The challenges of removing snow and ice during a pandemic

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Removing snow and ice in New England can be a lucrative business.

But Roger Dunn says the pandemic is taking a bite out of his bottom line.

“There’s definitely a drop [in business] from last year,” Dunn said.

Dunn owns and operates Roger’s Snow Removal and Landscaping in Boston. Since more people are working from home, he’s noticed more clients opting to save cash, and do their own yard work and snow shoveling.

“People have been cleaning up their own leaves,” Dunn said. “With our existing customers, some of them wanted lower pricing, some of them couldn’t sign up obviously, [because of COVID-19].”

TOWNS AND CITIES CHANGING UP SNOW AND ICE REMOVAL

The pandemic has forced communities to slash budgets across the board.

But snow and ice removal is one part of a town’s budget immune from the virus.

“It might be the one thing [COVID-19] hasn’t influenced,” Plymouth Town Manager Melissa Arrighi said.

Because winter weather is so unpredictable, local governments are allowed to go over a snow removal budget, something known as “deficit spending.”

“It’s one of the few areas under state law that allows you to legally overextend the budget. the deficit is made up on the next year’s tax levy,” said Chelmsford Town Manager Paul Cohen.

KEEPING DRIVERS SOCIALLY DISTANT

You won’t see services cut this winter, but you might notice fewer plow drivers, anyway.

“We try to run two men in a truck, because it’s an exhausting, tiring job, and I think you’ll see much less of that,” Arrighi said.

Like all of us, plow drivers will have to social distance themselves from other workers and sanitize each truck after use.

Arrighi said these precautions could slow down the snow removal process.

Cleaning the equipment is also an additional cost, Lowell Chief Financial Officer Conor Baldwin said.

“The way that we see COVID impacting [the snow removal] operation has to do with cleaning protocols for the pieces of equipment,” Baldwin said.

HELP WANTED: PLOW DRIVERS NEEDED

Communities like Plymouth and Lowell are also struggling to hire drivers this winter.

“We had trouble last year, too. We had to go up on our prices last year to try to attract people last year. I don’t think that’s pandemic related,” Arrighi said.

Cohen said fewer people want to take on the brutal hours, the wear and tear to their vehicle, and the expensive insurance policy required to plow snow.

“Even some of the employees don’t want to work the overtime and odd hours,” Cohen said. “That’s what makes it challenging because you could get called in at three in the morning and you really don’t have too much advance notice.”

“A lot of the workers today don’t want to put in those type of hours,” Cohen said.

Arrighi and Baldwin said they’ve had to raise their rates in order to attract more drivers.

“I would think it would be the opposite because you think maybe this is a way if somebody maybe lost their job during the year, you can supplement some of that annual income, but we haven’t seen it,” Baldwin said.

PRICE OF SALT AND SAND UNAFFECTED BY PANDEMIC

While the price for construction materials and equipment has gone up, the cost of salt and sand have not, Baldwin said.

“We haven’t really seen the prices of salt and sand be affected too much by the pandemic,” he said.

“There’s other cases in construction projects where we’ve seen unit prices or material increase because of supply chain issues. We haven’t seen that with salt,” Baldwin said.

EMERGENCY SHELTERS WILL NEED TO ADAPT

Local communities will need to reconfigure how their emergency shelters distribute water, food and beds for residents forced out of their home during a bad storm.

“That’s going to look very different,” Arrighi said. “Before, you’d see people huddled together, talking, sharing a meal. We have to arrange for sleeping quarters [in a pandemic.]”

Arrighi anticipates a lot of changes for how a shelter will operate.

“We’re working with our emergency management director on that now,” she said.

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