Commercial Snow Removal.

Three standard structures. Per-visit at $0.025–$0.055 per square foot of cleared surface — best for properties under 50,000 sq ft with variable storm frequency. Seasonal fixed-fee — a single monthly or seasonal invoice that absorbs storm-count risk, best for properties over 100,000 sq ft and for any property with budget predictability requirements. Per-event with minimum — a per-storm rate with a guaranteed minimum number of paid events regardless of weather, best for retail and hospitality with open-by-time obligations. Pricing locks at contract signing and indexes to a fuel-and-salt price floor. We do not bid low and upsell mid-season; we quote the real cost of the real service.

Standard commercial contracts include plowing on every triggered event, ice control (pre-treatment brine + post-storm salt or treated salt blend), sidewalk and walkway clearing, stair and ramp clearing with ADA-compliant application rates, snow stacking in designated areas, GPS-stamped photo proof per visit, monthly billing reports with hours and material usage, and a dedicated property manager for service issues and escalation. Optional line items include on-site snow melting (trailer-mounted unit), snow hauling to municipal dump, parking-line repainting after winter, and 24/7 storm-priority dispatch with sub-2-hour SLA. All standard items carry the $5M GL insurance and $2M E&O on the management layer.

Standard commercial response SLA at snow.ca is 4 hours from a 2 cm trigger, the same as residential. Many commercial contracts negotiate tighter SLAs based on the property's operating requirements: 2-hour response for hospitals and emergency services, "open-by" SLAs for retail (cleared by 7 AM, before customer arrival), "continuous monitoring" SLAs for hotels and 24/7 facilities, and pre-treatment SLAs that trigger brine spray 24–6 hours before forecast precipitation. Tighter SLAs come with a 15–30 % premium because they require dedicated dispatch capacity. We do not offer SLAs we cannot reliably deliver — every contract specifies the response time we will actually meet on every storm.

Snow stacking is a designed operation, not a default. Before contract signing we walk the property and identify the stacking area — typically a low-priority corner of the lot, a landscape island, or a designated stack-out zone. Stack heights are limited by sight-lines (snow piles cannot block driver visibility from any parking stall), drainage (stacks should not pile over storm drain catchments), and lease restrictions (many commercial leases cap stack height at 1.5–3 metres). For properties with no stacking room, we contract on-site melting (trailer-mounted snow melter) or hauling to a municipal snow dump. Both add per-event line items priced at the time of contracting. We document stacking locations in the contract so there is no mid-season dispute about pile placement.

Industry-standard minimums in Canada are $2M general liability for small commercial accounts and $5M general liability for any property with significant pedestrian traffic (retail, medical, hospitality, condo, school). snow.ca carries $5M GL on every commercial account regardless of property size, plus $2M errors-and-omissions on the management layer for documentation and dispatch failures. Slip-and-fall claims average $340,000 per incident in Ontario (the most-litigated province) and are the dominant liability driver in commercial snow operations — the photo-proof reporting standard at snow.ca is designed to provide indemnifying evidence that the property was cleared and salted per contract specification at the time of any claimed incident.

Standard contracts include a 30-day notice cancellation clause with a wind-down fee equal to 1 month of average monthly invoiced amount. Mid-season cancellation is rare — the contract renewal rate at snow.ca is 91 % over the past 5 seasons — but the option exists for ownership changes, property sales, and operational restructuring. We do not penalise legitimate mid-season cancellations beyond the wind-down fee. For dispute-driven cancellation (service issues, billing disputes, performance failures), the contract specifies an escalation path through the dedicated property manager and regional operations manager before formal cancellation. Most service issues are resolved within 7 days of escalation without contract impact.