Snowfall turns into cold cash for some
For certain business people, snow is just like money falling out of the sky. All you have to know is how to scoop it up.
In his Ford 4x4, Chuck Lantzman, 29, of Mt. Lebanon, is one of the masters of the game. Thirteen winters ago, barely out of high school, he kept his landscaping business going through the winter by equipping his trucks with snowplows and salt sprayers.
Sunday morning, his fleet of 10 trucks was out by 5 a.m., making the rounds in Ross, Mt. Lebanon and Robinson, trying to keep pace with the snowstorm. By early Monday afternoon, on barely an hour of sleep, Lantzman was getting started on Beverly Heights United Presbyterian Church in Mt Lebanon. He figured he'd grossed $18,000 in 30 hours, and had six hours of work ahead of him.
Out on the streets, other landscapers, construction contractors and others with a plow and a dream were circling like hawks over a field of rabbits.
"I can make more money in the winter than I could in the summer, if you proportion it month by month," said Lantzman, owner of Chuck's Landscaping. "This year, I've already done $100,000."
With his right hand, Lantzman worked the gear shift on the column, a relentless metronome of forward and reverse. Simultaneously, he used just the finger and thumb of his left hand to toggle a joystick mounted on the dash. The joystick lifted the blade up and down, side to side, as Lantzman steered heaps of the stuff into a giant reef he was forming along the edge of the lot.
All the while, he punched between calls on his speaker phone, handling customers and troubleshooting problems with his crew. Lantzman was getting a lot of calls.
"I've had 25 calls this morning from residential alone," he said, even though he doesn't do residential.
Rates vary wildly from contractor to contractor, but Lantzman tried to put a snow like Sunday's into basic dollars and cents. Normally, he explained, he'd charge $140 for an average-size commercial lot, plus $80 or $90 for salt. That's up to 4 inches. Past that, he charges another third per two inches.
At just more than 13 inches of snow recorded by the National Weather Service in Moon, Sunday and yesterday morning's snow could make the average $140 plow job swell to around $350 -- before figuring in cost of salt.
And that's commercial lots, Lantzman said. They're eating up all his time. He figures if he could do residential drives after a snowfall like this one, he could add $50 just for showing up.
Not that moving mounds of wet snow is easy work.
John Gibbons is a worker, not a contractor, and he started his day at 7 a.m. shoveling out driveways. This is Gibbons' fourth season with McClellan Landscaping, and the worst one yet.
"Last winter, we lost money," he said.
At about noon, he and fellow employee Andy McClellan were clearing the drive and sidewalks of condominiums along Shady Drive East in Mt. Lebanon.
"It's been snowing so much, we've been busy all the time," McClellan said as he pushed another pile of snow off the drive with his shovel.
Gibbons and McClellan didn't have a plow attached to the truck they drove, nor a heavy-duty snowblower. They had two shovels, and four more stops to make before they were finished with their day.
"Hopefully, (we'll be done) before dark," McClellan said.
