Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Anyone have info about hand carts?

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

> We are expecting to provide a hand cart for each household to bring
> stuff back and forth between the car and the house [....]

If by handcarts you mean the things with a small platform, two six- or
eight-inch wheels, and an upright back, like UPS and other freight carriers
use, those are useful for large rigid objects like boxes or dressers, but
not things like grocery sacks or toddlers, which in my observation most
households haul much more often after move-in.

One handcart for EACH household?  One more things to store ....  The
similar role in our community is primarily filled by a pair of Radio Flyer
wagons.  The households that own them leave them on their porches,
available for borrowing. We've had a couple of bikes stolen off porches,
and a rototiller, but so far the wagons have stayed put.  There is one
handcart which is kept in the (locked) workshop.

The most useful carrier I've found is a big two-wheeled garden cart I got
at a yard sale (the best $15 I ever spent).  It's big enough to hold six
full grocery bags (maybe two by four feet?).  The body is green fiberglass
with a flat bottom, straight sides about a foot high, and a sloping front. 
The body is supported by a tubular metal framework, which rises in the back
to provide a handlebar, a squared loop as wide as the body.  The wheels are
spoked, about two feet tall, with rubber treads.  I'm not certain of the
brand name, but I think the words "GREEN THUMB" are molded in the
fiberglass.  I would guess it would have been about $50 new.

It holds as much volume as a big wheelbarrow.  You can push it with both
hands or pull it with one.  It rolls smoothly on pavement and goes over
rough terrain and curbs easily (it has a slight tendency to bog down in
mud).  Unlike the other garden carts our neighbors own, it is stable and
doesn't tip sideways on steep slopes (if you load it wrong it will tip
forward).  As well as unloading the car on those occasions we have more
than one armload, we use it for all our garden hauling -- sod, compost,
ball-and-burlap trees, leaf bags, wood chips, trash gathered to be hauled
to the dumpster ... (except I vetoed wet clay, after seeing the way the
fiberglass bent when the considerable weight of the load came onto the lip
during dumping.  The wheelbarrows are best for really heavy loads).  

A neighbor borrowed it after struggling with first a wheelbarrow, then a
wagon, to get strips of sod from the pallet in the parking lot to her back
yard, half of the trip across wood chips, and she said afterward it was a
godsend.  It was easier to pull and required fewer trips.

Various households have large or small wheelbarrows, two differents styles
of two-wheeled plastic garden carts with smaller wheels and a deeper body
than mine, Radio Flyer wagons, a handcart, and a luggage cart, all of which
I've borrowed at one time or another, and I feel my green cart is the most
versatile and the easiest to handle.

Kay
Wasatch Commons