Gardens

Tipke Fold-it Utility Cart

Collapsible gardening mobile

This nifty, lightweight (33 lbs.) garden cart ($225) will fit into any spare cranny in the garden shed or garage. It folds into a long, slender package about six inches wide at the wheel hubs, and three or four feet long. While I wouldn’t go dropping jagged boulders into it, it’s proven a tough, sturdy and useful hauling tool for gardening or otherwise over the couple years I’ve had it. I’ve mounded it high with bark, manure, compost and brush (the load limit is 330 lbs.), and it’s performed like a champ.

Because of its smooth aluminum surface, it hoses clean for transporting non-dirty items. The gate on the front of the cart is basically a reinforced flat sheet of metal with a folded U-shaped channel that interlocks with a similar folded U-shaped channel on the cart. I feel obliged to mention that one time I was hauling a composted sawdust/manure mixture and some of it got caught in the channels of the lift gate. Since then I haven’t been able to get the gate all the way down, but it’s really a minor issue. The gap is only about an inch and stuff doesn’t seem to leak out the front.

Overall, this cart is just a marvelous, very maneuverable device for the storage challenged person. There is a slightly cheaper folding cart by Bully that can haul up to 400lbs. However, with the Tipke Fold-it, you can also buy a trailer or bike hitch, and front gates in a couple of heights. I haven’t used either of the hitches, so I don’t know how well they work, but if you’re a gardening biker looking to kill two birds with one stone, this could fit the bill nicely.

-- Amy Thomson 07/31/18

(This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2007 — editors)

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