Now that I'm starting to get old, I'm contemplating a cart for my canoes. Questions are: short fat wheels or higher thin wheels? Inflatable tires or solid tires?
I can see advantages/disadvantages to both. I'm open to advice/ideas/suggestions. From the side of the garage to the truck to the waters edge is about as far as I want to carry any more.
Some years back we had the opportunity to field test a half dozen different canoe cart designs, center haulers, end haulers, folders, take aparts, tiny versions and ones capable of toting a row boat. And for every advantage some design facet offers that was a disadvantage.
The Canadian Boat Walker/Swedish Boat Cart may have been the best of the lot, sturdy with high ground clearance. Which also means, relative to some other designs, big and heavy. Plus the higher the bunks on which the canoe rests the harder it is to get the canoe centered atop, and the higher the center of gravity, which is not a good thing on a \ sideways slope.
Center haulers make for an easier carry than an end hauler. With a properly balanced center hauler you can roll the canoe along with two fingers on smooth level ground. A 17 foot plastic canoe gets heavy with an end hauler where you are holding all of the weight aloft with one hand. With a center hauler I can carry some gear in the boat, not something you want to do with an end hauler unless you have Popeye arms.
That said I mostly use an end hauler cart for moving boats into the shop and from the truck to the water on easy paths.
With an end hauler I just slip the stern into the hauler frame, attach one hook and walk off. I am at the shop or water’s edge in less time than it takes to hoist it onto a center hauler, get it centered and buckle the straps. That said an end hauler would be useless on rough terrain and the boat weight quickly gets heavy in hand on any lengthy walk.
Skinny tires suck in sand or deep mud. Pneumatic tires get flats at inopportune times. Take apart carts fit in the canoe or vehicle better, but they better be dead simple to put back together with no small parts to lose.
The prefect boat cart is akin to the oft-asked novice canoe choice query “I’m looking for a canoe for my family of 5 that I can solo up to Class III”.
For a compromise cart (center hauler, fat tires, take apart into 4 pieces) I liked the Paddleboy Heavy Lifter we tested.
http://www.r3doxies.com/store.php/ou...FYsfhgodQCUNjw
I did not like it $230 worth though.
I am sure that made your choice clear as mud. For your purposes, if you are at all handy, I’d look at the various cart designs, repurpose some suitable wheels and axel and DIY one for $20 in parts.