There's no business like snow business

Quincy man finds new life post-retirement clearing the streets of the white stuff

By Matthew Weaver

Herald staff writer

QUINCY - Whether or not it's on the ground as readers take in this very sentence, and who can really tell with the constantly changing climate, there's one man who's rooting for snow.

Charlie Sepulveda started Sepulveda's Snow Plowing Service in 1999, upon retiring from the Grant County Public Utility District after 30 years.

"While I was employed by them, one of my jobs was plowing," he recalled. "I would drive the company plow and keep Wanapum (Dam) and what they call a maintenance center - I would do the plowing around their facilities."

Later on, Sepulveda said, he was promoted to mechanical foreman and had other people doing the plowing.

"So I was around a snow plow for a long, long time before I retired, and then I decided, 'Aw, hell, I'm going to start my own business," he said.

Sepulveda said he has been in Quincy since 1960, when his folks migrated to the area from Texas.

As far as snow removal goes, business has been slow since starting up Sepulveda's Snow Plowing Service, he said.

"It's been OK," he said. "I don't depend on it for a living, so it's not really bad. I enjoy doing it."

Sepulveda, a motor vehicle buff, said he enjoys seeing what his four-wheel drive vehicles and trucks can handle against Mother Nature.

"It's kind of neat to put the thing in four-wheel drive and just see how much snow you can actually push with it," he said, a large grin displaying his obvious enthusiasm for the undertaking. "It's a challenge. I enjoy doing it, and then I get paid for it."

Sepulveda doesn't recommend getting into the business for the money, however.

"If you're depending on Mother Nature to keep you in money, you're not going to do it," he said with a chuckle.

Sepulveda said he normally starts getting excited for snowfall around Halloween, which he said is essentially the start of his season. Then it leads to making sure his vehicles will work - the lights, the plows, the hydraulics, the tires and batteries - after being parked most of the year. The season normally runs until about the first of March, he said.

After starting out with one truck, Sepulveda has five trucks with plows, a Jeep he tows and an ATV for doing sidewalks and getting real close to around buildings - a total of seven rigs.

When it's the season, but it's warmer weather, like it was when Sepulveda was being interviewed at the beginning of the month, what does he do?

"I bake pies," he said with a grin, before letting on that he's kidding. "I just kind of tinker around the house and stuff. I've got a four-car garage back here; I restore old trucks." He also helps his wife out, he said, noting that she has a little bit of time before she retires.

Even with the first flurries of snow early in the season, Sepulveda said he was not too busy, and only plowed for four businesses.

"We didn't get enough snow … it started melting," he said. "There's a couple of places that want their snow plowed before they open for business, no matter how much snow is on the ground. It's very critical for them to get it off for their customers."

Sepulveda employs five people, using them as he needs them, he said.

Sepulveda said he covers "most all" of Quincy, although businesses are shared with other snow plow services, and goes out as far as George.

"There's a couple of latté places out there," he said.

Sepulveda said he doesn't have a real rescue-type story, but last year he did help help clear a path to the Quincy cemetery in time for a funeral, and helped a town doctor who lives on a little farm up on a hill get home.

"It snowed and it started blowing and drifting really bad, to where his wife was home, and she couldn't get out, and he couldn't get in," he recalled. "I said, 'I'll go try it.' I took my big diesel, went up there, and it was a piece of cake."

Keeping warm on the job isn't too difficult, either.

"You're inside of a truck, so you've got your heater, the music going and hot chocolate," he said. "You dress warm, because sometimes you have to get out and make sure that there's nothing under the snow that you're going to mess up or hit with the plow or something."

He said he has CB radios in all of his rigs, so as to maintain contact with his workers, working as troubleshooter in addition to owner-operator.

Sepulveda said his favorite part of the job, in addition to testing his vehicles' snow-pushing capabilities, is the reaction of children as they spot the ATV, which he calls his little bike.

"We've had little kids running behind it just to see it," he said. "That thing will actually push big mountains of snow in front of the bike, it's got that kind of traction."

Gee, given all these things he likes about his job, is there a downside to the business?

"Warm weather," he said with pitch-perfect timing, adding that he also takes in the occasional jest from people about making it snow if he takes his plows off his vehicles. "But I enjoy the ribbing, because when it does snow, they're saying, 'OK, you can shut it off any time now!' I tell everybody I do my snow dance."