The downside to pneumatic tyres is obvious, and if you’ve ever owned a bicycle, motorcycle, car, etc. you will have dealt with them- punctures. With rubber and plastic tyres, you don’t have to worry about accidentally rolling over a screw, nail, or bit of glass, and then having to break out the puncture kit before you can carry on working: Pneumatic tyre is very comfortable to use until a puncture upsets things Another very minor flaw that, again, is common to this kind of wheelbarrow is that it is very difficult, if not impossible to tip all of the contents of the tub out at once. There will always be a little bit of soil, sand, etc. still in there that you’ll have to help on its way with a shovel or similar. I guess I’d say that if your garden or work area is relatively easy to traverse, or if you are pretty fit and don’t mind using a bit of extra effort to move the wheelbarrow, then puncture-proof tyres could save you a potential headache. For those of you who might be a little longer in the tooth, or just have lumpy gardens to work on, the smoothness of pneumatic wheels can’t be beat. You’re not going to be shifting huge loads of materials or equipment with the Garden Caddy like you can with larger models such as the DJM heavy duty wheelbarrow, but it can manage up to 40kg, which I think is enough for most casual gardeners. The deep tub and high sides are also great for holding long handled tools, like spades and rakes, in place, and you can throw a load of dead leaves or weeds in there too.

The thing to think about when it comes to choosing how large a maximum load weight you want, is can you actually lift that much without hurting yourself? I mean, it’s fine to be pushing a fully loaded 90kg wheelbarrow if you’re particularly fit, but not everyone is, and if you’re only going to be filling it half way, you might as well save some money and buy a smaller barrow instead. Metal or plastic wheelbarrow? There were also some issues with bolts and holes lining up, but with a bit of help we got it assembled in the end. On the plus side, the pneumatic tyres are really good quality for the price, and I think that those, and the other pros we mentioned, outweigh the cons. Pros

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So, in the end, I settled on this Crazy Gadget wheelbarrow. With dimensions of113D x 60W x 53H centimetres, it’s big enough to be practical and useful without being overly large. It can also hold up to 65 litres which, although not as impressive as the 90 litre DJM wheelbarrow, is still pretty good. Another thing to look out for when it comes to wheels, is the quality of the bearings used, as this will directly affect the performance of the wheels. Not only do good bearings ensure a smooth roll, but it can also affect the durability of the wheels, especially under heavier loads. What can I use a wheelbarrow for? I recently saw a comment from a customer that mirrored my own thoughts about how this product could be improved, and that was with some kind of drainage plug. I understand that for moving compost and similar you need a solid bottom, but that also means rain water can build up in there, and the high sides make it harder to tip it out without laying it down on its side. Some way to remove that water easily would be a nice addition in the future. Pros

If the tray of the wheelbarrow is filled unevenly, it will no doubt wobble and make it harder for you to keep it steady when you lift and move it, and this usually ends up with the whole thing tipping over. Again, taking smaller loads can help, but ensuring that any load is well spread out and balanced is the best thing to do, and if you have to put more weight in one place, have it towards the front. Wheelbarrows can obviously be used to transport materials over short distances. This can be sand, cement, compost, soil, mulch, gravel, paving stones, and just about anything else as long as the wheelbarrow, and yourself, are strong enough to haul it. I’ve also heard of people using them as an emergency cover for things like petrol generators when it suddenly rains, using metal wheelbarrows as makeshift fire pits, or repurposing old wheelbarrows into beautiful garden features like these planters: Wheelbarrow repurposed as a planter – no need to throw it away once it’s past it!

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Best wheelbarrows for seniors: Draper expert garden caddy– lovely and light weight with a large base incase you have a slip! The tyres on Walsall’s wheelbarrow are the puncture-proof kind, but they are not the usual hard plastic material. Instead, they feel like some kind of hard rubberised material, and I have to say that it does make the barrow feel better to move over lumpy terrain than a lot of other products. Well Simon, I want to mix large quantities of cement, and to do this I need a wheelbarrow that has enough depth to hold it. On top of that, it needs to be wide enough so that I can mix the cement with a shovel without banging into the sides every 5 seconds. But that’s not all. The wheelbarrow needs to be low enough off the floor so that I’m not having to lift the powdered concrete up too high to get it in there. Oh, and it has to be strong enough to hold the weight and be durable enough material so as to not get chipped and scratched by the shovel as I mix.”

Now, I have to admit that making sharp turns with this barrow isn’t as easy as with single wheeled models like the Walsall, DJM, Crazy Gadget, and Draper wheelbarrows, but I have to say that Oypla have done a decent job at making this pretty agile. The shorter handles might also have had a part to play in that too. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t terrible, it’s just that after playing around with the Oypla that had really large handles, these seemed a bit small in comparison. If you’ve already shopped around a little bit for your wheelbarrow, you will have noticed that there is no standard size. When searching online, the size of a wheelbarrow is usually right there in the description as it is thought of as one of the main things people want to know, and rightly so. There are a few ways of looking at size though. Firstly, there are the actual dimensions of the wheelbarrow- height, width, etc. and these are obviously very important when you think about storage space in the garage, getting the barrow in and out of the shed door and through gates, and just generally manoeuvring it around. Trying to deftly move a huge wheelbarrow around a very small and narrow garden isn’t going to be fun, so you might want something smaller like the Crazy gadget model.You only have to take one look at that plastic wheelbarrow to realise, yeah, it’s got support braces, but no, I am not loading that twice the weight of a heavy duty wheelbarrow! Choosing a wheelbarrow that I would recommend for allotments wasn’t an easy task. You see, there are just so many variables that come into it. Different people grow different things, and perform different tasks on their allotments, so choosing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model was pretty much impossible.