Our roots date back to 1973, where Larry Oelschlegel, Jr. ran a one-man snow plow side business with a handful of clients.  The business continued to be a one-man operation, though occasionally employing additional workers and plow trucks over the years.  As his children grew, they would often accompany him during snowstorms.

The Blizzard of ’96 dumped 31″ of snow on the city of Philadelphia, earning Larry enough money in a single storm to purchase the family a new minivan. During that storm, many of Larry’s children rode in the truck with him seeing how the work was performed.  Into the late ’90s, Larry’s oldest son Ian began to grow the business by marketing to additional customers, and in 2003, we bought a second plow truck.

In 2005, we published our first website, and over the next decade, the company would invest heavily in new technologies, acquiring additional trucks, trailers, skid steer loaders, and other various snow clearing equipment.  Our invoicing became a lot more detailed as well, including certified snow fall totals for each zip code we service.

We bought our first hydraulic extendable-wing plow in 2009 — the Western Wide-Out.  Today, all our trucks have them.

In 2014, Philadelphia received 75″ of snowfall in a single season — nearly 4x the annual average.  As a result, SSP invested in Ventrac sidewalk machines to handle the additional load.  This not only allowed us to more efficiently service our sidewalk properties, but increased quality of work, and we gained additional accounts as neighboring business owners saw the result, further driving up efficiency.  Market saturation has been a focal point of our business model given our urban environment, and utilizing sidewalk equipment plays a pivotal role in that aspect.  We would add additional specialized sidewalk equipment in the years to come, including Polaris ATVs with Boss V-plows and Snowrators.

2018 was a huge year for us.  By the end of the season, we had grown to over 160 individual job sites serviced each snow fall, including over 9 miles of urban sidewalks.  Payroll was up to 90 employees, with over 50 working every storm spread across some 20+ crews.  We implemented mobile app technologies, simplifying routing and dispatching, and employed a dedicated account manager.  That summer, we sent a team to the Snow and Ice Management Association’s 21st Symposium in Cleveland, where we took first place in the Best Practices Skills Competition, as well as see several members of our team achieve the Advanced Snow Manager credential!