Adding Street Sweeper???

Kristopher Pettitt

Kristopher Pettitt

Member
So I have a pretty big question for some of you. I have been considering adding a mounted sweeper in the back of my F250 and getting an extension for my hitch to tow my trailer. So the set-up works. I’ve been doing some research on how much a Sweeper can make a year, and to my surprise it was way less than I expected. Now I would be doing this as an add on service. So my question goes out to those that have considered adding street sweeping to their power washing company.


1) After Consideration did you do it and how did is go?


2) If you considered it at first and then changed your mind, what made you change your mind?


I have seen companies do street sweeping and power washing, but never as a lone contractor. From what I’ve seen, it’s been the big corporations that are doing it, with 30+ employees. I’m curious as to the reasons why.


Thank you.
 
TY from AZ Power Wash Pros also does parking lot sweeping, we sub all of our sweeping out. Maybe he will chime in.
 
SoCalKpow said:
But, aren't they a bigger corporation?
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We looked into the same thing, even went up to Reno for training from a PWI member. Couldn't make the numbers work.

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You pressure wash a center maybe once a quarter, you sweep it 5-7 times a week. 5-7 times the headache as well, maintenance can be a nightmare on those from what I have heard. That is the math I have looked at, but really have no intent to get in the sweeping business.
 
I also have a separate power washing business with a sweeping division. Being in Canada our regulations are much different than other parts of the world and we'd be lucky if we swept something more than twice a year. The first one is usually hoppers full of sand on a single lot and the later sweep is usually leaves in the fall. The machines make great money for 3 months of the year and basically sit for the rest of the year which is fine as they generate a lot of revenue in that short period of time. Both portions of the business have grown with the addition of the sweepers as it turns into a one stop for customers. Who really wants to organize 2 different companies to work around each other while cleaning a property? Nobody....... 9/10 times we get the work when there are 2 separate companies involved.
 
Besides having garages swept in house or us just renting a sweeper/ scrubber(I may buy one of these down the road) to do it before we power wash, to do parking lot sweeping I have no interest for that. I did over the yrs talk to companies that were sweeping the parking lot while we were doing commercial store fronts in the middle of the night, and the amount of money they got paid & what Jeff Robinson said about maintenance never seemed to be a good enough thing for me to get into.

The other thing about sweeping is the hours. It's almost always strictly night work that didn't pay enough to keep us out all night with our small operation.
 
It's like every business if you find your little niche you'll do alright. Gated communities in the daytime and lots at night but you have to work around residential or you'll be in trouble! From what I've heard of guys doing it in the US they aren't making a killing at it.
 
I sub any power sweeping I get out. I have my hands full with power washing as it is. If you don't mind working 8 PM til 8 AM 7 nights a week then I say go for it.
 
Though there are people that make a lot of money sweeping, I don't know how.

BTW, Ty is not really that big an operation, though he is not doing badly, by any means.
 
Yes, we do offer parking lot sweeping services in Phoenix. We actually created an entire new division of our operation just for sweeping.It took me quite a bit of time to figure out how to make money sweeping parking lots. But we are making money from it now. It is not as profitable of a business as power washing, by any means, because the market has been saturated with low ballers who offer inferior services for astonishingly low prices. And that is expected considering anyone can walk out to a parking lot with a trash can and pick up trash by hand. But they are not blowing the curbs, getting the cigarette butts, cleaning out the planters, and blowing the store fronts.

That being said, the trick is to pick up small and large properties in the same route. Sweeping is a numbers game. It makes no sense to sweep 4 properties a night that are all on different sides of town. We have 9 properties we sweep with one truck 7 days a week. Each truck has a different route. All the properties they hit are in the same area. 5 locations that take about an hour and 4 small locations that only take between 15-20 mins. The profit margins are very low, but as you gain more customers you are able to squeeze in more properties that are in your trucks areas. If you can make $15-20 profit per location by the end of the night off 9 locations that one truck is pulling in $135 a night profit. That is $3,780 profit a month. That is just one truck. We only have 3 trucks right now and some nights we pull in much more and some night much less. But you can imagine the money there is in it if you had 10-15 trucks.

There is a lot of upkeep expenses and lots of wear and tear costs. You have to learn how to handle a lot of upkeep in house. Oil changes, tire rotation, oil filters, fuel filters, spark plugs, things like that. We go through SO MANY tires its unreal. But we are still making a reasonable profit. Just like power washing, the key to having a successful sweeping company is GOOD EMPLOYEES that care about their job. And luckily, I have been blessed with a team of guys that I pulled together from other sweeping companies in the area that take their job very seriously. Every sweeper in my team has at least 5 years experience sweeping.
 
Scott Stone said:
Though there are people that make a lot of money sweeping, I don't know how.

BTW, Ty is not really that big an operation, though he is not doing badly, by any means.
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Lots and lots of cheap units will make money! It's not the easiest business to be involved in.
 
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