Celebrating 21 Years: The Stories That Shaped "Earth's Largest Power Sweeping Resource"
by Ranger Kidwell-Ross, editor
WorldSweeper.com
Today, June 21st, marks exactly 21 years since WorldSweeper.com was launched to replace the American Sweeper website. That kind of coincidence is known as a 'Golden Anniversary.' Back in the summer of 2005, the vision was to create an international home for the power sweeping industry – a place where contractors, public works officials, and environmental professionals from around the world could find the resources they needed to do their jobs better.
Today, as I reflect on over two decades of effort – which has resulted in more than half a terabyte of archived data – I am humbled by how far this project has come, especially since it has been essentially a one-person operation.
For this milestone May/June 2026 issue, rather than focusing on the news of the day, I decided to do something different. I have combed through our 21-year archive to select and feature a lineup of what I thought were the best, most standout articles we've ever published. These are the stories that defined eras, changed perspectives, and brought our community together.
If there is one message I have championed since my days founding and printing American Sweeper magazine in the early 1990s, it is that power sweeping is the first line of defense for protecting water quality. For years, this was treated as an afterthought by stormwater managers. That changed dramatically with the landmark 2019 Florida Stormwater Study.
Included in this month's retrospective lineup, that study conclusively proved that street sweeping is 300% to 500% more cost-effective for removing Total Nitrogen, Total Phosphorus, and Particulate Matter than any other available removal method. We are also tracking current 2026 efforts by the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project to empirically test runoff differences between swept and unswept streets. These studies represent the scientific validation of everything this website was built to advocate.
An educated industry is a successful industry. That's why I've started with John Dolce's masterful series on the maintenance of sweepers and rolling stock. Dolce's 40 years of fleet management experience provided our readers with actionable, bottom-line-saving advice that remains just as relevant today as when I first heard him speak at the National Pavement Expo in 2007.
Similarly, we've highlighted the Metropolitan Council's exhaustive guidelines on "Best Management Practices for Street Sweeping," along with our ever-growing "Tip Clipboard," which now houses over 135 sweeper tips submitted by professionals from across the globe.
The heart of the sweeping industry isn't just the machinery; it's the people. In this issue, we revisit the stories of two extraordinary individuals: Danny Downs, who spent 40 years crafting exquisitely detailed miniature models that included tiny representations of vintage sweepers like the Austin Western Model 40, and Kenny Page, whose lifelong love for sweepers led him to rescue and restore full-sized vintage Elgins, eventually catching the eye of national sponsors.
And who could forget the lighter side of our industry? Our retrospective wouldn't be complete without revisiting the 2002 Junkyard Wars episode "Garbage Guzzlers," where teams from Schwarze and Elgin famously battled to build functioning sweepers out of scrap metal. It remains a high-water mark for showcasing the ingenuity and good-natured rivalry of our manufacturing community.
WorldSweeper has always looked beyond North America. Over the years, I've had the privilege of traveling to 18 different countries to report on how the rest of the world sweeps. For this issue, we are featuring our APEX Grand Award-winning European travelogue saga from 2006. It serves as a reminder that the challenges of urban sanitation and environmental protection are truly global.
As I announced late last year, I am actively working toward retirement and currently collaborating with a consortium of professionals designing a WorldSweeper 2.0 that will ultimately facilitate transfer of ownership of WorldSweeper.com. My hope is that this 21-year archive will be preserved and expanded as a neutral, educational backbone for the entire industry.
Until that transition is complete, I will continue to advocate for the environmental necessity of power sweeping. Thank you to the sponsors, the WSA members, and the readers who have supported this journey since 2005.
Please enjoy this look back at some of the finest moments in WorldSweeper history.
As always, if you have questions and/or any news of potential interest to the power sweeping community, please let us know. Between this publication, the WorldSweeper.com website, and the World Sweeping Association, we'll be sure to get the information passed along to interested readers.
Good Sweeping,
Editor, WorldSweeper.com
Executive Director, World Sweeping Association
Member, PAVEMENT Hall of Fame
PS If you're a contractor I urge you to check out the many benefits of membership in the World Sweeping Association. Also, if you haven't 'liked' our WorldSweeper Facebook page, what are you waiting for? That's where we offer a variety of industry previews and updates on an ongoing basis.
For our May/June stories click on links below.
- John Dolce on Maintenance of Sweepers and Other Rolling Stock
- Stormwater Studies Confirm Street Sweeping Offers Best Pollutant Removal Value
- Building Sweepers on Junkyard Wars – and Much, Much More
- Award-Winning Travelogues of Sweeping Stories From Europe and Elsewhere Around the World
- Two Model Sweeping Industry Individuals
- Best Management Practices for Street Sweeping
- 135 Sweeper Tips (and Counting...) in One Location
John Dolce on Maintenance of Sweepers and Other Rolling Stock
This series of three articles by the same professional, John Dolce, all cover fleet vehicle maintenance. Dolce has more than 40 years of experience operating fleets of various types and sizes, in both the public and private sectors. Dolce conducts university-level seminars on vehicle maintenance, management, and fleet management in the US and Canada, and has written two texts on the subject.
I first heard him speak at a National Pavement Expo held in 2007. His advice appeared to hit the mark for everyone in the room. After the first feature article on Dolce and his excellent maintenance ideas, we added two follow-up articles at later times.
Below is a link to the first article, which has links at the bottom to his two other articles WorldSweeper published. If you want to keep your rolling stock in top condition at the lowest overall expense, Dolce's advice is something to follow.
Click here to read all of the info.
Stormwater Studies Confirm Street Sweeping Offers Best Pollutant Removal Value
In 2019 the first definitive study showing the extreme value of street sweeping for pavement-based pollutant removal – 300-to-500% more cost-effective for removing Total Nitrogen, Total Phosphorus, and Particulate Matter than any other available removal method – was published in Florida. The study found street sweeping to be the most economical and dominant practice that MS4s can implement and optimize in order to maximize nutrient and particulate matter (PM) recovery benefits to urban drainage systems and the environment.
A 2021 follow-up study in Minnesota and now in 2026 there's a current effort by Elizabeth Fassman-Beck, engineering head of the Souther California Coastal Water Research Project, aimed at directly quantifying the water quality differences between swept and unswept street segments – they're doing empirical testing at field scale showing runoff differences between swept and unswept street segments. We will be covering the latter as data emerge.
Revisit the 2019 study that provided such strong confirmation.
Building Sweepers on Junkyard Wars – and Much, Much More
The WorldSweeper website offers over 50 fun and funny articles having to do with sweeping. The breadth of information runs from cartoons to song lyric modifications to years of our acclaimed April Fool's articles, and much more. As a result, it was difficult to choose the top story for this retrospect issue. If you go to the home page for our Funny Business section you may well be there for hours.
However, after thoughtful consideration, our coverage of The Learning Channel's 'Junkyard Wars' television show – competitions where two teams fabricated unlikely machines from castoff parts found in a vehicle graveyard – won top honors. The sweeper challenge episode, called 'Garbage Guzzlers,' was first aired on June 12, 2002.
In that episode, a vice president for Schwarze managed his "Sewer Rats" team in building an air sweeper from junkyard parts. He was pitted against an Elgin counterpart who managed his "Trash Can Heroes" on making a broom sweeper from the junkyard. Judge was Gale Holsman, owner of American Sweeping, Inc., and WorldSweeper's Editor, Ranger Kidwell-Ross, provided coverage for the six part online series. It's great fun as you go behind the scenes on the set of the show during its taping.
Check out the good-natured competition – and mayhem.
Award-Winning Travelogues of Sweeping Stories From Europe and Elsewhere Around the World
WorldSweeper's Editor, Ranger Kidwell-Ross, personally visited and brought back sweeping stories from eighteen different countries. WorldSweeper's international coverage includes an additional seven. From five of the visits Ranger made – from Asia, Australia (twice), Europe and India – he brought the industry multiple story 'sagas' about sweeping.
Two of those sojourns, Asia in 2002 and Europe in 2006, won APEX Awards of Excellence. However, we chose the latter to be our choice for our retro coverage because so did the judges at the APEX Awards: The European Saga was awarded a Grand Award designation in 2004 when only 100 Grand Awards were presented from the over 5,500 entries received. So, if you'd like to go along on as Ranger's companion on his grand adventure of covering European sweeping, use the link below.
The European sagas. If you want to see all of WorldSweeper's international reporting, use this link.
Two Model Sweeping Industry Individuals
Two fascinating gentlemen we've written about include the following...
Danny Downs has been building models over 40 years and has made astonishingly detailed models of old vintage sweepers. The models he made are quite small and extremely detailed. The first article with Downs is the one discussing how he built an Austin Western model 50. Then, in 2014 we again featured him and his build of an Austin Western Model 40 sweeper, which was exquisitely done and offers an exceptional level of detail. It was fascinating to learn about how this model builder made his sweepers, as well as models of other vehicles.
The other person who made models, McKinley "Kenny" Page, made them giant-sized. They were even somewhat operational, certainly for their size. He even donated one for us when the World Sweeping Association hosted the first 'Sweeper Roundup.' Page said he had loved sweepers since he saw his first one at about the age of three or four. Then, when 22, he discovered a somewhat abandoned 1962 Elgin Street King when he missed his exit and ended up at the next where the machine was behind a fence.
He ultimately ended up buying it for $700 and then put another hard-earned $5600 into getting it operational. In addition, he found and purchased a 1960 Elgin White Wing and a 1964 Elgin Pelican. He even took them out to sweep streets in his Newark hometown – on the sly – and had some adventures along the way. Use this link to read what he told WorldSweeper about them.
Kenny Page then started building model sweepers, ones that came to the attention of the founder and president of Golden Isles TV, Ms. Avery Brooks. With the sponsorship of Elgin and Schwarze, Page and Brooks made an entertaining video of Page's interest that was about 18-minutes long. You can also read the WorldSweeper article about how that happened as well as view the video on YouTube.
These individuals were only two examples of some of the unique people who populate the power sweeping industry. You can find many more in WorldSweeper's 'Noteworthy in Power Sweeping' and 'History of Power Sweeping' website categories.
Best Management Practices for Street Sweeping
When it comes to best practices for street sweeping, the WorldSweeper website offers a variety of information in its Street Sweeping: Best Practices category. One of our favorites, though now somewhat dated but still valuable, is the information developed and distributed by the St. Paul, Minnesota-based Metropolitan Council, a regional agency that conducts long-range planning and research for the Twin Cities metro area.
The Metropolitan Council report has widespread application because – like the agencies that conduct street sweeping throughout America – there is a wide variation in how the Council's member cities provide street sweeping. To gain a variety of ideas about running an effective street sweeping operation, we suggest two of the articles by them that we published on that topic.
"Best Management Practices for Street Sweeping" and "Metropolitan Council's Best Practices for Street Sweeping." Although they are both exhaustively complex, if developing and implementing best practices are topics you want to know more about, these are good starting points. Then, to see a complete list of what is offered on the topic at WorldSweeper, go here.
135 Sweeper Tips (and Counting...) in One Location
Through the years WorldSweeper has compiled well over 100 tips related to power sweeping. If you haven't yet read and in some cases memorized them, what better time to do so could there be?
The Tip Clipboard.
Sweeper Toys, Songs and Games
What better way to pass along your own legacy in sweeping than to provide your kids and grandkids (and great grandkids) with selections of toys and games about power sweeping?! Even songs: click on the graphic above and you'll see what we mean.
That section of the WorldSweeper website, though not exactly sweeping, is certainly a great way to introduce those around you to the world of power sweeping. Use the link below to see the current selection. If you have knowledge of others just let us know and we'll add them.
WorldSweeper's Toys, Songs and Games section.
|
