Snow Shoveling.

For residential snow removal visits, walkway snow shovelling from driveway to front door is included in the standard scope. The crew clears a 1–2 metre wide walkway path, clears the stair landing, and clears the area immediately in front of the door. Optional add-ons include rear deck clearing, side-yard gate access, detached garage walkway, and mailbox approach. For commercial properties, walkway shovelling is a separate line item priced per linear metre or per stairway because the scope varies widely (a warehouse may have 50 m of walkway, a hospital campus may have 2 km). All shovelling work carries the same photo-proof documentation as the plowing work.

snow.ca dispatches snow shovelling crews from local depots in 80+ Canadian cities. The crew you get is a local crew, not a sub-contractor; they live in your city, know your street, and are accountable through the dedicated property manager or dispatch hub for any service issues. Use the city search at /cities or enter your address at /quote — the platform matches you to the nearest depot online. For residential customers, shovelling is bundled with snow removal at $79–$129 per visit or $580–$960 per season. For commercial customers, shovelling is quoted separately based on linear metres of walkway and number of stair landings.

Yes — ice melt application is included on request for residential customers and bundled by default in most commercial contracts. We apply pet-safe ice melt blends (Safe Paw, Paw Thaw) on residential walkways and stair landings unless customer preference specifies otherwise. For commercial ADA-compliant surfaces we apply calcium chloride or treated ice melt at the 12–16 lb per 1,000 sq ft rate required for high-pedestrian-traffic surfaces. Application is done with calibrated hand-spreaders (Spyker, Lesco, Earthway), not visual estimation. The product used, the application rate, and the application timing are all documented in the per-visit photo-proof report.

Depends on scope. A standard residential walkway (driveway to front door, 5–15 metres of 1–2 metre path plus stair landing) clears in 6–12 minutes. A condo townhouse row of 20 units clears in 60–90 minutes with a 2-crew dual route. A commercial property with 200 m of perimeter walkway and 8 stair landings clears in 90–150 minutes. ADA-compliant ice melt application adds 15–30 % to total time vs. clear-only because the spreader-application step is separate from the shovelling step. Speed is not the right metric for shovelling — completeness is. Every shovelling visit completes the full mapped scope before the crew leaves the property; partial completion is grounds for re-dispatch at no additional cost.

Snow shovelling is manual clearing with a hand-shovel; snow plowing is mechanical clearing with a truck-mounted or skid-steer-mounted plow. The two are complementary, not alternative. Plowing clears the driveway and parking-lot surfaces (10x faster than shovelling on large areas); shovelling clears the walkways, stairs, decks, gates, and detail areas (the only option on surfaces a plow cannot reach). A typical residential snow removal visit uses both: the plow truck clears the driveway and end-of-driveway windrow, the crew member shovels the walkway from driveway to front door. Commercial visits add a third tier: a skid-steer pusher for the lot bulk, hand-shovel crews for the walkways and stairs.