"CLIMB CART" Topic

Dear List

I bought two of these things out of the Harriet Carter Catalog but you have seen them on television. They are those hand-trucks with three wheels on each side instead of one to help climb stairs. The idea being they can follow up the stairs behind without banging and clunking like a hand truck.

I'm always looking for stuff for loading and unloading at cnventions and schlepping things around. I bought two because the catalog gave you one free one when you bought one.

I assembled it and tried it out with various loads of hobby stuff.

My observations.

1.It's a little flimsy and lightly built. It's probably good for a shopping bag or two but I don't know how it will stand up to a pile of boxes filled with heavy lead. It has a bungie cord and a bag to hold in disorganized stuff.

2.It has a very small "base place, less than a foot on each dimension so if you want to tote around large stuff it will make an unstable load unless you fasten a new base plate to it to give it a larger carrying area. This can be easily fabricated out of 1/2 in plywood. I tried this. It's oK, but it does unbalance the cart a bit.

3. The cart has a poor KDF factor. KDF is an industry term for "knock-down flat."  This means that it's not as collapsible as other models. you can however easily dismount the wheels on each side and take them off and easily put them back on. This makes the KDF factor better, almost as good as other collapsible hand trucks.

The major reason for buying this is ease in going up and down stairs, and it does that just fine, so if your stuff is light then you can haul an awful lot of it with ease. As I said the only question is making a stable load  and what the weight bearing is. They say 38 pounds  and that's not much, but it makes it a lot more worthwhile because of the stairs factor.

As a person who loads and unloads a lot at a convention it's worth a consideration. I will be on the look out for a more heavy duty one. 

Of course one factor is that it is harder to haul up the stairs the heavier it gets. 

Just to let you know if you saw it and were considering it.

otto

Thanks for the info. I fruitlessly searched for one of those small 4 wheel carts or a bigger computer hauler but no luck. I've seen the add for the stair hauler and was curious.

I've been working with it. One of the net things is the wheels are easily dismountable and the whole thing folds up nicely into the snap-on heavy vinyl bag carryall that comes with it. I'm experimenting with a larger foot plate.

Depends on how much your stuff weighs.

Otto

I've been looking at Game Carts online. The 500 pound capacity should be good for gaming stuff, and the large tires should handle the stairs at the Host fairly well.
link

That might work Sparky. I've used something like that before. The only problem I had was that the radii of the wheels means that at no time will the weight of the whole shebang rest on a flat surface, and you'll be hauling up all the weight on the cart on your arms. Also the angle of the bed may mean you have to lean over too far to be stable. Give it a shot though.

I also wonder if the stuff will slide off the front as you haul it up.