Sweepster

It's not easy to hide a 465,000-square-foot-manufacturing plant, but somehow Sweepster, Inc., has managed to do it. Since its founding in 1945, the Dexter company has kept a low profile, and few people in the area know it exists or what it makes. But without its products, businesses and governments the world over would be hard pressed to keep their streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and airport runways clean.

"We're basically sweeping the world," says Pat Robertson, vice-president for finance and manufacturing. Sweepster and its 200 employees make everything from three-foot walk-behind sweepers to huge, self-propelled airport runway sweepers. And they do it well enough to corner 65 percent of their market.

Sweepster founder Phil Jenkins was a young engineer working for Caterpillar Tractor when he got a call to take over the family farm equipment business in Dexter, then called Jenkins Equipment Company. At that time the company sold various lines of farm equipment and also built and sold truck bodies and related items. A couple of years later, a friend who sold Jeeps asked Jenkins whether it was possible to mount a street-sweeping attachment to the front end of a Jeep. Over the following weekend, Jenkins and the other guy tinkered with a "sweeper" borrowed from village officials, eventually engineering a mounting system.

Realizing there was a market, Jenkins began manufacturing the sweepers. Eight-seven units sold the first year; by 1958 the company was making sweepers full time, and in 1963 it renamed itself Sweepster, Inc. Today's products include: hydraulic and mechanical drive sweepers, pick-up and windrow sweepers, tow-behind and self-propelled brooms, plus replacement brushes for all makes.

Sweepster also supplies sweeper attachments and brushes to a variety of manufacturers. And the company is investing heavily in the future, having just concluded the largest single capital improvement in its history, a $1.7 million switch from painting to powder-coating---a higher-quality and more environmentally friendly finishing process.

Sweepster serves a great many small "niche" markets offering add-on sweepers for all makes of lawn & garden, compact utility, commercial turf, agricultural, utility, and industrial tractors. Sweepster's self-propelled models also come in many sizes, including 24-foot airport models. The Dexter-built sweepers are used to clear runways at more than 700 airports around the world---not bad for a company in a town that doesn't even have an airport.

As it enters the new millennium Sweepster continues to innovative with auto-sensing, surface-following attachments, push brooms, and self-propelled units.

Sweepster believes in high quality products for specific needs. Profit from our experience and put a Sweepster to work for you today.