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hen Andy Ellis does his job right you’d never know he was there at all.

“It’s a weird thing going out and doing some-thing that nobody is ever going to notice,” the 28-year-old said. “Sometimes I don’t quite know what to think about that.”

For the past two years, Ellis has worked with Coast Pavement Services, a Tigard company that, among other things, sweeps and cleans parking lots when most of the world is asleep.

Ellis’ world is different than most people’s. The often-clogged Tualatin-Sherwood Road has no traffic as he makes his way through town. Like everyone at Coast, Ellis works his 10-hour shifts alone. He seldom sees any-one on the job and could go days without talking to any-one, he said.

“Working overnight like this, you can probably fit most of my social interaction into a 30-minute time peri-od,” he said. “By end of the week, you kind crave social interaction a little bit.”

It’s not a job for everyone, Ellis said.

“To do this job you do have to have a bit of a different personality,” he said, steering his rig through Tualatin. “It is a very lonely job.”

It’s a bumpy ride, too. Coast’s trucks run almost 24 hours a day, Ellis said, bouncing around the cab of his truck. “The suspension on this one is just gone.”

out there making your own decisions.” Before coming to Coast, Ellis worked on a grass seed farm in Sweet Home but was laid off when the economy went sour. “I’ve always liked jobs where I’ve been free to move around and make my own decisions,” he said.

Coast has cleaning crews during the day, as well, but the difference between day- and night-sweeping is mon-umental, he said.

Day cleaning mostly involves apartment complexes. “But the real difference between day and night crews are the people doing it. The night crew are a bunch of lone wolf individuals.”

Most night crewmen are single, and few can sleep for longer than four hours a night, Ellis said.

He arrives at a small business park in Tualatin and sets to work checking the area for leaves, garbage and large sticks, then opens a hatch on his rig and pulls out a large leaf blower.

“At this point I’ve gotten to be kind of a Jedi with the leaf blower,” he says as he pulls the throttle and the machine roars to life.

His headphones playing underneath a set of noise-canceling ear-muffs, Ellis wanders the parking lot blow-ing out corners that his rig can’t reach and then returns to his truck.

Snow is on the forecast for the weekend, and Ellis speaks authoritatively when he discusses the weather. Coast employees “are all masters of the weather,” he said. “You walk into the shop and four different guys will be saying ‘no, no you’re wrong; it’s going to rain at this time.”

Ellis’ attention to the weather is key to his job. Rain, wind and snow affect how — or if — he goes out at all.

As he walks back, a slight breeze scatters a few leaves across the parking lot.

Ellis sighs to himself. “We absolutely hate the wind,” he said.

Back in his rig, Ellis drives in circles around the park-ing lot, making smaller and smaller circles until he reaches the center of the lot.

A large sweeper at the bottom of the truck picks up dirt, branches and leaves as well as old soda cups and cig-arette butts.

While Ellis has plans on going back to school some-day, many on the night crew have been working for Coast for nearly a decade, he said, and everyone has a story about the weird things they see in the middle of the night. “It’s a weird time to be out,” he said.

Many times it’s animals like coyotes or other critters that make their way through town in the dead of night. What few people they do see are sometimes on drugs, he said.

But most nights are quiet Ellis said, though they do find a large variety of objects on the job.

“I could open up a glove store with all the gloves I’ve found over the years,” he said.

Ellis still has about 10 parking lots to do before his shift is finished. He estimates he won’t make it back to his North Portland home until about 4 a.m.

“If you had told me five years ago that I’d know this much about how to sweep a parking lot, I’d have said you were freaking crazy.” he said. The majority of his night will be spent cleaning lots in Wilsonville, and Ellis said he has the new album by The Decemberists to keep him occupied. “It’s been a very interesting experience.”