The Bottom Line
Pros
- Folding garden carts offer easy storage.
- Portability: just throw your folding garden cart into the back of your vehicle for off-site work.
Cons
- A flexible wheelbarrow ultimately means a puncturable wheelbarrow.
Description
- Fold-A-Cart folding garden carts come with different holding capacities, priced accordingly.
- The "hooks" that serve as legs for these folding garden carts don't dig into lawns as the legs of regular wheelbarrows can.
- Besides its hook-legs and foldability, Fold-A-Cart's light weight facilitates storage.
- The "tub" part of the folding garden cart is made of Flextron, which is supposed to resist puncturing and UV light....
- Fold-A-Cart has a warranty, but even the instructions warn against carrying sharp materials in the foldable wheelbarrow....
- For those who, like me, don't keep up with all these newfangled materials, Flextron is a flexible, rubbery sort of product.
- As usual with products nowadays, the "instructions" for these folding garden carts read more like a garbled Rosetta Stone....
Guide Review - Folding Garden Carts
One side of my garage is inhabited by space hogs -- and no, this isn't a UFO story! I'm referring to large items (lawn mower, snowblower, kayaks and, yes, a metal wheelbarrow) that take up a lot of floor space. I hate having to navigate between them to gain access to other equipment. If you have a similar space crisis in your storage area, you may want to eliminate one space hog, at least, by switching from a regular wheelbarrow (sometimes misspelled "wheel barrow") to a folding garden cart (or "utility cart," "yard cart" -- call it what you like).
I became very happy with my folding garden cart once I got past the assembly stage. I accept part of the blame, though, for my trouble in assembling it. I'm not the sharpest knife in the draw when it comes to product assembly. But as a reviewer, that's actually a plus: I'll detect potential assembly problems that would elude most product gurus.
There are 2 steps in the assembly, in this order:
- Frame assembly
- Tire assembly (which is easy)
I made the mistake of moving the frame parts around too much prior to the frame assembly step; as a result, my orientation was hopelessly thrown off, and I couldn't figure out how the holes lined up (through which you're supposed to thread bolts). If I had first viewed the assembly video (which I heartily recommend) on Fold-A-Cart's Web site (http://foldatools.com/en-us/), I would have known to thread the bolts through immediately after opening the box -- apparently, the garden cart is shipped such that the holes are aligned.
When it's time to store the garden cart away, you push down on the cord that controls the locking mechanism, while simultaneously pulling up on the handle. After thus collapsing the unit, the hooks that serve as the wheelbarrow legs can be used to hang up your folding garden cart -- which is easy to do, because it's lightweight.
