What should a kid charge to shovel snow?

Snow is the one job where the customer is not price shopping, and pricing it like a favor wastes the strongest position a young founder will ever have.

What they are really buying

Not a clear driveway. They are buying getting to work. They are buying not going out at six in the morning in the dark to do heavy lifting in the cold, which is genuinely dangerous for a lot of adults and the reason emergency rooms see a spike after every big storm.

For an older neighbor, you are buying them the ability to leave the house at all.

What adults pay proves it

Driveway snow removal runs about $30 to $70 per visit in 2026, with hand shoveling billed around $25 to $75 an hour because it is the slowest method. Sidewalks and walkways a plow cannot reach typically add $25 to $75 on top. Seasonal contracts commonly run $300 to $700.

Notice that hand shoveling, which is exactly what you do, is the most expensive method per hour in the professional market.

Where to start, and why

For a normal driveway plus the front walk after a regular storm, somewhere between $25 and $45 is a sensible price. A big storm with a foot of heavy wet snow is a different job and worth more.

Set two numbers before winter. A regular snowfall is one price, anything over about six inches is another. Saying both upfront means nobody is negotiating in a driveway in the dark.

The discount should not last

The proof here arrives faster than in any other business. Turn up at seven the morning after the first storm, without being called, and you have demonstrated the one thing that matters. There is no slow trust to build.

By the second winter you are not an unproven kid, you are the reason they stopped worrying about snow. Price accordingly.

Where you should not discount at all

You are on the street. A plow service has a route and you are somewhere on it, maybe at noon. You can be done before they have started, and for someone who has to leave at seven that is not a slightly better service, it is the only one that solves the problem.

Walks, steps, and the path to the car are the other one. A plow truck does not touch them, and pros charge $25 to $75 extra for exactly that work.

Do not gouge on the big storms

When a huge storm hits you could probably charge triple, because people are stuck. Do not. The neighbor who felt taken advantage of in February remembers it in April, and this business runs entirely on being the person a household calls first.

Charging more for genuinely harder work is fair. Charging more because somebody has no choice is a different thing, and it costs more than it earns.

Clear the whole path

The driveway is what they asked for. The walk to the door, the path to the car, and the space around the mailbox is what they needed. Ten extra minutes, and it is the entire reason someone calls you again.