Burning leaves

I've tried this with many different types of mowers. Every one of them collects at the front of the deck and just plows, the mower won't go over them and chop them up. Unless I did what my retired neighbor did before he died /and that's to mow every day as the leaves fall, and keep up with them.
Since the have to work, and have so little daylight when I get home I can't do that daily. I have to wait til the weekend, to have time to do leaves and they can pile up pretty good in a week.
Before he got his riding mower he'd bundle them and bring them across the street to my ditch so he didn't hurt the grass in his ditch...... That was getting old, after the first time he did that
I've taken to burning at the end of my gravel driveway, but the weeds took over the bottom of my ditch this past summer so it was a good excuse for me to get rid of them once and for all