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Gideon W. Smith
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Katherine Nolan
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P.O. Box 235, Stockton New Jersey 08559
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Melissa Kennelly
EDITORIAL
Heidi Karpinich
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Noah Aiden
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P.O. Box 235, Stockton New Jersey 08559
• Non-CDL version available
• Mechanical sweeping to handle heavy applications like millings
• Independent broom control for in-the-cut precision
• Single engine for fuel economy and less maintenance
• Simple start-up procedure with easy-to-operate controls
This is a business that entered the Mid-South US market with an enormous advantage in the proven leadership of Carl Barton. As PepsiCo, Inc. GM, Memphis & New Orleans, Barton had overseen operations of two of the corporation’s swarming regional hubs. He brought broad general business knowledge and corporate management skills to his new entrepreneurial
endeavor. Today, after nearly 30 years of private business ownership, to say the least, his venture into the power sweeping industry has paid off very well.
We are fortunate to have Carl share the history of Aardvark Memphis, how he has achieved outstanding success with his organization, and other information about this thriving company:
The earliest phase of my career was 9 years with Coca-Cola. The family that owned the independent operation I worked for sold it to the parent company. I went on to work for Pepsi and was promoted to my first position as General Manager there at age 26. I never wanted to live my life in a corporation. I had been
I went on to work for Pepsi and was promoted to my first position as General Manager there at age 26. I never wanted to live my life in a corporation. I had been looking for an opportunity, but couldn’t find a business type that I could afford to start.
looking for an opportunity, but couldn’t find a business type that I could afford to start.
Plus, my wife liked our corporate lifestyle, with the regular good paychecks. She did not want me to do it [take the risk of leaving it and starting a business]. She finally conceded, but then she did not want me to call it [the new business] Aardvark. [Carl joking] I don’t take advice well sometimes, but I am good with long-term
relationships. I met my wife when we both worked at Dairy Queen at age 14 [over 50 years ago].
Though I had expected success in the new business and reasoned with my wife that she wouldn’t have to work unless she wanted to after we “made it,” during those earliest years, money seemed to be getting sucked into a black hole. As for many business owners during the startup, every dollar just vanishes, and you truly wonder if there’s enough runway to get the plane off the ground.
It’s fun looking back, and it’s easy to romanticize the early days, but I’m not sure we felt the same way about it then. We may tend to remember that time as better
than it was. I had to wear a lot of hats. It was a baptism by fire. It challenges your soul. But I like a good challenge.
In the beginning, it was a lot of long, hard, 18-hour days. Sometimes I was too tired to drive home and just slept on the floor. Those first years were do or die. It was stressful. But I made it, and it’s worked out well.
We’ve been blessed. The usual way is to get one truck going and then a year or two later add on. But we had bought 5 trucks by the end of the first year.
We were growing extremely fast, maybe too fast.
One of my strategies was to grow fast enough so I could get out of the truck and focus on running the business. I love this business. Its service is good for the community and the customers. I have a lot of respect for the industry. Not everyone respects the service we provide or recognizes what a great industry it is.
I feel good about being a part of it. People have asked me what I have planned for an exit strategy. I tell them my exit will be through the coroner. I have no plan to sell the business or leave it for retirement.
Power sweeping is about 80% of our business. Portering is another 10% or so. All other services make up the other 10%. Those include power washing, large debris removal, warehouse scrubbing, everything but dumpster rentals. The dumpster rental service is entirely an offshoot business of its own.
It’s limited to residential customers. We don’t provide dumpsters for contractors, because they too often overfill and damage them. It’s a nice revenue source, but the margin is not huge. Most dumpster rentals go for like around $550. Dumping fees are $44 per ton. With the average load up to 4 tons, that’s up to $200
just for dumping. There’s also the cost of an hour or so to drop off, an hour to pick up, and an hour to dump it. So, as long as it’s not distracting from providing other services, it’s worth doing. The hooklift trucks for carrying the dumpsters are handy. We can put a pressure washer on those, a box truck, or a flatbed on it. They’re very versatile.
Currently, we have 27 people. We operate very lean in the office. We have Alesha, our office manager and customer service manager, my wife, and me. The rest are 5 working supervisors and their different crews. Our night manager has 7 guys, the day manager has 10 guys, and our fleet department includes a
mechanic, a mechanic’s helper, and a washer. We wash trucks 7 days per week. We also have 5 porters providing stand-alone portering service MondayFriday. Our busiest time for sweeping is Saturday and Sunday.
Our service area is Shelby County and DeSoto County (Mississippi). A lot of sweeping companies go 150 miles away. We try to condense our routes and limit our windshield time. We work for growth in the form of offering other services to customers. We plan to grow more into road construction. Since regenerative air sweepers don’t work as well for those needs, we’ve already got estimates for mechanical sweepers.
Over 50% of our staff have been here for 10 years or
longer. But, the difficult employment market has been the biggest challenge for us. My strategy is that when I need to fill one position, I usually hire 2 or 3 people to compensate for the predictable attrition rate for new hires in the industry.
I do all the interviewing. I usually pick a Friday or Saturday night for the employment interview, to see if the applicants are serious about coming in. I explain to them in the interview the several reasons why people typically quit and the few reasons why we terminate.
There’s a lot of advice available on hiring and retention issues. For example, Pepsi told us at management seminars never to hire anyone who’s
worked for themselves, whether they were a success or failure. Their logic was that you shouldn’t want either, because failed business owners have proven to be unsuccessful in their pursuits, and successful ones are too independent.
We’ve had other challenges, like during COVID. It was a struggle for us to hold the team together. But, we were determined not to lay anybody off. We got through that, and over our 29 years in business, we’ve never had a layoff.
Another big challenge to the sweeper industry is the third parties and the private equity firms trying to buy everyone. A lot of the great sweeping services have
continued on page 14
sold out to national corporations. A couple of times a week on average, we receive contact from someone trying to buy us.
The first sweeper truck I bought was a Schwarze 343, which I named Aardy 1. We’ve grown to have 27 fleet vehicles licensed for the road. All are named Aardy and their number, so they’re Aardy 1-29 [including the retired mascot, Aardy 1]. At the start, me and Aardy 1 were out there learning together the hard way. She got promoted a year ago to marketing and is no longer used in the field. Every truck gets changed out every five years, except Aardy 1, who will always be a part of the company.
In total, we operate 15 sweeper trucks, and other
auxiliary vehicles, including the 2 hooklift trucks. We also have pickup trucks for portering.
The primary truck we use is Victory. We have 10 Victorys. We also have 4 Tymcos and 1 NiteHawk in use. Our customers mostly need parking lot or construction sweeping. We haven’t been doing any milling or public streets, especially not the bigger roads and highways, and we’ve stayed away from government contracts.
My first 7 trucks were all Schwarze. When the Schwarze family sold to Alamo, Mark Schwarze started his own company, named Victory. I like the simplicity of the Victory truck designs and how easy they are to work on. It’s easy to obtain parts for them, and the durability of the Victory models is outstanding.
How did we end up with the Aardvark name and logo? Keep in mind, it was back in 1996 when we started. In those years, Yellow Pages was like the original Google. A name starting with “Aa…” got you at the top of the list. Also, the aardvark is nocturnal, like power sweeping work. And, everyone thinks it sucks stuff up (as the sweeper trucks do). It’s not exactly accurate, but it’s what people think, so I went with it. I didn’t want to limit my business growth with a less advantageous company name. People laugh at the idea of the aardvark, but they remember it. When I started, I had a lot of contacts in the area, but not property managers. I opted for a more passive sales approach, instead of a lot of direct cold calling. So, I joined BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association) right away. It has brought big benefits in branding. I was on the BOMA Board of Directors, the Exchange Club Board, and others. I was on too many boards, so I eventually got off those. We took a new approach. Most competitors didn’t even put their names on trucks.
continued on page 16
Our employees all wear clean uniforms, and our trucks are all washed every day. We want to represent that we can keep all our property clean and, therefore, we can keep yours clean too. So, we invite people to visit our facility, and we get a lot of takers on our invites when we have an open house.
away with just one nugget of information or inspiration from each of those visits.
We are also a member of the 1-800-SWEEPER coop. (I was on the original Board of Directors for the organization.) It has proven to offer a great wealth of information and is a networking resource for us.
Our working supervisors have about a half route each. They spend the rest of their time helping staff improve performance. We want to reach 400 billing minutes based on a 10-hour shift. The crew supervisors figure out, as their day or night progresses, how to maximize their teams’ SQp.
They kept below the radar and treated their companies like a small business. Instead, we’ve gotten articles published and actively worked to familiarize people with our brand. You can see our Aardvark logo all over everything.
Our employees all wear clean uniforms, and our trucks are all washed every day. We want to represent that we can keep all our property clean and, therefore, we can keep yours clean too. So, we invite people to visit our facility, and we get a lot of takers on our invites when we have an open house.
For example, we brought a crowd over from the recent trade show to tour. Over 70 contractors have come over the years to visit. I’ve visited a lot of sweeper companies myself. I mark it up as a success if I come
We use GPS on all the trucks. The advanced tracking function shows every turn, every pattern, speed, etc. You can see precisely what the operator covered, monitor proper speed, and other performance factors. For our complete business platform, we hired an Access contractor to design our own custom system. It tracks drivers, trucks, work orders, properties, SQp, and all bonus programs.
Every shift starts with a roll call meeting. We go over Safety, Quality, and route issues. We have a standing challenge to promote focus. If within the first 5 minutes of the meeting I don’t say safety, quality, and productivity, I pay $100 to everyone in the room. I’ve had to pay several times, which I’m glad to do. It means the incentive is working.
Visitors come and marvel at the condition of the trucks. We train the workers to take good care of the vehicles, and we don’t let the drivers do the post check. The Fleet team does that, and they communicate with the driver. The driver is held
responsible if there’s a scratch or tear. We fix it, and everything is kept in like-new condition.
We expect the driver to operate the truck like it’s brand new, and if something is wrong we want to know how it happened. Nine times out of ten, when there’s a problem, it’s happened because the driver has put productivity in front of Safety and Quality.
Washing the vehicles every day helps too. We have our own power washing equipment. The Fleet team takes care of the trucks, and Willie, Maintenance Manager, takes care of all other equipment.
Drivers who achieve A-Team status are paid an extra dollar per hour, plus an extra $10 per day, and a quarterly bonus. The crew supervisor determines how many credits the driver gets. For logging over 400 billable minutes per day, the driver gets the income from the minutes over that amount. Then, at the end of the period, there is a bonus for overage minutes as well. We reward the Attendance Bonus to drivers who prove their reliability throughout the year. In mid-December, drivers with excellent attendance can receive a $2,000 bonus.
Under our Eyes incentive program, drivers and porters can take pictures of issues on customers’ properties and submit them. A photo might be of a sign knocked down, a broken light, a couch abandoned on a customer’s property, etc. For every photo that is accepted, the worker gets a dollar. At the end of the month, workers who have accumulated as many as 50 pictures get an additional $100. For more than 600 photos in a year, the worker receives an additional dollar bonus for each one.
We forward the photos to the customers as an FYI courtesy, and it’s amazing how many customers say, “Please take care of it.” We also provide other bonus incentives around our core Safety, Quality, Productivity principles.
We provide each worker with a $300 health and wellness account at the start of each year for anything he or she needs. It can be used for work boots, athletic shoes, long underwear, etc. We supply it all. They can buy whatever they want that makes sense to buy for
We just want everyone to make a good living and enjoy their jobs. The benefits we provide include vacation pay. We do that differently than most employers.
work. That can include over-the-counter medications, and other things, but not things like designer basketball shoes, etc.
We just want everyone to make a good living and enjoy their jobs. The benefits we provide include vacation pay. We do that differently than most employers. Our workers’ vacation paycheck amounts are in keeping with their regular earnings, not just for 40 hours.
We won’t just be the cheapest provider of any service we offer. We don’t give out bids. I don’t do “cheap.” We don’t cut corners. We want customers who want it done right.
We provide health insurance, $50k life insurance, and vision coverage. All the guys have voted against the 401k each time it’s been brought up for consideration. They always opt instead to have money that would be allocated for that rolled into their paychecks instead.
We do other things for our employees, like having fun outings, and there’s our Dirty Santa event, where people steal each other’s workplace Christmas gifts. It’s something different, and everyone has a good time with it.
I’m in the office most of the time. It’s important to me that I’m here when guys go out and come in. I want to hear them and figure out if they had a good or bad day. I do my administrative work and do property visits between roll calls.
We won’t just be the cheapest provider of any service we offer. We don’t give out bids. I don’t do “cheap.” I’ll give a prospective customer an estimate of what it will
cost to keep his or her parking lot clean. But, if I’m the cheapest, it’s probably an error. We don’t cut corners. We want customers who want it done right. That’s proven to be the most effective way to generate word of mouth advertising.
For inspiration, see the impressive Aardvark Memphis website featuring photos of employee training sessions with uniformed staff members in professional formal classroom settings.
I talk to a lot of people over the phone. I’m a big believer in helping others succeed, except my competitors in Memphis. The one thing most sweeping service providers are afraid to say is, “No.” “No” has to be one of the tools in your tool belt. You have to know what you are willing and able to do, and be willing to say, “No.” If someone is asking you to provide an additional service that you’re not willing to do, you have to make the choice that is right for your business.
We’re a full-service maintenance company, but there are service types we don’t offer and scaled workloads that we don’t accommodate. For example, people sometimes call offering me a big portfolio of portering accounts without power sweeping involved. We don’t offer that extent of portering service.
It would be hard to find a more prepared, personable, open business leader than Carl Barton in any industry. He seems to be all there is to want in an employer, business partner, or service provider. His genuineness and intelligence naturally inspire trust. His company, we learned, also gives back to the Memphis metro
continued on page 20
and greater regional community through numerous charities and organizations.
Among the wide array of exceptional features of Carl Barton’s highly successful strategic enterprise design, his brand conception stands out. The creation of the regionally iconic logo has certainly proven its merits as a unique and exciting image, and Carl’s reasoning for naming the company Aardvark has delivered remarkably well over the decades.
One big point of proof is the result of searching the 2025 Yellow Pages online for “Memphis TN sweeping service.” Naturally, Aardvark is the #1 listing in the category, appearing at the top of the first Yellow Pages Google SERP for the city. So, in 2025, as in
1996, online as on paper, Carl Barton’s marketing and branding logic has prevailed, as have his rationales for his entrepreneurial career leap and his business leadership methodology.
For information about Aardvark Sweeping Services Call (901) 266-4700 www.aardvarkmemphis.com
IT’S BARELY OVERSTATING THE MERITS OF THIS REVOLUTIONARY DIGITAL AGENT TO CALL IT A WONDER OF AVANT-GARDE
AI. HAVE YOU TAKEN A LITTLE TIME YET TO EXPLORE SOME OF THE POWERFUL ADVANTAGES OF USING CHATGPT FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES? NO? WELL, SO FAR, JUST ABOUT 49% OF SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS AND 92% OF FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES HAVE USED IT. LET’S LOOK AT SOME OF THE BIG WAYS YOU CAN BENEFIT FROM USING CHATGPT IN RUNNING YOUR OPERATIONS.
RADICALLY IMPROVE ALL YOUR OPERATIONS WITH CHATGPT
There is literally no facet of organizational management in which ChatGPT cannot be very helpful for virtually everything involved in it. From developing processes, training programs, and marketing methods, to automating rote tasks, analyzing metrics, and
Your power sweeping company may be a one-truck service, at this point, or a venture capital-funded national operation... Either way, consider putting ChatGPT to work for you.
collaborating in brainstorming for solutions to the gamut of potential business issues.
HOW YOUR BUSINESS CAN BENEFIT FROM CHATGPT
Your power sweeping company may be a one-truck service, at this point, or a venture capital-funded national operation that continues to grow at a blinding rate. Either way, consider putting ChatGPT to work for you.
You may be surprised at how simple using this free ChatGPT AI program is to produce a limitless array of instant solutions.
If you’ve ever undertaken the laborious chore of creating a full-scope employee training system, you probably recall that it seemed manageable enough in the early phase and then the additional modules for a never-ending flow of tasks you discovered should be included.
• Upgrade your training system:
Instantly create learning modules and operating procedures by simply typing in a few words describing what kind of instructions you want to produce.
• Automate routine tasks:
Through the chatbot platform’s new “Task” function, it can automate data entry tasks for you, routinely produce content on chosen subjects, give daily updates on data points, and more.
• Obtain custom leadership coaching:
You can copy transcripts of phone or video interactions to the platform for analysis and feedback for training, customer service, and sales process improvement.
• Engage in virtual collaboration:
Think of ChatGPT as a collaborator and partner with your chatbot to brainstorm ideas for marketing, branding, product development, or any other business solution.
The platform can be used to help write scripts for chatbots to produce automated responses to typical questions from customers. It can further condense
lengthy writings into simpler language, proofread text for you, and much more.
• Personalize sales campaigns:
You can create personalized email campaigns which consistently excel in marketing performance over competing communication modes.
• Automate various sales and service interactions:
Generating chatbot scripts for responding to customers’ questions helps increase customer engagement, a critical performance metric.
• Develop drafts at record speed
Take any content project from zero to rough draft to fine-tuned presentation phenomenally fast by letting ChatGPT do most of the work for you.
Putting the platform to the task of writing blogs, marketing emails, social posts, etc., cuts the marketing work to a minimum. The program even does your research into the best keywords to use, and it can provide competitor data for analysis too.
• Develop strategic marketing:
Let the ChatGPT chatbot help you do your research and analysis to inform your ideas for marketing your power sweeping company in your particular target market.
• Generate an endless variety of marketing content: Use the bot to instantly produce drafts for email blasts, product descriptions, articles, press releases, blog posts, video scripts, and more.
• Recycle existing blog and ad content: Rewrite previously used articles or other marketing assets to create new materials, or to refresh outdated
• Achieve Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Identify the most effective keywords and keyword phrases, produce the most attractive meta descriptions, improve page performance and the overall visitor experience.
The value of data is, of course, in the quality of information that can ultimately be gleaned from processing it effectively for your purposes. With ChatGPT, you can:
• Perform competitive market research: The platform generates industry insights, identifies trends, customer needs, competitors’ offerings and assets, and regional business climate considerations.
continued on page 26 information and produce evergreen content.
• Perform business analyses: The ChatGPT bot can facilitate your operational needs analysis and deliver a wealth of other insights into your organization’s strengths and areas of needed improvement.
• Establish virtual guidance resources: The chatbot platform can lead you to top authorities in the industry and your target customers’ industries, so you can develop your own virtual professional support network.
As you can imagine, if you use the platform to gather information and draft content for just a fraction of the
purposes listed above, you’ve gained an incredible amount of free material.
The possibilities are endless. Plus, ChatGPT is fun to use. You just type “chatgpt” into the Google search field, hit enter, and click on the ChatGPT website. And, there it is — the empty ChatGPT page with its blinking prompt always awaiting your question, any question at
all. Go ahead! Type it in. See what all the excitement is about!
$75 MILLION SENIOR UNSECURED NOTES OFFERING.
CHARLOTTE-BASED EQUIPMENT FINANCE COMPANY COMPLETES INVESTMENT-GRADE PRIVATE PLACEMENT.
CHARLOTTE, NC (August 14, 2025) Commercial Credit, Inc. (CCI) , a leading independent commercial equipment finance company, today announced the successful closing of a $75 million private placement of senior unsecured notes. The investment-grade rated notes mature in August 2030 and were placed with a diverse group of institutional fixed income investors. Piper Sandler & Co. acted as the sole placement agent for the transaction.
diversify our capital structure,” said Dan McDonough, co-founder and CEO of CCI. “The strong demand for our notes and the investment-grade rating reflect the strength of our business model and performance. We are well-positioned to continue our growth and deepen our commitment to serving customers nationwide.”
About Commercial Credit, Inc.
Proceeds from the offering will be used to extinguish a senior note issued by Commercial Credit Group Inc. (CCG) in 2021...
Proceeds from the offering will be used to extinguish a senior note issued by Commercial Credit Group Inc. (CCG) in 2021, further optimizing the company’s capital structure and extending its maturity profile.
“This offering represents a significant milestone for CCI as we continue to strengthen our liquidity and
Commercial Credit, Inc., through its wholly owned subsidiaries Commercial Credit Group Inc., Commercial Funding Inc., and Keystone Equipment Finance Corp., provides equipment loans and leases to small and mid-sized businesses in the construction, fleet transportation, machine tool and manufacturing, and waste industries, and accounts receivable factoring in a variety of industries. The company is headquartered in Charlotte, NC, and operates full-service offices in Buffalo, NY, Naperville, IL, Hamilton, ON, Salt Lake City, UT, and West Hartford, CT. For more information, please visit www.commercialcreditgroup.com,, www.commercialfund.com, and www.keystoneefc.com.
Contact Information: Julie Murphy 704-944-2771
jmurphy@commercialcreditgroup.com
SWEEPRITE IS
TO
THE OPENING OF THEIR SECOND MANUFACTURING FACILITY.
Due to on-going growth in Canada and the United States, the leadership of Sweeprite is pleased to announce the opening of their second manufacturing facility in Detroit Michigan. Sweeprite’s Detroit facility is producing the popular S2 Husky and S3 road sweepers for US customers. The first S2 Husky assembled in the United States rolled off the assembly line August 5, 2025.
The NON-CDL S2 Husky is the product of 50 years of innovation. Built with North American steel...
The NON-CDL S2 Husky is the product of 50 years of innovation. Built with North American steel, the S2 has been engineered to meeting the needs of the public sector and sweeping professionals across North America.
When asked about the US expansion, Colin Zhao (President of Sweeprite) stated: “Our growth trajectory required us to expand our production capacity. There are many benefits to adding a US manufacturing
plant. Our primary motivation was to continue to provide our US customers with quality sweepers and parts at competitive prices. The Detroit facility will be dedicated to meeting the needs of our customers across the US.”
Sweeprite will be unveiling the first S2 Husky built in America at the PWX Show, August 17-20 in Chicago (booth 12001).
South Plainfield, NJ – August 2025 Keystone Plastics, Inc. , a leading manufacturer of street sweeping brooms, proudly announces its 80th anniversary this month. Founded in August 1945, Keystone remains a privately held, family-owned business now in its third generation of leadership, a rare distinction in the American manufacturing landscape.
Keystone
has been dedicated to producing high-quality, Americanmade brooms that keep communities and infrastructure safe and clean.
Since its founding, Keystone has been dedicated to producing high-quality, American-made brooms that keep communities and infrastructure safe and clean. With full vertical integration, Keystone transforms raw materials into industry-leading brooms at its New Jersey facility, supporting local jobs and ensuring consistent, high-quality manufacturing.
“Eighty years is a major milestone,” said Marvin Naftal, President of Keystone Plastics. “We are proud of our legacy as a family-owned business and even
prouder of the role we continue to play in American manufacturing. Our commitment has always been to build the best broom in the industry and to do it here, in the United States, while creating jobs and supporting our community.”
Over the past eight decades, Keystone has grown from a small local operation into an internationally recognized name in street sweeping. Today, its
products are used by municipalities, contractors, and equipment manufacturers across the world.
“This anniversary is a celebration of our customers, our employees, and our partners, many of whom have been with us for decades,” said Naftal. “Their loyalty and trust have fueled our growth and allowed us to keep evolving while staying true to who we are.”
To mark this milestone, Keystone will launch a yearlong campaign honoring its history, employees, and customers, with events, digital content, and special promotions throughout the year. The campaign will kick off with interviews from the Naftal family and feature highlights from Keystone’s eight-decade
journey in the industry.
“Keystone has always been about more than just brooms,” Naftal added. “It’s about people, pride, and a promise to deliver a product that represents the best of American manufacturing.”
Maplewood, Minnesota is a suburb of St. Paul. With harsh winters and bustling changes among the seasons, street cleaning is a priority to keep the town of about 40,000 residents looking idyllic and improve stormwater quality.
The municipality’s street cleaning program includes two rounds in the spring, cleaning after major storms in the summer, prepping for patching, cleaning up from milling prior to spot paving and cleaning through the
fall beginning in mid-October and lasting as long as the weather permits.
Troy Brink is the streets and storm superintendent for Maplewood Public Works. He has been with the city for 24 years. Joe Sheeran is the communications manager for Maplewood.
The pair noted the necessity of street cleanings throughout the year with spring and fall being key timeframes.
“Sand and sediment build over the course of the winter,” said Sheeran. “Spring and early summer are key times to get that cleared before that material reaches storm sewers and goes to waterways. We’re proactive.”
To keep Maplewood’s streets clean, the city employs 10 people including eight maintenance workers and two crew chiefs. They use the Elgin Pelican, which is a three-wheel mechanical sweeper that provides high
Sand and sediment build over the course of the winter,” said Sheeran. “Spring and early summer are key times to get that cleared before that material reaches storm sewers and goes to waterways. We’re proactive.
maneuverability and visibility.
One of Maplewood’s sweeper operators has been sweeping for more than 40 years. Doug Edge swept the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, which consistently ranks among the top in attendance, when he was just a kid, and now he works for Maplewood. Edge’s grandfather is believed to have received the very first Elgin sweeper in Minnesota. Since selecting Elgin, Maplewood hasn’t ventured away in sweeper choice.
Sweeping Inc. has been in the sweeping industry for 80 years.
“The sweepers have come a long way as far as comfort for operators,” said Brink. “The one button that drops all the brooms is nice. The guys like the greaseless pins and the remote hoses for grease points. It makes it easier to grease.”
Now Edge’s nephews, who work at Mike McPhillips Sweeping Inc., are also helping on Maplewood’s sweepers for upkeep. As a family business serving contractors and municipalities in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Mike McPhillips Sweeping Inc. has been in the sweeping industry for 80 years. Edge’s uncle runs the business.
continued on page 36
We try to keep up with the leaves. Late leaf drops are tough because we’re not able to get as many up,” said Brink. “We use two Elgin Pelicans and have them leapfrog one another...
Despite the history and operator family connections, Brink noted that the reliability of the Elgin is what keeps them coming back.
“I would say it’s reliable,” said Brink. “I don’t see us going away from the Pelican. I don’t think there is one that compares to cleaning leaves off streets.”
With fall soon approaching, Brink noted that the upcoming season is the busiest.
“We try to keep up with the leaves. Late leaf drops are tough because we’re not able to get as many up,” said Brink. “We use two Elgin Pelicans and have them leapfrog one another. We do a curb line pass with each sweeper, and once one is full, the other is ready.”
Keystone Plastics has been manufacturing the industry’s leading replacement brooms for street sweeping and road construction since 1954. At Keystone we believe in reliable quality and strive to make the heaviest, longest lasting brooms in the industry. We also believe the only good broom is the one that arrives to you as promised. Contact us to find a distributor near you.
With more than 150 miles of streets to clean, Sheeran and Brink pointed out that street cleaning is far more than looks.
“It helps us improve stormwater quality by getting the sediment and leaves cleaned up before it can reach lakes and streams,” said Brink. “We used to use sand in the winter time and now we use straight salt, so there is not as much sediment as when sand was used.”
The municipality of Maplewood worked with MacQueen Equipment for its Elgin Pelican sweepers. Elgin’s extensive dealer network helps customers for the life of the sweeper.
Sold and serviced through a network of more than 100 dealer locations worldwide, Elgin Sweeper products are the sweepers of choice for a variety of general street maintenance, special industrial and airport applications. With more than 100 years of experience, Elgin Sweeper offers municipalities, contractors and industries the most sweeper options in the world, using the latest sweeping technologies — mechanical, pure vacuum, regenerative air, alternative fuel and waterless dust control. Elgin Sweeper is a subsidiary of Federal Signal Corporation’s Environmental Solutions Group.
For more information, visit www. ElginSweeper.com.
Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE: FSS) builds and delivers equipment of unmatched quality that moves material, cleans infrastructure and protects the communities where we work and live. Founded in 1901, Federal Signal is a leading global designer, manufacturer and supplier of products and total solutions that serve municipal, governmental, industrial and commercial customers. Headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, with manufacturing facilities worldwide, the Company operates two groups: Environmental Solutions and Safety and Security Systems.
For more information on Federal Signal, visit www.FederalSignal.com.
Bensink
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909-713-1600 / globalsweeper.com
866-994-4929 / gregoryhighway.com
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