# Bidding Commercial



## jeremie24 (Oct 2, 2020)

First off any help would be much appreciated. I am currently looking into bidding for overall maintenance for a commercial property. I know where to be when it comes to the lawn and landscaping side but the plowing I am new too. This will be first year plowing commercially. I live in Indiana and attache dis photo and square footage of lot wanting help with. Any advice would be much appreciated.


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## Mistifier (Aug 21, 2016)

Don't know what you are using or if there is any requirements like where to stack for example. If nothing special and ur using a truck and 8' plow, I would call it close enough to price it at 1 acre.(generally the standard here b/c most charge hourly and u should be able to clear an acre in an hr) but your town might be more competitive then here.


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## Kinport (Jan 9, 2020)

To me it looks like that would take 45 minutes to an hour (assuming no more than 4-5 inches of accumulation). If your new to plowing you could plan on spending closer to 1.5 or 1:45 just to be safe. Just guessing from the photo but I would probably start by pushing everything from the smaller parking areas in front and behind the building out into the larger parking area and then windrow the larger parking area to one side or the other, and then stack it in the corner. If they want salt you could Probably plan on using 600-700 lbs. It’s probably less but that’s a good starting point.

obviously I’m on the other side of the country and can’t take a look at it. My numbers might be way wrong and should be treated as such.


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## Fourteen Contracting Inc. (Jul 5, 2019)

Painted islands! You're a lucky man. I'd probably price around $3000.00 - $3500.00 a month for it, salt included. That pricing probably doesn't help much because it's based on weather events up here which are probably far different that yours.... but painted islands!!!!


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## Plow Masters (Sep 30, 2020)

I developed a complex excel spread sheet about 12 years ago that consistently gets me to within 5% accuracy, but there are so many formulas it would be hard to type it all out.

It will be much easier once you've done a few plowings but to start you should figure out your hourly rate and I would just call around local companies to see what they charge for a similar piece of equipment to what you'd be running. You can also ask them to quote the property by pretending to be a potential client and have them send the quote to your personal email.

But from my experience estimating how long it will take you will always be off, even if you had lots of experience plowing... So you need Figure out how many sq.ft per hour you can plow at 100% efficiency by multiplying your machine width by the machine top speed. then divide by 20 to get a 5% efficiency rate.

Divide your hourly rate by number of square feet you can do in an hour to get your square foot rate. Then multiply by your square footage and add travel time based off Google maps x hourly rate and this should get you in the ball park to start for a per time plowing.

To get monthly rates you need to look at weather history for your area and find out how often on average it snows enough that it hits the threshold you'll be plowing at.

I also have formulas for pricing in the perimeter and a sliding scale for efficiency based off overall size.


Based off the dimensions you gave I would charge $175 per plowing or about $470 per month. The price allows for about 10minutes of travel both ways. My per month rate actually allows for 4 plowings per month based off our weather but I charge more per time as I can only invoice at the end of the month, it's higher gamble and I try and encourage customers to go monthly.

We do mostly buckshot (sand) here which I charge the same price for. Salt is not popular in my city, but the rare occasion that I would salt it would be 2.5x the plow price.

My calculator says it would take about 1.01 hours to plow with a single speed skid steer with 1 yard snow bucket. which means I could do it in about 15 minutes with an 11' winged plow on a truck

I hope that helps. If you have any questions let me know.

Also just to note in the photo you attached you didn't include the north parking stalls along the road, not sure if that was intentional but if not, make sure to included all areas to get accurate pricing.


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## MSsnowplowing (Nov 1, 2012)

Fourteen Contracting Inc. said:


> Painted islands! You're a lucky man. I'd probably price around $3000.00 - $3500.00 a month for it, salt included. That pricing probably doesn't help much because it's based on weather events up here which are probably far different that yours.... but painted islands!!!!


A month? that would around $15,000 for the season, I want to move there and do snow if you getting that kind of money for a small site like that.


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## Mistifier (Aug 21, 2016)

How many visits per month?


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## dieselss (Jan 3, 2008)

Guess its not that important.....


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## Meezer (Apr 3, 2010)

jeremie24 said:


> First off any help would be much appreciated. I am currently looking into bidding for overall maintenance for a commercial property. I know where to be when it comes to the lawn and landscaping side but the plowing I am new too. This will be first year plowing commercially. I live in Indiana and attache dis photo and square footage of lot wanting help with. Any advice would be much appreciated.
> 
> View attachment 207013


Do you have any idea what the average yearly snowfall totals are for the Indy area is?


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## CCSnow (Jan 25, 2016)

Meezer said:


> Do you have any idea what the average yearly snowfall totals are for the Indy area is?


22 inches from what I found online.


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