The United States is a developed nation that is home to many cars and trucks both private and commercial, meaning that there are countless roads and parking lots found across the nation. Asphalt and paving companies work hard to lay down these streets and parking lots as well as repair them, but there’s other maintenance and upkeep to consider, too. Street sweeping services, for example, are companies that provide street sweeper trucks that can clean up debris of all kind from today’s streets and parking lot with great efficiency. This is important work, and parking lot sweeping prices are something for town or city governments to consider for this public service. Of course, parking lot sweeping prices will vary, but such services nearly always find their way into a city or town budget, and for good reasons. Parking lot sweeping prices are paid so that streets are not cluttered, unsanitary disaster zones.
The Business of Street and Parking Lot Sweeping
When parking lot sweeping prices are paid to hire street sweeper services, a city is tapping into a large and important industry. Speaking more broadly, there are around 9,224 different American companies offering road maintenance services today, and many of them are in fact street sweepers. Just how large is this mundane but essential industry? The industry for manufacturing street sweeping machines is estimated to generate around $283 million in revenue in the United States each year, and this industry is older than some Americans might think. Way back in 1849, a man named C.S. Bishop invented and patented the first ever street sweeping machine, meaning that street sweepers out-date cars themselves.
These machines are built to handle nearly any mess, liquid or solid, that they come across on today’s American road and parking lots alike. What might they come across? Liquids, for example, are a real hazard and are routinely scrubbed and sucked up to keep roads clear. Pesticides, industrial chemicals, oil spills, and more might be found on the roads, and these may constitute a serious biohazard to both local wildlife and human society alike unless cleaned. Rain water often washes these chemicals around, so street sweepers will be diligent about scrubbing them off the road and removing them.
And of course, plenty of solid trash will be found and removed as well. The spilled contents of a trash bag or trash can, for example, may be swept up and removed, along with natural debris such as fallen tree branches, twigs, and sweet gum balls, among others. These street cleaning machines are mounted on trucks, and they are most often used in areas with a lot of traffic. Solid trash makes for an unpleasant visual at best and is a health hazard or an obstacle to cars at worst. Curbs often have their own gutters, analogous to a roof’s gutter, and those curb gutters tend to collect a lot of trash over time, and street sweeper machines can clean them right out.
Trash like this is removed not only to remove a biohazard, but also to maintain appearances and safety. If a lot of trash is allowed to build up on streets or in parking lots, that makes a very poor impression on guests, and people are likely to simply leave the area. Apartment owners, for example, work hard to keep not only the interior of their buildings pleasant but also keep the outside attractive as well. This means repainting or refinishing the building’s walls, as well as landscaping and removal of trash from the front ground and pavement alike. Potential tenants are unlikely to be impressed when an apartment has trash everywhere on the premises, and a strip mall or shopping square may see little traffic if there’s trash all over the place.
Removing trash like this is also a fine way to perform pest control. Wildlife such as opossums, raccoons, and rats and mice are attracted to trash since they eat organic waste, so built-up trash will make an area look even worse with these unwanted animals around. Such mammals are also known to attack pets or people or spread disease through their bites or through the fleas they carry. Trash removal may discourage a large, troublesome pest population like that.
