at only one inch deep at the very most is where we then have authorization to provide full service, and even provide salting services and "partial plows" with salt at depths less than that! Mainly for their fiscal, and for their employee's and customer's safety protection, but also as a business model in order to get and then keep the very best of Guys that work with us, by giving them more constant work and a fair deal on what they themselves bring in, rather than them being forced to wait until the depths get even deeper like what most company's contracts allow for.

SO, whereas this may or may not right now seem to possibly represent some partial "conflict" in terms of when you can be available because of your own contracts as opposed to when we would need you as a part of the team, I would still like to talk to you about the idea, because I think if we sit down and discuss it further, you will realize that not only what I have described here, but how our other plans that I won't mention here in this forum, stand an excellent chance to benefit every one of the ten top guys that we seek to have by next year, before we do some very interesting things that have never been done before in this business. By anyone!. Ideas that can help to make all ten of us very comfortable, if you know what I mean, by the time any of us are ready to retire.

We need for now, just a couple more experienced drivers that are fully prepared to take on the challenge of being there when needed, EVERY time they are needed, and who have reliable equipment on BOTH ends of your truck set and ready to go. And for this we pay an absolute minimum of $50 per hour, with almost everyone we have, earning more than that! While paying for all of your drive time from one location to the next, this is something that working for yourself never pays. And it eats up as many as six hours for every 15 to 20 hour shift you are out there stuck in "snow day traffic", as you very likely already know.

At first, It may sound like it doesn't add up to all that much if you look at it compared to what you might try to charge your own customers for the actual time that you are actually ON their property. But when you consider the fact that last year, by the time most other companies had nothing to do at all until February at all, our guys had already logged close to or more than 80 hours each for the season before February began, and that didn't include the massive amount of hours that came their way during February when everyone else fell behind, except us. Because they were supposed to wait until it got to two or three inches deep before they were allowed to begin plowing, or because they were obligated to wait until the snow had stopped completely before they could begin! While we had been plowing and salting all along, every since it was less than one inch deep! Enabling us to be one of the only companies in Central Ohio that actually took "call ins" after we cot our "contract work" completed for the third time over, and gave those "call ins" out to our Guys where they were allowed to then take in whatever they could get, without owing the company back a single dime for the extra work that "called in" through our yellow pages line!

That meant that most of our crew had already made close to five grand for the season before anyone else's season even began last year, and since we were not just allowed, but obligated to "plow with the storm", when "the big ones" finally came last February, we got in two to three full plow and salt runs minimum for each of the storms that came in late in the season instead of just one plow for each location like most other companies' contracts allowed them to earn! Making last year one of the best in a long time, and allowing our crews to totally blow away the amounts earned by small independents that have their own "mini-route" to execute, and then are looking for something else to do by "cherry picking" what they can.

One of the downfalls as I'm sure you already know to being just a one or two truck fleet and not part of a larger "team", is what happens when your truck or plow goes down. When that happens you often wind up risking loosing not only that cash flow for that day or week, but any and all cash flow to ever again come from those customers later on! So to help Guys like you that have a few locations and want to continue earning a fair profit from them, while having "the best of both worlds", and of course help ourselves become larger in the process too, we have set up "deals" if you will, where if you want, you can bring your existing locations "into the fold", and know that they will be covered regardless of what happens to your one or two trucks as there are others to back YOU up no matter what!

The deal that is ultimately arranged naturally comes down to what is affordable and possible depending on contract size and other terms, but needless to say, we offer a fair compensation that allows you collect a "commission" on those properties for one, two or five years depending on how you choose to structure the deal, and join our team, if you choose to do so. Naturally, while enjoying the benefits of having lots of other guaranteed work while the contracts you currently have might otherwise be earning nothing, until the day DOES comes that "big snow" finally comes our way!

In any case, if this sounds like something you may be interested in, give me a call at 614-766-6800 and leave me a message via an operator so I can call you back on my dime, and maybe even arrange a time to meet and discuss it further.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Eric 
ice-eater
[email protected]
Ice Eaters Snow Removal, Inc.
Gahanna Ohio

PS: Something else to remember is that back in the 70's the "buzzword" that everyone was speaking of, well, phrase really, was "coming ice age". And it seemed that just as soon as that became what everyone was thinking, we entered into a 20-25 year cycle that proved to be warmer and with less severe of winters for us here in this part of the country than what if you're old enough, you remember us having those winters back in the 60's and 70's. The 50's too!

So don't be too surprised if soon after the last ten years of everyone shouting "Global Warming" at the top of their lungs, if it turns out as many scientists are now pointing out even that ultimately MUST eventually lead to and be a predecessor of the next greater overall "global cooling" to come, as the untalented ice melts in the Northern Atlantic melts, sinks to the bottom of the abyss, and then eventually aids in stopping the intercontinental sea water cycle flow from the massive circulation that has kept us from returning into another "ice-age" every since the end of the last "mini-ice age" of nearly 650 years ended in the late 1700's! Thus, even if there IS truth to "global warming" as a whole, it might very well turn out to be the necessary beginning of a reversal of the trends we have witnessed over the last two decades or more!

Personally, I think that what we have been seeing regardless of how much truth there is to being a link between man's industrialization and global worming via increased carbon dioxide emissions depleting the ozone layer above us and therefore being the "cause of global warming, it pales in comparison to what is now known for fact about the effect of sun spot activity and how it runs in cycles, that it not only seem to, but exactly mirrors our "relative" short term trends in weather severity from one generation to the next!

In part, because my sister is a teacher that has worked to a great extent on sun spot research for NASA, and in part because of my own longevity in this business and naturally being interested in all things "winter snow and plowing related", I have, I personally believe, "seen" things that DO indicate that we are actually as far as this part of this continent goes, about to enter into a period of colder winter temperatures, and more snowfall rather than the opposite, as we have already gone through that "cycle"" of greater sun spot activity which has now come to an end.

It is actually a fact, that the entire farmer's almanac has always been in terms of it's long term weather and climate "per zone" predictions, been based on these observed cycles of sun spot activity and that alone! And we are most definitely, right now last year and this, entering INTO what is supposed to be one of the quietest periods of sun spot activity in the last 100 years OT MORE, over the next ten to twenty years!

So, since it's also been proven that even the entire "El Nino" phenomenon, is directly linked to these sun spots cycles and quite literally the extra heat of even just a few degrees that passes into and through our atmosphere when there are periods of increased solar activity taking place, I'm not going to "wager on", less severe winters for our area over the next ten to twenty years, but on MORE severe winters to "come our way. And a return more so to the winters that I remember as a kid back in the 60's rather than the near "lack of them" in the 80's and 90's! Back to VERY cold and snowy ones!

Naturally, I could be wrong. But I thought that you, and others might find it interesting to at least take note, that believe it or not, even more evidence exists to believe that the entire North-East portion of this continent will experience in and over the next ten to twenty years, a period of gradually colder and snowier winters, than exists proof that "global warming" is actually caused by man, and the increase CO2 emissions in any way even close to, yet alone more than the very simple and rational explanation of the fact that we have just left a period of the largest and longest lasting solar sun spot activity known to have existed in several hundred years of keeping track of them! And now, that cycle has reversed!

I don't know about you, but it sure makes me wonder if instead of having less severe winters in store for us soon, if we aren't about to start seeing much more severe winter weather pattern fall upon us! At least in this part of the world! (And yes, I admittedly base that on a much more limited set of facts than everything else said above, but on facts and statistics, nevertheless!)

And one last thought.. Just remember all the reports of what a harsh winter it was in China and ALL of Japan last year! With three foot deep snow storms the rule rather than the exception! And then realize what a cool summer it has been for us here, in addition to how late of a winter "we received" last February when we virtually DID get "slammed"! So thinking of what we heard about what happened almost exactly on the opposite of the globe last winter, almost ALL winter long, by this coming winter, that may be us that gets totally slammed instead of merely passed by!

To me, I see it as being a lot like the stock market these days. Just as soon as everyone gets "comfortable" thinking they understand how it works and why, the entire model of how things work, suddenly changes and gets turned completely on it's head! And since we have a cause and effect relationship between the entire world's cold winter weather patterns, their severity, and that being connected to long periods of reduced solar activity, I think maybe we better not underestimate this known change of trends happening right now with our sun, nor the over tendency and pattern of human being to settle into ideas and rationale about what the future will bring, just in time to get shown who's really the boss!

And it sure isn't us in either case!

So cross your fingers! and hope for the best! It may still happen! Who really knows for sure?! Being in the snow removal business. MAY within another few years, "God wiling", be all it takes for you to make a living for you and your whole family, just from it!

Hey! I COULD happen!

E


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## iceyman (Mar 1, 2007)

ur posts are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too long...imo...


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## LawnProLandscapes (Nov 15, 2007)

omg your PS was longer than any of my posts


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## Mid-Ohio Scaper (Aug 17, 2008)

Hey Ice Eater,
I'm about ready to get in bed with Brickman, which can keep me busy till I can't handle it any more. What can you offer that they can't?


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