Leaf Loader 2451027 Lawn Clean-Up Tool

Two summers ago I bought a house in the city with a half-acre lot and over 100 oak and elm trees. It was beautiful and shady and peaceful and perfect until the fall. What was I thinking? Bags and bags and bags of leaves (gathered over several weekends) later this old lady decided trees are for the birds.Next year I hired out the leaf collection. Hundreds of dollars later, and a severely damaged lawn ravaged by an over zealous leaf removal machine operated by one of the lawn contractors (thousands of dollars to re-sod), I saw this thing.I didn't really expect this to amount to much, but I gave it a shot. I was shocked at how much easier it is to bag leaves with this. I still don't like raking leaves, but last weekend I picked up 10 55-gallon bags of leaves in about an hour and I didn't hurt my back at all. This thing is a little weird at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's fabulous. It's light weight and it seems pretty tough. Plus, I don't have to put my hands in the leaf piles (snakes are also for the birds).I use the leaf blower to blow all the leaves to one general spot and then take a rake and pitch them in the shovel end of this thing, tip the bag up (one full scoop with the device in the bag fills a 55 gallon bag almost up), then I take the scooper out of the bag, smash down the leaves, and funnel another half scoop in the bag to fill the bag. The scooper is light enough to handle easily as a big funnel and once you don't need it to hold the bag open, you don't need to keep it in the bag. I found that it was harder to remove once I smashed (sp?) the leaves down to make room for more so I took it out before I smashed the leaves down.When you are done with it, you fold it and clip it and store it away (in very little space) until next time.

Bought this at the same time as I bought a leaf blower, we have a fairly big property and a lot of leaves.It is absolutely brilliant for raking leaves into a bin - as shown in the demo video, and probably for carrying them down to dump in the street.However we have to collect them into brown paper bags and we could not make the Leaf Loader help with that job. There is a piece of string provided that is supposed to help in some way, but it didn't work for us and the bags tore unless one was very careful - it was faster to pickup with a rake and dump into the bag.There was a leaf tamper on Dragon's Den the other day which would be be a big help to squish the leaves down in the bags - it didn''t make the cut unfortunately.

I don't usually give negative reviews but this is the worst product I have ever bought. I didn't expect much for $25 but I was still surprised at how poorly this product under performed. It is essentially the same construction as one of the "pop-up" tents that you can buy for kids. You know, the kind that come in a neat little circle that you can never twist the tent back into for storage? Yeah, just like that.The difference is that these engineers figured out how to get their version to want to stay in the twisted form. Look at the main photo for this product and it looks like a taco. I spent 20 minutes trying to balance holding it in that open position (while trying to load it and the bag) while it tries to twist itself into a knot. Throw in getting it to sit in the end of a paper bag and pushing leaves out of it into the bag and you will need 6 arms.It also rips through paper bags like it was paid to do it.The tally at the end of the day:- Easy to fill? Fail, twists itself into knots.- Compatible with paper bags? Fail, 5 out of 5 paper bags torn open. Bonus Fail, not pushing it to the point of tearing = leaves not going into the bag.- Faster than just using your hands? Fail, spent 30 minutes trying to get this to work. In the end it was faster to hear "I told you so" from a friend and bag leaves using my hands.I'll try and post photos to the listing if I can.

Not loads of leaves yet, but it has been a dry summer and some early leaf fall needed cleaning up. Previously, before I found the Leaf Loader, I used a bag stand to fill paper bags, but frankly they were slower than just getting on my knees and jamming it all in there. I have one of the company's sno wovels (snow shovel) and saw the Leaf Loader video on their web home page and it looked pretty handy. ..and it is. I can't say enough, especially for loading paper bags (but make sure you use the loop of rope - put that on the leaf loader first, then insert the Loader into the bag and slide the rope over the edge of the paper bag - it keeps the bag from tearing). But without droning on, it allowed me to take the Leaf Loader around and rake directly into instead of wasting all the time raking into piles first. Then, just tip it up to fill the bag (or can if you use cans I suppose). A tip: hold the funnel edges closed so the leaves don't come out as you shake the leaves into the bag (one hand for that and the other holding the edge where the bag meets the funnel edge... I think there was a picture in the instructions of that on the back but I didn't save it...). Anyway, it really is a great addition, and folds in a few seconds (another tip if I dare: with the Leaf Loader unfolded/flat step on the edge then twist it into a figure 8 and fold it for storage - like those windshield sun screens if you have seen or used them).