A lot depends on the particular blower. There are quite a few different makes and styles of blowers. 540 or 1000 PTO depends on the gear box. Some blowers are big rotary units kind of like small versions of railroad blowers. A think a good question to ask is what your budget is?
$20k.
I have been paying about $2,000 a season just to have my driveway plowed and they only do it once a day, at completely unpredictable times So you wind up always having to spend an hour on a snowblower every day anyway. They might plow it at midnight and then by morning you have 6 ft of snow in there.
So it sounds paradoxical but not paying a plow contract would actually save me a lot of time and effort.
10y payback seems reasonable.
And looking at the other heavy equipment I own I'm guessing at the end of that time it's probably going to be worth the same or more than I paid for it.
Added bonus if it's a machine that I can use for other things during summer time.
I figure I can get a used Cat 246/247
machine for around $17k and a blower for around $3k high flow looking at the used market rn.
I found a cheap 247b where the machine looks great but the ASV UC is all chewed up. Everyone talks about how good the ASV undercarriage is on snow but holy smokes does it look expensive to run on anything but snow. Honestly for my purposes it would probably be just fine even in its current condition but looking at how expensive the components are It makes me nervous.
My TL240 has years of use on it and I can't see any difference at all, it looks brand new still.