How to choose an industrial trolley

There's almost a trolley for every job - flat platforms, sack trucks, folding 2-in-1s, multi-tier pickers, fridge trolleys, and drum carriers. Picking the right one comes down to a handful of things, and our team's here to help you get to it.

Tell us what you're moving and where it has to go, and we'll point you at the trolley that suits. Below we'll go through it the way you'd work through it yourself - which type, how much headroom to leave on the load, the deck, the wheels, and pushing it safely under Australian WHS.

Here's how to get started: match the trolley to what you're moving and how it rolls, then leave some headroom on the load rating. Get those right and the rest is simple.

1.Which trolley for the job

Easyroll 2-in-1 · 200kgfolds sack truck to flatbedShop this trolley

Weight's the obvious thing to reach for, but it's what you're actually carting that picks the trolley. A stack of cartons, a full pallet, a fridge, a couple of gas bottles - each one wants a different bit of kit, whatever the scales say.

Flat, boxed or crated goods sit happily on a platform trolley, a stable deck on four wheels, from the 250kg folding-handle model up to the 900kg steel platform. Loose or round items need mesh sides, or they'll roll off on the first corner. For a load you'll tip and wheel - stacked cartons, sacks, a single heavy box - a hand truck or sack trolley does the lifting through the toe plate. Quick, cheap to run, and fine until the load blocks your view or creeps past about 250kg.

Delivery drivers and anyone short on van space tend to reach for a 2-in-1 convertible that folds from an upright sack truck to a flat four-wheeler. The hinge is the trade - it's the bit that wears - so for heavy platform work all day, a fixed platform trolley will outlast it. Order pickers and maintenance crews get more out of a picking or tiered trolley that keeps stock off the floor and near waist height, like the 450kg twin picker. Load the top shelf heavy, though, and the centre of gravity climbs; a tall trolley on a full top tier tips more easily than you'd think.

Tall, heavy appliances get their own frame. A fridge trolley like the stair-climber gives you the height, a ratchet strap and stair tracks - right for whitegoods, overkill for everyday cartons. Gas bottles have their own carriers too, like the oxy-acetylene trolley.

Plenty of sites end up with two or three types, and that's fine. If you're moving a real mix, tell us the range and we'll help you cover it with the fewest trolleys.

2.Load ratings, headroom and the selector

Easyroll steel platform · 900kgheavy-duty deckShop this trolley

A trolley stamped "500kg" is rated for a static load, spread evenly, on a smooth flat floor. On the floor it can be messier, depending on the load, the application, the floor surface and how it's handled - you drop the load on rather than lower it, it sits over one end, you catch an expansion joint at speed. So leave yourself room. Specify a deck rated 20-30% above the heaviest thing you'll actually put on it, so a 400kg job goes on the 450kg or 900kg trolley, not a 400kg one run flat-out every day.

Buyers should choose conservatively on wheel load - the ratings are there for a reason if you want your trolley to last! Floors are never truly level, so a trolley's capacity assumes only three of its four castors carry at any one moment - the same divide-by-three sum behind choosing castors. Overload the deck and it's really three castors and their bearings taking the strain.

3.Deck material: aluminium, steel or plastic

Easyroll aluminium platform · 300kg23.5kg emptyShop this trolley

The deck sets three things at once: how much the trolley weighs, how long it lasts in your environment, and how much of your push is just moving the trolley itself.

Steel is the tough one. It takes knocks, carries the highest loads, and it's what you want for engineering, mining and general manufacturing, like the 900kg steel platform. Trouble is weight and rust: a steel deck adds to every push, and once the powder-coat's chipped in a coastal or washdown site, it'll corrode from the scratch.

Aluminium buys that weight back. The 300kg aluminium platform is just 23.5kg empty, so there's less trolley to shift before you've moved any stock - your pickers feel that by knock-off. It costs more and it dents rather than springing back, but for delivery, cold rooms and long push distances it's worth it. Plastic and polymer decks - polypropylene, thermoplastic - wipe clean and don't corrode, so they suit food, healthcare and wet areas, like the two-tier TPE trolley. They cap out lower than steel, and cheaper grades can go brittle in a freezer or under years of sun, so keep them to the jobs they're built for.

4.Wheels for your floor

The wheels decide how hard the thing is to push and whether it copes with your ground.

On smooth concrete, polyurethane is hard to beat - high capacity, non-marking, rolls with little effort. Take that same wheel onto rough asphalt or gravel and it fights you. Outdoors, over kerbs or broken ground, you want pneumatic wheels for the cushioning, or puncture-proof solids if you'd rather never chase a flat - you give up a little ride comfort and a touch of rolling resistance, and you lose the downtime.

Diameter matters more than people expect. Small wheels drop into floor joints and take real effort to start; bigger ones climb obstacles and start easier, so for heavier loads or anything outdoors, size up rather than down. On a mixed floor - part smooth concrete, part rough yard - there isn't one perfect wheel, and the only way to be sure is to trial a pair, or tell us the floor and we'll make the call. Worn or seized wheels wreck the push long before the trolley's done, so spare wheels are worth keeping on the shelf.

5.Pushing it safely

A quick word on pushing, because the right trolley is part of your manual-handling duties, not just a purchase.

In Australia there's no legal weight limit for pushing or pulling a trolley. Moving loads is a hazardous manual task you're expected to assess and control under Safe Work Australia's Hazardous Manual Tasks Code of Practice, and the trolley is one of your control measures - which is exactly why the specifying you're doing here counts.

A few things the ergonomists agree on, and they're free to build in. Pushing beats pulling - you get your weight behind it and you can see where you're going. Handle height wants to sit around waist-to-shoulder; the aluminium platform trolley lands at 970mm, about right for most adults. And the hardest moment is always the start and the corner, not the steady roll, so anything that lowers the starting effort - bigger wheels, good bearings, less deck weight - is doing real injury-prevention work. Ramps change the sums sharply, so flag any slope on the route before you buy. If you want the push forces checked against Safe Work guidance for a specific task, that's a conversation worth having.

6.Standards

There's no single Australian standard that sets how a general industrial trolley's load capacity is tested - unlike shopping trolleys, which have their own. Trolley capacities come from the manufacturer's own testing, so the rating is only as good as the maker behind it, and the trolley sits inside your own manual-handling assessment as a control rather than a certificate. The Easyroll range we stock is rated on that basis, and every product page carries the specs - deck size, load, weight, wheel and bearing type - so you can match one to your task.

7.How to order

Have these ready and we can spec it in one call: what you're moving and its heaviest weight, the floor and any ramps or outdoor stretches, how tight the aisles are, and whether it needs brakes for a dock or a truck body. That maps straight onto the choices above. Or run the selector, land on the right range, and open a product to read the full specs and datasheet.

Send us the load and where it has to roll, and we'll point you at the trolley that suits - or tell you which two cover your whole floor.