When you visit AC Sweepers & Maintenance website, there's a quote right at the top of the page that greet you:
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
The immediate follow-up makes sure to recognize that this statement applies to women who find themselves called to the commercial contract sweeping industry. That is the immediate vibe that Latasha Crenshaw, founder and director of business development at AC Sweepers & Maintenance, communicates when talking about how she came into the industry. It's something of a calling.
There are people who enter the sweeping industry by accident. And then there are people who arrive by inheritance, resistance, necessity, and eventually, a choice. And Crenshaw is all four of these rolled into one person.
As the 2026 Sweeper of the Year recipient, one of the pavement maintenance industry’s highest honors, AC Sweepers is recognizes not only for their technical competence or fleet size, but leadership, longevity, and influence. It is an award reserved for contractors who have shaped how sweeping is conducted in their market and executed within the broader maintenance ecosystem.
However, Crenshaw’s path to that recognition was anything but linear.
“I Just Graduated From College. I’m Not Going to Deal With Garbage.”
Crenshaw was first introduced to the sweeping industry in 2000, when her parents started a parking lot sweeping company in the Chicagoland area. At the time, she was fresh out of college and firmly embedded in corporate America, training as a technical sales representative for IBM during the lead-up to Y2K.
Her response to her parents’ new venture was immediate and emphatic.
“I said this exactly,” she recalled. “‘I just graduated from college. I’m not going to deal with garbage.’”
But it was not arrogance. It was conditioning. Crenshaw had been just finished a high level education and it trained her, explicitly, that success meant Fortune 500 companies, corporate ladders, and defined career paths. Entrepreneurship was not part of the curriculum. But corporate America, as it often turns out, had other plans.
Over the next decade, Crenshaw was laid off three separate times as companies merged, restructured, or were acquired. Computers. Pharmaceuticals. And another pharmaceutical firm that sold to a Japanese company. Each move required reinvention. Each layoff forced a recalculation.
“To be uncomfortable three times in ten years,” she said, “that changes you.”
It also reframed how she saw her parents’ business.
Learning Business The Hard Way
As Crenshaw helped her mother explore minority- and woman-owned business certifications, she found herself learning the mechanics of entrepreneurship from the inside. Corporate minutes. Compliance requirements. Contract language. The unglamorous but essential infrastructure of running a company.
“That’s how I learned how to do business,” she said. “All the things they needed, I helped to put together.”
She began identifying growth opportunities her parents were not interested in pursuing. Large portfolios. Expanded service areas. New clients. Her mother graciously declined.
“Who’s going to do that?” she asked.
Crenshaw raised her hand.
In January 2012, she started AC Sweepers And Maintenance in the Atlanta market, one contract at a time, built largely on referrals from relationships.
And when she secured those first accounts, she made another shrewd decision.
“If I’m going to get a [sweeping] truck,” she remembered thinking, “I better learn how to use it.”
For six months, Crenshaw did it all. She sold contracts during the day and ran routes at night, learning the physical realities of sweeping firsthand. It was not a symbolic gesture, it was a demand put upon herself, by herself.
“You need to know what you’re asking people to do,” she said. “You need to understand the job.”
Eventually, the demands of parenting, running the business, and being the operator made that model unsustainable. Crenshaw hired her first two employees, turned over the routes, and focused on scaling what she'd already built. What she carried forward from that first year was not just operational knowledge, but credibility.
Speaking The Customer’s Language
Crenshaw’s background in enterprise sales became one of her greatest assets. This is a huge factor. While contractors who own and manage their businesses are often good-to-fair when it comes to selling their business to clients, there can sometimes be a disconnect. Crenshaw had worked on the inside of the types of large scale corporations that she was now trying to partner with as a vendor. Consequently, that experience gave her an added way to understand and connect with their needs.
“We learned how to read people,” she said of her time at IBM. “We learned how to adapt to different environments.”
That ability translated directly into construction and facilities work, where sweeping is often one moving part in a larger, high-pressure operation.
“They don’t need us to be a problem,” she said. “They need us to be a solution.”
Whether working with superintendents, property managers, or national retailers, Crenshaw tailored her approach to what the customer actually needed, not just what she wanted to sell.
“That’s how you get in the door,” she said. “But more importantly, that’s how you stay.”
From the beginning, AC Sweepers And Maintenance was built for adaptability. Today, the company operates more than 30 sweepers, ranging from small parking lot units to air trucks and broom trucks. Its workforce fluctuates between 45 and 50 employees, scaling with demand. Crenshaw is deliberate about fleet decisions, choosing equipment based on application rather than brand loyalty.
“I want the best tool for the job,” she said. “It’s like shoes. You don’t run a marathon in the same shoes you wear every day.”
That mindset has allowed the company to service everything from small commercial lots to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest airport in the world.
“It doesn’t matter how small or how large you are,” she said. “The expectation is the same.”
An Industry That Has Flipped the Equation
Over the course of her career, Crenshaw has watched the sweeping industry change in fundamental ways.
“What used to be quality over price,” she said, “has completely flipped.”
Today, customers often expect more service, more technology, and more accountability at lower rates, even as equipment costs continue to rise.
“Twenty years ago, my mom could charge more than I can now,” she said. “That’s wild.”
To survive, sweeping contractors have had to become value-added partners, offering supplemental services and flexible solutions without losing control of margins.
“Sweeping keeps the lights on,” Crenshaw said. “But to grow, you have to do more.”
The pandemic accelerated changes that were already underway. Store hours shrank. Night windows tightened. Expectations intensified.
“You’re not getting more money,” Crenshaw said. “But you’re getting less time.”
That reality forced sharper decision-making and more disciplined operations. It also reinforced the importance of adaptability, a theme that runs through Crenshaw’s leadership philosophy.
“You have to be able to make quick decisions,” she said. “And you have to be okay with that.”
For Crenshaw, one of the greatest modern challenges is not equipment, but technology.
“I love technology,” she said. “But it moves too fast.”
Systems are implemented, replaced, and updated in rapid succession, often faster than teams can be trained to use them effectively.
“You get the tech,” she said. “And then you don’t have the people.”
The result is a constant tension between innovation and execution, one Crenshaw navigates carefully.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “AI is not a real person. People are.”
Investing in People, Not Just Systems
When asked what advice she would give her 2012 self, Crenshaw did not hesitate.
“Invest in my employees,” she said. “Build them up.”
That answer surprised her as much as anyone.
“You can have all the technology in the world,” she said. “But it’s the people who make it work.”
She likened employee investment to fuel.
“You put premium gas in your car so it runs better,” she said. “It’s the same with people.”
That philosophy has shaped how AC Sweepers And Maintenance approaches training, leadership, and retention, even in an industry where turnover is common and competition for labor is fierce.
What Sweeper of the Year Represents
The Sweeper of the Year Award is not given for growth alone.
It recognizes contractors who have demonstrated resilience, adaptability, and leadership across economic cycles, technological shifts, and cultural change.
Latasha Crenshaw represents all three.
She is a second-generation sweeper who initially rejected the industry, only to return to it on her own terms. The true-blue hero's journey of sweeping. A corporate-trained sales professional who learned the job from the ground up. A business owner who understands that sweeping may be overlooked, but it is never optional.
She has built a company that can stretch without breaking, adapt without losing its core, and lead without forgetting where it started.
For those reasons, and for the example she sets within an industry still defining its future, Latasha Crenshaw and AC Sweepers And Mainteance is the 2026 Sweeper of the Year.
