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The Surf Rake is the beach litter removal machine Barber first built in 1966 to clear man-made debris from sand quickly and safely. It removes glass, plastic, and submerged sharp objects while aerating and grooming the sand in the same pass. For resorts and municipalities keeping beaches visitor-ready year-round, here’s how mechanized litter removal replaces hours of hand raking.
The SURF RAKE’s tine-and-conveyor system cleans large beach areas at up to 15 acres per hour — far faster than any manual crew. It collects debris as small as cigarette butts, bottle caps, and glass shards to as large as filled garbage bags in a single continuous pass.
The SURF RAKE removes plastic bottles, cans, bags, wrappers, cigarette butts, syringes, glass, foam, and virtually any solid debris.
Manual raking is impractical for large beaches — a single SURF RAKE replaces dozens of labor-hours per cleaning cycle. For beaches with thousands of daily visitors, mechanical cleaning is the only viable approach to maintaining consistent standards.
Frequency depends on visitor volume, proximity to urban areas, and seasonal patterns. Many resort beaches clean daily in high season; Busy municipal beaches also clean daily, while less crowded ones may clean several times per week.
Yes. The SURF RAKE collects syringes, broken glass, and other sharp litter into its hopper while the operator stays seated in the tractor cab, away from direct contact. Crews then handle only contained debris at disposal, not scattered hazards across the sand. This keeps workers far safer than hand-picking sharps and lets you clear contaminated stretches manual crews are reluctant to touch.
The SURF RAKE reliably lifts cigarette butts, bottle caps, and glass shards through its tine-raking action in a single pass. Sifters can handle very fine debris in dry, flat sand, but they slow down and strip out clean sand when conditions turn wet or the litter load is heavy. For mixed real-world litter at speed, tine-raking removes the small debris without stripping the beach or increasing erosion potential.
Yes. The SURF RAKE works across dry sand and the damp tideline where wave-borne litter and wrack collect. It also allows control over how deep to clean to adhere with environmental requirements. It can quickly adjust to clean deeply in the dry sand near beach chairs and highly-trafficked areas, while digging more shallowly at the tideline to remove excess wrack without disturbing sea life under the sand.