West of the city the lots get bigger, the drives get longer, and the lake houses sit at the far end of them. Long Lake Township is 88.9% owner-occupied, with a median home value of $410,600 — a year-round market that buys a season, not a single push.
Traverse City Snow Plowing is a referral service. Contractors introduced through it are independent businesses that plow, blow and salt under their own names and policies — this site does none of that work itself.
Operators in this market say it in so many words: final pricing depends on driveway length, turnaround area and complexity. Around the inland lakes all three run high. A drive can wind a long way from the road to a house near the water, end in a turnaround squeezed between trees, and drop toward the shore on the last stretch.
By January the edges of that drive are gone. Culvert ends, lawn margins and the lip of the ditch disappear under packed snow, which is why the operators here who say anything about it stake driveways before the first snow. A fall staking visit, with a few photos of where the edges really are, saves a torn-up lawn and a blade in the culvert in March. What to measure and mark before you ask for a price → · How season and per-push prices are built
Propane is the common heat outside the natural-gas footprint, and where a house runs on it, that changes what a plow contract has to cover. A tank that runs dry is a freeze path no thermostat will catch, and a delivery driver who cannot reach the tank pad does not deliver. So the scope should name the path to the tank, not only the garage apron.
The drive to the delivery point, the tank pad itself, and the furnace and dryer vents where drifts build against the wall.
Michigan’s insurance regulator advises keeping heat at least 55 °F, or having a professional shut off and drain the water, and having someone check the house.
Many homeowner policies exclude freeze damage unless heat was maintained or the water was shut off and drained — read yours. For houses that stand empty part of the winter, see the second-home plowing page.
No snow station sits inside the township. The nearest long record is Cherry Capital Airport, with a 1991–2020 normal of 101.4 inches and January the heaviest month at 33.2. Just beyond the township to the northwest, the Maple City station in the Leelanau uplands averages 142.1 inches, the highest normal in this market. Long Lake has no number of its own, so treat the airport figure as a guide rather than a promise, particularly on the township’s western side. How the snowfall gradient runs across the area.
This site’s research did not reach Long Lake Township’s own ordinance book, so no township snow rule is claimed here either way. Public roads are the Grand Traverse County Road Commission’s, and on them County Winter Parking Ordinance No. 12 bars parking from midnight to 8 a.m., December 1 through March 31. Some lake roads may be designated seasonal, which the road commission does not plow from November through April; ask it about yours and read how a seasonal-road contract differs.
Under state law, MCL 257.677a, driveway snow cannot be pushed onto or across the road, or banked where it blocks the view of a driver pulling out; the civil fine is up to $100. County and state rules, compared.
Give the length, the turnaround, and whether the heat is propane, and the season price can be scoped properly.
Call (231) 715-4148 Get a Season Price
Traverse City