ROCK ISLAND, Illinois — While many people have enjoyed some warm days throughout this winter, local snow removal businesses have not.
As of Jan. 18, 2023, the Quad Cities is about a whole foot below the average snow amount for the winter season, according to weather data.
News 8's Jonathan Fong spoke with Jesus Vargas, who owns All Green Site Management in Rock Island, Illinois.
Vargas said winter is always a challenge because it's hard to know how much snow there might be in a given season.
"It really affects our employee retention, and we're also huge on just being able to provide growth opportunities for our employees," Vargas said. "With having to cut back on the opportunity that snow brings, it really affects our team overall. We still try to keep everybody busy on a daily basis."
He explained when there is not enough snow, he has to cut back slightly on employee hours.
Vargas said this also makes training difficult: ideally there would be enough days with light snow to give workers practical experience, but no snow means no practice. He said when this happens, he tries to give his employees other training and roles when possible.
"They just do other other tasks in the office, focus on sales for the upcoming season," Vargas said. "They might do things around the shop, maintaining equipment, might do a few repairs on things."
However, he said despite losing some money so far in the season, his business is still able to carry on.
He explained that his business, like many others in the area that offer snow removal, offer a variety of landscaping care in other seasons that makes up part of the income.
He added that for snow removal, most of their commercial and residential business is sold through seasonal or monthly contracts, so they already have some guaranteed income.
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