www.protoolreviews.com: I help a lot of people move, and I take a lot of deliveries. In fact, over the years, I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with these rigid steel pack mules. After you deal with the bulk and unwieldiness of a hand truck for years, you start to think that you’re simply stuck with the general design. Fortunately, that’s no longer true. A lot of products stood out at the 2015 World of Concrete, but something was shown to us at the 2015 Bosch press event that left an indelible mark in my mind. It was the Bosch XL Cart
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In working in both event production and theatre I have realized how important short-distance transportation is. In settings where you are loading in or loading out equipment (e.g. loading in equipment for an event, or into a theatre for a production) having the right carts and cases can make a world of difference. This is especially true in time-critical situations, such as when an event hall is only reserved for a set amount of time, the staff wants to leave at the end of the night, or you are under a time crunch to load in a show. Being able to decrease the necessary time and people to load in or out can have surprisingly significant results. This is just an example of one of the many details that must be considered in the production industries. And there is a notable market for equipment specifically designed for load in/out applications, with sometimes surprising price points. This Bosch hand-cart has a list price of over $200, and that’s a conservative price point when considering the other options on the market (Rock’n’Roller set-ups can push $300-$400, and Magliner professional hand carts can also be in that same range). With experience, however, it is realized that investing in good transport and casing can save you time and money.
At my high school we constantly had to deal with the problem of either not having enough carts to move things, having too many in one space, or having ones that were just slightly too big to comfortable use in the space we had. It wasn’t uncommon for us to resort to just moving everything by hand, since navigating doors meant for people with unwieldy carts is a nearly guaranteed recipe for knocking holes in walls (we did plenty of that too, to this day there are holes and chips in the walls from us striking sets). Something like this would have been great to have, it wouldn’t have helped with some things (like moving large set pieces) but it would have greatly simplified moving sound equipment and tools around, and we could have just folded it up and put in a corner instead of constantly having to fight with it for space in our already cramped shop.
I would say this would be cool to have in our own shop, but I know it would last maybe a day. I don’t even know if we would be moving such heavy things with hand trucks. This might actually be useful for the sound department who actually use, maybe just one person, to move around large pieces of very expensive equipment. After finishing the article I also can’t really understand what the big deal is if it can only hold three hundred pounds. It’s nice that it can still collapse, but it would be pretty impressive if it held….maybe 500 pounds. Its compact design is cool, good for people who are traveling around, like the moving men this article describes. The article says that this is more impressive than it looks so I suppose it would be more interesting to see this in person. I wonder if I would even recognize it as particularly special when walking down a store isle.
This is not a revolutionary device at all…Sorry. I have seen many folding hand trucks in the past, this is not a new idea by Bosch. If you are looking for a device to move things around like your toolboxes or shipping boxes then this is a good device (or any of the others that are on the market that are the same). However, these devices are not your heavy duty hand carts. I would not feel comfortable using this to transport really heavy items. The thing that makes a hand truck so great is that it is so rigid. You can’t break it. When you start adding moving parts and folding pieces the entire unit gets more fragile. Also I would think a really good portion of what people move on hand trucks are over 300 lbs. This hand truck could be good for light duty use, but I cannot foresee it taking the place of the standard rigid hand truck.
I’m happy to see that these tool companies are listening to consumers and modifying pre-existing products to make them a better tool for the job. I have been on many job sites where I’ve sees contractors having to modify a “hand truck” that is too small to accommodate large piece of equipment. So no, this product isn’t all that impressive considering every standard “hand truck” has been converted. Another red flag is how little this thing can carry…. 300 pounds isn’t exactly something I think of when the word steroid is in the title. This may be suitable for lighter objects, but I can’t think of many oversized objects are under that weight, and if they are, we most likely have other methods of transporting it. All in all, I don’t think our shop, or any department for that matter, would find this to be useful. Knowing CMU, if we’re in need of something like this we would probably just build it.
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