Driveway and sidewalk clearing arranged in the county seat — the city with the county’s NOAA station, its only published per-visit price, and a sidewalk bill priced by the lineal foot.
Any operator you reach through this page is an independent business plowing under its own name and insurance in the City of Waukesha. This site connects and does not clear.
The City of Waukesha is the largest municipality in the county at 70,872 people and the one that gives the market its name. It is also the renter-heaviest: 58.8 percent of households own, against 76.0 for the county, and single-family detached homes are 49.5 percent of the stock where Brookfield’s are 74.2 (Waukesha County Housing Study, 2023). Median year built is 1979, with 13.9 percent of units older than 1950 and 18.2 percent built since 2000 (ACS 2020–2024). Median household income is $83,837 and the median home $315,500, both the lowest of the county’s seven cities.
None of that makes the city a small snow market. It has more driveways than any other place in the county, and it is the only one where a published per-visit price exists to measure a quote against.
The city’s sidewalk page puts the duty on “Property owners, occupants, or persons in charge,” cites Waukesha City Ordinance 6.12, and lists “Snow placed in the street” among the violations. When the city does the work, the rates are itemized.
| Item | Charge |
|---|---|
| Sidewalk | $2.00 per lineal foot |
| Curb ramp | $25 each |
| Bus pad | $25 each |
| Fire hydrant | $100 each |
| Administrative fee | $25 on a second violation; $50 on a third and later in one season |
A hundred-foot frontage with a curb ramp and a hydrant is $325 for one visit, before the administrative fee. The deadline for clearing is set by ordinance and is deliberately not printed on this page: the city publishes two different figures on two of its own pages, and the codified section, Sec. 36-9, had not been read at the time of writing. Ask the city, or read the section, before relying on either number. The county’s sidewalk rules side by side.
Waukesha’s overnight ban runs year-round: “No vehicle shall be parked on any public street within the City between the hours of 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., except with a night parking permit” (Ordinance 7.04(6)). Permit holders park on even-numbered sides on even dates and odd on odd; permits run $6 for three nights, $18 for 30, $42 for 90 and $160 for a year. The clause that matters in January: “Permits are not valid during snow emergencies.” A car that is legal on the street at 3 a.m. in October is not once an emergency is declared, and the plow operator scheduled for the driveway needs the street cleared to get the truck in. Every municipality’s hours.
The NOAA cooperative station in Waukesha (USC00478937) is the source of every plowable-day figure on this site: 39.5 inches a year on the 1991–2020 normals, 13.6 days with an inch or more, 4.7 with three or more. December (8.8 inches), January (10.4) and February (10.1) are nearly level here, unlike the airport, where January peaks at 14.9. March still averages 1.7 plowable days.
The storm pages fill in the rest. On February 5–6, 2008 the gauge two miles southeast of Waukesha read 16.3 inches against Milwaukee’s 11.6, a calendar-day record for the airport on the 6th; the city beat the lakeshore by nearly five inches. On March 9–10, 2023 Waukesha measured 8.2. The county’s station does undercount days with a trace (24.0 against the airport’s 35.3), which is the signature of a volunteer observer missing small events rather than a drier climate; its one-inch and three-inch counts are the reliable part.
One Waukesha operator prints a residential price, and it is good inside the city limits only: $49 per visit “unless it takes the crew longer than 15 minutes,” at a one-to-two-inch trigger, with salt at $25 per 50 pounds, sidewalks free if they take under 15 minutes, a $39 non-productive stop fee, service “24 hours after the last snowflake falls” (48 in an extreme storm), and asphalt surfaces only. It is a next-day, per-event model and the floor of the market, not its premium tier. At 13.6 plowable days it comes to roughly $670 a season before salt, and that is the number a seasonal quote in this city has to beat or justify. Another Waukesha operator posted “Currently FULL” for residential before the season opened; a third prices three named tiers, Per-Push, Standard Seasonal and Premium Seasonal, without a dollar on any of them. Snow removal is not subject to Wisconsin sales tax; landscaping by the same company is. All of it, on one page.
Waukesha is also the one city in the county on a chloride clock: its Clean Water Plant is under a DNR WPDES limit with a November 1, 2026 compliance deadline, effluent stood at 323 mg/L in August 2026, and the city is paying residents to optimize or remove water softeners to get there. The Fox River at Waukesha has been above the state’s chronic chloride standard since the early 2000s, in the DNR’s own strategy. A driveway contract that specifies how much salt goes down, and at what temperature, is a small part of the same problem. Salt and the county’s water.
Nearby: New Berlin · Pewaukee · Genesee · Brookfield
Say whether the surface is asphalt or concrete and whether the sidewalk frontage is in scope; both change who can take the job and what it costs.
Call (262) 333-0458 Get a Seasonal Quote
Waukesha County