Greetings and welcome to fall. The Colorado high country has had its first dusting of white and the phone if finally starting to ring. Woohoo !

The subject at hand is selling liquid anti-icing and deicing. It is a subject that can be a challenge. Here are a few ideas that I have used effectively to communicate the benefits of liquids.

1. When you pre-treat before a storm (anti-ice) the liquid melts the snow from the bottom. It functions a little like “teflon for the road”. It keeps the packed snow from bonding with the pavement. That bonded snow, which would easily turn to hard pack and then ice, is kept from forming. Any kind of post treatment, be it salt, treated salt, or some liquid is coming from the top down. It has to melt its way to the pavement. That takes time. Anti-icing is working from the first flake, and can be of significant help in improving traction before plowing.

2. Anti-icing can make those “not quite plowable” storms much safer, and get the contractor some revenue from a storm that likely would have had him sitting out. Light “dusting” snowfalls are melted on contact. BEWARE- vendors will stretch the truth and say some products will melt the first 2 inches. Generally NOT true. 1/2 to 1 inch, possible, even probable. more than that- not likely.

3. It is a better value. All the product you put down (unless in a significant wind) stays on the ground, not bouncing to the sides. Granular products of all kinds tend to track with traffic. Liquids will track but generally that is a good thing to even out coverage. You rarely have a quantity of liquid tracking off your lot unless you spray at a high traffic time. (which most avoid anyway)Any traffic driving over freshly spread granular pre-treatment is going to track and disperse.

4. If you pre-treat with liquid and post treat with salt or granular, your need for salt/granular will diminish significantly. Liquids used in combo with salt reduce salt usage to finish up after plowing dramatically.
Hope the things help you to talk to your customers and sell the value of pre-treating with liquids.