A Twin Cities winter averages 7.6 snowfalls of two inches or more — enough that most households stop guessing in November and buy the whole season at once. Say where the property is, what has to be cleared besides the driveway, and whether you are on a corner. You will be connected with an independent operator who plows your streets.
Twin Cities Snow Plowing is a referral service. It does not plow, shovel or salt, and does not offer to. Every job is carried out by an independent snow removal operator working under their own company name, their own equipment and their own insurance.
Seasonal contracts · Per-visit plowing · Sidewalks and walkways · Saint Paul alleys · Roof snow and ice dams · Commercial and association contracts
Most snow removal sites will tell you a season contract saves money. Run the arithmetic on real Twin Cities numbers and that is not quite true, and it is worth saying so plainly.
The Minnesota DNR has counted snow events at the Twin Cities station since 1891. The average season brings 7.6 snowfalls of two inches or more — the depth at which a residential contract typically triggers. At the $75 to $100 a visit that established local operators charge, that is $570 to $760 of per-visit billing in a normal year. Seasonal contracts for the same property run $600 to $750. Those two numbers land on top of each other.
The snowiest season on record here was 1983–84 at 98.6 inches. The least snowy was 1930–31 at 14.2 inches — a sevenfold spread, and no forecast in October tells you which one you are about to get. A seasonal contract moves that risk onto the operator. It also buys route priority, which is what actually matters at 5 a.m. after fourteen inches.
There is a second, quieter reason. Per-visit customers are cleared after seasonal customers, because seasonal customers are the route. In a normal storm that difference is an hour. After the December 2010 storm that collapsed the Metrodome roof — 17.1 inches, the largest December snowfall on record here — it was considerably more than an hour.
How the two contracts compare →The single largest variable in a Twin Cities residential quote is not the driveway. It is how much sidewalk comes with it — and that is set by a city ordinance you did not choose and a lot line you probably did not think about when you bought.
A Minneapolis or Saint Paul corner lot runs close to double an identical interior lot in the suburbs, and there is a specific reason for it. Both cities require the property owner to clear the full width of the adjacent public sidewalk down to bare pavement within 24 hours. A corner lot has two frontages instead of one — and in Minneapolis the corner property must also clear the curb cutouts and the crosswalk ramps, all the way out to the street gutter. That is three to four times the shoveling of the house mid-block, and no equipment shortcut makes it go away.
Full pricing, broken out →This surprises people who move across the river, and it is worth being direct about: the City of Saint Paul has never plowed alleys. Not as a budget cut, not this year — never. The city’s own words are that it “has never plowed, salted, or sanded alleys in winter.” Minneapolis, ten minutes away, plows its 400 miles of alleys as an ordinary municipal service.
What Saint Paul has instead is the alley captain: a neighbor who organizes the block, collects from each household and hires the operator. A 2019 University of Minnesota study the city itself commissioned found 66% of surveyed residents with alleys were doing exactly this. The arrangement is common in West Seventh, Highland, Macalester-Groveland and Frogtown.
The city also declines to help you price it. It keeps no contractor list, offers no estimates, and notes that plow companies need no license to operate in Saint Paul. So here are the real numbers: contractor bids for a season run $500 to $1,500 for the alley, which works out to roughly $30 a household on a typical block and about $600 for the whole alley.
Alley plowing, and a cost splitter →One thing worth doing yourself, free: pile shoveled snow on the left side of the driveway as you face the street. The city plow’s next pass then carries snow away from your apron instead of back into it. Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Plymouth all publish this advice and almost nobody follows it.
In Minneapolis and Saint Paul it is you, within 24 hours, full width, to bare pavement — and both cities will send a crew and bill you if you do not. In Minnetonka, Bloomington and Plymouth the city clears public sidewalks itself. Same metro, opposite answer, and the line falls at the city boundary. City by city →
Your roof is almost certainly fine. Design snow load here is 35 psf and undisturbed snow has been measured under 15 — it would take more than two feet of light snow to approach the limit. Clear a roof because of ice dams, not because of collapse. What ice dams actually cost →
Minneapolis runs a three-day even and odd cycle. Saint Paul runs night plow and day plow routes, and the day routes are not signed. Getting this wrong costs $56 and a ticket in Saint Paul, or $222 and a trip to Van White Memorial Boulevard in Minneapolis. Both systems, side by side →
Lots, medical and retail frontage, condo and townhome associations, and private-road subdivisions the city will not touch. Commercial triggers run one to two inches rather than two, and the contract structure is the real negotiation. Commercial snow and ice →
A driveway apron, a boulevard walk, a Saint Paul alley, an eave full of ice, a parking lot that has run out of places to put the pile. Each one is a different quote, and each is carried out by an independent operator rather than by this site.
Give the address, the driveway size, and whether there is sidewalk frontage or a corner. That is enough for a real seasonal number rather than a range.
Call (612) 712-4640 Get a Seasonal Quote
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