slaingod

So whenever I prepare to buy something I tend to agonize over every little decision. search engines are great, but you really have to know what exactly are looking for to find what you need. Otherwise you end up spending hours and hours searching through the same pages over and over. That’s basically what I did for about a week recently. I needed a new shopping cart as the one I had was beginning to show its age. It was big, wide, too wide to fit through most New York City grocery aisles, rattled and shook, and it felt like the wheels were always about to come off, until they finally did.

So in my grand tradition of hunting and gathering in cyberspace started searching for pretty much every combination of “cart, grocery, shopping, aluminum, casters, foldable, collapsible, etc.”. I finally came across my first contender, the polder aluminum cart pictured below. It really seemed to have a lot of features are looking for, such as being narrow, having rubber wheels, and being lightweight. But the reality was far far removed from those perceptions. This is arguably the worst product I have ever used for its intended purpose. Where to begin? First, the handle is too short and too close to the cart so you can’t really walk or pull it without it blocking your feet. Second, the wheels are barely held on by tiny little plastic clips, which the instructions didn’t even properly indicate how to use. The front wheels were also entirely too small intended to catch on tiny little sidewalk cracks, almost causing a pitch head over heels every few feet. Finally, the cart that I received a manufacturing issue where the brake would engage every few feet, making the card essentially useless without modification. Before realizing all the other issues the cart had, I had taken a Dremel to the brake, thereby removing any chance I had of returning it.

So $60 later I was back to the drawing board. Armed with my new knowledge and my desire not to waste my existing purchase entirely, I struck upon the idea of finding a much sturdier handtruck style cart and then attaching the light weight aluminum foldable basket portion of the cart from hell. I finally found something usable at handtrucks.com(I know, who knew!) in their folding hand trucks section.

there were some other products that might have sufficed, but I went with the high-end Wesco folding aluminum handtruck for about $100. This car is pretty amazing and it collapses up into a pretty small area for discreet storage. It has awesome rubber tires, can hold 150+ pounds, and it is very lightweight. Once I received this, it was now time to turn part-time cart. At this point I took a hacksaw, and cut off the arms and wheels of the crappy Polder cart leaving just the foldable basket. Now it was just a matter of being able to attach the basket to the handtruck and a quick release manner. in the pictures below you’ll see that I use reusable zip ties, but I have since moved on to using Velcro Velstrap (2 inch wide by 3 foot cut to size ) as my quick release mechanism, which I found at CyberGuys for around $10 delivered.

Below you can see the final product of my efforts minus the Velcro with some added foam grip for the handle. this bad boy doesn’t grab some attention on the street, as easily the most maneuverable cart in the store. It is lacking the second set of wheels so does require a little more effort to manage when fully loaded, but all in all it is a huge improvement and should last for a really long time, and the handtruck will find other uses besides just holding the basket.