The SpeedyLeafer was an invention of necessity. Will and I work at least 40 hours every week so what little time we do get is precious to us. Needless to say, we wanted to spend as little time as possible on yard work. We built the first SpeedyLeafer for us with little thought of expansion, however as more and more of our neighbors urged us to build some for them we wondered if we could begin manufacturing them for anyone who wanted or needed one. The initial idea was over a year ago now, Will and I are finally ready share it with you.

One day at lunch I was talking to my good friend Will. I was telling him how I had spent all day Saturday picking up leaves from my yard and transferring them into 28 of the compostable bags which are required by Charleston county SC. He said, "Yeah, I got to do that this weekend. There no easy way to get the leaves into the paper bags, even if your lawnmower has a bagging attachment. I wish there was something that would pickup the leaves and put them directly into the compostable bags." "Let's make something that will!" I responded. And that is how the SpeedyLeafer idea was born.

That weekend Will and I got together and grabbed whatever we could find to make the first prototype. Which turned out to be two plastic bins turned upside down on top of a frame. This prototype failed, however the potential was there and we learned. We decided to build the next one out of wood to get the custom shape required. So every night after I put my kids to bed I went out to the garage and worked on the design.

The result of my labor on the second prototype looked like a chicken coop that had been run over by a tractor trailer. We mounted it to the riding lawnmower and it worked!! we were so happy. There were a lot of things to workout, but it worked. Once we began using it our neighbors wanted to try it too. We were astounded, people actually wanted to use our creation despite all the bugs and what it looked like. Our neighbors were a great source of feedback and gave us an outside view for modifications.

Will and I took what we had learned and went back to the drawing board. We got rid of the wood and chicken wire and contacted a local fabricator. Working with him, we created a new hood for the SpeedyLeafer. While that was being fabricated, Will and I were busy designing and building the new frame as well as mounts for major lawnmower brands.

Once everything was ready we painted it and created the video above. As you can tell from the video Will and I are not actors. We are regular people who created something to help themselves and now want to expand that idea to something that is available to everyone.

Because the SpeedyLeafer takes most of the manual labor out of picking up leaves, it is great for people who are elderly or unable to maintain their yard how they would like.