The Dinky Toys Vacu-Sweep ver­sion of their 451 John­ston Road Sweep­er was released some­time in 1972 to coin­cide with the intro­duc­tion of the actu­al machine in the US in late 1971. The no park­ing street sweep­ing sign in the above pho­to makes the per­fect com­pan­ion for the mod­el in this pho­to.

Background of My Interest in Road Sweepers and Dinky Toys

Com­mer­cial vehi­cles have been a life­long inter­est of mine since I was about three years old. Some of my favorites are munic­i­pal vehi­cles such as garbage trucks, snow removal trucks, and street sweep­ers. This fas­ci­na­tion got me addict­ed to col­lect­ing the toy ver­sions of their real-life coun­ter­parts. The two hob­bies go hand in hand in for me.

One of the first Dinky Toys I ever received from my mom was the 451 John­ston Road Sweep­er, I was about five years old. It came from Five Cor­ners Toy and Gift shop in West­wood, NJ. This almost mod­el-like toy had immense play val­ue with its func­tion­ing brush­es, open­ing cab doors and catch basin clean­er attach­ment. It swept many miles of imag­i­nary roads and vac­u­umed pre­tend storm drains on my liv­ing room floor when I was a kid. Hav­ing my “own” street sweep­er was a real treat, and if we passed by a real one in action my par­ents would often stop to let me watch it. Dur­ing the fall, sweep­ers would be espe­cial­ly busy with leaf-removal duties, and spring would have them out clear­ing the streets of the sand and grit left over from the win­ter snow.

The Dinky Vacu-Sweep promotional model was based on the new for 1971 451 Johnston Road Sweeper.  Image: Dinky Toys 1971 catalog.

Dur­ing the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, my child­hood home­town of Emer­son, NJ had a truck-based street sweep­er that looked just like the Dinky John­ston mod­el. What truck-crazed kid wouldn’t like to have a toy ver­sion of the actu­al machine? This truck replaced an old Elgin Pel­i­can mechan­i­cal sweep­er Emer­son had. The truck was con­fus­ing to me, though, and would be for decades. It clear­ly was an Inter­na­tion­al Car­gostar (a very pop­u­lar cab-over engine truck dur­ing the 1960s into the 1990s in North Amer­i­ca), but it had a large black plaque on the front of the cab in place of the Inter­na­tion­al badg­ing that read ECOLOTEC.

The mud­flaps also had Ecolotec stamped on them as well as VACU-SWEEP. The Emer­son truck had a red cab and white sweep­er body. I saw it in oper­a­tion occa­sion­al­ly and always want­ed to get a pho­to of it.

Dennis Trucks made this brochure in 1968 to promote what appears to be a Dennis Dominant chassis for use with the Johnston 200 sweeper.

Lat­er, when I turned 12 in 1982, my Aunt Jill gave me a Kodak disc cam­era that enabled me to take pho­tos of trucks I liked. I had friends that lived near the Emer­son Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works (DPW). The DPW yard was bor­dered by train tracks and woods at the rear. There was a hole in the fence at the back of the yard, and it was fun to run in there and take some pho­tos — and even climb on the trucks. Sneak­ing into the DPW yard was prob­a­bly not the most social­ly cor­rect thing to do, but we nev­er dam­aged any­thing and we had fun. To my dis­ap­point­ment, the sweep­er was nev­er out­side; it was kept in the garage. I could see the big Ecolotec badge through the win­dow panes of the garage doors. The derelict Elgin Pel­i­can it replaced was out­side; I took a pho­to of that machine, but I was nev­er able to get a pho­to of the Ecolotec sweep­er or find out more about why an Inter­na­tion­al had its name replaced with Ecolotec. It was sold around 1987 and replaced by a Tym­co sweep­er.

Mechanical sweepers like this early 1970’s Elgin Pelican have dominated the American market for decades and still do.  This example was owned by Emerson, NJ and a Vacu-Sweep replaced it in 1977. I photographed it in 1983 when I was 12 years old.

While at a traf­fic light in the ear­ly 1990s, I saw the sweep­er again. It was in the ser­vice of a paving com­pa­ny; it had bad­ly degrad­ed, and it was very rusty. It was sad to see the truck that had been so sim­i­lar to one of my favorite Dinky toys as a child, and the one that I had always hoped to pho­to­graph, in such poor shape. This truck would always be remem­bered by me as the Inter­na­tion­al that had the strange name on the front.

Johnston Sweepers, Ecolotec and My Dinky Vacu-Sweep

Fast for­ward to 2017... One day while perus­ing eBay, I ran across a mint boxed Dinky 451 Vacu-Sweep ver­sion that I nev­er knew exist­ed. While exam­in­ing the pic­tures in the list­ing, I saw that the front of the truck had an Ecolotec decal. I couldn’t believe what I saw; here was the sweep­er with the odd name that had been a mys­tery to me grow­ing up. I was pos­i­tive­ly elat­ed. I won the auc­tion a few days lat­er.

When it arrived, it was even bet­ter than described. The first issue all-card box was pris­tine, as was the mod­el. It appeared to have been just put away for years. I asked the sell­er if they had back­ground on where it came from, and the only his­to­ry they could pro­vide was the mod­el had come from the estate of an equip­ment deal­er. Things were begin­ning to make sense now regard­ing the basi­cal­ly iden­ti­cal looks of the Ecolotec sweep­er and the Dinky John­ston mod­el I had as a child. The Ecolotec Vacu-Sweep was obvi­ous­ly a John­ston prod­uct, so I emailed Buchen Munic­i­pal (John­ston Sweep­ers) to ask for infor­ma­tion on Ecolotec sweep­ers. To my amaze­ment, I received a reply. It seemed that my email had been bounced around Buchen, as most respon­dents on the email chain replied with ques­tion marks. My inquiry was about a sweep­er that was ancient his­to­ry by 2017, but even­tu­al­ly my email found its way to a knowl­edge­able gen­tle­man named Clive Offley. Clive is the engi­neer­ing direc­tor of truck-mount­ed sweep­ers at Buchen Munic­i­pal and was very kind to share what he knew about Ecolotec.

Before I dive into the Ecolotec sto­ry, I do have to men­tion the his­to­ry on John­ston Sweep­ers and how Ecolotec was the begin­ning of their mod­ern day North Amer­i­can pres­ence. John­ston, a British com­pa­ny, was found­ed in 1904 by JM John­ston and his two broth­ers. They import­ed Blenheim stone and con­struct­ed roads. As the years pro­gressed, they start­ed pro­duc­ing the relat­ed machin­ery for build­ing and main­tain­ing roads. In 1937 they made their first mechan­i­cal sweep­er, and in 1959 the Dork­ing-based com­pa­ny devel­oped the first truck-mount­ed vac­u­um sweep­er that swept and vac­u­umed. This unique machine was patent­ed, and John­ston became a builder of sweep­ers that were export­ed all over the world. There were deal­ers in the Mid­dle East, Aus­tralia, and Europe. Sales were brisk and the machine was a com­mer­cial suc­cess. In 1968 the advanced Mod­el 200 (the mod­el the Dinky toy was based on) made its debut, and the next 11 years would see 3,956 sold. This sweep­er was also fit­ted with a “wan­der­ing hose,” which was a top-mount­ed, ful­ly-maneu­ver­able (up to 180 degrees hose) that could be used for suc­tion­ing out catch basins and storm drains. It was a state-of-the-art machine for its day.

Now, onto the Ecolotec sto­ry. In 1971 John­ston want­ed to enter the huge Amer­i­can mar­ket, which at that time was dom­i­nat­ed by mechan­i­cal sweep­ers (non-suc­tion) like the Elgin Pel­i­can and the then-pro­lif­ic Wayne sweep­ers. A joint-ven­ture com­pa­ny, Ecolotec Inc., was estab­lished between John­ston Broth­ers and the Kenil­worth, NJ, based Newark Brush Com­pa­ny to mar­ket the Mod­el 200 under the Vacu-Sweep name. The Newark Brush Com­pa­ny was found­ed in 1894 (still in busi­ness today) as a man­u­fac­tur­er of brush­es for the brew­ing indus­try and then lat­er, of brush­es for the tex­tile, auto­mo­tive, met­al work­ing indus­tries, and for indus­tri­al uses such as street sweep­ing. Through my research—courtesy of the Clark and Newark, NJ Pub­lic Libraries —I dis­cov­ered that Newark Brush was owned by a gen­tle­man named John P. Hor­ton, who also owned Dan­line, which was a line of street sweep­er brush­es. Dan­line opened a fac­to­ry in North Wales in 1964 to serve the UK and Euro­pean mar­kets. I couldn’t con­firm through my research, but I would have to assume that Dan­line was a brush sup­pli­er for John­ston, thus the con­nec­tion with Newark Brush, which was the gen­e­sis for the Ecolotec joint ven­ture.

Dandy Lion was the sharp-dressed king of the streets and kept Litterbug Lane clean thanks to a Danline sweeper brush. Danline was a Newark Brush brand; it opened a factory in North Wales in 1964 and was most likely the connection with Johnston and Newark Brush. This whimsical ad dates back to 1963.

The first sweep­er was sent from John­ston to New Jer­sey in Jan­u­ary 1971 for demo pur­pos­es. Clive added that his old boss — and pre­vi­ous tech­ni­cal direc­tor — Antho­ny Duthie was sent to over­see the machine. The sweep­er was the first export skid unit put togeth­er by John­ston that was com­prised of the whole sweep­er body with the brush gear and oth­er ancil­lary equip­ment stowed in the debris hop­per. The body was then mount­ed on an Inter­na­tion­al Car­gostar chas­sis. It had its first pub­lic appear­ance in Philadel­phia, PA at the annu­al Pub­lic Works Con­gress and Equip­ment show in Sep­tem­ber 1971.

In April 1972 Ecolotec, Inc. filed for three trade­marks. The Ecolotec trade­mark was defined as a vehi­cle for street pol­lu­tion con­trol, equipped with vac­u­um sweep­ers and suc­tion attach­ments. The Vacu-Sweep trade­mark was defined as vehi­cle mount­ed vac­u­um sweep­ers. The Wan­der­lead was defined as a suc­tion attach­ment for vehi­cle mount­ed sweep­ers. In that same year, an assem­bly plant was set up in Clark, NJ, on 45 Wal­nut Avenue and a busi­ness office was shared with the Newark Brush com­pa­ny in near­by Kenil­worth, NJ, on 260 Michi­gan Avenue. We Dinky fans know Kenil­worth as the home of H. Hud­son Dob­son, the famous US importer of Dinky toys.

The Ecolotec Company’s rotating arrows logo came from the Newark Brush company logo; shown here on a trade show pin.

The sweep­er bod­ies were export­ed from the UK in groups of three, loaded on spe­cial trail­ers on the then new Roll-on/Roll-off (Ro/Ro) ships. The jour­ney in those days took eight days to reach Port Newark, NJ. The trail­ers would be picked up by a semi-trac­tor for the short ride to the Clark facil­i­ty. They would then be assem­bled, mount­ed on the truck chas­sis, and paint­ed to cus­tomers’ spec­i­fi­ca­tions. It appears that the pre­ferred chas­sis used by Ecolotec was the Inter­na­tion­al Car­gostar though I have seen a Mack Mid Lin­er demo unit. Options includ­ed air con­di­tion­ing and right, left side or dual steer­ing. Most, if not all, were diesel pow­ered and they car­ried approx­i­mate­ly 200 gal­lons of water.

The Ecolotec prototype in late 1971 and 1972 production models were fitted on the early narrow cab International Cargostar chassis, and from 1973 to 1982 the updated wider cab models were utilized.

This Vacu Sweep was fitted on a Mack Midliner chassis. It’s the only non ‑International utilized by Ecolotec I have ever seen. It has the Ecolotec demo paint scheme with the stripes and was featured on a Mack calendar.

More Ecolotec and Johnston Company History

Through­out the 1970s the machines proved to be a com­mer­cial suc­cess in a mar­ket that was, and still is, dom­i­nat­ed by mechan­i­cal dri­ve sweep­ers. In 1976 Ecolotec com­mis­sioned a study, pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Pub­lic Works Admin­is­tra­tion, enti­tled “Street Clean­ing Effec­tive­ness: Vac­u­um Sweep­ers.” It read, “Tests show that in nor­mal city oper­a­tions over­all removal effec­tive­ness of the dirt and debris frac­tion of street refuse by mechan­i­cal sweep­ing is between 11 and 62 per­cent. The removal effec­tive­ness on the five par­ti­cle sizes (less than 43 microns) is high­ly inef­fec­tive. A syn­thet­ic type of street debris was devel­oped and eval­u­a­tion tests were con­duct­ed using an Ecolotec Mark IV Vacu-Sweep. Three dif­fer­ent sim­u­lant load­ings were test­ed and the results showed that any sweep­ing speed from 1 to 6mph, over­all dirt removal effec­tive­ness over the test area was at least over 90 per­cent. The removal of fine par­ti­cles (less than 43 microns) exceed­ed 75 per­cent in all cas­es and could be as high as 90 per­cent with heav­ier dirt load­ings.”

The Smithtown NY highway department purchased this 1973 Vacu Sweep used for $15,936 in 1974. It’s shown here being inspected by town officials and the man holding the roll of paper is highway superintendent James Dowling. The Ecolotec ID plaque is clearly visible on the rear.

After this arti­cle was pub­lished, Ecolotec used these find­ings in their adver­tis­ing to pro­mote the then-new 400 series machines as one that “Out­cleans, Out­speeds and Out­per­forms” any sweep­er.

One of the first advertisements for the Vacu Sweep dating from 1972. Note the early model Cargostar shown.

By 1977 over 5,000 machines had been sold. Deal­ers were quick­ly being estab­lished all over the US, and by the late 1970s there was at least one deal­er in all 50 states. By the ear­ly 1980s Ecolotec became a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of John­ston and was renamed John­ston Envi­ron­men­tal, Inc. (JEI).

The cobblestone streets along the Mississippi river waterfront in Memphis Tennessee were being swept by this 1973 Vacu Sweep which was one of three machines owned by the city.  Cobblestone roads are notoriously difficult to sweep clean due to the crevices and uneven nature of the stones. The suction of the Vacu Sweep made them ideal for this task.  Memphis would purchase additional units in later years as well.

In 1987 they had out­grown the Clark facil­i­ty and leased 25,000 square feet of space in near­by Spring­field, NJ. They also opened a Cana­di­an divi­sion in Mis­sis­sauga near Toron­to, and that was called John­ston Envi­ron­men­tal Equip­ment.

“Proven Best from East to West” was a novel catchphrase ad that listed cities that were operating the machines.

Around 1992 John­ston acquired the assets of the Cal­i­for­nia-based FMC sweep­er com­pa­ny. With this acqui­si­tion the com­pa­ny closed the two East Coast oper­a­tions and moved pro­duc­tion to a new facil­i­ty in Chi­no, CA. This new com­pa­ny was called the John­ston Sweep­er Com­pa­ny. In 2000 the acqui­si­tion of Mad­vac, a sweep­er com­pa­ny in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da had all oper­a­tions move to that facil­i­ty. A man­age­ment buy­out occurred in 2005, and the com­pa­ny ceased trad­ing in 2011.

This rare photo taken was taken sometime in the 1970’s at a trade show in New Orleans, Louisiana. Note the optional air conditioner.  Photo courtesy of Clive Offley and Buchen Municipal.

John­ston then set up a new com­pa­ny, John­ston North Amer­i­ca, locat­ed in Mooresville, NC, where it remains today. John­ston is cur­rent­ly owned by the Swiss Com­pa­ny Buch­er Inter­na­tion­al. What start­ed in 1971 to enter the lucra­tive Amer­i­can mar­ket as a joint ven­ture to man­u­fac­ture export­ed Mod­el 200 sweep­ers for Ecolotec Vacu-Sweep has evolved tremen­dous­ly over the past 51 plus years for John­ston (Buchen Munic­i­pal).

This 1976 model was owned by the Alyeska Pipeline Company in Anchorage, Alaska. It was photographed in 2015 at auction when it was being sold.  Note the Ecolotec ID plaque at the rear.

Details on my Dinky Vacu-Sweep Promo Model

The Vacu-Sweep pro­mo­tion­al mod­els made for Ecolotec had per­fect tim­ing with the release of the 451 Dinky John­ston Road sweep­er in 1971. With Ecolotec in oper­a­tion by 1972, the Vacu-Sweep ver­sions were sup­plied as pro­mo­tion­al mod­els to the then new expand­ing com­pa­ny. The British Ford D mod­el truck chas­sis that the Dinky was based on was not sold in North Amer­i­ca, but this was nev­er an issue as it bore a very sim­i­lar resem­blance to the Inter­na­tion­al Car­gostar chas­sis used by Ecolotec.

Note the Ecolotec decal on the license plate area of the front bumper on my example. The placement is incorrect as the real machines had the Ecolotec badging right below the wind shield of the cab.

My 451 in the all-card box is a good exam­ple of one of the ear­ly ver­sions that were giv­en out when the com­pa­ny was start­ed. The Vacu-Sweep mod­els were easy mod­els to pro­duce for Dinky as they are in the same pro­mo­tion­al yel­low I recall that was used for the oth­er two pro­mo­tion­al 451 sweep­ers, the John­ston ver­sion and the Go Plant Ltd ver­sion. Most of the Vacu-Sweep mod­els appear to have sil­ver grills, though I have seen one in white. Some had yel­low plas­tic sweep­ing gear and Wan­der­lead instead of the more com­mon black.

Side views of the model.

It’s not known who applied the unique Vacu-Sweep and Ecolotec decals. The John­ston ver­sions were shipped to John­ston by Dinky and appar­ent­ly had the decals applied by John­ston employ­ees. It is pos­si­ble the Vacu-Sweep mod­el decals were also installed by John­ston employ­ees since it was a John­ston prod­uct or, per­haps shipped to Ecolotec in NJ and the decals installed there. The exam­ple I have has the Ecolotec decal placed on the front low­er area of the bumper where a license plate would be, but it is not the same as the loca­tion on the real machines. The actu­al vehi­cles had the large, black cast alu­minum Ecolotec plaque on the front of the cab below the cab’s wind­shield. I have seen oth­er Vacu-Sweep mod­els with this decal in this cor­rect area and one with­out any decal. This paper stick­er is very small and per­haps some were nev­er applied or lost with age, as the small area of adhe­sive back­ing dries up over time.

The brushes were operated by pushing the model and were driven with a cable from the rear axle. Lots of play value here!

Out of the sev­en or so boxed exam­ples I have seen when I start­ed my research on this mod­el, all were in the last issue hang­ing box. One of the hang­ing box­es had a unique Vacu Sweep decal on the box. The 1973 and up bub­ble type box­es must have been uti­lized as well, but I have nev­er seen one for a Vacu Sweep ver­sion. I have also nev­er seen the cost cut­ting non-open­ing cab doors 449 ver­sion uti­lized for Vacu Sweep but they cer­tain­ty could exist. Though, I have seen the 449 num­bered box with the 451 mod­el inside on some. It’s also unknown how many Vacu Sweep mod­els were ever pro­duced and when pro­duc­tion ceased.

With the Wanderlead and extension out, the Vacu-Sweep is ready for some catch basin cleaning. 

Since join­ing the DTCA and read­ing the posts on the Vacu-Sweep ver­sion, there were ques­tions about who and what Vacu-Sweep was just as it was to me since I was child. Even one of the auc­tion hous­es had mis­tak­en­ly described it as pos­si­bly a pro­mo­tion­al made for a Chica­go based sweep­ing firm some years back. The lack of heavy inter­est most Dinky col­lec­tors have for the final decade of Dinky toy pro­duc­tion has con­tributed to the lack of knowl­edge on this unique mod­el. If it had been pro­duced in the gold­en era of the 1950’s and ear­ly 1960’s, I bet this sto­ry would have been told a long time ago.

This last issue hanging box has a unique Vacu Sweep decal. Note the yellow Wanderlead and sweeper gear in place of the usual black. Dinky also must have exhausted the supply of 451 boxes as this model comes with a 449 box. Photo courtesy of Vectis Auctions.

With regard to the 451 John­ston Road sweep­er Dinky Toy on which the Vacu-Sweep pro­mo­tion­al was based, this was a very detailed mod­el for its time, per­haps the best ever die cast toy made of a truck-based sweep­er. The func­tion­ing brush­es, open­ing cab doors and move­able Wan­der­lead with catch basin hose exten­sion real­ly set the stan­dard for a street sweep­er mod­el in 1971, and it had great play val­ue. Let’s not for­get this was a toy before it was a pro­mo­tion­al, and Dinky was first and fore­most in the busi­ness of sell­ing toys. The only fea­tures it lacked was a tip­ping mech­a­nism to eject the sweep­ing debris, and a tilt cab. Its large scale and hefty all die cast met­al con­struc­tion nat­u­ral­ly lent itself to being a pro­mo­tion­al mod­el for a rough and dirty busi­ness.

Conclusions and Acknowlegments

Since dis­cov­er­ing this ver­sion in 2017, I have been try­ing to obtain some fac­to­ry lit­er­a­ture and pho­tos on Ecolotec and would have liked to fea­ture it here, but they are appar­ent­ly extreme­ly uncom­mon. I also reached out to the Newark Brush Com­pa­ny hop­ing for archival mate­r­i­al to include in the arti­cle, but I nev­er received a reply. I had also want­ed to include pho­tos of the Clark Ecolotec facil­i­ty, but the prop­er­ty has since been rede­vel­oped into high den­si­ty hous­ing.

1982 would be the last year for Ecolotec advertising as going forward all machines would be Johnston badged.

How­ev­er, I was very for­tu­nate to find the large iden­ti­fi­ca­tion plaque that was fit­ted to upper right-side rear of all Vacu-Sweep machines. These cast alu­minum plaques mea­sure about 22 inch­es by 7 inch­es and weigh almost six pounds. Can you imag­ine a plaque this heavy being fit­ted today to a mod­ern truck?

Weighing over six pounds, these large cast aluminum plaques were fitted to the rear of all Vacu-Sweep machines. My example shown here was painted red, white, and blue and could have been used for trade show décor during the 1976 bicentennial. Note the serial and model numbers were never stamped.

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This arti­cle is a spe­cial one for me as it explained all the unan­swered ques­tions behind the real Ecolotec Vacu-Sweep machine I remem­ber fond­ly from my child­hood, and the 451 John­ston it was based on was one of the first Dinky toys I received as a child that gave me much enjoy­ment.

My terrific 451 trio. The first model sans doors and other pieces but well-loved is what remains of my childhood Johnston, the middle model is a mint/boxed example that was acquired from Memorable Things in 1990 and my Vacu-Sweep promotional.

Writ­ing an arti­cle like this is nev­er a one-per­son endeav­or so very spe­cial thanks go Clive Offley of Buchen Munic­i­pal, David Fly­nn, Mark A. Red­man, The Amer­i­can Pub­lic Works Admin­is­tra­tion, Per­ry Soli­man­do, Super­in­ten­dent, Emer­son NJ DPW, The Newark NJ Pub­lic Library, The Newark Star Ledger, and Robert Mar­tinez San Juan of the Clark NJ Pub­lic Library.