It looks a bit like one of those coils attached to a big hairdryer in a ladies' salon.
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Or, maybe, a super-sized dryer vent that's just waiting for a homeowner to come along and clean out the lint.
But the big sucker attached to a truck along Kreider Avenue in Manheim Township this day makes things much, much easier versus the old days for several guys at work along the suburban street north of Lancaster.
The workers are members of the township's busy — repeat, busy — leaf-collection crew on a sun-splashed, wind-whipped day of autumn.
From mid-October through the week leading up to Christmas, these guys will be making three sweeps through Manheim Township to collect leaves.
And the big sucking unit is attached to one of several leaf-collection machines that the township has out on its roads each day.
The crews maneuver the big machine, or "leaf vac," into place over a two-foot-high leaf pile that an attentive homeowner has swept to the street.
As the township workers help guide leaves toward the suction, the device goes whoosh, and the big pile quickly begins to disappear.
"Need a quick haircut?" someone quips.
Hey, when you have just under 200 miles of roads where the leaves are your responsibility, who has time to rake?
"If you can get six or seven loads a day, that's doing real good," Dick Eddy, driver of one of the crew's two trucks, says as he steers it along Kreider Avenue, a short street off Lititz Pike just south of Landis Woods Park.
It's hard work, but Eddy, a Columbia native (and 1971 Columbia High grad) who has been a Manheim Township employee for 8!-W years, says it's much easier with the new equipment.
Without the leaf vac, crews had to physically rake leaves into rotating paddle-like devices, some of which still are used by a few of the township leaf crews.
The township is in the process of saving up the money so all six crews will have leaf vacs within the next several years.
Work also is eased, Eddy and several others agree, when it doesn't rain.
Just as moisture hinders a guy in the backyard with a rake, "rain is just terrible to us," Eddy continues.
"Even with the new machine here, with rain, it's still harder for us to get the leaves up. ... There's a lot more scraping, and as it gets colder, if there's any rain or even frost first thing in the morning, it sticks to the ground.
"It's a little bit more trying."
For workers such as Eddy and crews in other municipalities that gather leaves, now is crunch time.
Literally.
From the start of fall until the equipment is retrofitted to begin plowing snow, many are the leaves cleared by municipal collection crews.
Crews in Manheim Township, Lancaster's largest suburb with 36,000-plus residents, have 144 miles of roads where they gather the leaves that have been raked to the curb by cooperative homeowners.
There also are another 55 miles of state roads where they are not allowed to use the big machines. On those roads, such as Lititz Pike, each Friday they collect leaves that are bagged by residents. That continues as late as Jan. 15.
Along with 16 full-time workers, Manheim Township's Public Works Department hires 10 to 12 part-timers during leaf-collection season.
"So far this season, everything's been dry, so productivity has been to the max," says Carl Neff, the township's public works director.
The leaves are sucked into a truck that has a series of small shredders to chop them almost to a powder and then compact the material.
It has an open-screen top, so in the air right above the truck, the shredded leaves pop up as they're ground, making it look like bees are hovering just above a nest.
The shredded leaves are taken to Manheim Township's eight-year-old composting facility off Oregon Pike, beginning a process that will take the leaves back to yards and flower gardens.
"It all works together," Neff explains. "We're in the service business (as a township), and with regulations over time, burning leaves became prohibited because there was just too much smoke in the community."
Neff, the township's public works director for 33 years, agrees with his driver, Eddy, that rain or even an early snow are the main worries.
And wet leaves can present a hazard, because vehicle tires can slip a lot more easily on them, Neff points out.
When winter comes, the leaf trucks are quickly retrofitted to become snow plows.
The conversion once would have taken two or three guys half a day, but now two people can do it in a half-hour, he estimates.
With snow a distant threat on this sunny day, Neff explains that each truck can haul 16 to 20 cubic yards of leaves and crews will haul some 1,100 loads in a season to the compost facility.
The raw leaf materials eventually will become what Neff calls "soil amendment," which residents can use to top-dress their lawn or to mix with the soil in their flower-bed areas or gardens.
Many homeowners have found that a half-inch to an inch of top-dressing placed on "bald spots" on their lawn allows "the grass to grab hold" and make the lawn strong, Neff says.
Even with the leaf vac, crew members still get in their exercise — they can expect to walk 10 miles a day guiding the leaves toward the suction machine.
When they're done on this side of Lititz Pike, Eddy and the others on the crew will head toward the Blossom Hill neighborhood across Route 501.
The regular dump-truck body has a capacity of 9 cubic yards, but the township's leaf trucks have been modified to double the capacity, Neff says.
That pays off when the year's total haul reaches 20,000 cubic yards of raw leaf material to be processed into leaf compost.
Township residents bring in another 7,000 to 8,000 cubic yards of leaves on top of what the crews collect.
Drop-off of leaves is free, Neff emphasizes.
Manheim Township's 5-acre composting facility, which has an unsweetened-cholocate aroma on a working day, produces more than 14,000 tons of compost per year.
But it all goes back to the crews doing the heavy work of collecting the leaves.
As Eddy drives his truck over to start collecting its brown-and-orange cargo in Blossom Hill, he reflects on the job.
"We give them (the township) a real good day. ... If you can get six or seven loads a day, that's doing real good," Eddy says.
With rain in the forecast for this week, four of the township's six crews worked Saturday, a beautiful, sunny day, "to stay ahead of it" and not have to collect as many of this week's heavier, soggy leaves.
The results of their efforts are seen later, after Neff returns to the township building off of Oregon Pike.
Another township crew member is spreading the compost, being used as top-dressing on a soccer field next to the township building.
His crews "are the best," Neff says. "They are the guys we count on, not only in the leaf-collection season, but then day and night in the winter activities (i.e., snow) and then as the seasons roll on."
doconnor@lnpnews.com
