I’m looking to cart products around to sell on foot.
Basically I want a box on wheels with bars in the front that I can lift and then walk forward. Similar to the idea of a rickshaw, but instead of seats for people, a container that can hold ~200lbs of weight. Or the type of thing you’d connect to a bike, except I want to just pull it on foot. The added element is that I want to be collapsible or able to be dismantled when not in use. Surely this must exist but I have no idea what term to use to search for it.
“Rickshaw” mainly brings results related to pedicabs. The closest I got was “utility cart” like this for example. But the problem with these, unlike a rickshaw style design, is they don’t scale well with the addition of weight where two wheels is easier than 4, depending on the surface. Also, versions that can be taken apart of collapses aren’t rugged enough.
I’ve used a hand truck put into the flat configuration in the past. But that lacks the box component to contain the products. I can stack boxes on it, but that gets unstable. And, again, the 4 wheel flat design doesn’t scale well with weight compared to the rickshaw concept.
So, yeah: what do you call that?
I just call it a “Pull Cart”.
Or “Cart” for short.Check Costco. They sell carts like that since people use them for their grocery runs.
Thank you. I’ve tried those but unfortunately they don’t handle enough weight
When you tow something the pulling force has to be down low, aligned with the load, to make it efficient. With the human body, given the height of your hands, it will always be easier to push a load than to try and tow it. The angular force when pushing a wheelbarrow, along with the weight of your body, helps the wheelbarrow along. If you turn around and try to pull it, your body takes that angular force instead of the front wheel. Like, instead of the lever and wheel doing the work, you have to not just move the load along, but lift it too. In short, there’s a reason why you can’t find something like this. It’s the same reason that why you look at wagons or pull carts, the handle is connected as low to the load as possible, and may likely have an angle built into it, also the same reason why flatbed type push carts say right in them “push, don’t pull.” Same with wheelbarrows. In short, you’re going to hurt yourself.
Your post doesn’t make sense. “A four wheel cart doesn’t scale well when compared to the rickshaw design”? Given that a four wheel design spreads the weight to four wheels instead of just two, four wheels can obviously move more weight more easily than two.
As above, especially in uneven surfaces, pushing is easier than pulling given that angular force is reversed (pushing the wheel over a bump and using the angular force to help rotate the wheel versus lifting the load up over the bump using your body whilst pulling). No question.
Maybe try searching for ‘kiosk’ with other words like ‘wheeled kiosk’ or ‘mobile kiosk’
This came up when I looked for wheeled kiosks.
In my country we have these:
This is a dvoukolák (lit. twowheeler). According to the internet it can carry up-to 240 kg. Dvoukoláks often have bigger wheels and they’re not collapsible.
I looked on American Amazon and on Walmart’s website and I couldn’t find anything like it. Bike trailers seem to be closest to a dvoukolák.
Yes, thank you! That’s the type of setup I’m thinking of. Friends of the family had these when I was a kid
I think you’re going to struggle to find something that can carry 200lb and be collapsible. Most carts seem to either be for much less than that, or much more. I found several that looked a bit like what you may want by searching for ‘vendor cart’.
You may well be better off building/comissioning something to your spec though as a lot of the bigger carts are designed to be food stalls when stationary, so they’re probably unnecesarily heavy. I think you’d be able to make something along the lines of what you wanted with parts from your local DIY store.
