If you’ve been to a camping festival before, you’ll have seen plenty of well-prepared festivalgoers towing all their gear in those festival trolley things. Perhaps you’ve seen someone make a train out of
They can be a bit tricky to find in the shops and when they do pop-up, most things marketed as ‘festival trolleys’ probably aren’t what you want. They’re usually folding trolleys only suitable for very light loads – not your tent and crates of beer.
We’ve explained the different types of trolleys used at festivals below, along with some tips for choosing the best one for your next event.
Below that, we’ve found the best festival trolleys of each type, and where you can find them.
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What are festival trolley things actually called?
They’re not something you typically find in a supermarket and they don’t seem to have a proper name. This can make them hard to find online.
I’ve found the best type tend to be sold as a ‘garden trolley’ or ‘garden cart’ and are usually found in specialist building stores and garden centres. These are the four-wheeled, metal carts.
What kind of festival trolley do I need?
If you’re not carrying much stuff, or if you know you’ll be able to park really close to your tent, you might not need such a heavy-duty trolley.
You could save some money with a two-wheeled trolley, or a fabric-lined trolley, but I wouldn’t recommend anything but a metal trolley for carrying heavy loads or going long distances. So they won’t do for Glastonbury, where you could be queuing for hours and walking a couple miles to your car. You’ll really want to bring everything in, and out again, in as few trips as possible so go for a full metal trolley at the bigger festivals.
With no central arena, Glastonbury is one of the few festivals that allow you to drink your own alcohol everywhere you go. So… you’ll need to bring way more cans than other festivals where you’re supposed to buy drinks from the bars in the arena.
Strength and durability
The best of the metal trolleys have big rubber tyres, so should be better suited for the bumpy ground and shouldn’t get clogged with mud.
Be careful with the max load ratings though. They’re based on carrying paving slaps across a small garden, not carrying a dozen crates of lager two miles.
We found this out when using a 200KG max load trolley to bring about 200 cans of Fosters into Glastonbury last summer. That’s about 100KG, with an extra 20KG of tents on top. Well under the max load of 200KG, but after nearly two miles of hard, bumpy Glasto terrain, the trolley buckled.
So from now on, even with the best metal trolleys, I wouldn’t put more than 60 or so cans of lager in one unless you’re only going a short distance or over a smooth surface.
Best festival trolleys for summer 2024
The best full-metal festival trolley
Amazon Brand Garden Utility Cart
This own-brand option from Amazon is probably the best type of festival cart for most cases, with a full steel frame along with ‘off-road’ wheels and pneumatic tyres making it one of the best suited for the rough terrain of a festival. It also has fully rotational front steering, so you can make really tight turns with its padded handle. Just make them slowly and it won’t topple over.
If you’re carrying a lot of stuff that isn’t too heavy (ie pretty much anything other than drinks) the higher side panels mean you can pile more stuff in without resorting to bungee cords or tape – however, don’t get tempted to fill it up to the max and keep the heavy stuff on the bottom – otherwise, it’ll become ‘top-heavy’ and more likely to tip over on a sharp corner or on a bumpy bit of a festival field.
Its maximum load is rated at a few hundred kg – although as we say every time, don’t go anywhere near the max ratings when you’ve got half a mile of festival fields to cross. A few crates of beer on the bottom layer, camping equipment in the middle and sleeping bags + pillows on top and you’re good to go.
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NEO Heavy Duty Cart
The NEO Heavy Duty Cart is wider than most similar trolleys, making it more stable and probably the best type of festival cart for most cases, with a full steel frame along with ‘off-road’ wheels and pneumatic tyres making it one of the best-suited for the rough terrain of a festival. It also has fully rotational front steering, so you can make really tight turns with its padded handle. Just make them slowly and it won’t topple over.
That 700lbs / 320 KG max load is pretty massive, though keep in mind while it’s sold as ‘all-terrain’ that max load rating isn’t based on journeying for miles across
Try not to max out the capacity with loads of beer all at once! Stick to one layer of beer crates then pile stuff like tents on top and tie it all together. Do a few leisurely trips from the car rather than one that’s an ordeal.
This is our best pick, and it’ll be our Glastonbury trolley later this year. They’re fit to survive summer after summer of festivals without so much as a flat tyre, but it’s sold with a warranty should things go wrong.
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Oypla Heavy Duty Metal Trolley
The Oypla Heavy Duty Metal Trolley is pretty much an alternative to the trolleys above with pretty much all the same features and specs. The maximum load is stated at a massive 400KG or 880lbs (but as above, remember that’s for short journeys across a flat garden, don’t load it up like this for a festival!)
It’s got fully rotational front steering and pneumatic rubber tyres with the same full-metal, foldable design as our best pick above. The only real difference is the brand and the colour, so if there’s only one of the two in stock at the moment don’t feel like you’re getting an inferior product. They’re both great options that’ll last for years, provided you look after them and don’t overload them.
- SOFT GRIP HANDLE – Comes equipped with a soft handle for a more comfortable user experience
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The best foldable festival trolleys
Amazon Basics Folding Outdoor Utility Wagon
These foldable trolleys are a popular choice of festival trolley, thanks to both their lower price and how much easier they are to fit in the car. The model shown above retails on Amazon all year round.
This type of trolley is often sold as an Aldi/Lidl festival trolley special during the summer months, which probably explains their popularity. It’s pretty much the only time you’ll see festival trolleys of any kind sold in a supermarket.
This lower max load, just over 115 KG, might make a fully metal trolley a better long-term investment, but the folding type will be more than good enough for most festival trips – just don’t pile it high with cans.
If you’ve got a small car that’s already gonna be packed out, the fact that you can fold these trolleys down to nothing might be one massive advantage.
The smaller, solid wheels make these trolleys less suited for deep mud. We had a pretty dry summer last year and they’d have been fine at most festivals, but we’ve had some very muddy festivals in the past.
They’re available direct from the manufacturer, and you’ll see the Amazon listing below.
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The best upright / two-wheel trolley
Heavy Duty Industrial Steel Sack Truck
The upright trolleys with just two wheels can offer a sturdier, cheaper alternative to the folding trolleys above. That’s if you’ve got the body strength to keep it upright.
Best suited for taking heavy weights short distances, as these are incredibly strong, but they won’t be fun to push for miles. The more tired you get, the more likely you are to let it fall over.
You’ll also need a load of bungee straps or something else to tie your beer and your bags to the back of the trolley. These are absolutely essential, and if you forget and try to use duct tape last minute, you’ll have a bad time and no tape left for making a wizard staff guy out of your trolley.
Our best pick is 325KG heavy duty sack truck. With a fully steel 1-inch tube body and pneumatic tyres it shouldn’t buckle under any load you throw at it. It’s available in black, blue and red.
The axle is also replaceable, should it ever go wrong, so this thing should last a lifetime. After it’s done being a festival trolley, it’ll probably become one of the most useful things in your garage.
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The best alternative festival trolleys
The Wheelbarrow
The classic wheelbarrow often makes a great makeshift festival trolley, particularly if you’ve got one lying around the garden already. Perhaps test it first to make sure it’s not too rusty to take the weight!
They’re a bit chunky to fit in the average car, alongside your mates and a load of festival stuff, so keep that in mind too.
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F.A.Q.
What are festival trolley things actually called?
The four-wheeled, metal carts are usually sold as a ‘garden trolley’ or ‘garden cart’. The fabric, folding carts are sold as ‘folding trolley’ or sometimes ‘festival trolley’, while the two-wheeled upright versions are usually called ‘sack carts’ or ‘sack trucks’.
What type of festival trolley do I need?
If you’ve got the space in your car, take a full metal trolley with big rubber tyres. It’s by far the most suited for carrying your tent and beer supply across a few bumpy fields. A folding trolley is a good alternative if you’re short on space, but they won’t carry as much weight and the smaller wheels can get clogged up in thick mud.An upright trolley can take a surprising amount of weight, but you’ll need the strength to keep it upright. If it topples over and falls apart, it could be game over.
How much weight can a festival trolley take?
Some of the metal trolleys advertise a 200KG max load, but that’s for taking paving slabs across your back garden, not miles of rough fields. If you don’t want it to fall apart when your halfway back to your tent with your beer, stay under half the maximum load. That’s still the best part of 100 cans per trip with a full metal trolley.Folding trolleys usually claim 45-75KG maximum, so take care loading them up with multiple crates of drinks.