Snow Removal Contract Template

You just landed a driveway or a parking lot and the first storm is coming. A snow-removal contract pins down the four things winter disputes turn on: when you show up, what you clear, how you charge, and who eats the liability when someone slips on ice. Fill the fields above and the agreement builds in your browser — no signup, no email wall, nothing saved to a server — then download the editable Word file and sign it offline.

Sample, example, simple, seasonal, residential, commercial: one document, six fills

People search for this contract six different ways, and it is tempting to believe that means six different documents. It doesn’t. A snow agreement for a suburban driveway and one for a strip-mall lot run through the same clauses in the same order; what changes is the scope line, the trigger, which pricing row is switched on, and whether the additional-insured sentence appears. That is why the version chips sit above the form rather than splitting this into six pages.

A version never fills your parties, dates, rates or governing-law state — those are yours. And the depths and windows it drops in are drafting starting points, not standards: nobody publishes a defensible universal trigger depth, so treat those numbers the way you would treat a blank.

What the trade calls the clauses you are filling in

The Snow and Ice Management Association publishes a standard glossary for exactly this reason: two parties arguing about a snow contract are usually arguing about a word. Its definitions map cleanly onto the form above, and using them makes your agreement legible to the property manager reading it.

Two practical consequences. First, a trigger depth is not the only lawful way to start service — SIMA lists forecast, written request and site judgment as service initiators too, which is why this template lets you pick on-call as a service mode instead. Second, “zero tolerance” is not a level of service on its own; SIMA’s glossary says so explicitly. If a client asks for it, the contract still needs a completion time and an accumulation threshold written down.

Residential and commercial versions differ in four places

Everything else — independent-contractor status, termination notice, assignment, governing law, signatures — is identical, which is the point. Winning the lot in the first place is a separate job with separate rules; that is covered in how to get snow removal contracts, not here.

The four pricing rows, and what each one says on paper

The pricing menu prints all four models side by side and strikes the ones you did not select, so the signed document shows exactly what was excluded. Three of the four are named in SIMA’s glossary:

The glossary also defines Per Event separately from Per Service: an event is bounded by the contract’s own parameters, so one storm can produce several billable services. Say which you mean in the pricing line, because that single ambiguity is a common winter invoice dispute. Choosing between the structures is a risk question rather than a drafting one, and it is worked through in per push, per inch, or seasonal; to put a number on the row you pick, use the snow removal pricing calculator, and for the de-icing line the de-icing salt calculator sizes the material behind it. Seasonal deals are also the ones that reshape your winter cash position, which is the subject of off-season cash flow.

A “simple” contract is a shorter fill, not a shorter document

The Simple version keeps one service and one price and answers every optional scope line, so the only bracketed blanks left are the ones no template can fill for you: parties, dates, your per-push rate, your late-fee percentage and the governing-law state. What it does not do is delete clauses. Five things stay in even the plainest driveway agreement:

1. Who the parties are and what property is covered. A contract without an address is an argument waiting to happen.
2. What starts service and what “done” means. Trigger plus response window.
3. The price and when it is invoiced. One row selected, cadence stated.
4. Who carries the liability. See the next section; this is the clause.
5. Signatures, dated. Both parties, on the printed copy.

For comparison, the free template Signaturely publishes runs Parties, Services Provided, Payments, Independent Contractor, Special Instructions, Assignment, Termination, Applicable Law and Signature — and carries no indemnification clause at all. That absence is the gap this template is built to close.

The slip-and-fall clause is the one to get reviewed

Section 7 carries a slip-and-fall indemnity with a gross-negligence and willful-misconduct carve-out, an optional additional-insured sentence, and a plain note to review it with counsel. It needs that note, because in the United States the enforceability of the clause is a matter of state law rather than drafting skill. Colorado legislated it directly: the state’s Snow Removal Service Liability Limitation Act, passed as SB18-062 and effective 8 August 2018, makes void — on the Act’s own terms — provisions of a snow removal agreement that require one party to indemnify the other, hold the other harmless, or defend it, with carve-outs for contracts with public bodies, public utilities, work on public roads, airport de-icing, and insurance or surety arrangements. A clause that is routine in one state can therefore be unenforceable in the next one over. Fill it in here; have a lawyer in your state read it before the season starts.

Word, PDF, print, or plain text

Download Word (.docx) hands you the editable file to finish offline — the primary deliverable, and the reason this page is not an e-signature product. PDF renders the live preview, so fill the form first unless a blank is what you want. Print goes straight to paper, and Copy as text drops the whole agreement into an email or a work order. None of them ask for an address.

What it is, and what it isn’t

Nothing you type is saved. There is no customer or contract database, no dispatch board or route map, no billing engine, and no e-signature of record. The accumulation trigger and response window are contract text, not a live schedule; the pricing fields are blanks you fill; parties sign the printed copy offline. The document is drafted against United States practice, and the governing-law line is a blank for a reason.

Working in Canada? The same engine ships as a Canadian snow removal contract template: centimetre triggers instead of inches, per-push and per-event split into separate pricing rows, a GST/HST clause, a certificate-of-insurance block, and a service-record section built around Ontario’s 60-day snow-and-ice notice regime.

Pairs with the service contract template for non-winter work, the recurring pricing calculator for seasonal-fee math, and the late-fee calculator for the arithmetic behind the late-fee clause — the clause here is descriptive text only and computes nothing. More documents like it live in the templates library.

This template is a starting point and is not legal advice; have it and its slip-and-fall liability terms reviewed for your jurisdiction.