I commented before, but my Gorilla Cart has a lot of years and a lot of hard miles on it. Most of its life is spent hauling landscaping rock and gravel along with dirt.
I got it specifically with the thought that it would be easier for my wife to operate than a wheelbarrow. It has been significantly easier for her.
The plastic bed is very tough. We’ve moved numerous boulders that were probably over capacity for it, but it takes the abuse very well.
The wheels that come with it are decent, but the tires are poor. Upgrading to the 13" airless tires from Harbor Freight is the way to go. Just don’t use the Harbor Freight wheels - they dont hold up. The metal is too thin, at the attachment point to the hub, the weld is thin and weak. They always fail at that weld after a season of hard use. You can see that I have a white Harbor Freight wheel on one axle and the original wheel on the other. The Harbor Freight wheel is guaranteed to fail this season.
@ampersand, I suppose that the best thing would be for you to analyze what the top 2 or 3 expected uses of the garden cart would be. For instance, if you are planning to plant lots of pots or flats of flowers and to use the cart to move and hold them in the meantime, then a Vermont/Tipke style, or a garden wagon like @BenG or @SpokanePeach would likely be more suitable. If you plan to move lots of rock or dirt then the question would be of how large/sturdy to buy, and whether you want to be able to tilt and load or have to lift everything over the sidewall. With some cargos there’s not any dumping involved, and with others the way the cart functions for unloading is very important.
I prefer cart over wheelbarrow because it’s much less effort to pull a cart than to lift and push a wheelbarrow imo. My spouse gave me a gorilla cart for my birthday a couple of years ago and it’s been holding up great. I got the kind with the bike-like tires instead of plastic wheels and it’s been holding up great for the past year in Florida (though I do keep it in the shed because I don’t trust leaving anything plastic outside in our summer sun).
I bought a Brentwood wheelbarrow 15 years ago or more. I leave it outside but treat the wood with boiled linseed oil annually. Other makes, like Jackson, break in 5 years some with plastic barrows crack in 2 but the plastic in this one is still solid and the handles have survived very rough use leveraging balled trees into my truck from the barrel’s lip against the lowered gate and using the handles for leverage. Too heavy for 2 men to lift together sometimes.
For twice the money you get a wheelbarrow that lasts 4 times as long. Mine is the 6 cubic ft version but I have an 8’ one I haven’t gotten around to assembling. So busy.
I used to use a cart a lot and Carts Vermont made a very good one but there are less expensive versions. Just make sure that the metal frame doesn’t interfere with easy loading and unloading.
Avoid those plastic pieces of crap that will end up in a landfill after a couple of years. If time is money, good tools are money makers.
I’ve never had use for a wagon and have never seen them used professionally. Carts and wheel barrows allow leveraged dumping.
I believe I bought the cheapest possible blue hawk steel wheelbarrow at Lowe’s for $40 in 2019. It has hauled a few yards of compost, mixed a decent amount of concrete, and moved more than a few yards of soil and a few thousand pounds of sandstone to build walls.
It’s flimsy and starting to rust through, but it’s more than paid for itself and owes me nothing. I’ll be referring to this thread when the time comes to replace it with a better quality device, probably a two wheeled model.
My neighbor did gift me a plastic cart similar to the Aldi poly @Audi_o_phile shared, I think mine is Rubbermaid. It seems like it will be a good mulch mover but I don’t plan to truck 500 lb rocks in it.
They really aren’t all that functional for the kinds of work I do. They just don’t maneuver as well. Landscape contractors rarely use them but I see them a lot at horse “farms”. Maybe they are good when you are going in a straight line.
I like to repair as much as I can, and oftentimes am able to repurpose things and minimize waste in the process. With this repair I am using a ~60 inch long piece of composite deck board that fell off of somebody’s truck or trailer and I found lying in the road. I’ve cut it into 4 pieces and will screw those to the wooden handles, and then screw the tray to the composite, using finishing washers to distribute the force.
If y’all have a wheelbarrow with a steel tray those ones are generally superior to the poly trays. Just remember to store them so they are not holding water, and consider wiping some Flood Penetrol on any bare steel when you put them up for awhile. The same goes for any steel tools that are kept somewhere that they might develop rust.
Not if you are maneuvering carts of mulch all day between fruit trees in a nursery, or filling holes with top-soil. I live in hilly terrain and steel trays are like wearing leg weights to a foot race. Also the poly trays on Brentwood wheelbarrows hold 6 cubic feet instead of 5.5
I never could find a glue that sticks to that plastic.
Steel trays for masonry and other kinds of rock work, poly for everything else.
Thank you, @alan, I recognize now that I did not effectively communicate that which I was trying to say: it has been my observation that the longevity and durability of a steel tray, when the wheelbarrow is stored so it does not rust prematurely, does exceed that of a poly tray.
I’ve got a search open for the Brentwood Company. When you first mentioned them it piqued my interest, as I am unfamiliar with that name. That blue poly tray that I am trying to repair by creating a second layer of the floor, it is a generous 8 cubic feet. The manufacturer says that my tray is discontinued, there is a replacement tray available under a different name of their marketing conglomerate, but that they don’t make an 8 cubic foot steel tray. Here’s to hoping I don’t have to get a replacement tray delivered to one of the local stores.
Edit: Wow, Brentwood make HPDE trays in 6, 8 AND 10 cubic feet!
As far as I know, Brentwood is in a class of its own if they have the same quality as the one I bought 15 years ago. Cleary their schtick is to be more than a cut above or they couldn’t survive when selling such an expensive product primarily to tradesmen. Most of the tradesmen here use Jacksons with steel trays, but I suspect out of convenience. They can pick them up already assembled at Lowes and HD. Time is money here… I’m less than an hour from NYC. I bought my 6’ tray Brentwood from a masonry supply already assembled. I bought the 8’ one sitting in my basement, unassembled, 4 years ago. I may not get around to assembling it until the first one breaks.
@SpokanePeach, as I was driving around this week I saw in someone’s driveway a cart that was similar in appearance to your Gorilla, but the bed on theirs was in a dump position, somewhere around perpendicular to the ground. Does yours have that ability? Could you show us some pictures?
I think having a cart and also a wheelbarrow are pretty important. Wheelbarrows are great for dumping soil, mulch, heavy material. While a cart is great for moving potted plants, dug up plants, other material you dont want tipping over while in transport.
I love our jackson metal wheelbarrow. We have wood handles but they also come in metal with rubber hand grips. Getting the solid ‘no flat’ tires is a must in my opinion. When i did landscaping/ hardscaping for a living, we used nothing but jacksons. They’re tanks in my experience. A single wheel is also a must in my opinion since it has a single pivot point and maneuverability much greater than a dual wheel.
We also have a plastic guerilla cart, which we do like. To do it over, i would have picked the metal cage style that’s square. We don’t use it much for dumping but when moving a bunch of potted plants the extra flat surface area of the cage style would have suited us better.
