Commercial snow removal in Washington Township, NJ

Washington Township gives whoever is in charge of a property, whether owner, tenant, occupant or lessee, 12 hours after the snow, sleet or freezing rain stops to clear the sidewalk. Snow may not be put on a traveled roadway where it gets in the way of traffic. Source: Township of Washington (Bergen) Code §407-2 to §407-7. A commercial snow contract can include walkway clearing and treatment so the deadline is met without anyone on site having to remember it.

Washington Township has 43 miles of public road in it, of which the town itself is responsible for 35. That is the 27th largest municipal road list of the 70 municipalities in Bergen County, against a county median of 29.8. No county route runs through the town, and NJDOT 7 miles of state highway. None of those crews touch private property. A parking lot, its access road and its loading area are the owner's responsibility no matter how well the public roads around them are cleared, which is the reason a commercial property needs its own contract. Road mileage figures are NJDOT's, from its Mileage by Municipality and Jurisdiction report.

At the Bergen County station, an average winter brings 8.2 days with an inch or more of snow, 5.4 with two inches or more and 1.2 with six or more, counted across 155 winters. That is the number a seasonal price is built from, because a trigger depth decides how many of those days bring a truck out. The lightest winter on that record had 0 plowable days and the heaviest had 21, which is the swing a seasonal contract exists to absorb.

The long-record station for Bergen County averages 30.4 inches a season, and the worst season on that record was 78.4 inches in the 1995-96 winter. The average is the number people budget from and the maximum is the number that decides whether a seasonal contract was worth it. Both come from Newark Liberty Intl (nearest long-record station). Two towns in the same county can still differ on the ground, because elevation moves snowfall more than distance does.

Crews are alerted more than an hour before snow is expected to begin, so equipment is moving before the first flake rather than after the phone rings. Salt and machines are staged at locations across Bergen County and its neighbors rather than dispatched from a single yard.

A trigger depth agreed in writing before the season, not a judgment call during the storm. Every property gets a written plan covering trigger depths, priority areas and where the piles go, settled before winter, plus a service report after every event.

Yes, and it is how a lot of our work runs. We are a fit for industrial facilities and corporate campuses in and around Washington Township, where plans are timed to shift changes and receiving hours, with wheel loaders sized for truck courts and dock aprons. Nearby towns we also cover include Hillsdale, Westwood, Ho-Ho-Kus.