Raking is bad enough, but bagging and hauling whole leaves and trying to get them to compost instead of matting and turning to slime is a huge pain. I've always liked the concept of a leaf vac, but with that little bag, you spend more time hauling and dumping than you do sucking up leaves. They DO do a nice job of shredding the leaves tho, and they compost very well that way.
I've always thought the best of both worlds was a leaf vac set up to blow into a large enough trailer that you could suck up a year's worth of leaves in one trip and be done with it. As a side benefit, most leaf vacs have a provision for chipping small twigs and branches, which works really well for shredding sunflower stalks and the like.
After spending a couple of years waiting for the right deal to come along on a used leaf vac that I could swipe parts off, I came up with this monster:
I made a frame of old bed rails to hold up the sides, which are plastic "chickenwire" from Home Depot. The frame is bolted to the top of the trailer.
Undoing 4 bolts will take the top off, 6 more will let me remove the engine/blower and return the trailer to it's original state (less the welded on mount for the engine) for over-the-road use.
The chassis and transmission of the "self propelled" part of the original vac have been set aside for another project. I have about $200 and 4 hours invested in the whole thing, and it works slicker than a smelt!
If you enjoyed looking at this project, you might enjoy visiting a website for tinkerers that I hang out on: The Shopbuilt Forum