Ohio Steel 50SWP26 Pro Sweeper, 50"/26 cu. ft ,Black

Went back and forth forever on getting one of these and glad I finally got it. I have some pine trees that drop a good bit of pine needles and I tried for a couple years to rake them up to expand/refresh the islands around the trees but it took days to do at 1-2 hours at a time, with this I can run up and down a few times with my riding mower and sweep them up easily in under 30 minutes! The second big reason I got it was I also rake my grass after cutting to put in my garden. Again, took 2-3 hours sometimes to get it all raked up and moved, now can get it done in under 30 minutes. Lastly, it will be for cleaning up the leaves (15 mature pecan trees!) in the fall which I have not had the unit long enough to try it for that but I expect it will be much, much easier than blowing/raking/picking up and moving. Assembly took some time but was not at all difficult. They provided assembly instructions and numbered each assembly process. The hardware was sealed individually and numbered to coincide with the assembly number so no guessing on which nut, bolt, washer etc to use-Excellent feature! Using it takes just a little attention to get the right height and angle and if you only use one machine to pull it it should be a set it and forget it detail. You do have to pay attention to not only where the brushes are but also the bag so it's not dragging the ground-hence the height and angle adjustments necessary. I tried it with my mower 1st then tried it with my subcompact tractor and the height had to be adjusted a couple times to get it right so now I just use it with the mower to be able to leave it set. My yard is flat but bumpy and it picks up the majority of grass or pine needles within a pass or 2. Sometimes in certain areas (dips/bumps) I might go over a 3rd time just to try to get as much as I can but with the terrain of my yard I don't expect it to pick up everything perfectly so there are spots that have some debris left-it's not bad and I'm ok with it. The only "problem" I have is storage space! lol Since I will probably be using this 7 or 8 months out of the year at least, I won't be taking it down and minimizing it's footprint most if not all year and it's big! Nothing that can be done about it and I do have a place to keep it but it is a storage hog! At 52" working width plus the frame and wheels it's closer to 5' wide and at least 6' long from the back of the bag to the front of the tow bar so keep that in mind. The price to pay for making fewer passes and having more storage before needing to empty compared to a smaller sweeper :). Overall I'm very happy with this piece of equipment as it saves me Hours and Days and I have plenty of other things to do so it frees up time to do them. And, at least for me and my property, it does the job to my satisfaction. If I had one thing I could change, I wish you could disengage the gears for when you don't want to sweep up debris or moving from where its stored to where you want to sweep but I'm sure that would up the price and make it a little more complicated and add a potential breakage point.

Very sturdy and durable. Maneuvers great behind lawn tractor. Picks up grass and leaves great.

As mentioned in other reviews, the instructions don’t seem to match the actual part numbers. Not a big deal, just annoying. My pet peeve is durability. Used 3 or 4 times. This thing will flat pick up stuff. Having said that, just because you have that big bag does not mean you fill it & unload it. I apparently filled it more then I should. When I went to unload it: I pulled, it pulled back. I pulled harder, it pulled back. I really pulled & the cross bar on the bag were the vertical support meets the horizontal bag support snapped. Hoping to get a new crossbar as this is less then a month old. In the mean time I put a piece of conduit to hold the pieces together. In retrospect, there was more then leaves in bag. There were rocks, dirt, sticks etc, so I exceeded weight limit. I will be more careful in future. Leaves may not be a problem but grass will be. I would recommend with a caveat about weight limit. 09/07/23 Kudos to customer service. They sent me a new cross bar. Shortly after replacing it I noticed the bag was ripping. Contacted CS & they sent out a new one. Another problem I ran into: if you Jack knife the sweeper you can twist tire off of rim. Easy to replace but annoying. I have a couple places where I had to rethink my approach when backing in. 10/11/20204 Another update. This sweeper is a beast. I live in NC just west of Charlotte. We were hit pretty good by Helene, but not like Western NC. We had lots of debris in the yard along with small branches, sticks & leaves. I raked around trees & bulidings & left the piles. I then went back with the sweep. It picked up about 95% of what I ran over. It might have taken several passes but it got the job done.

Love how it picks up the grass!! Have about 2 acres of grass to mow and this past year the grass has gone crazy. It has done a wonderful job picking up all the grass.

Assembly took about 45 min in no particular hurry. I really like the way they labeled all the hardware by step, so you don’t have to fish through a bag of loose change. Aside from one pop rivet that was not seated at all, and thus impinging on the brush, the rest was put together fairly OK. the replacement of the rivet factored into the 45 minutes above. I guess for someone who doesn’t have that capacity it could be a little bit of a head scratcher. I certainly wouldn’t return it for that minuscule flaw. One piece of small tubing was also deformed, I straightened it up easily Performance wise, it does not pick up every single leaf on the lawn, but the convenience of getting a trailer load of leaves picked up, backed up to the burn pile and dumped is quite unparalleled. You do have the capacity to back it up, as the brush disengages the wheels in reverse, which truly adds in functionality. I’ve only had it one day, but put it through quite a bit of a pace. The unit feels pretty solid, and even if I have to replace the wheels occasionally, it still makes up for a back breaker of raking the leaves by hand Added: after 2 seasons and a metric ton of leaves it still works. Vine type stuff gets tangled in a brush, otherwise the performance is top notch. To quote a famous tattoo: " NO REGERTS"

I bought this sweeper for picking up leaves and pine needles in the fall, and after using it four times now I am completely satisfied. It has cut down on the time I spend cleaning up my yard in the fall significantly. Before I got the sweeper I was using a double bagger and mulching all the leaves for about the last decade or so. While this works, if the leaves and pine straw are thick on the ground, the chute between the mower deck and the bags had a tendency to get clogged. I would have to stop, disassemble the chute, reach into both halves and empty the debris, otherwise mulched leaves would be flying out from underneath the mower deck. Beats raking by hand, but still time consuming and aggravating when you're trying to get done in a reasonable amount of time. For perspective, my yard is .54 of an acre and I have pine, maple, pecan and dogwood trees on my property. I also get a lot of leaves from my neighbor's giant oak tree if the wind blows right. Here's a summary of this tool if anyone's looking to get one. Packaging: The unit arrived in one heavy duty cardboard box. In my case the box was not damaged upon delivery, but it was opened because the staples had come loose. I think more staples should have been used around the perimeter of the box, not just the two ends. Luckily nothing was missing as all the hardware and tubing is in its own taped box that had a plastic strap around it. The main body which houses the brush was mostly undamaged except for a slight gouge. The paint was gone from this gouge but it was easily fixed with some primer and closely matched spray paint. Assembly: Pretty straightforward in my opinion. I did this by myself outside on a nice day in about 50 minutes without any trouble. I got thrown for a loop momentarily when some of the numbered hardware in one step does not correspond with the numbered hardware in the provided hardware package. In other words, around step 5 the hardware in the package does not match with the hardware that is supposed to be used in that step. I think it's actually used in step 6. I can't remember at this point as I did this in September. But it's easy to figure out in a minute or two. My included pictures show the labeling of the hardware and that the instructions are large, clear and easy to follow. Anyone that has assembled flat pack furniture or a grill or similar lawn equipment should have no trouble getting this sweeper up and operational. Use: I had never used a sweeper before, but reading the few pointers in the instruction manual were helpful to getting me on my way. Slight learning curve maybe that can be overcome in about 10 minutes of use. It does a good job of picking up debris. In my other pics one can see the contrast between the swept and unswept areas in my backyard. Does it throw leaves around? Yes, but very little and only when it becomes full. I just come back and get the stragglers when the main parts are swept up. Also, I do have some small dips here and there and tree roots. Those will affect the performance of the sweeper....it won't pick anything up since the brushes have no contact with the leaves. I just use my blower to clear those areas out first and get them to a much flatter and more wide open area. Then the sweeper can do its job. If you have a particularly bumpy yard this thing may not work that well for you as it would for someone with a relatively flat area. But honestly, unless your yard looks like a plowed field, you should be ok. Driving in reverse is almost impossible as it's such a short "trailer". Very easy to jack knife yourself. Just pull up to your pile or dump site and with a bit of practice you can back up about 5 or 6 feet with no issues. Summary: I hope this thing lasts because it's a big help and I enjoy using it. It seems like it's made pretty solid and of decent materials, so fingers crossed. I paid 383.00 with tax for mine and I think it's worth it. My bagger cost 300.00 and as mentioned above, it can't hold a candle to this thing. I'm pretty sure I can hold as much if not more debris in the sweeper's hopper, so that's a plus. Where I live, the town picks up yard debris once a week. With the bagger, I was mulching and this compacts the debris. So I was left with a heavy pile of almost compost like material laying on the lawn for up to a week. If it rained this pile got water logged and would kill my grass by smothering it. With the leaves being loose coming out of the sweeper, this makes my piles lighter and more airy. So my "footprint" increased but my grass isn't getting smothered....something else to think about maybe. Also, for reference, I am pulling this behind a Husqvarna with a 46" deck (YTH22V46). I hope this review helps someone else make a decision that is helpful to keeping up appearances in their yard

Took less than 1 hour to put together on my own. I have only used it for 30 minutes so I cannot speak to its longevity. In 30 minutes attached to my Honda Rancher ATV I had filled it 10 times. One adjustment to the OOB height and it work incredibly well. I am going to adjust again in the light(I was testing at night), I think I had the brushes too low. I have to say that my yard is overrun with leaves so it had a lot of materiel to work on but it worked really well. We have a lot of trees on the our property and the grass that the donkeys eat is covered in leaves. This will help to prolong the donkey grazing on fresh grass rather than hay for a little longer. It holds a lot of material. This exceeded my expectations, I only hope it lasts a few years to justify the cost. If I could ask for one improvement it would be to have a way to disengage the brushes when you don't want to sweep, on the way back to my garage is was half full again. The only workaround is to use the rope to hold the "bag" in up position when you don't want to catch material, brushes still spew out leaves and stuff out the back but at the "bag" is empty. I would not walk closer the 30 feet if you do this, stuff come out pretty quick. It is "big". You will need decent amount of space in the garage to store it(maybe same as 1/3 - 1/2 car). It does not fold. The only way to reduce the footprint would be to remove the "bag", only help on by two pins, would reduce the footprint a bit. Based on my short use and it's effectiveness. I recommend this. In thirty minutes I cleared as many leaves as would take me hours of back breaking effort any other way. If you have a large yard with lots of leaves and can justify the cost vs. time to do it another way then buy it. I only gave it 4/5 because of the lack of brush disengagement and storing such a large thing(you have to store what tows it as well remember).

Entering our second season of use and so far, so good. I have over 3 acres of lawn, with trees and rolling hills. This picks up the grass in summer and leaves in the fall with ease. As long as the material is mostly dried when you sweep. It works great! I've had no issues reported in other reviews such as problems with tight turns or wheels "digging in." A clutch to stop the brushes spinning would be a great feature. But as it is, this thing has saved me hours of back breaking work each time I mow or do fall clean-up. It is large, so be sure you have a dry place to store in winter months. A material collection system for my John Deere would cost about $4000. And if I had one, I would have to stop mowing every 15 minutes to empty the bins. With this, I just mow, allowing the clippings to fall into the lawn. then wait a day or two for the grass to dry and sweep the large clumps. I still have to empty this 5-6 times when sweeping my entire lawn, but that's nothing compared to what it would be if I bagged all the wet clippings while mowing. My lawn yields about 3-4 cubic yards of clippings with each mowing. The work this saves me is HUGE. If it ever breaks, I will probably either repair it, buy another. I love it.

So far, this machine gets 5 stars. The difference in engineering between this one and the John Deere sweeper is the difference between a dinghy and a yacht. The tubes are a heavier steel, the pivot points are properly reinforced bringing the pivot point up to almost 1/8" in thickness instead of the thin steel of the Deere. The rear support bar is solidly held by a 3/16" pin at the bottom and a thumbscrew at the top. The Deere is two pieces of spring steel that are gone after my second day of mowing. The bag itself is a heavier material, so should last longer than the Deere bag (never more than half a season and it's falling apart). Then the biggest bonus, the Ohio Steel is almost $400 less than the Deere. Took me the same amount of time to put together as the Deere. The half-dozen bolts are 13 mm, and that's the only thing from the directions that was a pain, they didn't specify the wrench size needed for those bolts. Other than that, it was very simple to put together. Tomorrow, I'll be running it over my 5 acres, and I'll see how well it works. But if the design is as good as the engineering, it should be perfect. Well, used it yesterday to finish the pickup of grass on my front lawn, dumped it, then went to the back pasture and cut some heavy grass and weeds that my goats won't eat, and I filled it to the point where it was overflowing, I couldn't fit more grass into the hopper. Brought it to my compost pile and emptied it, and it is solid. No bending, twisting, nothing. Those who said you can't turn tight with it, I don't know what they're talking about. I specifically made tight turns because people said that and had no issues with damage to the ground or machine. I'm guessing those people maybe had a wet or very soft ground? My fields and lawn are dry, so there's no issue at all with turning on my JD 530Z mower.

Very well manufactured and sturdy. Works very well behind my yard tractor. Instructions are intuitive and assembly was stress free. It is quite heavy compared to other brands.

Instructions were not perfectly clear but I could figure it out. I find it sometimes bounces over heavy rows and it may take a few passes. But generally works well.

Bought this for my son's birthday and his lawn business. He had a couple of elcheapo ones before. This one costs a LOT more but should last him decades instead of a 2-3 years. He assembled it COMPLETELY on his own with next to no issues whatsoever. Grass catcher fabric & plastic wheels may wear out first but other than that this is a VERY well made unit

Very happy It did an amazing job of not only the grass and small yard debree but also some pieces of branches that had broken from a tree. It works much better than I was expecting this type of product of any brand would. It was very easy to assemble after taking it from the box. One thing i did do is tie a magnet to the end of the rope used for dumping the debree so i could stick it to the Fender of the tractor and keep it very secure and away from any moving parts that it could get tangled in; but yet still very easy to access and grab it when having to dump it..