We’ve seen quite a bit of the sun lately, but one thing we haven’t seen a lot of is snow.
Kevin O’Shea, owner of North Shore Performance, has been looking at his parked snow plows for months. Normally, he would be up to his knees snow blowing but now, there’s only dust under his feet and in his workers’ wallets.
“In the 22 years we've been doing business, I don't normally expect to have zero snow plowing into January,” O’Shea said. "Usually at this point, a year we've normally plowed 10 to 20 times and right now, it's nothing."
He said they’ve hit the roads once, maybe twice this season which leaves the business about $20,000 short of what they’d normally be bringing in. His drivers are feeling the pinch.
"They use the opportunity for snowfall to get in the truck and make extra money for their families and when that doesn't exist they just don't have that extra opportunity,” O’Shea said.
What they do have a lot of is salt, which is panning out to be a good thing with the shortage ODOT had been reporting on. North Shore Performance is sitting on about 80 tons of salt right now and hoping that because of this year, prices will go down next year.
"We fought really hard to secure our inventory and it did cost a significant amount more, now that we haven't had to use it luckily the supply is hanging out now,” O’Shea said.
We can’t control Mother Nature, so at the end of the day all you can do is look on the bright side.
"It does give us a great opportunity to make sure our equipment is in perfect shape so we keep our trucks clean and do maintenance,” O’Shea said. "It can only get better, two weeks from now we could be two feet deep in snow."