MOUND, MINNESOTA
In Mound, nobody parks on the street from November 15 to April 15. The city bans it between 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM for five straight months, and the Orono Police Department enforces it whether or not there is snow on the road and whether or not snow is expected.
That changes what a driveway is for. It is not just the path out in the morning, it is overnight parking for every vehicle in the household, every night, for the whole winter. A drive that only gets pushed open after the big storms leaves somebody choosing between a snowbank and a tow, so your driveway is cleared within 10 hours after snowfall stops, at a 2 inch trigger, all season long.
The dates line up almost exactly with our season. We run November through April, and the ban runs November 15 to April 15, so the months when your cars have to fit on the drive are the months we are already on your property.
Most Mound homeowners sign up once and let the season run. Your property goes on the route before the first snowfall, crews come when accumulation reaches the trigger, and driveway, front walk and steps are all included. You don't have to call. When the route is full, we stop adding drives.
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The parking ban sets the standard here. From November 15 to April 15 there is no legal street parking between 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM, so a Mound driveway has to be open to its full usable width, not just wide enough for one car to sneak past a bank. We clear the whole surface, including the extra parking apron beside the garage if that is where the second and third vehicles live.
Every residential truck runs a rubber-edge plow. Steel catches paver joints and chips the lip of a concrete apron, and the damage shows up in spring when nobody connects it to a plow from January. Rubber lifts the snow and leaves the surface alone, which matters more on a drive that gets cleared dozens of times a winter.
Behind the route is a winter operation of 15 to 20 crew, two wheel loaders, two compact track loaders, three plow trucks and two sidewalk machines, with a backup crew lined up before every storm. Service runs on a 2 inch trigger, and every visit is logged in Yeti, our snow management platform, with time-stamped service records and photos.
When every car is on the driveway, people walk further to the door than they do in summer, often past the cars in the dark. Walks and steps are included in residential service and get cleared on the same visit as the drive, so the path from the last parked bumper to the front door is open at the same time the pavement is.
Mound puts sidewalks on the property owner, giving single-family homes and duplexes 12 hours after a storm ends and apartment and commercial buildings four daytime hours. We work to the tighter of those clocks and our own 10 hour standard, and snow from walks goes into the yard or the boulevard, never the street, where piling it is against the law.
Steps, stoops and side doors are hand work. Machines take the edges off stone and brick, so crews use shovels and blowers anywhere a machine would cause damage, and we shovel a 3 to 4 foot ring all the way around a hydrant on the property, down to where hoses connect.
A full driveway makes ice worse. Cars carry snow in on their tires and drip it under the wheel wells all afternoon, then the melt runs downhill and freezes into a sheet by the time anyone leaves for work. That glaze forms in the tire tracks and along the walk, which are exactly the places people put their feet.
We treat drives, walks and entry steps following MPCA Smart Salting best practices, targeting the low spots and tracked-in melt instead of coating the whole slab. We keep 100 tons of salt at our shop before the season starts, so the stretch of repeat storms that drains everyone else's supply does not delay your service.
On a drive that doubles as overnight parking, every bank costs a vehicle. Push the same snow to the same edge through January and February and the usable pavement shrinks a foot at a time until somebody is parked at an angle or, worse, tempted to leave a car on the street inside the towing window.
When the banks are full, we relocate the piles to open ground elsewhere on the property or haul them off entirely instead of stacking them higher. We also leave room for the things that share the drive in winter, including garbage and recycling containers set three feet into the driveway on days plowing is likely.
A typical Mound drive lands between $200 and $250 a month across the November through April season, charged as one seasonal price and billed monthly rather than storm by storm.
Three things move that number: how much pavement there is, how much walk and step work comes with it, and whether the snow has anywhere to go once it is off the surface.
Driveway size. Standard covers a two-car width, about 20 feet, by up to 60 feet of length, which works out to roughly 1,200 square feet of pavement. Past that, figure about one added pass for every extra 1,000 square feet, whether the surplus comes from a third car width, length beyond 60 feet, a turnaround loop or an overflow parking pad. An approach running more than 150 feet gets quoted on its own.
Walks and steps. The base rate carries 50 linear feet of walk and four steps. Anything beyond that is slower, hand-tool work: a side entry off the parking apron, a walk that tracks the full length of the house, or a staircase running down toward the water all cost more per foot than an open stretch of sidewalk.
Room to stack snow. A drive with open yard at the end of it and space to hold a season of snow carries no added cost. The price moves up when the right-of-way is the only open ground, when beds and plantings sit tight against the pavement, or when the drive dead-ends at the garage. Relocation and hauling are quoted separately.
Seasonal or per push. Seasonal service is one price split into monthly payments from November through April, and seasonal clients are cleared first. Per push service is available as well. Call and we'll talk through which one fits your property and how many cars have to fit on the drive at 2:00 AM.
Every number above assumes the standard 2 inch trigger. Asking for a lower one moves the price further than an extra 20 feet of pavement would, because it multiplies the number of visits rather than the work per visit, so homes that want pavement closer to bare through the whole parking ban get an individual quote.
The City of Mound prohibits on-street parking from November 15 to April 15 between 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM, and the Orono Police Department enforces it whether or not there is snow on the road and whether or not snow is expected, with vehicles tagged and towed. Across roughly 41.6 miles of streets and alleys, that gives city plows a clear road overnight and gives every household a five month stretch where the driveway is the only legal place to park. We build the route around that, clearing full parking width rather than a single lane, and we keep piles in yards and boulevards because putting them in the street is against the law. Winter parking details from the City of Mound.
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Service triggers at 2 inches of snow, so your Mound property goes on the route as soon as accumulation reaches it and you never have to call in. Your driveway is cleared within 10 hours after the snowfall stops, which is the standard that keeps enough pavement open for the vehicles that cannot sit on the street overnight.
Yes. The city prohibits on-street parking from November 15 to April 15 between 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM, and the Orono Police Department enforces it whether or not there is snow on the road and whether or not snow is expected. Vehicles parked on the street during those hours can be tagged and towed, so your driveway has to hold every vehicle every night for five months.
Residential routes run rubber-edge plows, and we stake drive edges before the ground freezes so a crew working in the dark knows where pavement ends and turf begins. The city repairs right-of-way sod in the spring with black dirt and grass seed, but it is not responsible for landscaping or sprinkler heads in the right-of-way, so we keep equipment off that strip and plan a snow stacking spot that does not bury it.
Yes. Walks and steps are included in residential service and get cleared on the same visit as the drive, so the route from the last parked bumper to your door opens when the pavement does. The city makes sidewalks the property owner's responsibility, giving single-family homes and duplexes 12 hours after the storm ends and apartment and commercial buildings four daytime hours. Larger driveways, longer walks and extensive step work are priced accordingly.
Every Mound visit is logged in Yeti, our snow management platform, and each service record is time-stamped and comes with photos. That matters most along the right-of-way, where the city will reseed sod in the spring but takes no responsibility for landscaping or sprinkler heads, so there is a dated picture of how that edge looked when we left.
Yes. Mound commercial sites pick the tier that fits the lot: 2 inch, 1 inch, half inch, or zero tolerance with crews staged on site clearing continuously. Those visits are documented in Yeti exactly the way residential ones are, with time-stamped service records and photos, which is what a property manager needs when a tenant asks who was there and when.
Budget $200 to $250 per month for a residential drive in Mound, spread across the November through April season as one seasonal price billed monthly instead of a charge per storm. Larger driveways, longer walks and extensive step work are priced accordingly, and the walk-up quote tells you which bracket your property lands in before you commit to the season.
Plenty of our snow clients started with summer work: a patio, a drainage problem in the side yard, a tree leaning the wrong way. The crew that finished those projects already knew the property, so keeping it through the winter was the easy call.
It runs the other direction too. The same people clearing your drive in February can widen that drive in June, mow weekly through the season and handle the fall cleanup, and they show up already knowing where the sprinkler heads sit and how far the pavement really goes.
That knowledge is also why winter goes smoothly. A crew that has built a paver drive on a proper base knows exactly how much damage a steel edge does to one, so ours do not carry steel.
Routes fill and then we're closed. Tell us about your property and what needs clearing, and we'll get you a spot. The storm-alert checkbox is optional. Check it and you'll get a text the moment crews head out.