Commercial · 2026 to 27 season
Commercial snow removal and ice control in Oshawa.
Snow from $3,450 a season
Commercial snow removal in Oshawa, Whitby and Ajax runs on seasonal contracts, November 15 to April 15.
Book by November 1. Every commercial site is walked and surveyed before the first storm.
- $5M liability, you named on it
- Site log and photos on request
Green in summer. Clear in winter.
The arithmetic first
Per storm, or seasonal? The honest arithmetic
Some owners prefer to pay per storm and we will quote it that way. It is worth seeing the numbers first.
Oshawa averages about twenty-seven days a year with measurable snow. A commercial site is not one visit per snowfall: a storm usually needs a pre-treat, a push while it is still falling and a cleanup once it stops, and freezing rain needs salt runs with no plowing at all. A realistic commercial winter is 45 to 60 attendances.
Take a Standard plaza of around 18,000 sq ft. Seasonal Full Service is $7,200. The same site at per visit rates, $285 a visit and $155 a salt application, is roughly $18,900 across fifty attendances with thirty salt runs. The breakeven lands around the nineteenth attendance, some time in January. Per visit only wins in an unusually mild winter, and both numbers go in your proposal.
Service levels
What each level commits us to
Plow and Clear is for a low traffic site with forgiving hours. Most plazas, condo corporations, offices and schools sit on Full Service and stay there. Zero Tolerance exists for the addresses where a fall is a serious event, and medical buildings, seniors' residences and busy retail are the obvious ones. If your site is one of those and we cannot honestly hold that standard at your address, with what is on the truck and what is already on the priority list, you will hear it at the survey rather than in February.
| Plow & Clear | Full Service | Zero Tolerance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trigger | 5 cm | 5 cm | No trigger depth: forecast-driven, before accumulation |
| Pre-treatment | No | At our discretion | Before every forecast event |
| Response: overnight | 7:00 AM target | 7:00 AM target, or the site's own opening time if earlier | continuous through the event; no response window applies |
| Response: daytime | within 8 hours of snowfall ending | within 6 hours | continuous through the event, with a target two-hour cycle between passes, 24 hours a day |
| Salt & de-icer | Billed per application | Unlimited, included | Unlimited, plus anti-icing brine |
| Standard held | Safe and passable | Safe, passable, cleared to surface | Bare pavement throughout |
| Site log | On request | Monthly, photographed | Weekly, photo and GPS stamped |
| Return visits | On call | Automatic after drifting or freeze-thaw | Continuous monitoring |
Response times are counted from once it stops snowing, except at Zero Tolerance, where we stay on the site through the event.
Pricing
Seasonal pricing
Unlimited visits, no cap, no per-storm invoices. A brutal winter costs what a mild one does, because that risk is ours.
A commercial snow season in Durham Region starts at $3,450 plus HST for a compact lot of up to 10,000 square feet, and that price buys unlimited plowing and clearing at the 5 cm trigger from November 15 to April 15.
Where that figure comes from, and the three things that move it on a particular property, are worked through in what commercial snow removal costs in Durham Region, beside the published event count that an honest per visit quote has to be built on.
To price a commercial lot in Durham Region, Northline Property Care walks the property, measures the plowable area and the linear metres of walkway and steps, and returns a written seasonal price and a per storm number within 48 hours, at no cost.
| Site size | Roughly | Plow & Clear | Full Service | Zero Tolerance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compact: up to 10,000 sq ft | up to 33 stalls | $3,450 | $4,400 | $6,400 |
| Standard: 10,001 to 25,000 sq ft | 33 to 83 stalls | $5,600 | $7,200 | $10,450 |
| Large: 25,001 to 50,000 sq ft | 83 to 165 stalls | $9,650 | $12,400 | $18,000 |
| Major: 50,001 to 100,000 sq ft | 165 to 330 stalls | $16,000 | $20,500 | $29,700 |
| Campus: over 100,000 sq ft | 330+ stalls | Site visit | Site visit | Site visit |
Count your parking stalls and multiply by 300: a stall plus its drive aisle is about that, so a 60 stall plaza is roughly 18,000 sq ft. HST extra.
What we will tell you that others may not
Ontario sets no depth and no deadline for a private commercial parking lot, and the hard clock on yours is municipal rather than provincial. In Whitby the Clean Community By-law allows twenty four hours from the accumulation. In Pickering it is stricter again: Property Standards By-law 7887/21 section 36(d) asks that exterior parking areas, fire routes and laneways be free of ice and snow accumulations at all times, with no grace period written into the clause at all. Two towns, two different standards, and both of them tighter than anything the Province puts on your asphalt. The whole chain is set out in commercial snow removal Pickering.
This page said until October 15, 2026 that no Durham municipality sets a deadline for a private commercial lot. That was wrong, it was wrong in our favour, and it is corrected here rather than quietly deleted.
Rock salt stops working below about minus 10 °C. In a Durham cold snap it becomes grit sitting on ice. No contractor can salt their way around that, so we would be cautious about anyone promising bare pavement at minus 18 °C with ordinary rock salt.
What actually works in deep cold is clearing early, clearing completely down to the surface before anything bonds, and switching to a calcium chloride blend on the walkways and entrances where the falls actually happen. That is what we do, and it is written into the contract rather than promised verbally.
What happens when it snows
Before
We watch the forecast from November 1 and text you the timing and the plan before it starts.
During
Commercial runs before residential, in contracted priority order, with a mid-storm push on long storms.
After
Lot widened to the true edge, walkways and steps to bare surface, then salt. Salt goes on after clearing, never instead of it.
The morning after
Freeze-thaw check on every site by 6 AM. Yesterday's meltwater is today's black ice.
Common questions
What is the trigger depth?
5 cm on every commercial contract, unless you want a lower one, which we can do and will price. Some contractors quote 8 cm and it looks cheaper on paper, then a whole winter of 6 cm falls sits on you.
Is unlimited really unlimited?
Yes. No visit cap, no overage clause, no per-storm invoices. Worth asking every contractor you speak to, because some seasonal contracts do cap visits and bill beyond it.
Are walkways and steps included?
Included in the scope we quote, with the linear metres we measured so you can compare quotes properly. This is where cheap prices hide: steps cannot be plowed, they are hand work on every attendance.
What happens in an exceptional storm?
A 30 cm event is not one visit and we do not price it as one. We pre-treat where your level includes it, push through the storm so the lot never has to carry the whole fall at once, and make the full cleanup pass once it stops. None of that is billed on top, because the seasonal price is unlimited and a bad winter is our risk rather than yours. The honest part is the timing: at Zero Tolerance the two hour cycle is a target we work to, and in the worst hours of a storm that size it stretches. You will hear from us while it is happening rather than afterwards.
Who is liable if somebody falls?
That depends on the facts, and any contractor who gives you a confident blanket answer is not being straight. What we control: the $5M limit is bound before your first serviced day and names you as Additional Insured, and every attendance is logged and photographed, so the facts exist when somebody asks sixty days later.
Residential clears at 3 cm, which is 1.2 inches. Commercial clears at 5 cm, which is 2 inches. Two depths, two contracts, and the numbers are never copied between them.
The work, photographed
Real Northline properties, before and after, every one of them in Oshawa and every one of them this year. Drag the line to compare.
Reading a commercial snow agreement, clause by clause
Before comparing this page against anybody else, it is worth knowing what the law actually requires of a commercial lot, which turns out to be far less than most owners assume. Ontario sets a depth and a deadline for municipal roads and municipal sidewalks and sets neither for private property, so the trigger depth and the response window written into an agreement become the standard a site is measured against. That argument is set out in full, with the statutes and the Whitby by-law linked, in commercial snow removal in Whitby, read clause by clause.
Andrew answers, October 2026
Is the 3 cm trigger measured at my house or somewhere else?
On the route, not at an airport. Three centimetres is the depth at which a residential driveway stops being something you can drive out of, so that is where the number is set. Below it we are still out, but it is salt and the walkway rather than the blade, and that happens without you asking for it.
One of these goes on each page and it is replaced monthly. If the question you have is not here, ask it: 905-244-5779.
Get a commercial quote for your property
Give us the address and a rough stall count. The site gets measured, photographed and priced in writing within 48 hours, at no cost, with the per storm comparison beside the seasonal number.
Green in summer. Clear in winter.