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Cart/Wheelbarrow/Muck bucket to fit in trailer and use at shows

Around The Farm
#1

Anyone have suggestions for a the best somewhat space-conscious wheelbarrow, cart, muck tub set-up, etc to carry in the trailer and use when showing, that could ideally also be used to help haul items to and from the stalls when loading & unloading at shows, as well as for mucking? I’ve never been able to find something that works for me and have usually ended up just using a wheelbarrow from someone in my group, but that doesn’t always work.

I have a 3-horse GN (2+1) plus DR, but it’s likely I’ll sometimes be hauling three horses to shows this year and won’t be able to use the +1 area for gear. The DR doesn’t have a lot of floor space, and of course it has to fit everything else for 3 horses, so space in there is somewhat tight. Also I have always hated the thought of getting the DR filthy with dirty cart wheels! :open_mouth:

The other thing is, I don’t really have much space to store large-ish items at my barn - it’s possible that whatever I get will have to live in my trailer much of the time, even when not showing.

I’m interested in any ideas or suggestions, and to hear how others deal with this!

#2

Something like that could work?

http://calendargarden.com/54596/fold…gon-blue-ebay/

http://calendargarden.com/54596/folding-garden-cart/unusual-design-ideas-folding-garden-cart-tipke-2100-marine-fold-it-utility-amazon-ca-patio-lawn/

https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail…SABEgKzsPD_BwE

They have smaller sized manure buckets.
You could tie one to a regular dolly?

#3

The thing is…the first one looks like a great cart for transporting things at shows. I’ve had this Mac Sports one bookmarked for a while:

https://www.amazon.com/Mac-Sports-Collapsible-Folding-Outdoor/dp/B00BUUUIGK/ref=sr_1_4?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1523664073&sr=1-4&keywords=mac+sports+collapsible+folding+outdoor+utility+wagon

But I’m not sure how it could be used for mucking. It looks impossible to dump, and made of fabric so not easy to clean once it’s been filled with manure. Does anyone really use something like this for mucking?

The third is conveniently foldable, but doesn’t seem particularly stable or sturdy. Obviously given my constraints I am not going to end up with a Smart Cart, but something that collapses on me or wobbles and tips on uneven ground will end up being unused. I can’t sacrifice functionality or there’s no point.

Thats why I’m trying to figure out what has worked for other people. I always see wheelbarrows and big muck tub carts at shows - how are people fitting them into trailers if their trailers are full of horses? Is there anything compact or collapsible that actually works?

#4

The second option Bluey posted might work.

I agree the 3rd option is too flimsy. I haven’t had one personally but I have friends that do and I always see them struggling with it. They are quite small too.

Option one is great for hauling things to the arena. I have one for my kids for “kid stuff” and it works great and folds up nice and compact. You could easily put it inside your towing vehicle if you don’t have room in the trailer.

I dont go to multiple day events very often, but when I do I bring my REAL (metal) wheelbarrow. I have a fairly large dressing room in my trailer so there is plenty of room for it. When we arrive at the show, then I just keep it in the horse part so it’s not in my way in the dressing room.

The wheelbarrow lives at home in the garage otherwise. I don’t have room to keep it where I board.

I have rugs in my dressing room so they are easy to shake out or wash, if I get anything on the dressing room floor.

Anywhere that I have been overnight have their own big wheelbarrow-type things to haul out manure and soiled shavings. So I don’t use my own wheelbarrow for that. But I could if I need to, and then rinse it out with a hose. Side note: I do keep one of those seen-on-TV collapsible/ expandable hoses. They work very well for traveling in case the facility doesn’t have a hose out. And they take up pretty much no space!

#5

I didn’t know exactly what you needed, that is why all three options.

I have that first cloth one also, bought it at Walmart for around $60+ on sale.

It is good to carry stuff around, but if you wanted to clean stalls, I would not.
The canvas material would get too dirty for any other.

There are so many out there, I bet you can find one just right for you.

#6

I subscribe to KISS :cool:

I got a $30 Handcart from Harbor Freight

https://www.harborfreight.com/materi…uck-62199.html

I bungee a muck tub to that at shows & away we go.
Also useful for hauling bales of hay & other miscellany.
When I had a GN it went in the fixed rear tack or DR - really, wheels don’t get all that dirty - in my stock it goes in front of the center gate.

#7

We have several like that one above.
Those are definitely very sturdy, one is a good 60 years old and still fine.

This one or similar is even better when it comes to folding completely out of the way.
We got one at Home Depot, don’t remember where the other came from, they are years old now:

https://www.harborfreight.com/150-lb…uck-61867.html

We have two from different brands, all will hold most any heavy stuff we want to move.
Plywood sheets, boards, bricks, muckbuckets, hay bales, feed or concrete mix sacks, water containers, you name it, we moved it with those.

#8

I always bring my big muck tub cart (this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Rubbermaid-Commercial-Products-7-5-cu-ft-Plastic-Yard-Cart-FG564200BLA/100344354) with me to shows. I put it upside down in the bed of my truck in front of my gooseneck trailer. Takes a little wrestling to get it in, but it’s not in the way of the trailer at all. I have an 8’ bed and a standard Featherlite GN 4H trailer.

I have also put it on top of everything in the dressing room of my trailer for longer trips. Can’t put it in the trailer even if I’m only bringing 3 because it’s a little too wide for any of the horse stalls.

Can’t imagine trying to do stalls out of a little muck bucket or small wheelbarrow. Though maybe if you only had one horse it wouldn’t be that bad?

As for many of the other barns? A lot of the bigger barns send down a separate trailer for tack trunks and gear. Wheelbarrows often go in that rather than crammed into a regular horse trailer. I’ve also seen a lot of wheelbarrows strapped on top if a trailer has a roof rack. And I’ve seen a few hanging from the back of the trailer. There must be a bracket you can buy for your trailer to hold that on?

#9

I have the third one that Bluey posted. They’re not the best made as the wingnuts have come off a few times and they don’t hold a lot. But I have a pony and it works out well for me as she doesn’t tend to poop a large volume at once,

LetItBe

#10

A trick for those that have gadgets with the little pesky pneumatic tires that keep going flat, change them with same size, full rubber tires, without air.
Sure, they are a bit more bouncy, but what you put in there won’t care and you won’t have any more unhandy flats to fix.

Hardware stores carry those wheels in all sizes in their garden department, as most with mowers have the same problem.

2 Likes
#11

PNWJumper, that Rubbermaid cart is great. And I could theoretically put it in the bed of my truck. But I have no use for it at my (boarding) barn, and no place to store it at the barn. So it would have to basically live in the truck bed, which wouldn’t really work, takes up too much space on a long-term basis when I’d only be using it for shows.

The Harbor Freight hand carts are an idea. I could have a muck bucket live in the truck bed, as that is much smaller. Schneider has this Manure Dolly, which doesn’t require bungees:
https://www.sstack.com/Stable_Barn-Supplies_ForksMuck-CartsWheelbarrows/Easy-Up-Fold-Up-Manure-Dolly/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwqsHWBRDsARIsALPWMEPNin1j09W-nqi-nFacQ0Oa3tO3wsBx6RYg1wq9WyFp1H4HahJCjZ8aAqX6EALw_wcB

Schneider also has this Dura-Tech cart which I’d forgotten about but have seen before and is fairly compact, more so than a muck bucket:

https://www.sstack.com/stable_barn-supplies_forksmuck-cartswheelbarrows/dura-tech-multi-purpose-muck-cart/

Though sadly none of these is nearly as useful as a real wheelbarrow or cart like that Rubbermaid for things other than muck, like shavings bags or saddles or other gear. Maybe there’s no good answer. Why can’t someone build a truly sturdy at least partially collapsible wheelbarrow?

(Ugh saddles, figuring out how to deal with them at shows is my other big issue now that I will be showing more than one so carrying the saddle from the trailer by hand and using a single saddle stand will no longer be an good option… topic for another post I guess!)

#12

Also, on another thread someone menti9ned this Gorilla cart:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BECQAWO/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B01BECQAWO&pd_rd_wg=mfUJy&pd_rd_r=K117XM440RPV6GYENC7E&pd_rd_w=Gsgpx

which looks intriguing for both mucking and transporting things, but doesn’t look very easily portable…

#13

Do you have a yard at home? I have 2 of the Rubbermaid carts…when my first started to crack under heavy weight I retired it to garden duty. It is an awesome cart! I won’t go back to a muck cart or regular wheelbarrow.

#14

Home Depot here has that second one right now on sale.

Those manure carts in all kinds of them are super great for manure buckets and just most every other someone wants to carry.
Have introduced others to them and they have trouble keeping them, they tend to be so well liked, in busy barns, they disappear regularly, they tell me.

There are also some that do double duty, have a portable saddle rack that hangs on them if saddles is what you want to move next.
I have seen people at shows use this to move saddles, take the saddle racks out and use it as a dolly for hay, sacks and manure buckets also:

https://www.statelinetack.com/item/rolling-saddle-rack-cart/BRL30/?srccode=GPSLT&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsfGJnIu72gIVRbXACh0q4gfVEAQYASABEgIO-_D_BwE&kwid=productads-adid^160636394091-device^c-plaid^273296267921-sku^70047-adType^PLA

Those are very sturdy.

#15

These will fold flat. I don’t even know how old mine is now. I use it for the muck tub and to drag feed/bedding/hay bales from the house to the barn

I’ve also used it to drag my saddles from the trailer to the barn. I put my pad down and then load the saddles

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/pr…et-cart-300-lb

#16

We also have one of those, didn’t know it fold flat!
Ours is also years old, still looks like new.
I just changed the old tires to solid rubber ones in it.

#17

The Schneider’s Manure Dolly I linked to also folds flat… they both look like possibilities.

One thing I am trying to do is (further) reduce the enormous effort of loading and unloading at shows. I have a rolling Husky trunk & rolling bale bags…but I still have a whole bunch of things, like buckets and whips and stall guards and chairs, and saddles and pads, and then things like coat & boots, that I end up lugging in piecemeal, and this year I expect to have more of that. It would be great to either have a single large sturdy cart-type thing that could be used to unload all this stuff and also used for mucking, like the Rubbermaid - but I can’t figure out how to fit it/store it. Alternatively, I have to either figure out if there’s a smaller item that will serve both functions, or else figure out some combination of solutions (muck bucket & folding dolly for mucking and lugging some gear, plus … something else like rolling saddle rack thing, or the collapsible canvas wagon linked in the first post, for lugging other stuff like tack), which would be less efficient but could be easier to store because it would be two smaller items instead of one huge bulky one.

Maybe there’s some better way of organizing my DR to fit a larger item - but the non-GN portion of it is fairly cramped, and there’s a built-in storage box and saddle racks, plus a door into the horse area that needs to be accessible, so it has only a very tiny amount of usable floor space. But I wonder if I could store a cart in the GN part, if the cart was cleaned out fairly well? It might be a pain to get it up there. I have so much stuff

I have no yard for storing (and no use at home for) something like the Rubbermaid cart; we live in a brownstone in the city, with just a townhouse garden. The horses, obviously, are not in the city with me; I trek out to them!

I have been doing this for many years - you’d think I’d have come up with some solutions by now! I guess what I’ve been doing has been mostly working, but now planning for the first time in a while to add another active show horse to the equation, I’m looking for some better ideas!
​​

#18

https://www.sstack.com/stable_barn-supplies_forksmuck-cartswheelbarrows/easy-up-fold-up-manure-dolly/

Holds a regular muck bucket, folds up when not in use. They have a couple of others that look a little more heavy duty.

#19

I can’t help much there, lol! Mine is my main mucking vehicle at home too! They do make brackets to hang them from in the barn. So if you have an empty wall somewhere you could store it that way at home?

I have the same issue. I usually have 2-3 saddles at shows and I bring them with me into whatever hotel/airbnb I’m staying in. I bought one of these: https://www.smartpakequine.com/pt/two-wheel-saddle-rack-cart-4120?utm_source=cpc&utm_medium=google&utm_content=shopping&utm_campaign=nb_shopping_tes&utm_term=14120&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIoZnB3dq82gIVm7jACh0AswH9EAQYBCABEgJkk_D_BwE

It’s a bit of a pain to throw in the truck at the end of the day, but certainly makes it easier to transport everything I want to bring to the stalls in the morning. I would imagine that if you spent some time searching, you may be able to find a lighter weight one?

#20

It turns out there is actually a smaller version of the Rubbermaid cart:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B000NPCN6G/?coliid=IDCRTX1AWRUKI&colid=1YPVG0GLZGVL9&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

It’s about half the capacity, 3.5 cu ft instead of 7.5. The reviewers say it will just fit a single bale of hay. But it could be a decent compromise. It still isn’t small, but definitely seems more manageable than the larger one.

If I did that, I could use it both for lugging stuff and for muck. My other option I’m thinking is to have two items: for mucking either a muck tub/folding hand cart combo, or this (much smaller than even the small Rubbermaid cart):
https://www.sstack.com/stable_barn-supplies_forksmuck-cartswheelbarrows/dura-tech-multi-purpose-muck-cart/

and for lugging something like a collapsible wagon, like this:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00BUUUIGK/?coliid=IZUIERLQ2GV53&colid=1YPVG0GLZGVL9&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

(PNWJumper: I generally lock my saddles in a tack stall. But I still have to get them to the stall (and back), and have somewhere to put them in the stall. I’ve seen a few people recommending carts like the one you link to - but how well does it really roll over terrain with two saddles on it? It seems like it might be awkward. I wonder if lugging the saddles in a cart, then putting them on hanging racks, might be as easy and less space-consuming. I think maybe I do need another post about saddle storage at shows!)

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