Not ready for snow? There’s an app for that

LouAnne Ooton’s 86-year-old mother lives up on a hill in West Chicago. There’s a winding sidewalk that leads to a substantial driveway, all of which become treacherous when the snow falls.

Ooton and her husband live nearby and used to shovel the snow. But now her husband is recovering from a heart attack, she’s not interested in doing it herself, and it’s too much to ask of a friend. Shoveling snow is a young person’s game, she said.

“I’m 61,” Ooton said. “It doesn’t mean I’m ready for the grave, but the idea of picking up a shovel, that heavy (snow), in my peer group is just not very appealing anymore.”

So instead of reaching for the shovel when a late November snowstorm dumped more than 7 inches of snow, Ooton reached for her smartphone. On-demand snow removal is gaining popularity in the Chicago area, as residents increasingly turn to apps to outsource daily tasks.

Plowz & Mowz, the app Ooton used, gained 5,000 new users in the day after that November storm. Shovler, which

lets people with their own shovels or snowblowers answer snow-removal requests that come in through the app, has about 10,000 users in the Chicago area. There are others, too, including a San Diego-based app called Lawn Love, which launched its snowremoval service in Chicago on Friday.

The apps — not all of which are profitable — bet on repeat customers. If they need their driveway plowed in the winter, maybe they’ll need their yard mowed in the summer.

Stacy Sobut used Plowz & Mowz last winter to hire someone to dig out the 16-car garage at her Back of the Yards condo building.

“It was a huge snow,” she said. “Usually we can plow through it (with our cars), but I’m like, ‘There’s absolutely no way.’ ”

She was pleased with the results. Sobut, who declined to give her age, is the treasurer of the condo board and liked how the app allows users to pay only when they use it. Vendors she used in the past required annual fees, regardless of how much snow came down. Her neighborhood didn’t get enough snow to need plowing when that storm blew through in November, but she had the app pulled up in case it did.

“I was already plugging it in to see the cost,” she said.

The apps are tapping into the needs of different players. There’s the consumer, who needs to hire someone to come plow or shovel and doesn’t know who to call. There’s the gig economy worker, who owns a shovel, has some spare time and wants to make an extra buck.

And there’s the snowplow driver, looking for a way to pick up extra jobs and make a route more efficient. Those folks can’t make money unless they’re working, said Dan Lopez, operations manager of Syracuse, N.Y.-based Plowz & Mowz. But if they play their cards right, they can rake it in, Lopez said.

“There’s a reason why landscapers and our partners call snow ‘white gold.’” he said. “They get super amped because they know there’s money to be made.”

The apps are free to download. Their pricing structures vary, and they all work a little differently.

With Plowz & Mowz, users plug in the size of their driveway, how much snow has fallen and when they want it plowed — as soon as possible or tomorrow morning before work, for example. The snow plow operators answer the request and text a picture to the homeowner when the job is done.

Lawn Love pairs vetted contractors with homeowners, and pricing is “deeply discounted” if users sign up for recurring service, CEO Jeremy Yamaguchi said. The app uses satellite images and other

“There’s a reason why landscapers and our partners call snow ‘white gold.’ They get super amped because they know there’s money to be made.” — Dan Lopez, operations manager of Syracuse, N.Y.-based Plowz & Mowz

software to map out a property and determine pricing.

Shovler incorporates snow depth, property size, temperature, shoveler availability and more into its pricing, founder Daniel Miller said. Users put in requests to get their sidewalks or driveways shoveled, and the people who have registered as shovelers through the app answer the requests.

In the last storm, the average cost for clearing a driveway with a two-garage and a sidewalk was about $50 throughout the Chicago area, Miller said. The shovelers also take home tips.

The last shoveling job Demetrius Leatherwood completed through the app paid about $75, he said. The Roseland resident, who has his own shovel and snowblower, answers requests within a 15-mile radius. They vary from shoveling sidewalks that flank houses to salting driveways and clearing off snow-covered cars.

Leatherwood, 28, also drives for Uber and delivers food via DoorDash. With a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, the flexibility is essential, he said.

“You can just cut off the app when you’re done and go straight toward the day care to get your kids,” Leatherwood said.

Shovler is one of the few on-demand apps Valerie Williams, 60, of the West Pullman neighborhood, uses. She downloaded the app in November in search of someone to shovel and salt the walkways around the apartment building she and her husband own and live in. She used it to have her 79-year-old mother’s walkway and drive in Harvey shoveled too.

Last year, Williams paid a neighbor $40 to do the shoveling at her apartment, and he didn’t do a good job, she said. The people she hired through Shovler did a fine job, she said, and she didn’t have to find someone herself.

“The app made that much easier,” Williams said. “I don’t want to take the risk of a tenant or someone slipping and falling because the snow isn’t shoveled.”