Vermont Garden Cart - A Heavy-Duty Cart for Heavy-Duty Work
Written: Apr 04 '06 (Updated May 06 '07)
Product Rating:
Pros: holds a lot, goes over any terrain, easy to dump, large capacity, removable front piece
Cons: can get off-balance with heavy loads in front, handle could use grips
The Bottom Line: This is a great cart for people who need a large capacity cart for lots of work. It's versatility makes it great for many uses around the property.
AliventiAsylum's Full Review: Carts Vermont Model 20
Living in suburbia my whole life on first a property that was 40x100 feet and then 60x100 feet, year work pretty much consisted of mowing the lawn and taking care of the small plot of land I called a vegetable garden. I didn’t need much to take care of that, and my old cart, a Step-2 Yard About suited our needs just fine. It had taken a beating over the years, though, and was something else I elected not to bring with us but replace with something more suitable for the work which would be involved with our property which now was over an acre.
I had seen Vermont Garden Carts over the years but didn’t see a need for them. When I stopped by the local Farmer’s Union last fall, I saw one there and immediately knew I needed it for the work which would be involved on my property. With it just being developed last summer, there would be a lot of work to do.
My Vermont Garden Cart is made primarily of half-inch plywood stained a dark brown. It’s held together by an 11-gauge steel frame at the front of the car which has been electrostatically coated to eliminate corrosion. The rest of the cart is put together with 19-gauge galvanized tubing and 20-gauge galvanized steel along with zinc plated hardware. The axel is made of 3/4 inch steel and attaches to two semi-pneumatic 20-inch heavy duty steel spoked wheels. All in all, it’s quite sturdy.
Last fall I used the Vermont Garden Cart to clean up brush on my property. The front piece of plywood is removable, so this made carrying larger pieces of brush to the burn-pile very easy, and also made dumping the brush I’d accumulated easy as well. Over the winter, we needed to bring wood in from our woodpile to the garage. The Vermont Garden Cart saved us lots of trips back and forth through the snow.
Now that it’s spring (sort of), I’ve gotten even more use out of my Vermont Garden Cart. I am building two retaining walls on my property to create planting areas. Although there are plenty of rocks on my property, getting from where they are to where I need them can be a chore. With it’s 300 pound capacity, the Vermont Garden Cart makes bringing rocks to where I am working easy. If my property was flat I would get a lot more work done, but I manage fine with this. I do have trouble pushing or pulling the Vermont Garden Cart up my sloped driveways. The handle is a good length and is set back from the body of the cart, so I don’t feel like I am about to trip when I’m moving it. It’s also made of steel. Eventually I might look for some rubber grippers for it to make it easier to grab onto and hold, but I haven’t had trouble in that area just yet.
I’ve also used the Vermont Garden Cart to help move things from my house and storage to my parent’s house which is next door to mine. I can put quite a few boxes in it from my van or my basement and bring it right to their house, rather than taking the boxes one at a time. The only problem I have had, which came up with both the rocks and the boxes, is that the cart will have a tendency to tip over if I load it too heavily in front or if the rocks slide to the front. This also happens when I am unloading if I unload from the front first. In the case of the rocks, it’s easier to just take the removable front piece off and dump them - not so with fragile boxes!
Probably the best use I’ve found for it, though, is in distributing the loam around my property. We took about 600 cubic yards of loam off of a job we did, and I now have some of it in a pile on my property. I want to use it to plant in various places, but getting it from the pile to where I want it would be impossible without some help. My Vermont Garden Cart holds quite a bit of loam. It’s interior measures 41 inches long by 23 inches wide by 12 inches deep. It has a 6 1/2 cubic foot capacity, so I can move a lot of soil at one time. It’s easy to dump out when I get there, too.
When the time comes to plant, the Vermont Garden Cart will be great for taking flats of plants out of the back of my van to wherever I intend to plant it on my property, or to the base of my deck for planting in the deck boxes. I can move a lot of flats in one trip, rather than having to make multiple trips to get them where I want them.
The wheels on the Vermont Garden Cart is really what differentiates it from other wheelbarrows and carts. Because they are narrow and rubber like bicycle tires, they hold up through snow that’s several inches deep, along with the sandy fill that surrounds my home. Going over rocky terrain is fairly easy too. I do watch the tires to see if they need air (they have valves just like bicycle tires). So far over all my uneven terrain they haven’t broken a spoke or developed a leak.
I’m not that worried about the wood on my Vermont Garden Cart. The half-inch plywood is sturdy, and if it does break I can replace that section easily by picking up more plywood at my local home center. My Vermont Garden Cart comes with an unconditional, 2 year, no questions asked guarantee.
The only other problem I can see with the Vermont Garden Cart is storing it. The total dimensions of the cart (including handle and wheels) are 52 1/2 inches long by 31 1/2 inches wide and 20 1/4 inches deep. In our case there is no problem as I have half of a two-car garage empty to store it in. However, people who are pressed for space might have a problem. Although the steel hardware is coated to prevent rusting and corrosion, I prefer to keep mine inside whenever it’s feasible to keep it lasting a long time.
I know I will be putting this cart to the test, and from what I’ve seen so far it really holds up well. There are a couple of issues with the cart, but nothing major that I couldn’t compensate for once I knew about them. I don’t think I really would have needed such an expensive cart on my small property in New York, but for what I’m working with now it’s perfect.
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