Editor’s note: This tip made immediate sense to many of us with bad backs, shoulders, and knees born of jobsite injuries and the stresses of lifting heavy materials. Even if you’re still young and fit, consider what it will take to stay in the game for the long haul. Making one of these and using it to haul around the big stuff might help.
I picked up this tip when training at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School years ago to learn more about timber framing: To move heavy beams and posts, I now always use a timber cart. I built my own cart out of scrap lumber, a 5/8-inch steel axle rod from an old garden cart, and a pair of 26-inch-diameter wheels.
The key to using the cart is to balance heavy loads over the cart’s midpoint, the axle. I use it to move 24-foot staging planks, ladders, beams, and piles of framing lumber.
My homemade version is approximately the same height as my sawhorses. By pushing down on one end of the cart, I can raise a timber or staging plank high enough to easily set one end on my truck’s ladder rack or on a set of staging, and then slide it up into place.
