There are a lot of elements of city public works that go overlooked. How often do you think about your water meter or that audible crosswalk sign that yells "wait, wait"? And that's not just true for residents of a city.
"Before you started working here doing this, what was your experience or knowledge of street sweepers?"
"I had no idea. No idea until I started work here."
That's Tommy Doss, and he is one of two street sweeper operators for the city of Fayetteville. According to two of his superiors standing right next to him and his truck, he's pretty good at his job.
Ross Jackson is the fleet operations superintendent for the city. He says a key to being a good street sweeper is paying attention to your surroundings.
"He was talking about with computers when it's giving you alerts. 'OK, I've hit this many hours doing sweeper operations. It's time to rotate the hose.' He'll bring it into the shop, and he'll not only clean out the back of the tank, but he'll concentrate on that whole vacuum pressure box right here. He'll meticulously blow it out, clean it out, wash it out, and just take a really good job care of it."
Terry Gully is also standing there with them. He's the assistant public works director. He says another sign of a good street sweeper operator is transportation vision.
"He's out there all the time moving. If he sees — it could be low-hanging limbs, fallen trees, potholes, anything — he's eyes on the road that can give us some information on things we need to have attention brought to."
The sweeper itself is a fascinating piece of machinery. The make and model? It's the TYMCO Model 600, which is a regenerative air street sweeper. Jackson describes how it works.
"Essentially what it does is it has two engines — obviously the truck, and then you have a pony motor on the back side that basically powers the whole back side of the sweeper body. When they activate the pony motor in the back, essentially that turns a giant impeller inside of the sweeper body. And what it does is it creates 200 to 250 mile-an-hour pressured air through the lower sweeper box that actually drops down to street level, and it basically blasts the ground with that 200 mile-per-hour air to dislodge dirt, leaves, dust from cracks, seals, that sort of stuff. And as that pressurized air flows through an air chamber, it also creates a really large vacuum in the back of the sweeper body, which pulls all the debris that's being blasted in that chamber into the body. And what it does is it pulls air across the whole back side of the street sweeper. And as it's doing that, it's dropping all the debris contaminants down into the body of the sweeper and then pulling that air back through a dust channel to basically continuously use the same air.”
“Which is why it's called regenerative — because it's just using the same amount of air essentially the entire time."
"They also introduce water exterior and interior of the body, because it's really hard to get some of the real fine particulate matter like dust out of that air impeller, which could damage that impeller. So they basically shoot water into the dust that's coming into that air chamber to grab ahold, adhere to the dust, and have it drop down into like a dust-settling channel. That way, we're not creating a large, copious amount of particulate matter and dust for the community."
"It feels like it's kind of simultaneously like a leaf blower, but also a vacuum, but also like a Rug Doctor."
"Correct."
Doss runs his sweeper four days a week, and his work looks different depending on the seasons. He says in the fall, when the leaves are falling, the truck can get full quickly.
"I'd probably go a block and I have to come here and dump and then wash it out and then go back. I may make six or seven trips within four blocks of that when the leaves really get falling.”
The back side of the sweeper has a shape similar to a trash truck. It's got sharp angles on it that make it conducive for the debris to stay in the truck while driving down the road. But the back opens up and makes it easy to remove that debris.
When it's time, Doss opens the door and starts it up to open the back.
"Oh, so it's got steering wheels on both sides?"
"Yes, sir."
"When would be a time you would sit on the right side as opposed to the left side?"
"I'd never sit on the left side. I always sit on this side because this side is the curb side. And this is where I need to be so I can watch everything. And I have all of my monitors here — everything that I need to keep an eye on. And it tells me everything that's going on with the sweeper."
Another area of the "other duties as assigned" part of being a street sweeper operator is keeping an eye out for anything that needs attention from other city departments.
"Anything that I see — tall grass or box inlets or anything that we have any problems — I have a laptop. And if it's something emergency, I'll call Jason and let him know what's going on."
You don't have to spend a lot of time with Doss to recognize that he takes the work seriously and that it matters. Before working as a street sweeper for the city, he worked for contractors doing all sorts of jobs, but with a family and kids, there were plenty of downsides. Working outside all the time was getting old. The heat, the rain, the winter weather, and the uncertainty of when your next contract was going to happen was tough, too. But more than just the consistency of the schedule and the health care, Doss takes pride in his work.
"I really like the job. It's a good job."
So the next time you see one of the street sweepers making its way through town, going 5 miles per hour, lean over to your pal and tell them about Tommy and his TYMCO 600.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
