City of Merced street sweeper operator takes pride in keeping city clean

Jose Lopez’s favorite truck is the Peterbuilt 379. Think of an old school square-shaped long hood truck with big stacks and chrome visors.

Lopez, a street sweeper operator and maintenance worker for the City of Merced, has always been passionate about operating big machines.

“Growing up, I was fascinated by trucks and machinery,” Lopez, 34, said. He fell in love with truck driving while hauling hay.

And for the past six years, he has been living his dream, while working for the city operating one of the street sweepers and other various equipment.

Like other city jobs, it requires an early wake-up call.

Lopez starts his job at 6 a.m. daily, to avoid heavy traffic. After getting his route assignment for the day, he makes sure his street sweeping truck is topped off with water and ready to go. He then checks to see if there are any special requests.

“Once we’re on our route, we’re just sweeping the curb making sure that the curb is nice and clean so that whatever goes into the curb, the storm drain, it’s not trash it’s not oils or nothing like that,” he said. “We make sure that whatever goes in the storm drain is just clean water, because that water will end up in Bear Creek.”

Lopez said part of the job includes sweeping up areas where dirt has accumulated as well as any leaves that have fallen from trees. He and his colleagues will also perform road and street maintenance when needed, lending an extra hand to the various road and maintenance departments when it comes to installing things such as asphalt and concrete.

“We do a little bit of everything,” Lopez said.

During his time working for the City of Merced, Lopez said the city has grown quickly. He said it is not uncommon to cover multiple street sweeping routes in a single day. This could be due to various reasons such as a driver is out sick or on vacation, or they may have been pulled from their route to help with another road project.

Multitasking is a skill that is required for the job, as Lopez said he has to keep an eye on many things and operate multiple components of the truck during his daily routes. Among them are how the truck is operating, the amount of trash and debris being picked up and avoiding parked vehicles..

“I have to keep track of how heavy the truck gets, because certain areas have very light trash. I wouldn’t even call it trash, but just whatever is on the curb. But some areas have lots of dirt, and you can’t even tell how much dirt you’re picking up. So if you’re not paying attention on how much you’re really picking up, when you go dump, you can overload the containers where you’re dumping,” Lopez said.

He said people seem to find it interesting that while he and his colleagues perform the same job, they all do it differently. People are also surprised when they see him stop the truck and get out to pick up trash or debris.

“Sometimes they get out and they question us, like, “ ‘Hey, why are you guys picking it up?,’ ” said Lopez. “I mean, it’s on the side of the road, and if it’s on the side, we have to take it too. So we have to open up our doors. People just think that we’re just driving and sweeping.”

He said that sometimes he will even make multiple passes through areas depending on the amount of debris, to leave the street as clean as possible. This is something he chooses to do in order to be thorough.

“We’re trying to do better than the guys before,” he said. “Not because they were doing worse — but we try to do it better because it’s nice when people come out and compliment — and it makes us feel better about the job we’re doing.”

During his time operating the sweeper trucks, Lopez has developed some tricks and techniques to picking up the various debris along the roadway.

For instance, when cleaning up dirt, Lopez said shutting off water to the sprinklers beneath the truck prevents the dirt from turning into mud or gunk. When the dirt turns to mud, it becomes heavier and more difficult to clean up. It may create some dust, but Lopez said he will just make additional passes to clean up the remaining dust and dirt.

Being a self described people person, Lopez that’ he has always enjoyed hanging out with others and enjoyed playing sports as a kid.

“As I grew up, I wanted to help out people and work with people and just see people be happy,” he said.

Prior to working for the city, Lopez was a volunteer firefighter and served at Station 64 in Cressy for four years before becoming a commercial truck driver. He said he stopped volunteering because he was busy hauling hay and going to college. From there he transitioned into driving various types of trucks, saying he really fell in love with not only the driving, but the fact that the job meant he was involved with agriculture.

Lopez said he had to find something a little more stable than the seasonal agricultural jobs, especially since he was staring a family and had purchased a home.

“I fell in love with driving trucks,” he said. “But I knew that driving trucks, I was going to be by myself and I wasn’t going to talk to many people. I enjoy talking to people, and I like meeting new people all the time. I had an opportunity to come work for the city and I just ran with it. I just I fell in love with the type of work,” he said.

Although the job can prove to be difficult at times, Lopez said that when residents along his routes come out to offer him a beverage, a homemade cookie or when a kid waves to him and wants to see the truck, those are the little things that make the difficulties disappear. Those things, as well as working with a great crew of people is just icing on the cake, said Lopez.

“The guys at work make everything better too,” he said. “That’s what I enjoy about working here at the city– is I get to meet a lot of people, and I get to talk to a lot of people, and I get to do a lot of cool stuff. But the most thing that I really enjoy, is the kids. When the kids come out. Yeah, that’s the best part.”

“I know the customers and the houses and the cars. I know everybody to where, like, okay, I gotta start over here, and I’ll do the outer perimeter to let the people inside, the customers that I know that leave at certain times, be gone.”

Growing up in Winton, Lopez was always a big fan of trucks, such as fire trucks and garbage trucks. Having grown up in a more rural area, Lopez said that back then he didn’t know about sweeper trucks and he hadn’t seen them until coming to Merced.

“I was like, “”Oh wow, I didn’t know people swept their streets,”” he said.

Tonka trucks and a tractors were some of his favorite toy trucks to play with as a kid.

“I’m living my dream. I get to operate equipment like backhoes, front loaders. I get to pull a dump trailer, dump trucks with a flatbed trailer hauling a backhoe or something, a roller, you know, compacting asphalt. They say boys never really grow up, their toys just get bigger. Yeah, it’s a really fun job. I love it.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2025 at 11:30 AM.