For any leaf clean up job of more than 1-2 hours, raking is a tough way to go. While a good pair of gloves may keep the blisters at bay, the longer you rake the more your back will, uh, “talk back” to you.

Leaf blowers are a popular rake replacement tool, and they are very effective at herding the leaves into a central location. Gasoline-powered and battery-powered models are available. Gas blowers are noisy, so we prefer a well-balanced, lightweight battery-powered leaf blower. Leaf blowers are particularly good for those who have a final destination they can blow their leaves to…say, into a wooded area, or a ravine.

But for most of us, gathering the leaves isn’t the end of it. We actually have to bag them up or otherwise get them off our property. And that’s where a leaf vacuum offers a big advantage. On a smaller property you may be willing to bag up the leaves, but if you have lots of trees and a sizable yard, you’ll be stooping over and over again and inhaling a lot of leaf dust and debris in the process. And you’re “back” where you were with raking.

A high capacity leaf-vacuum, such as those we offer at DR Power Equipment, will do almost everything in one pass: gather, reduce the material and contain it in our hard shell collectors. All that’s left for you to do is drive it to a convenient spot for dumping or composting.

Obviously, a Leaf Vacuum is a bigger investment than a leaf blower, but if you consider how many hours you put into this annual project, you may find that it’s worth your while. Consider too, that DR Leaf and Lawn Vacuums are more than just leaf cleanup machines. They also make great high volume “baggers” for collecting grass clippings while mowing with your riding mower!