Our church in Whippany, NJ had about 5 acres with LOTS of big, mature oak trees on it. We'd had 2 Sears lawn tractors with underbelly mowers for the grass for a number of years, and they were a PITA to service. For leaf removal, they had an engine that mounted behind the seat and took suction with a flex hose off the discharge of the underbelly mower and discharged to a covered trailer behind.
Well, I got some relief from my work travel schedule in about the mid 80s and told them I'd take it over again (did it a couple years in the 70s) if they'd let me buy a ZT mower. They did. Bought a 3 blade Scag. That thing would mow the grass in half the time. For the leaves, I just discharged everything inside the BIG circle until the machine was about to cough up its guts. Then I reversed for a round and then turned it back around to do the same thing all over again. Worked great. If it was a mulcher like our walkbehind JD and Honda mowers, it'd chop them like a real champ. Don't know why anyone collects leaves unless they want them for compost. I used to collect about 100 bags of leaves that the silly town peopled just put at their curbs. They finally quit doing that, as the company that normally collected the leaf bags just tells them to rake them to the curb now where they suck them up.
Ralph
