Snow removal in Courtice, all winter.

Courtice has no transit to fall back on, so the driveway is the whole plan

Here is the part a snow quote usually skips. Courtice has no station and no frequent local route, so the car is the only way out of the house and the driveway is the only road to it. There is nothing else to take while you wait, and that is worth knowing before you compare two prices.

It is also why I write an hour down at all. A seasonal snow contract is often sold on a service window instead, measured in hours after the snow stops rather than against a morning, and in a heavy storm that window can be a long one. On a property where nobody has to be out by eight, that is a perfectly sensible thing to buy. Courtice is the town where the difference between the two actually shows up.

Our target is 7 AM on Gold and 6:30 AM on Platinum after overnight snow. A target is not a guarantee, because nobody can promise a morning in the middle of a storm. What is in writing before you pay anything is the trigger, the order the route runs in and where your street sits in it.

What a Courtice driveway asks of a truck

Up by Pebblestone and the north end of Courtice Road the subdivisions are new, the driveways are wide, and open farmland still sits on the windward side of a good many of them. Wind crosses that ground and drops the snow against the first thing in its way, usually your garage door. Hancock is the same story with fewer mature trees to slow it down.

Prestonvale is older Courtice, nearer the lake, with longer driveways and real slope on some of them. Slope, a thaw and a refreeze together are the whole argument for salt, which is automatic on Platinum and a $25 salt only trip on Gold.

Townline is the Oshawa boundary, and both sides of it run on the same night, so an address near Townline sits early in the night rather than at the tail of it.

What a Courtice winter costs

The membership runs twelve months and the snow is inside it: Silver $129, Gold $189 or Platinum $279 a month plus HST. Gold plows the driveway to a 7 AM target. Platinum goes first, targets 6:30 and salts without being asked. All three are set out side by side on the memberships page if you want to compare them before you call.

Silver does not plow the driveway. It takes the municipal windrow off the end of it by 5 PM on the same day the member route runs, and it banks four full clears a season for the storms that beat you. If that sounds like the wrong half of the job for your property, read what Silver does and does not do before you buy it.

We go out at 3 cm and you do not phone to start it, and the snow season runs November 1 to May 1. The snow removal page walks through a storm morning in the order it actually happens.

If the lawn is not part of what you want, a seasonal snow package without a membership is $800 for a small driveway, $975 for a standard one and $1,200 for a large one, plus HST. A laneway longer than 400 feet adds $200 for every 100 feet past that.

And the thing I would say standing in your driveway rather than on this page. The part of a membership you pay most for is the morning target. If nobody in the house has to be out by a set hour, you are buying an hour you will never use, and a seasonal snow package covers the same driveway for less. Ask me for one of those instead and I will quote it. If the lawn needs doing too, Gold is still the cheaper road: it carries both seasons for less than a seasonal snow package and 26 weekly cuts bought separately.

Questions Courtice homeowners ask

Which streets in Courtice do you cover?

Prestonvale, Courtice Road, Townline, Hancock and Pebblestone, and the streets running off them. Tell me your street and I will tell you where it lands in the order before you commit to anything.

At what depth do you come out?

Three centimetres, measured, on every residential membership. Commercial sites run on a 5 cm trigger and the two are never mixed.

Does the $129 Silver membership plow my driveway?

No. Silver takes the windrow and banks four full clears a season. Driveway plowing starts at Gold, $189 a month plus HST.

Can I still get on the Courtice route in January?

Sometimes, and sometimes not. The route closes when it is full and it does not reopen, because only so many driveways fit inside a morning that still ends on a 7 AM target. Ask me and you will get a straight answer either way.

Also here: lawn care and snow removal in Courtice all year, commercial snow removal in Durham Region and snow removal in Bowmanville.

Summer on the same route: weekly lawn care in Courtice.