I'm not all that particular about raking the lawn in the fall, as decomposed leaves are pretty good fertilizer. However, too thick a layer smothers the grass, so I rake the bulk of them up. Also, they're also GREAT compost material.
Raking is bad enough, but bagging and hauling whole leaves and trying to get them to compost instead of matting and turning to slime is a huge pain. I've always liked the concept of a leaf vac, but with that little bag, you spend more time hauling and dumping than you do sucking up leaves. They DO do a nice job of shredding the leaves tho, and they compost very well that way.
I've always thought the best of both worlds was a leaf vac set up to blow into a large enough trailer that you could suck up a year's worth of leaves in one trip and be done with it. As a side benefit, most leaf vacs have a provision for chipping small twigs and branches, which works really well for shredding sunflower stalks and the like.
After spending a couple of years waiting for the right deal to come along on a used leaf vac that I could swipe parts off, I came up with this monster:
I made a frame of old bed rails to hold up the sides, which are plastic "chickenwire" from Home Depot. The frame is bolted to the top of the trailer.
Undoing 4 bolts will take the top off, 6 more will let me remove the engine/blower and return the trailer to it's original state (less the welded on mount for the engine) for over-the-road use.
The chassis and transmission of the "self propelled" part of the original vac have been set aside for another project. I have about $200 and 4 hours invested in the whole thing, and it works slicker than a smelt!
If you enjoyed looking at this project, you might enjoy visiting a website for tinkerers that I hang out on: The Shopbuilt Forum