How much do you know about street sweeper?

A street sweeper or street cleaner may refer to a person or a machine that cleans streets.

At first, sanitation workers use a broom and shovel to clean the streets. Later, they use water hoses to wash the streets. Then in order to do the cleaning more efficiently, machines were created in the 19th century. Today, modern street sweepers are mounted on truck bodies and can vacuum debris in streets.

History of street sweeper

Manual sweeping

The original way people cleaned the streets was completely manual.

Mechanical sweepers in the United Kingdom

By the 1840s, as the first industrial city, Manchester had one of the largest textile industries at the time, which also resulted in poor local sanitation. To deal with this problem, in 1846, Joseph Whitworth invented the mechanical street sweeper.

Mechanical sweepers in the United States

The very first street sweeper was patented in 1849 by its inventor, C.S. Bishop. For a long time, street sweepers were just rotating disks covered with wire bristles.

In 1868, the first self-propelled sweeper powered by a steam engine received a U.S. patent. In 1879, Eureka C. Bowne received a U.S patent. She was the first woman known to receive a patent for a street sweeper.

In 1896, African-American inventor Charles Brooks improved the traditional street sweeper, making front brushes of different lengths and adding the function of collecting and processing garbage. The front brush can also be replaced with a scraper to remove snow or ice. in 1896, Brooks received a U.S. patent. However, before 1900, most of the more than 300 street sweeper patents issued in the United States did not have engines on board.

In 1911, John M. Murphy planned to invent a motor-driven pickup street sweeper. Then he was employed by Charles A. Whiting and James Todd who established The American Tower and Tank Company in 1903. After 2 years, he succeeded. This is the first Elgin sweeper. After continuing to improve, in 1917, J.M. Murphy obtained a U.S. patent.

Technological advancement

It was not until the 1970s that policymakers began to worry about water quality, and street sweeping could be an effective measure to reduce pollutants in stormwater runoff. As a result, the goal of street cleaning, which was to simply remove debris, began to change. This also promoted the technological progress of road sweepers.

Modern Sweepers

Now many street sweepers are PM10 and PM2.5 certified, which means that they are capable of collecting and holding particulate matter sized less than 10μm and even down to 2.5μm.

In 2018, Boschung launched the Urban-Sweeper S2.0. It’s the first fully electric street sweeper with zero emissions.

Now more and more modern street sweepers are launched. Like our SW-III, it's not only used for cleaning. But also with multi-functions, such as spraying, watering, snow removal and so on.