How to Pick the Best Hand Trucks Dollies and Electric Stair Climbers - Guide

Hand trucks, appliance dollies, dolly carts, and electrically assisted stair climbing carts come in many different forms.

Your moving and transportation needs require a solution that saves time, keeps costs as low as possible, while also minimizing the amount of effort needed to get your items from A to B.

The tool you ultimately end up choosing depends on several key factors:

How many boxes you need to transport
Are there any stairs or steep inclines where heavy items must be carried
Is time of the essence?
Will you have another person to assistance carrying heavy items up or down stairs?
Are the items extremely large in size?
Total budget available to spend

Let’s break each of these down to determine how to pick the best hand trucks dollies and electric stair climbers for your transportation needs.

For Heavy Items Carried Up or Down Several Floors

When items are extremely large or heavy, manually carrying them up or down several flights of stairs is extremely labour intensive and at times out right dangerous.

The risk of accidents happening which result in injury to yourself or damage to the item rises. Items such as this include refrigerator-freezers, gun safes, or large dressers.

In this case the need for a good quality appliance dolly arises whereby you can safely strap the item in place and use the stair crawlers assistance to roll smoothly over each step.

Where you don’t have another person to assist you or when the number of floors you need to travel is too labour intensive of a task, an electrical assisted stair climbing dolly can take your large items up several floors with minimal effort in a very safe way.

Stair climbers for heavy equipment such as appliance dollies can carry up to 1200lbs without issue. Electric stair climbing dollies can range anywhere from 300 – 1500lbs maximum weight carrying capacity.

For Professional Use

If you operate or work as part of a team in a home moving business, you’ll need a reliable and durable tool that can be used for long periods at a time. The common hand truck, while adequate for general home moving, has a limited weight carrying capacity typically around 330-500lbs where heavier loads can often exceed this.

The lack of industrial duty retaining straps also make them unreliable at retaining loads that exceed this limit safely. Appliance dollies excel here as their ability to carry extremely heavy loads (up to 1200 lbs), their capability to climb and descend stairs, strong retaining straps, slim body profile and lightweight frame make them easy to maneuvre, carry around, and operate in tight spaces. It is the go to choice for many moving companies, often preferred over electric stair climbing dollies due to their space, weight, and cost savings.

For Moving Numerous Packing Boxes for Home Movers

Fully packing an entire home’s worth of items can leave you with several tens of boxes to move. Many undoubtedly quite heavy and cumbersome to move. While it’s possible to move each one by one hand carrying them into the transport vehicle of your choice to be taken to storage or to their new destination.

The trouble though is that moving boxes this way is extremely time consuming and you’ll need to exert far more effort than would be necessary if the appropriate tool is selected.

Optimally you’ll want to use a hand truck or dolly cart in order to load and move multiple boxes all at once.

For Large Pieces of Furniture

Difference between a furniture dolly and utility dolly - furniture dolly

Undoubtedly for large pieces of furniture that are awkwardly shaped or have dimensions that are too large to fit comfortably on hand trucks, then furniture dollies are the perfect solution for these particular issues.

There are two main types of furniture dollies. The first being a single flat unit, typically a flat rectangular surface supported by 4 individual 360 degree rotation wheels. The lack of edges and walls means a large piece of furniture can be placed on top unrestricted then wheeled around to wherever it needs to go.

The second type being individual tri-wheeled trollies or low profile appliance rollers. These are placed underneath a large piece of furniture at every corner to keep it upright. The furniture rests its weight across off the individual dollies, which can then be wheeled around to their destination. The advantage here being no matter how large the piece of furniture it will always have a unit supporting its weight at the edges or corner of it for the ideal amount of support and stability.

For Office Trollies Carrying Low Weight Items

For office spaces, ease of use and quick access are the main priorities when selecting a trolley. You’ll want a low hassle and safe way to move large, numerous, or heavier items. A hand truck requires balancing by the user, so as such poses a small risk to untrained staff.

A dolly cart requires no balancing from the user and so makes an ideal office tool for general use by most for daily tasks.

Moving Items Using Short Term Rentals

For many people major moves are a rare occurrence, only occurring a handful of times throughout their life. In this case where occasional or repeated use of a hand truck is not necessary, a rental can be the smartest choice due to cost savings possible over purchasing a brand new moving hand truck.

This savings possible are even more pronounced for powered stair climbing hand trucks that have a much higher cost over manual hand trucks.

Powered Stair Climbing Hand Truck UK Top 7

Rentals for power stair climbing hand trucks are available country wide.

You can also rent hand trucks and dolly carts from the main hardware stores such as The Home Depot and Lowe’s as well as you local businesses.

Nose Plate Depth and Width For Large Objects

With hand trucks and appliance dollies, the size of the nose plate makes a huge difference to the usability and stability of the hand trucks. In short the bigger the nose plate the better able the tool is at carrying larger items with greater stability.

Speciality Hand Trucks

When the need arises to move a particular object that has a shape or dimensions where it cannot safely fit to a standard hand truck or dolly, it’s recommended to use speciality hand trucks to accomplish the job.

A prime example of this is a gas tank cart. It has a specific frame shape to carry cylindrical objects of a particular size. Carrying a gas tank on a standard hand truck would be unstable. Mostly due to the flat back frame cannot properly support the rounded shape.

Gas tank carts provide assurance of stability and that the load remains fully retained to the cart.

When to Use a Hand Truck or Appliance Dolly

The type of items you need to move will typically indicate what the best tool for the job is. Here are some applications where a hand truck or appliance dolly would be best.