Seasonal contracts, per-storm plowing and salting · Winchester and Front Royal

Settle the price of your winter in September, while you can still see the driveway.

Tell us how long the drive is, how wide, what it is made of and how deep before we come. You get a price for the whole season in about a minute — every storm included, no per-visit bill, and the same number whether February is quiet or it is not.

Price my season Call (301) 555-0142

Staked out before the ground freezes Every storm, no per-visit bill Salt and walks priced up front

Instant price for the season

One number, the whole winterEvery storm at your trigger depth is in the price. We do not bill per visit and we do not stop coming in a bad year.

We stake it in NovemberMarkers down the edges before the ground freezes, so nobody finds your wall or your culvert with a blade in February.

One price whenever you signSeptember or January, the number is the same. We do not charge more because it has already snowed once.

We tell you which is cheaperIf per-storm would suit you better than a contract, we say so. In a quiet winter it usually is.

Two ways to buy

One of these gives you a number on this page. The other gives you a phone call, and that is the honest answer.

It is easy to price both the same way and hope nobody notices which one was guessed at. We would rather show you where the line is, because knowing why one of them cannot be quoted online tells you something true about how snow actually gets moved.

Priced on this page

Seasonal driveway contract

A 60-foot two-car asphalt drive, three-inch trigger, salt on the apron, walks and steps: $606 – $772 for the season.

Everything that sets this price is knowable from a driveway in daylight. How long it is. How wide. What it is made of. How deep before we come. Salt or no salt. Walks or no walks. Somewhere to push the snow, or nowhere. None of that changes when it starts snowing, so there is no reason to make you wait for it.

Nothing quotes under $345. Over $2,400 we come and look instead, because past that you are not buying a driveway contract, you are buying a lane.

Not priced online, on purpose

Per-storm plowing, billed by the push

No number. The form takes your details and the route manager calls you back with a rate.

A push is priced by what is actually on the ground when we get there. Six inches of powder off a subdivision drive is fifteen minutes. The same drive after the county truck has walled the end of it with four feet of ploughed slush is forty minutes and a shovel, and nobody can tell which one you have from a form at four in the morning. A number given then is either a guess that is wrong or a ceiling we would have to charge to be safe.

What the form says, word for word: “We're booking this for the season ahead — we'll reach out when it's time.”

Two things worth knowing before you choose it. Per-push customers are cleared after our seasonal contracts, every storm, without exception. And in a heavy winter per-push costs more by March than the contract would have; in a quiet one it costs a good deal less.

What we do

Plowing, salting, walks and steps — from November to whenever it stops

One thing, for four months, properly. We do not mow in July and we do not turn up in a pickup with a borrowed blade in December because the landscaping got quiet. The trucks are ours, the salt is bought in September, and the routes are set before the first storm.

Priced on this page

The seasonal driveway contract

Every storm at the trigger depth you pick, from the first flake to the last. Staked out in November, plowed before you are awake, and one number agreed before any of it.

Priced on this page

Salt and ice melt

Plowing gets the snow off. It does nothing about the thaw on Tuesday and the sheet of clear ice on Wednesday morning, which is what actually puts people on their backs. The apron and the slope, or everything.

Priced on this page

Walks, steps and the front path

A plow cannot do any of this, so it is a person with a shovel and a blower, and it is the longest part of the visit. Priced for the season with the drive.

Callback, not a quote

Per-storm plowing, billed by the push

One storm at a time, for people who would rather take the risk themselves. The form captures everything; the rate comes back from somebody who has seen your drive.

Site visit

Lots, HOA roads and private lanes

A lot is not quoted by its square footage, it is quoted by where a winter’s worth of snow is going to be put. We walk it, we agree who carries the liability, and it goes in writing.

Site visit

Ice dams, steamed off

A steamer, a ladder and a person. We never chip one off with a hammer, and we do not re-hang the gutter it tore loose — that is a gutter company’s work and we will tell you who to call.

How we price

By the foot of driveway, and then by what you actually want done to it

The form at the top of this page uses our real rates. It shows a range rather than a single number because the slope, the culvert and where the snow can go are things we settle standing on your driveway, not in a form.

Measure the drive

Length is the only answer that multiplies, because it is the only one that is more work every single time it snows. Then width, surface, trigger depth, salt, walks, and whether there is anywhere to push the snow. The same questions we ask on the phone.

See the range

Midpoint plus or minus 12%. Nothing quotes under our $345 minimum, and anything over $2,400 gets a visit instead of a number. Ask for the drive open before 6am every time and the floor rises to $675, because that is staffing rather than plowing.

We stake it and sign it

Markers down both edges before the ground freezes, travel priced from your ZIP, and the number fixed for the winter. There is no seasonal rate on any of this and no surcharge for signing late — a winter costs what it costs whether you booked it in September or in January.

Service area

Based in Winchester. We say what the trip costs before we make it.

Your ZIP code sets the travel line on your estimate. A plow truck runs a route, so a drive twenty miles off it is not a longer drive — it is a second route with one customer on it, at three in the morning, in the thing everybody else is staying home from. That is why these figures are bigger than you might expect, and why you get to see them before you book rather than after.

Local: Winchester, Frederick and Clarke CountyZIPs 226xx
No travel fee
Over the Blue Ridge: western LoudounZIPs 201xx
+$60
Across the Potomac: Frederick County, MarylandZIPs 217xx
+$85
Everywhere else we can get a truck toAny other ZIP we can reach
+$140 and +8%

Notes for anyone evaluating the demo

Priced path. Pick Seasonal driveway contract, then: 60 ft, two cars wide, asphalt or concrete, a three-inch trigger, salt the apron and the slope, walks and steps Yes, somewhere to push the snow Yes, open before 6am No. Use ZIP 22601. The live pricing engine returns $606 – $772 with the disclaimer, and the lead lands in the demo account’s inbox. That is the contract this business sells more than any other: 60 feet at $3.40 is $204, plus $185 for the second car’s width, plus $150 for salting the apron and $150 for the walks, which is $689 of dollars with no percentage on top of it — the midpoint exactly.
Only one answer multiplies, and it is worth seeing on its own. Driveway length is a multiply; the width step, the salt tier and the walks are flat amounts added once for the contract; surface, trigger depth and nowhere-to-stack are percentages. Strip the priced path back to the plow line alone — 120 ft, one car wide, asphalt, three-inch trigger, no salt, no walks — and the rate shows through: $359 – $457, a $408 midpoint, which is exactly 120 × $3.40. Take the priced path and drop the salt and the walks, which is the contract a lot of people actually sign: $345 – $436, and note the low end is the service minimum rather than 12% under the $389 midpoint.
One answer at a time from the priced path, everything else held still. Gravel instead of asphalt (+18%) is $715 – $911. A two-inch trigger instead of three (+20%) is $728 – $926. A five-inch trigger (−15%) is $515 – $656. Nowhere at the edge of the drive to push the snow (+15%) is $697 – $887. Salt everywhere, every visit, instead of just the apron is $822 – $1,046.
A negative option, and a rule that fires on NO. The five-inch trigger is minus 15%, because a deeper trigger means fewer visits — the engine takes a negative percentage on a dropdown option perfectly well and most demos have nothing that uses it. The stacking question is rarer still: its rule fires when the answer is No rather than Yes, which widget/quote.php supports and almost nothing exercises. It is phrased positively (“is there somewhere…”) because that is the honest way to ask it, rather than as a double negative invented to keep the rule on Yes.
A rule that raises the floor instead of adding a fee. Take the priced path, drop the salt and the walks, and answer Yes to “do you need it open before 6am, every time”: the work itself is $389, but the rule lifts the minimum to $675 and the quote comes back $675 – $756. Being on the first run is a staffing commitment rather than more plowing — we are there before it has stopped snowing and again afterwards, whether or not you call — so it belongs on the floor rather than on the ticket.
The cheapest and the dearest this form will quote. The smallest thing it can describe — a 20-foot pad, one car wide, asphalt, five-inch trigger, no salt, no walks — works out at $57.80 and comes back $345 – $386, the service minimum. At the other end, 250 feet with a turnaround, salt everywhere and the walks is $1,527 – $1,943. Both ends of the $350-to-$900 range the plan expects for this trade are inside that, with room either side.
Travel zone. Repeat the priced path with ZIP 20132 (Purcellville, over the Blue Ridge): $659 – $839. With 21701 (Frederick, Maryland, across the Potomac): $681 – $867. Any ZIP outside the listed prefixes, whether 20874 (Germantown) or 75001 (Texas), falls to the catch-all zone: $778 – $990 — the 8% first and then the $140, in that order.
Over the ceiling. Enter 400 feet with a turnaround, gravel, a two-inch trigger, salt everywhere, walks Yes, nowhere to stack the snow No, before 6am Yes. The midpoint works out at $3,434.85, clearing the service’s $2,400 ceiling, so the widget routes to “we’ll come and look” rather than printing a number. That ceiling is set where it is on purpose: past $2,400 this is a private lane rather than a driveway, and a lane is on the third service.
The winter mode, which is what this account exists to show. Pick Per-storm plowing, billed by the push and answer anything at all. No price appears, ever: qf_price() returns at the mode check with routed=winter and the visitor reads “We're booking this for the season ahead — we'll reach out when it's time.” The lead is captured in full, every answer included. Not one question on that service carries a pricing rule, deliberately — a rule there would still compute a subtotal that nobody is ever shown, which is configuration that looks live in the editor and is dead in the engine. docs/trade-pages-plan.md section 9 puts a push at $40 to $90 in this market, and this page never prints that as an engine figure, because the fixture cannot compute one.
The mode is checked before any season logic, and that is a known gap rather than a feature. The plan names this trade in its engine-gap list: “Season is a percentage only, and cannot flip mode.” So the per-push service routes in July exactly as it does in January — run its command with --date=2026-07-04 and the answer is identical — and a real Saltbox would flip that one service to instant in December and back in April, from the service editor, in about four seconds. The demo shows the honest state of the engine rather than pretending to a date-aware mode that does not exist yet.
Two routing reasons from one service, decided by the ZIP. Out-of-area is tested before the mode (includes/quote-engine.php, step 6), so the per-push service with ZIP 99901 shows the out-of-area decline rather than the winter sentence — two different messages from the same service with the same answers. Worth trying in that order; it is the clearest demonstration in the estate of the routing sequence actually being a sequence.
The third routing path. Pick Commercial lots, private lanes and ice dams: site-visit mode, so it never shows a price either, and the visitor reads “For a job like this we like to see it first, so we'll be in touch to book a quick visit.” With the contract service’s over-the-ceiling case above, that is four of the six reasons qf_route_message() can return, all reachable from this one page. A lot genuinely cannot be priced from a form: the question is not its square footage, it is where a winter’s worth of snow goes once the first three storms have filled the corners, and that is a conversation standing in the parking lot in October.
Where this account stops, and who it hands the rest to. Melting an ice dam off a roof edge is ours — a steamer, a ladder and a person, and no hammer near it. What the dam did is not: a gutter pulled off its fascia, shingles lifted at the eave, a wet soffit. That is Overhang Gutter Co.’s and Summit Ridge Roofing’s work, and the site-visit question’s help text hands it over by name rather than quoting it. This account is also deliberately not a landscaper who plows — Evergreen Lawn & Landscape is that business, and trades/landscaping.php tells lawn contractors to run a snow service on the same account, which is this fixture built.
Two questions carry no pricing rule at all, on purpose. The per-push service asks how long the drive is, validated between 20 and 400 feet, and prices it at nothing — the help text says out loud that the answer is for the route rather than the price. The commercial service asks for a space count the same way. Both prove the widget renders and validates a number that changes no figure, which is a legal and useful thing for a service to ask.
The photo question carries no rule. Photos never move the price — the engine skips them entirely. Nothing is uploaded either: on a demo the visitor can tick “I have photos I can send” and the lead records “Has photos to send, not uploaded”, which is the owner’s cue to ask for pictures on the call. Attaching the image itself is on the roadmap.
The missed-call text-back, and this is the trade where it matters most. On a storm morning every truck and every phone this business owns is on a route, so every call is a missed call — there is no version of this business that answers them. The CallMitt page replays which of five messages a caller would get and why. Straight about where it stands: nothing on this platform delivers a text message yet, because there is no SMS gateway and no carrier registration, so the reply becomes an outbox row marked queued and stops there — and a row still queued an hour later is retired as too old rather than sent late. The rules, the hours, the weekend and holiday branches, the quiet hours and the opt-out handling are built and running.
The widget’s ultramarine matches this site because the account’s key carries a theme color; the same script on an agency’s client site would carry the agency’s color.