What its like to be a Snow plow operator -a Long cold day in the life of a snowfighter

Well, the other TLV is dead in the water. That one's dead. Yeah, it's not plugged in. No, it's plugged in, but the battery is dead. All right. Don't worry about it. I got it. I'll do all the work, man. You're not going to be very tight cuz you're Are you all the way in? You're not all the way in yet. Is that what she said? Yes. We have just one joke in our company and we use it over and over and over again. There's nothing like recycling. All right, we got it. We got to bury up tight. Tim wants you to go in further. Uh Bla, now when you're plowing snow, you're going to end up working day and night and sometimes day again. [music] What I mean is there's no breaks when you're a snow plow. You can't stop until the system leaves the area and you get all of your lots perfectly clean. All right, guys. We're touring everything that we snowplow here. So, everything that you see is part of our account. Uh this is 1.6 6 million square ft that we cover, which somebody count that out to be like 32 acres. All right. Now, guys, I plowed this 1.6 million square ft as a subcontractor, and I plow an additional 500 to 600,000 square ft as a contractor or so, which I thought was pretty cool, uh, you know, kind of way of phrasing it. Um, makes it just seem pretty massive. Then I realized growing up on a [music] farm that if my dad heard 32 acres, he'd be like, "That's nothing." He was a crop duster, so he'd go out and spray 400 acre fields. So 32 acres doesn't [music] seem like much. So all of the snowing Okay. So, one of the things, Elliot, when you scrape like that, you're not getting any more down pressure than if you scrape at a lesser angle. What could happen is you're going forward, if you hit something, you can bend slightly bend the hydraulic arms, the hydraulic cylinders, and then you'll get a weird leak out of them. Okay? All you got to do is have just the slightest bit. It doesn't improve anything. Now, if you hit something and you're less likely to bend those cylinders, Now, as a subcontractor, I get paid by the hour, but I also have accounts set up under my own contracts that pay me no matter what. That means, guys, if I don't even go out and snowplow at all, I still get paid for the entire winter. It's not as much as if I was working, but it covers all of my equipment expenses. I get paid if it doesn't snow, but I get paid even more if it does. Now, if you guys want to learn how to set up your own accounts to protect yourself and your business over the winter, no matter what happens, whether it snows a ton or it doesn't snow at all, go over to Dirt Monkey University because the good news is is right now we are putting on an intensive training seminar on how to optimize your snow plowing. But it goes further than that. We're also going to be dovetailing that into an entire bidding and estimating series and wrapping that up with what we call the Big Boss Workbook. None of this is available anywhere else but at Dirt Monkey University. The winter time is when you guys should be shoving your heads full of information, not playing the Xbox. Now, check this out. This thing is freaking massive. The amount of snow [music] this uh Quattro plow handles is insane. Look at him. He's going. He's articulating around [music] the corners. What a hot shot, actually. I love it. So all of the snow inside of here has to get pulled out and then we have to push it all the way down to over here. Um so we just toured one building. [music] Now the other building, let's see the the backho may be coming by here pretty quick. Got to look for cars that goes over there. So all the snow in this lot goes up here. Here's the next building right here. This tour is going to take a while. I may have to I may have to shut you guys off cuz it's a long tour. Um, we're going to go see how the coffee shop boys are doing. We got to work our way around. This is all part of what we plow here. So, you can see Blaine is moving snow that way. That's good. Dialysis is cleared. That's good. Shovelers have not showed up yet. Shovelers got a big job out here. They use a four-wheeler. I am Yes, I am going down the note way. But that's one of the the few perks of driving a snowplow truck is you get to go where other people don't. [music] All right, guys. We're going to break in here for some quick B plow action. As you see the snow coming by, what I want you to look at as I'm showing you guys how you can angle each blade to capture the snow. On the next pass, watch is how I have a big pile of snow coming right at us. And then last minute, instead of it knocking the camera down, what I do is I grab that driver's side blade and I flip it to push the snow to my passenger side to avoid the camera. Here it comes. Now, I'm going to do this one more time, but this time we're going to flip the snow from the passenger side toward the driver's side. One of the main advantages of a Vplow is the ability to control which way the wind rows go, as well as you have an increased carrying capacity. And now back to our regularly scheduled program. That's our neighbors. You can see they're using a big loader. And um same pusher blade that we're using on a TLB. 12 14T. That's really typical of what you're going to see for a midsize loader. That is the same thing that a TLB can handle. TLB stands for tractor loader backho. And the reason I prefer tractor loader backhos is for our company they're more versatile. It gives us the ability to go out, dig an addition, put a pusher blade on it, do snow removal in the winter time. It's more of a allse type of a machine for our specific needs. I mean, I've driven both, owned both, and I would [music] buy a TLB any day over a payloader for put using a 12 or a 14t snow pusher. We're not [music] We wouldn't put a 16footer on a TLB. Slippery snow. Slippery snow. Snow is slippery. Nothing worse than sliding into a curb. Okay. Actually, sliding into a car. Sliding into a car is worse than sliding into a curve. Or I had a guy hit a light pole. Yeah. Yep. One of the bad things about TLBs is that big boom arm on the back and an inexperienced operator hooked right onto one of those telephone poles. All right, so we plow this. It wasn't here. This was years ago. Oh, here's a question some of you guys had. [music] Why do all of your equipment have the IC sticker, Interstate Company's logo on it? Well, we actually sell all this out, which I actually prefer to do. I don't I don't have to worry about invoicing or collecting or being the go-to person. So, we plow all this, by the way. Um, I have one person that I deal with. He handles all of the different managers for all of these different accounts that we we're doing this tour on. Uh, he coordinates everything. He coordinates the salt. He coordinates the the the sidewalk crews. I coordinate the lot [music] clearing uh crew. So, I take that off his plate. I actually do the best I can to get as keep as much off from his plate as possible because uh Ryan, I've worked with him for years. He's a good friend of mine now. Uh he's a great guy. Interstate company. He's a great company. Absolutely love working for these guys. All the years I've worked for him. Probably one of probably the best company I've worked for. Actually, it is the best company. So, um they slapped their stickers on my equipment and you know what? I'm a it's a proud partner with as far as I'm concerned. Okay. So, we're back plowing. We plow all this. Plow all this in here. So, if you guys have a company that you uh work with or plow with, sub out. So, we plow all this. This is actually our snow stockpile site. So, all of the snow gets hauled into here and dumped. We will literally fill this entire lot up before the year is over from hauling snow. Uh so if you guys are considering being a subcontractor, be careful. Boy, there's some crappy contractors to work for. In fact, I have worked for more crappy ones than I've worked for good ones. Just dot your eyes and cross your tees. Make sure your contracts are clear. Um, if you have payment terms, some words of wisdom, if the contractor gets behind on payments, then you need to start jumping up and down and screaming like a little kid, cuz you there's a there's there's no excuse for it. More times [music] than not, when a contractor gets behind on a payment and they're [music] dealing with massive accounts like this, that means the company's in financial trouble. And that also means that you may not get paid at all. So don't let a contractor of yourself, don't let a contractor come up with excuses why they can't pay you. That should be one of the first early signs that they're facing problems of their own bigger problems. And you guys will be on the losing end of that. So anytime you don't get paid, they're going to pay themselves first. They're going to keep their own doors.