Snow Hauling.

When you have no on-site stacking room, when municipal bylaws cap stack height below your snow accumulation (downtown Toronto Yonge corridor, downtown Vancouver, Plateau Mont-Royal, Vieux-Montréal limit stacks to 1.5 metres), when sight-lines from parking stalls would be blocked by stacked snow, when accessible-route compliance prohibits piled snow near building entrances, or when leasehold restrictions in commercial tenancies require snow removal from the site. Many downtown commercial properties default to hauling on every major storm event because stacking is structurally impossible — a 100,000 sq ft downtown commercial lot may have only 200 sq ft of available stack-out area. We assess stacking capacity at contract signing and recommend hauling, on-site melting, or hybrid based on the property layout.

Per-truckload pricing runs $250–$500 (tandem-axle, 8–15 cubic metres) depending on city, distance to municipal snow dump, and traffic conditions. A typical 100,000 sq ft commercial parking lot in southern Ontario or southern Québec generates 15–35 truckloads of snow per major storm event (20+ cm accumulation), or roughly $3,750–$17,500 per storm in hauling cost alone. Smaller properties generate proportionally fewer truckloads. Properties with frequent hauling requirements (downtown commercial cores in Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Ottawa) often spend $50,000–$200,000 per winter on hauling. At this volume, contracted on-site snow melting via a trailer-mounted Trecan or Snow Dragon unit becomes economically competitive — see /equipment/snow-melters.

Municipal snow dumps. Most major Canadian cities operate one or more designated snow dumps — City of Toronto operates 4 active dumps, City of Montréal operates 8, City of Vancouver operates 2, City of Ottawa operates 3. Dumps are typically free or low-fee to commercial haulers under municipal permit; the permit specifies which dumps a hauler may use, what hours the dumps are open (typically 24/7 during the season), and any restrictions on contaminated snow (snow with significant motor-oil contamination from underground parking access is often not accepted). At the dump, the snow melts naturally through spring and the meltwater is processed through municipal stormwater infrastructure with grit and oil-water separators. Some cities (notably City of Edmonton, Whistler) operate active snow-melting infrastructure at the dump.

In most cases, no — municipal snow dumps require a commercial hauler permit, and most permits are issued only to contractors with active commercial snow-removal contracts, with documented insurance, and with a Class 3 operator certification for the assigned dump routes. Some municipalities do issue homeowner permits for single-load residential hauling at specific small dumps, but these are limited and require advance application. For commercial properties, the practical path is to contract a hauling service (snow.ca or equivalent) rather than to attempt self-haul. The cost difference is small and the permit / insurance complexity is significant. We bundle hauling with commercial snow-removal contracts at a per-truckload line-item rate documented per storm event.

Hauling runs as a second operational layer after plowing. The plow trucks clear the lot first and stack snow in a designated stack-out area; the hauling fleet arrives 4–24 hours after plowing completion to load and remove the stack. The delay between plowing and hauling exists because hauling crew capacity is the binding constraint — a single tandem-axle truck running a continuous route to the municipal dump takes 60–120 minutes per load including loading, transit, dumping, and return. For storm-priority properties (hospital frontage, retail open-by-time, hotel entrance), hauling runs concurrent with plowing using a dedicated loader and a dedicated truck rotation; this is contracted separately at a premium because it requires committed equipment that cannot serve other properties during the same storm event.