Two-Inch Trigger Snow Co. · Sedgecote & the Weir Flats · no contracts, one gauge, honest pushes
No season, no contract, no judgement. The gauge reads two inches and the blade comes.
Two-Inch Trigger runs per-push clearing off a public measurement: the Sedgecote gauge, read at the co-op grain office and posted every storm morning. When it crosses two inches, the routes build themselves and the blades roll — you pay per push, tiered by what your place actually is. Six winters of teaching a valley that it does not need a contract to get a plow.
The premise
Why a gauge beats a contract
A season contract sells certainty, and certainty is expensive when the winter is light — the valley has paid for three plows and received one enough times to notice. The gauge does the opposite: one public instrument, one trigger everyone can read for themselves, and a rate card that charges a push when a push happens. You watch the same number we watch, the blade arrives on the same terms every time, and a February that dumps pays more while a December that dusts pays nothing. The argument against it has always been “what if the trucks are busy” — and the answer is the board: seventy-four slots, filled in the order the gauge decides, and closed when they are full so nobody on the board is a promise we cannot keep.
Tier One — the drive
$65per push, to 4 cars
- Plowed to black at the two-inch trigger
- Walk to the door opened
- Photo of the done drive, timestamped
- Brine and sand on ice, included
The standard Sedgecote drive: double-wide to four cars, straight, no berg to fight.
Tier Two — the lane
$95per push, to 100 m
- Lanes and shared driveways to 100 metres
- Turnaround cleared, not just plowed through
- Mailbox berm knocked back
- Blower pass where the blade cannot reach
The Weir Flats special: long gravel, a turnaround, and the wind’s opinion.
Tier Three — the yard
$140per push, yard & stack
- Blade plus blower for the yard edges
- Windrows hauled where stacking is full
- Paths to barns, bins and oil tanks
- Blade matched to gravel — poly edge, always
Farm yards and smallholdings, where the plow is only half the job.
Off the same card
The extras, priced like everything else here
Added to a push, or bought alone when the gauge never crossed and the wind did the work anyway.
The extras card, 2026 — 27
The wind calltier rate
The gauge stayed under two but the drifts came anyway — one push at your tier rate, no argument
Steps, porch & side paths$18 / visit
Hand-cleared and sanded, the parts no blade touches
Refreeze salting$22 / visit
The afternoon after, when the melt runs to the shade and hardens
Cul-de-sac & road-end berms$45 / event
What the county blade left across your apron, knocked back and hauled
One-off visitor pushtier rate + $10
Company coming, the gauge quiet — book the morning of, blade by supper
The board fee$0
What it costs to hold a slot all season: nothing, ever
The trigger sequence
What happens at two inches
The same five beats every storm — public, boring, and faster than a phone call.
The gauge is read
Every storm morning at 5:00, the Sedgecote gauge is read at the grain office and posted on the board — the same board the co-op has run for forty years, where everybody’s weather already lives.
The routes build themselves
Cross two inches and the board’s addresses stack by geography, tier by tier. Nobody triages by who phoned loudest; the map is the triage, and it is the same map every storm.
The blades roll
Ninety minutes median from crossing to blade-on-drive. Tier Three yards run the blower truck; gravel always gets the poly edge — steel on gravel is how driveways get expensive.
The photo lands
Done drives photographed and posted — timestamped, no poetry. It is how you learn the push happened while you were still at work, and it is the invoice’s evidence.
The card bills itself
One push, one line, your tier rate. Invoices monthly, storms itemized to date and gauge reading, and the wind-call lines marked as wind calls. Nothing else appears on it, ever.
Six winters of gauge mornings
Last season, off the board
Sedgecote & the Weir Flats, 2025 — 2026
Push mornings
Six done drives off the board, photographed by the crews that pushed them.
Six winters of season contracts, two of them mild enough to be donations. The gauge winter cost us $975 for twenty-odd pushes, itemized to date and reading, and I watched every trigger cross on the same board as the grain prices. My only complaint is that nobody ran this arithmetic sooner.
The yard has barns, bins and an oil tank, and every previous plow treated it like a parking lot. Two-Inch runs the blower truck for the edges, knocks the berms, and the paths to the tank are cleared before I remember to ask. Per push, on a farm, honestly priced — I did not believe the card until the first invoice matched it.
I teach and I leave at 7:15. The push photo usually lands before my first class — timestamped, drive black, walk open. Ninety minutes is their median and it has never once been my experience of waiting, which says the median is honest and my road is early on the map.
The February storm dropped nine inches with a wind that rewrote every drift on the flats. Our old contractor — season contract, friendly enough — sent a text about “conditions” and came two days later. Two-Inch’s board pushed us at 10:40 that night: the gauge had crossed at nine, the routes rebuilt around the drift lines, and the Tier Two lane and turnaround were black before the school bus ran. The invoice said $95, same as a dusting. The neighbours on the season contracts are on the board this winter, all four of them.
Before you take a slot
Gauge questions
The five the grain office hears every November.
What if the storm starts at night?
The gauge is read at 5:00 every storm morning, and the board posts the crossing then — the blades run overnight and into the morning by geography. The trigger is the reading, not the hour: a storm that crosses at dawn is pushed by supper, one that crosses at the evening read is pushed before the school run.
What if I think the gauge is wrong for my street?
Say so at booking: the board knows the pockets — the hollow on Mile 6 that drifts at an inch and a half, the sheltered closes that hold powder the flats lose, the bylaw corners on the school street that need the blade earlier than anyone. Wind calls exist precisely for the gap between the public number and your driveway, and they run at your tier rate, not at an argument premium.
Seventy-four slots — what happens when they are full?
The board closes, and it closes honestly rather than overbooking: a promise kept is worth more than a promise sold. Closed winters happen by early December in big years; we say so at booking, and the waitlist opens the moment a slot leaves. Six winters in, the closing has never lasted past a thaw.
Why two inches, specifically?
Because under two the sun and the traffic mostly handle it, and pushing dust insults the gravel and the invoice both; over two, every vehicle on the flats starts fighting the same berms at once. Two inches is where a plow stops being a luxury and starts being the difference between morning and morning ruined — the same threshold most season contracts bury in fine print, posted where you can read it.
Is per-push really cheaper than a contract?
Some winters, no — a heavy February can outrun a flat season price, and we will say which your address is likely to be. The gauge arithmetic across six winters: per-push has beaten the average season contract four times and lost twice, and it has never once billed you for a winter that did not happen. What you are buying is the terms, not the discount.
The board opens November 1 at the grain office and here · (555) 091-6654 · gauge@twoinchtrigger.example
Take a slot on the board
Tell us the place and which tier it honestly is — drive, lane or yard — and the slot holds from the first crossing. The board fee is nothing, the rates are the card, and the gauge at the grain office is the same number for both of us. gauge@twoinchtrigger.example