Electric Wheelbarrow

I've been building a mountain bike trail on my property for the past few months but it's been kind of slow going because late fall/early winter is the "mud season" here in Northeast Ohio. I won't take my tractor out into the yard or woods this time of year unless the ground is hard frozen because it will turn the ground into a mud pit. Heavy machinery like a tractor does the work of dozens of people, so without it, everything is much slower.

For the trail project, I frequently need to carry heavy or bulky stuff into the woods. Just a few 12"x18" sandstone pavers that can be used to get over a muddy spot, for example, weigh over 100 pounds. Since some parts of the trail are about 1000 feet from the driveway, it's not convenient or practical to make several trips back and forth to move a pile of rocks or whatever. I used a wheelbarrow as an intermediate solution between carting everything out by hand or by tractor. When the ground is very muddy, though, even the wheelbarrow makes a mess because the tire is too narrow and high pressure.

I thought a low pressure ATV type wheel with a hub motor could make a wheelbarrow into a very versatile tool--basically a poor man's Sherp. (see the sherp) It seems many people had the same idea since there are numerous electric wheelbarrows and kits available. The kits consist of a built up hub-motor wheel, a motor controller, and some simple hand controls. It's easy to use large power tool batteries to supply energy to these devices.

The electric wheelbarrow is an interesting category of device and tech development for me because the "typical" approach for projects is to adapt the landscape to the needs of machines, which devolves to a generic solution that meets the needs of the corporate and financial system. For example, since a tractor or skidsteer is useful for so many applications, they are mass produced. To move one to a remote job site requires a road, though. "Building roads" means cutting down trees, leveling grades, and the like, which of course is the opposite thing I'm trying to do with a mountain bike path.

The system generates so much stuff though that an individual can DIY a specific solution to their specific problem from bits and pieces that the system casts off. The niche is too small for the corporate system to bother with, like the electric wheelbarrow.

This scenario is sort of paradoxical. The capable individual needs the system less and less and can exploit weird niches, which generally means "lower cost" environments.