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 trolleys like spotted above at Download.
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 light-duty supermarket trolley, but I wouldn’t recommend anything but a full metal trolley or heavy-duty folding 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. When you’re stuck in those long lines, pairing your trolley with an easily accessible camping chair strapped to the top gives you an instant seat whenever the queue stops moving.You’ll really want to bring everything in, and out again, in as few trips as possible so go for something heavy duty 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 2026
The best full-metal festival trolley
Mountall Heavy Duty 350KG Steel Garden Trolley
The MOUNTALL Steel Garden Cart stands out from the crowd of cheaper festival trolleys thanks to its lower, wider platform and a 350KG rated load — nearly double the 200KG you’ll find on most of the budget options. That wider base makes a real difference on uneven ground, keeping your load more stable and less likely to tip when you’re navigating a tight gap between tents or hitting a rut in a festival field.
It’s got the full steel mesh frame, 10-inch pneumatic tyres and rotational front steering you’d expect at this end of the market, but the lower centre of gravity means you can load it more confidently than the taller, narrower alternatives. Keep the heavier stuff (beer) low and flat on the base, and pile the lighter camping gear on top, and it handles the rough terrain of a festival site very well.
Its maximum load is rated at 350KG, which sounds like plenty of headroom, but as always, don’t go anywhere near that when you’ve got half a mile of festival fields to cross. Those ratings are based on short trips across a flat garden, not a fully loaded slog to your pitch at Glastonbury. A couple of crates of beer on the bottom, camping equipment in the middle, and sleeping bags and pillows on top is the sweet spot.
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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 rough festival terrain. It’s sold as “designed to overcome all surfaces” by the manufacturer, but they mean carrying compost around a big back garden and not beer for miles across a festival.
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.
- Heavy Duty Steel Frame Construction – Built from strong steel with a weather-resistant coating for long-lasting outdoor durability.
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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 this G-Rack 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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How to pack a festival trolley
Getting the loading order right makes the difference between a smooth walk to your pitch and a trolley that tips over halfway across a field with 60 cans of lager all over the floor.
The rule is simple: heavy stuff goes on the bottom, light stuff goes on top. Put your beer crates flat on the base first, they’re dense and low, which keeps the centre of gravity where you want it. Camping equipment, a cool box, shoes and wellies go in the middle layer. Sleeping bags, pillows and anything soft and squashable goes on top. It’ll look a bit precarious, but it’ll move well.
Whatever you do, don’t stack everything light at the bottom and pile crates on top to stop it sliding around. A top-heavy trolley is a disaster waiting to happen, it only takes one rut in a field or one slightly-too-fast corner and the whole lot goes over.
Don’t trust the max load rating. Those figures are based on shifting paving slabs across a flat garden, not hauling beer across a mile of bumpy festival fields. We’d recommend staying below half the stated capacity. That’s still the better part of 100KG on a full metal trolley, which is plenty of beer and equipment. It’s also just much easier on your body. Load a trolley to its limits and you’ll feel it before you’re halfway to your pitch. We learned this the hard way at Glastonbury when a 200KG-rated trolley carrying well under its limit buckled after nearly two miles of hard terrain.
Bungee cords are worth throwing in the bag. Even with a full metal trolley with high sides, a couple of straps over the top will give you peace of mind once you start moving across uneven ground, and if you’ve got anything awkward sticking out above the sides, they’ll keep it in place. You can get away without them if you’ve packed carefully and kept everything low and stable, but you’ll probably wish you had them the first time you hit a rut at speed.
If it’s looking like rain, bag up anything that’ll suffer for it before it goes in. The metal trolleys are open-topped and a liner will only do so much if you hit a proper downpour on the walk in. A couple of bin bags over your sleeping bag costs nothing and saves a miserable first night.
Festival-specific tips
The distance you’ll walk with your trolley varies massively, not just between festivals, but at the same festival depending on where you’re parked and where you end up camping. At most events it’ll be somewhere between a few hundred metres and a couple of kilometres. At the bigger ones, it could be even more.
Glastonbury is the extreme case. The site is enormous, including the car parks, it can take the best part of an hour to get from one end to the other even without bags. Most people will camp somewhere near where they’ve parked, but if you’re joining friends who’ve already pitched up elsewhere, or you’ve got your heart set on a specific campsite, you could be crossing a significant chunk of the site. That’s the walk where a cheap trolley will buckle and loading it poorly will cause you problems.
What a lot of people don’t think about until they’re doing it: the walk itself isn’t always the hard part. At peak arrival times, a lot of festivals mean long, slow queues rather than a clear path from the car to your tent. A trolley doesn’t just help with distance, it means you’re not picking up and putting down a heavy bag every thirty seconds when the queue shuffles forward. That takes it out of you far more than walking the same distance at your own pace. You don’t want to start a festival on a bad back before you’ve even put the tent up.
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.
Can you take a trolley to every festival?
For standard camping festivals, pretty much, yes, but it’s always worth checking the banned items list for any festival as you might find some surprises. Many festivals will tell you to only bring a trolley if necessary to improve entry times, and that trolleys may be subject to a separate search queue which could take longer. It’s never been a problem for me, but it is worth mentioning. They also ask that you don’t wrap your packed trolley in cling film or similar. This can help with car packing but hinders searching. Use bungee cords instead if you want to load your trolley before putting it in the car.
Also note that some festivals, like Boomtown, have a width restriction on trolleys, enforced with metal poles in the ground ahead of the entry gates. This is another reason to make sure you check the banned items list.
At Glastonbury and Boomtown, you can take a trolley anywhere because there’s no central arena and you can drink your own alcohol across the whole site. At most other festivals, your trolley and your crates of beer will be restricted to the campsites.
What’s the best way to stop a festival trolley tipping over?
It all comes down to your centre of gravity. Keep your heaviest items, like crates of beer, flat against the bottom of the trolley. Pack your camping gear in the middle, and pile your lightest, squishiest items like sleeping bags on top. Never put the heavy stuff at the top to hold things down. Finally, take your time on the steering. The front-wheel pivot steering on metal carts is great, but if you take a sharp corner too fast on a bumpy field, the whole thing will go over.
Do I need a puncture repair kit?
I don’t know, it’s probably a good idea. I’ve never taken one and luckily I’ve got away with it, and if I did get a puncture I’d just get by without a trolley for the weekend, but if you want to be prepared, a basic bicycle puncture repair kit and a small hand pump take up zero space. If you buy a heavy-duty metal cart with pneumatic rubber tyres, these off-road tyres are by far the best option for surviving miles of bumpy festival fields without getting bogged down in mud. However, if you catch a sharp rock or a stray tent peg and get a flat tyre halfway to your pitch, it’s game over. If you have a folding trolley with solid plastic wheels, you don’t need to worry about punctures, but you will struggle more in deep mud.
Can a festival trolley fit in a small car?
It depends how many people you’ve got in the car. Two of you in a Ford Fiesta, you can fit a fully built metal trolley and way more stuff than you need no problem. Three of you, you’ll make it work. Any more, maybe you can do it, it’ll be a bit of a challenge, you’ll probably have to assemble the trolley in the car park. Full metal carts and wheelbarrows are incredibly sturdy, but they are chunky, rigid, and take up a massive amount of room. If boot space is a real problem alongside three mates and a weekend’s worth of gear, you’ll want a folding festival trolley. These collapse down to almost nothing and can easily slide under bags. Alternatively, using bungee cords to pack your items directly into your trolley before loading it into the boot can really help maximise your space.
Is a festival trolley worth it for a day ticket?
Probably not. Many festivals won’t even allow day ticket holders to bring trolleys onto the site, so you should definitely check the banned items list for your specific festival first. If you’re only going for the day, you aren’t hauling a tent, sleeping bags, or multiple crates of beer. A decent backpack will easily hold your waterproofs, suncream, and whatever else you need for a single day, without the hassle of dragging a trolley through crowds.
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