Snow plowing and hauling, all winter

Plowing moves snow. Hauling removes it.

A plow pushes snow to the edge of the lot. In a light winter that is the whole job. In a normal Anchorage winter, and certainly in a year like 2023 when the city took record snow before Christmas, the edge piles grow until they eat parking stalls, block sight lines at the exits and start melting into the building in March. Hauling is the fix: a loader stacks the piles into dump trucks and the trucks take them to a disposal site. The Municipality does it for the streets on a published schedule, its Snow and Ice Control Plan explains the priorities, and private lots hire it. We run both halves: the plowing that keeps your lot open through each storm, and the hauling that takes the piles away when the edges fill up.

Monthly plowing contracts

A monthly contract puts your lot on our route for the season: plowed after each snowfall at a set monthly price, with the piles stacked where they can be hauled later instead of against the building. It is the arrangement most property managers settle on, because it turns a winter of 6 a.m. phone calls into one number on one invoice. What triggers a plow run and how fast we respond are set per property and written into the contract.

Who calls us

• Commercial property managers with tenant parking to protect.
• HOAs and condo associations whose roads have one plow lane left.
• Property owners who want one company for the plowing and the haul-off.
• Plow contractors who do not run trucks and need a hauling partner mid-storm.
• Contractors with a winter job site that has to stay open.
• Churches, schools and clinics where the piles have become a sight-line problem at the exit.

Where the snow goes

Hauled snow is regulated because it carries road salt, sand, oil and whatever else was on the lot, and it melts into the creek. The Department of Environmental Conservation sets siting guidance for snow disposal, and the sites in Anchorage are either municipal, the private Sand Lake dump on the south side, the newer West Anchorage site, or a contractor's own permitted dump. We tip at permitted sites only, the tipping fee is on the invoice, and we will tell you which site your snow went to. Dumping in a vacant lot or on the creek bank is illegal, and it is the property owner who gets the letter.

How plowing and hauling are priced

Plowing is priced by the month on a contract, so you know the winter's number before the first storm. Hauling is loader time plus truck time plus disposal. The loader is the pace-setter, so the trucks are scheduled to its speed; we usually run two or three trucks per loader on a Bowl lot. Per-load pricing works for a defined pile; hourly works for an open-ended clearing. Contract clients get hauling at the contract rate with a response window in writing. Our rates are on the pricing page.

What makes a lot easy or hard to haul

• Where the plow stacked it. Piles along the fence line, away from the building, load fastest. Piles against the building or over a landscape island cost an extra hour of loader care.
• Height. Loaders stack, but stacked ice above eight feet has to come down carefully.
• Room to turn a truck. A loaded tandem needs a lane and a swing; if the lot is full of cars, we haul at night or early morning.
• Gravel in the pile. Sanded lots put gravel in the snow, and gravel in the snow means the disposal site charges more or refuses it.

Season, capacity, and the honest answer on availability

From the first big storm to breakup the trucks are committed to snow first. Monthly contract clients get a response window in writing. Call-in clients get a real date; in a heavy week that might be a few days out, and we would rather say so than promise Tuesday and show up Friday. Outside Anchorage and Eagle River, hauling only makes sense for larger lots because the disposal sites are here, not there; the Mat-Su page covers what we do in the Valley.