There's no business like 'snow business'

OSSEO, Minn. -- The snow was piling up on the curb outside Heinen's Motorsports. Paul Heinen looked out the front window of his business and thought about the past couple of months.

"I'm always smiling when the snow's coming down," he said.

Heinen's showroom had a couple of Arctic Cats on the floor, and they were surrounded by motorcycles. Those Arctic Cats are all the sleds he had left to sell; but they had plenty of them in the back garage. Snowmobilers brought in their rigs for a quick fix, trying to get a last fix before the snow melts. The latest blizzard was a business boom.

"This will definitely extend out a bunch and hopefully it lasts through March so we can keep riding," Heinen said.

An hour later, we found Joel Berg smiling after he got done swiping down a driveway in Plymouth. "I see it's starting to snow again so I don't know. I was going to go home but I don't know now," he said.

Berg owns his own lawn and snow company and says this is the best winter's he's had in the past decade. He was happy to burn the candle at both ends; having worked 18 hours with a quick 2 hour nap squeezed in. "You just kind of switch into a different mode and keep going," he explained.

Charlie Black knows a little something about that. He had worked 18 straight hours when he got the call to pull 2 cars out of the median on I-494 in Plymouth. "Every tow driver knows that every time it snows, it's going to be long hours and lack of sleep," he said.

Black lost count of how many drivers he had rescued but thought he was averaging about a one tow per hour. He also noticed the snow falling around noon Monday. "It's rush hour right now," he joked. "The traffic's already stopped on 494."

There is no business like snow business.

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