Deep freeze economy: What Calgarians are willing to pay for when it's cold

During the deep freeze, heated parking lots were packed while tow trucks and cab companies were busy. 

While most Calgarians wanted to hibernate — life in the cold still goes on.

For some, staying warm did mean staying in. According to a SkipTheDishes spokesperson, there was a 20 per cent spike in orders between Tuesday and Thursday compared to the week before. 

Kurt Enders, president of Checker Transportation, said while calls were up, it was hard for cab drivers to get around.

"We couldn't get around the city as quickly as we'd like to," Enders said. "All in all, it was a fairly steady 10 days for us — which is what we're there for is to help people out when they need when they need help."

And he said traffic through the week was slow-moving because of a combination of cautious drivers on slippery roads and just the sheer volume of folks opting to drive in the chill. 

But, Enders added, it was a nice boost for drivers braving the weather.

"Providing their car starts and everything else, it's always nice to have that extra business come through the door," Enders said. 

According to Mike Whitehead, fleet trainer with AMA, the company had more calls last week than they typically field for an entire month. 

A month-worth of calls in one week

"Usually we'll get about 50,000 calls in a month," Whitehead said. "We had about just shy of 67,000 just last week, so we were overwhelmed with call volume.

"If you have a battery that's not up to where it should be. It's just going to fail and it's not going to start on you."

Whitehead said at the start of this week they are just looking to catch up on all of those calls. He said at the peak last week callers were looking at a 72-hour wait for tows, and right now those waits have gone down — it's now a 12-hour wait.

Calgary Parking Authority said six of their seven downtown parkades were at peak occupancy during the cold. The Centennial Parkade peaked at 97 per cent occupancy, while a week before the cold snap peak occupancy at Centennial Parkade was 85 per cent. 

Even some of the CPA's surface parking lots saw a bump in use.

While more people were parking, there was a decrease in enforcement because it's harder to get around and tow trucks are busy helping with other services like battery boosts and freeing vehicles that are stuck. 

How do your spending habits change when the weather gets cold? Let us know in the comments.