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The Aardvark Heavy Duty Tow-Behind Magnetic Sweeper is designed as a severe duty all terrain tow behind magnet that is packed with features. It’s ready for severe duty keeping rough terrain and large areas free of dangerous metal debris. It has a fully enclosed magnet which means you don’t have to worry about metal debris getting all over the magnet housing and features a torsion ride suspension system that keeps the trailer stable over rougher terrain.
The Aardvark has an 8-foot sweeping width and features an automatic 12 volt powered clean off system. Clean off debris with a push of the button!
The 16.5″ x 6.5″ inch urethane foam filled tires are puncture proof and are attached to a new torsion ride suspension system that absorbs bumps and provides a smoother towing magnetic sweeper when terrain gets rough.
The wheels attach to the Aardvark Heavy Duty Tow-Behind Magnetic Sweeper using 5 – bolt hub and spindle axles with grease fittings for easy maintenance and strength.
Aardvark Heavy Duty Tow-Behind Magnetic Sweeper is great for cleaning up metal debris in landfill sites, construction sites, access roads, rail trails, mining areas or any larger rough terrain areas.
$16,189.99
See Pricing For All Models Below
$16,189.99 USD
| Aardvark Series | Aardvark 96 |
|---|---|
| SKU | AV96 |
| Sweeper Width | 96″ |
| Ground Clearance | 1.5″ to 6″ |
| Cleaning Method | 12-volt push button clean off |
| Coupler Height Adjustment | 2” ball with 6 height adjustments 13”, 15”, 17”, 19”, 21”, 23”. |
| Height Adjustability | 1.5”-6” continuous adjustment using top link |
| Housing Construction | Steel and welded aluminum |
| Wheels | 16.5” Carlisle foam filled flat proof hub and spindle design |
| Magnetic Surface Area | 752 sq. inches |
| Maximum Lifting Height (using 2.5″, 8 penny nails) | 12 inches |
| Total Sweeper Weight | 1073 lb |
| Total Shipping Weight | 1198 lbs |
| Shipping Dimensions | 119″L x 40″W x 28″H |
| Tongue Weight | 260 lbs |
| Terrain Surface | Off Road |
| Accessories | Yes. See the “Operating Instructions“ |
| Pricing Range | $16,189.99 USD |
The Aardvark uses permanently charged grade C8 magnets that will never need to be recharged. Power will never decrease, ensuring years of use.
A: A = Distance from Magnet (Sweeping Height)
Note: Gauss (G) shown as the peak gauss measured in the center of the magnet at each distance.
| 5 star | 100% | |
| 4 star | 0% | |
| 3 star | 0% | |
| 2 star | 0% | |
| 1 star | 0% |
Customer Images
$1,162.94
Price range: $1,889.99 through $2,049.99
Price range: $463.99 through $1,197.99
The Aardvark Magnetic sweeper has been updated with a new torsion ride suspension that improves handling at higher speeds for when you are transporting the magnet after sweeping and when towing across the roughest terrain. Check out the video below to get a quick preview.
“We swept our operations yard for the first time and were taken back by the amount of material this unit collected and now understand why we were getting so many tire punctures.”
Scott M.
Phu Bia Mining Limited
The Aardvark Heavy Duty Tow-Behind Magnetic Sweeper has a permanently charged magnet in it that weighs close to 600 lbs and with a magnet this big, clean off has to be automated in some way.
The Aardvark utilizes the simplest most proven and effective method of automating clean off which is to rotate the magnet around a pivot point on one side to rotate the magnet upward to physically separate the magnet from the debris.
To do this a 4000 lb winch is used. Rotating the magnet around a pivot point on one side takes less effort than lifting the magnet straight up and the 4000 lbs winch does this with no problem. The normal steel winch cable is replaced with an Amsteel blue synthetic winch rope in order to withstand more frequent unwinding and winding. A normal steel winch cable would fatigue and break with a limited number of uses.
The winch is designed to be powered by a deep cycle marine battery. A marine battery does not come with the unit but should be used instead of a regular battery because they are designed to be used in these circumstances much like they are used for trolling motors in boats. They can also withstand some bumping and bouncing.
Okay, so we just got back from going through, what was that, four miles of trails or so? Like four, five—four or five miles of trail. So this magnet, this artwork, has been up and down that a bunch of times this summer. But we did collect some things; we heard it pinging off the bottom of the magnet as we were driving. So all you have to do to clean this off is just hit the disengage button—it’s the down arrow. So all that does is—or, sorry, the up arrow—that pulls the magnet up away from the debris pan, which will separate all the metal away from the stainless steel pan and release it into the tarp we have laid down underneath it.
So, if you watch the little arm back here, there’s an arrow that says “stop here,” so once it gets to that, you know you’re at the top of the stroke and the magnet is as far away from the debris pan as you can get. So what that’s going to do is separate the debris that’s on the bottom from the magnetic field of the magnet and then drop everything onto the ground. So we have a tarp down here just for easy cleanup, and so you can see what’s been there.
So there’s your debris collection for four miles. We got a number of railway spikes, some washers, some nails, a bunch of wire, that sort of thing. So when we had this magnet cleaned off, there was actually a railway spike still stuck on the back of the housing here. So this frame does actually get magnetized a little bit, and because of that, we had an extra railway spike kind of hanging off of this.
So once your magnet’s cleaned off, all you gotta do is hit the down arrow on the controller, and that’ll drop the winch cable and let down the magnet housing. And this little indicator here lets you know where you’re at in the stroke. So when we were going up, we stopped where it says “stop,” and then when you get to the bottom, it’ll stop moving as well. So I’ll hit the down arrow—there you go, that’s down. So there you go, that’s how you clean off the yard.
The Aardvark Offroad Towable Magnetic Sweeper has been updated with features that make any metal debris collection effort easy and effective, this video goes over what has been updated on the Aardvark, from the new suspension system to the wrap around function that holds debris even if you hit the ground. Everything that has made the Aardvark an industry leading heavy duty magnetic sweeper is still present but is now improved with the increased control at speed gained from the new suspension system.
Okay, so here’s an overview of the new updated Aardvark Magnetic Sweeper by Blue Streak Equipment. This is one of our heaviest duty off-road towable magnetic sweepers. With that, we have a pretty large magnet inside—it’s a permanently charged ceramic model, so that’ll get you a maximum pickup height of 12 inches. If you get a 2 and 1/2 inch nail and somehow lift this magnet up to 12 inches off the ground, it’ll pick that nail up from 12 inches.
Sweeping height on the Aardvark is adjustable from 1 and 2 inches to 6 inches, and that’s accomplished using this adjustable top link here. It’s got a lock nut on one side and then there’s a rod in the middle you can pull and turn, and by turning this, you can raise or lower the magnet. What that does is just change the angle of the axle, so you either go up or down, and that’ll change your sweeping height. Right now, we have it set at about 3 inches because we’re on a trail, and the thing’s got the new suspension on it, so it’s going to bounce a bit. That 3 inches will give us just enough movement of the suspension to keep it off the ground but still be able to pick up whatever debris is on this trail. Because of the pickup height on this magnet—it’s a 12-inch pickup height—you can set it even at 6 inches and if you’re going slow enough, it should do a fine job of picking up any type of debris, from railway spikes, wrenches, nails, wire, bolts, snowmobile spikes in this case, because snowmobiles use this trail also.
So, the new updates for October 2023 are we have air-filled wheels on here instead of foam fill, so that gives you a little bit of flex while you’re driving just for a bit of a smoother ride. We coupled that with a new torsion ride system that allows this wheel to move independently of this wheel and also move independently of the sweeper itself. That gives you suspension, which allows a lot smoother ride, so if you’re actually not sweeping and you’re just trying to get back to where you came from, you have a lot of smooth ride. You don’t have to go 2 mph the whole way back—you can go up to 15, like Scott was saying he does here. If you’re sweeping, we still recommend going 5-6 mph, 10 at the most if you have to. If you’re at a low sweeping height, it’ll still do a great job doing that, but this allows for a bit higher speed travel and it takes a lot of stress out of the frame of the sweeper itself.
So, the Aardvark Magnetic Sweeper is an 8-foot sweeping width. That is a little bit wider than most pickup trucks, so account for that if you’re dragging it—you don’t want to catch on anything. The sweeper has an automatic clean-off system, so down here is a battery box that holds a 12-volt deep cycle battery, which is connected to a winch inside. When you press the buttons on this controller here, which is mounted right to the chassis, it activates pulling in the winch or lowering the winch. The winch is hooked to the magnet on a swing arm; as the winch cable comes up, it pulls the magnet away from the stainless steel debris pan on the bottom, and what that does is just remove the magnetic field from whatever debris is collected, and that drops it down to the ground. We just did a clean-off video where we put a tarp in front of it, pull the magnet up on the tarp, press the button, get all the debris off, and then pull forward, and all your debris is left on the tarp—nice, easy clean-off method.
On the front of the magnet, there’s a big—we can’t really see it because it’s on the bottom—but there’s a UHMW skid bar. What that does is, like Scott was saying, what happens with him is they have a big drag that comes down this trail and it leaves a bit of a ridge in the middle. So instead of worrying about getting a grader or something to go after that, what they’ve done is just kind of use this thing as a grader. This UHMW skid bar takes a lot of abrasion before it starts wearing out, and they were using it kind of as a grader just to drag along the gravel and level things out a little bit. We didn’t design it to do that, but if you’re using it for that and it works, why not? The real point of this is if you hit a rock or hit something heavy, it kind of skids instead of hanging up on the stainless steel, and that just saves your debris pan from a lot of wear.
So, the tongue here on the Aardvark Magnetic Sweeper is adjustable. All you have to do is pull the tractor pin out and adjust it to here. This will allow you to use it on a variety of vehicles; you can use it on a bigger UTV, pickup trucks, bigger trucks—we’ve seen it on tractors—anything like that that’s got a 2-inch ball, this should work. We also sell a pintle ring for it if you want to switch to that. It’s got about a 200 lb tongue weight on this thing, so keep that in mind for whatever you’re towing it with, and then obviously it comes with a jack from the factory and 2-inch ball and safety chains.
The Forest County ATV Association purchased an Aardvark magnet to sweep the local ATV trails after multiple reports of flat tires caused by railway spikes in the trail. They then reported the Aardvark was bouncing excessively while getting towed down their rail trails at any speed over 3mph due to ruts and bumps present on the ATV trails. Bluestreak Equipment sent them a suspension system to try out, this suspension supports the weight of the magnet and allows towing speed to be increased on rougher terrain without bottoming out. The suspension also helps when you need to get back after you’ve swept a section already and aren’t trying to pick up debris since you can tow the Aardvark faster while still maintaining control. This suspension is now standard on all Aardvark magnetic sweepers and greatly increases handling on rougher terrain. FCATVA was able to tow the Aardvark magnetic sweeper down their rail trails for over 200 miles in just their county over one summer and collected 659lbs of metal debris (mostly railway spikes). It was lent to neighbouring trail associations also to clear an additional 400 miles of trails. This video to see what the FCATVA operator of the Aardvark magnetic sweeper has to say about the new improvements to the Aardvark magnet.
Okay, so, uh, we’ve been running around these trails on behalf of the Forest County ATV Association with Scott here, and, uh, he’s been running this Arvar magnetic sweeper on our trails—these local trails here in Wabeno, Wisconsin—for what, the whole summer? Basically the whole summer.
Yep.
And, uh, so you guys were the first ones to get this suspension system. Can you tell me something about what difference it made in the performance?
It made a whole lot of difference. It doesn’t bounce like it used to. Also, the nice thing is it doesn’t pull on the truck anymore when you hit a bump, and you could actually feel it, it would pull.
Yeah, ’cause you guys had the solid axle, and this really helps. It actually—you can increase your speed if you want, right? If you’re in a hurry. Usually we like to pull it about 7 miles an hour, 7 to 10.
Yeah, and we were doing about, you know, 10 or so coming back there, and you could see the magnet in the mirror. It’s going up and down. We have it set at, you know, three and a half inches or so, maybe. That’s usually where we run—three and a half, three, three and a quarter.
Yep.
Yeah, and it’s bouncing, but it doesn’t get too close to the ground. So that suspension seems to be about the right pressure for this weight, which is about, you know, 1,100 lb. It looks like we got it, and when that thing hits the ground, you know that’s going to really dig in on the truck.
It does—it did, I should say. With the suspension, it’s nice.
Yeah. So, uh, have you ever had the battery run flat on you?
Uh, the battery has run down low, but not completely gone. You just gotta feather the button sometimes—let it stop, do it again, stop, do it again—so you can get it up. Then you can drive home, and then cycle the battery in there. That is a deep cycle battery.
Yeah, we also have the solar charger we got for a donation. Um, a guy donated it for us. So with that, we don’t have the battery problem so much ’cause somebody used it and then they parked it, didn’t tell anybody, and they didn’t plug it in, they didn’t do anything.
And, um, plus a lot of places we store it, we don’t have power.
Yep.
So, um, the solar charger is awesome. I think we should have that as an option with magnets on it, you know? Stick on here—stick, yeah—like if we had a little, little tail coming out of the battery box and then a magnet, it just sits there, and then we take it up, fold it up, put it in the truck.
Yeah, and that’s what we do.
It’d be a good accessory. I think we just got to find one.
But, yeah, this thing—I mean, you said when you first started pulling out, you said four buckets—
I pulled in—no, four stops. You said it was four stops in about a 10-mile range, and I had to stop four times and empty it because it was full. And I filled a five-gallon pail up in that—four stops.
Yeah, so 10 miles, and then I finished it that day. I think I had like four buckets’ worth of stuff that first day they did, between this whole trail, which is about 30 miles total. Tells you how much is really out there.
Right.
Oh, yeah. Well, just—we got this much again today, just that little bit. It’s not a lot, I mean, it’s cleaner ’cause you’ve been sweeping it this time.
We’ve been sweeping. But, I mean, you said over the winter it kind of gets pushed back up.
Yeah, it’ll get pushed back up—the frost will heave it up and the spikes will reappear.
And so there’s basically just stuff that’s further in the ground that just gets worked up eventually?
Right, so you just keep going, keeps working up, and keeps coming up. And then you get the snowmobile spikes—we get those, that’s a nice big flat base to stick in your tire. It sticks in and it does a lot of that.
And, uh, but we pick up them—a lot of them are aluminum, but they have a little bit of steel on them, usually just enough to catch.
So, uh, how often did you run it? Like once a week or so?
I ran it once a week for the first month and a half, and then we cut back to about every other week or so.
Every other—when we groom the trails. And then I’d go about every other time, then.
Yeah, staying cleaner now that—because we, yeah, we share it with—um, oops, sorry—we share it with the, it’s our group too, but it’s on the west side, so we’ve got a whole other trail system over there that we swap back and forth. And we’ll run it over there, and then they run it, and they’ll have it for a week or two, then bring it back, or I’ll go get it and I’ll run it over on this end again. So this thing’s always going.
So I think Jake said you guys had close to 200 miles on this thing, probably?
That sounds about right.
That’s pretty good for one summer.
Yep.
I mean, especially at 7 miles an hour or whatever.
Right, a long—yeah, it’s a long day.
Yeah, but hey, it’s nice—you can sit in there, can, you know, like you said, take the dog, take coffee, dog, coffee, soda, whatever, relax for a couple hours. Dog likes to jump out, run around while you do the cleanup.
Yeah, so, um, yeah, we like it, we like it a lot. It’s really done a lot, because a lot of these trails are rail trails, right?
These are—yeah, everything that we’re doing are all rail. They were all railroad at one time.
Right, which is where the spikes come from, obviously. So, do you guys have any trails you run that aren’t rail trails? Do they have a similar problem at all?
We don’t run any trails that aren’t grade A rail grade.
Yeah, so you’re not taking this through, like, the—
We don’t take this through a non, um, ’cause we have a lot of—you don’t want to get hung up. Yeah, we got a lot of trails that are not maintained. We don’t take them through there.
Yeah, that’s understandable. I think you need it a lot taller to get through some of the stuff. You don’t want to bury this thing and then have to try to dig it out.
I mean, we’ll take it on a couple of the roads or stuff too, but the county does a lot of that too.
So did you guys ever actually have problems with people getting—You heard people—so people were complaining about it then?
Yep, people were complaining. Um, we actually, now we got the guy from, uh, Sports—Northwood Sports—complaining that he doesn’t have the business he used to have. He used to do a lot of tire repairs.
Well, that’s a good thing for us.
For us, yes. And he’s good with it too.
Yeah, you guys—I’ve seen on your Facebook, the big buckets and nails and railway spikes, it’s like 10 of them, I think you said you collect?
Yeah, I think we’ve got at least 10, maybe 11 or 12. There’s two more over at the other spot we store it.
Couple hundred pounds of steel.
Oh, there’s more than that—each bucket’s probably a couple hundred pounds.
That’s insane, I guess. Yeah, I mean, if I owned an ATV out here and just bought a brand new set of mud tires, I think I’d be pretty happy that you guys are doing that, ’cause those aren’t cheap to replace. You know, every nail, that’s—could be, and especially if you put a railroad spike in it or something.
Yeah, you can’t plug that. I mean, every one of these could be a, you know, $250 tire.
Oh, yeah. If you’ve got a big set of, like, 30s or something, that’s 200 bucks. I seen one of those pushed right into a tire, and I seen one pushed right into a truck tire on a road.
Yep, that’s—you can’t really patch that, not safely, anyways.
No. Yeah, especially on a quad tire, you get that in between the treads, they’re pretty thin compared to trucks, too. I don’t care if it’s 8-ply or 10-ply, you get it right—still sharp. It might be 100 years old, but it’s still pretty sharp.
So, yeah, I mean, I’d be happy that you guys are doing that. And this thing seems to work with the new suspension, so this is now officially an off-road magnetic sweeper, without the quotations.
There you go.
Because you can bounce on it.
Yep, yep. No, it makes a big difference.
All right, I’m pulling it. Well, we’ll get you a new skid, because these guys like to use this thing as a grader.
A little bit, little bit. So get you guys a new skid bar.
Thanks for having us out, Scott, appreciate it.
No problem.
And I guess we’ll see you guys on Saturday.
Saturday, yes.
Whenever, we’ll show you more of our rubble then.
Yeah, it’ll all be there.
Yeah, we’ll see the full collection, take a picture.
The “Wrap Around” feature on the Aardvark Heavy Duty Tow-Behind Magnetic Sweeper prevents debris from falling off due to ground strikes, or dirt and grass pushing the debris backward on the magnet and off the back. Instead of the debris falling off the back when pushed backward, the debris just wraps around onto the back side of the magnet.
Adjustable sweeping height from 1 1/2″ to 6″. Adjusts to suit all off road conditions. Continuously adjustable sweeping height by turning the top link (gold in color as show in pictures) allows fine tuning of performance in any terrain and conditions for optimum performance.
Aardvark Heavy Duty Tow-Behind Magnetic Sweeper features four layers of permanently charged magnets packed end to end un-spaced with a metal backing plate to increase the size of the magnetic field and direct it downwards to increase pickup performance
Aardvark Heavy Duty Tow-Behind Magnetic Sweeper can pick up a 2 1/2″ nail from 12″ in a bench test. The sweeping height of the magnet is adjustable from 1 1/2 to 6″
“We love the new magnet; it allows us to go over rough terrain (which we have a lot of at the landfill) that our old magnet just couldn’t handle. Based on the metal items such as nails and screws that we are picking up we estimate we saved over 100 potential flat tires in our first trial pass with the magnet.”
D. McElroy, Sanitary Landfill Superintendent,
City of Sioux Falls Public works.
The optional DDR XL is a heavier duty debris digging rake that deploys easier and faster than the original. The DDR XL has 5/16” inch diameter spring teeth that can dig into the ground to loosen up any embedded metal debris so it can be caught by the magnet behind the rakes. The DDR XL is available in 62”, 74”, 86” and 98” inch widths so it will work with many different sweepers. The DDR XL also leaves behind a groomed surface that serves as a visual cue of what areas have been swept already. Rubber stone guards deflect flying rocks that get thrown by spring teeth to prevent damage to nearby equipment and personnel.
An optional Debris Digging Rake accessory can be purchased for offroad magnetic sweeper trailers. The Debris Digging Rake (DDR) slips on over the tongue of a trailer and agitates the ground. The 0.215” diameter agricultural tines can be set to varying depths to disturb the ground ahead of the magnet to loosen up embedded and compacted debris so that the magnet can pick up the debris as it passes over the ground behind the debris digging rake. The distinctive pattern left by the DDR when it is digging is also great as a guide for the operator indicating areas that have already been swept for debris.
This solar battery maintainer attaches to steel surfaces on Bluestreak magnetic sweepers using included rare earth magnet pucks and will keep the battery on your sweeper topped up year-round. Easily attaches to the battery using included ring leads or alligator style clips via an SAE style connector. The solar panel can be permanently mounted on the sweeper and attached to the magnetic sweeper’s battery, which increases the lifespan of the battery and continuously charges the battery when outside. Provides up to 10 W 0.58A of power to the battery with overcharge and reverse polarity protection.
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It’s our second one
It’s awesome, very pleased. Beyond the nails it was expected to pick up, it has picked up a three foot piece of rebar, circular saw blades, and hedge clippers.
Good morning Mike, I had my guy pull the road this morning, and this is what we picked up in only 1 pull.
I have decreased flats by more than 80% so far.
Thanks
Hi Mike,
I thought I would send you a few photos of one of the sweepers at work on the public road and the material collected.
We now sweep 66 Kilometers of the public road and we are already seeing a decrease in the incidents of punctures.
We made a video today for you. Our IT guy is going to see how to format it and get it to you. I think you will be quite happy with it. The unit works great.