5 Popular Types of Street Sweeper Trucks

Occasionally, if not daily, cities and towns around the world get cleaned by specialized trucks referred to as street sweeper. These trucks are commonly found in urban areas where the presence of dirt and litter highly irritates people, especially the authorities mandated to do the cleaning. But it’s not until the 19th century when machines were invented to do the job, streets used to be full of trash and the only cleaning that was done, used to be manual. This consumed a lot of time in addition to its ineffective capacity of covering large areas.

There are various types of street sweeper trucks. Those that make use of brushes to clean the street and those that uses air to clean. However, the core function of any street sweeper is the same. The process of cleaning a street involves a series of steps depending on the nature of the dirt or litter. Typically, the dirt has to be removed from the ground; form a pile of dirt, and then the pile needs to be siphoned or scooped from the surface into a bin for proper disposal.

Street sweeper trucks come in different types and designs, they are:
1.Mechanical broom
This type of sweeper truck function by picking up debris and relaying it through a conveyor belt to a hopper. It uses a relatively low amount of horsepower airflows to pick up dirt hence uses less fuels as compared to other types of sweepers. Additionally, mechanical broom street sweeper trucks are not sensitive to rough street surfaces and are able to pick large debris and off-load them into trucks and containers. It’s commonly used to remove heavy granular materials, especially after flooding, and also the general city sweeping. Some of the drawbacks in using mechanical broom sweepers include, complex to use, high maintenance levels and remove less dirt.

2.Pure Vacuum
Just like a vacuum cleaner, pure vacuum sweeper trucks remove dirt and deposits it into a trunk hopper. Air from an impeller lifts debris from the ground and sucked by the vacuum fan then deposited into a hopper. Water from the containment area blocks granular particles from being pulled through the vacuum fan and exhausted into free air. This street sweeper truck removes dirt efficiently under the suction nozzles with its major application area being the rough potholed roadways. However, the nozzle entrance point is quite small limiting the size of materials being sucked. It can also be used in parking lot sweeping.

3.Regenerative air
Typical to pure vacuum but this one uses a blast of air to lift dirt through an airstream to a vacuum hose, where it’s hoisted into a dirt trunk. From the name itself, this sweeper relies on recirculating air through a regenerative loop. Most of the road sweeping services use this type of sweeper as it considered environmental friendly. Since it has a self-contained air stream, nothing gets out or exhausted into the atmosphere. Regenerative air sweeper is mainly used in alleyways, streets and parking lots.

Most of these street sweeper trucks are publicly used, meaning that it’s rare to find someone using around his backyard, not unless you have a big chunk of tarmac land. They can be easily found from various street sweeper rental services.