I ordered a Grizzly mobile lumber cart, T34006, here’s an early review of how it went together.
In a nutshell, it’s janky, but serviceable.
This is the first Grizzly product I ever ordered, and to be honest I am a bit disappointed.
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The lumber cart has 2 fixed and 2 locking swivel casters and 4 uprights with 3 levels of arms.
With the bottom shelf, there are 4 shelves for holding wood boards.
Grizzly has another option that can also hold sheet goods, but I wanted to smaller footprint for storing wood boards.
This cart has a 60-1/2″ x 30″ footprint, and 58-1/2″ height.
According to Grizzly’s Q&A, the bottom shelf can hold 440 pounds, and each of the other tiers can hold up to 265 pounds each (66 pounds per arm). It has a total weight capacity of 1100 pounds.
The fasteners arrived in a plastic-wrapped bundle, with the caster fasteners separated via a tied-off bag. There were a few defects, and it was good there was an extra split ring washer.
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There was some shipping damage, or maybe it happened at the factory.
When hand-tightening the fasteners, I saw that the caster plates and flat mounting bracket didn’t mate perfectly well. Either the caster or frame mounting plate was bowed a bit. I saw similar with some of the other casters.
The welds were a bit sloppy.
This weld was missing its surface finish. Shipping damage?
The upright supports were sloppily constructed as well – crooked and also not flat. These were not fully tightened – they did flatten out a bit.
Once I had it assembled, I realized the caster mounting bolts brushed against one of the swivel casters. This was the case with at least 2 of the bolts, so I removed, reversed, and refastened them.
The manual clearly shows, albeit in the teeny tiniest diagrams I can ever recall seeing in assembly documentation, that the mistake was mine. I’ll have to fix the others later.
I started with the top shelf, and there was a gap at both ends.
I tried several boards and then grabbed a piece of 80/20 extruded aluminum where there’s no question of straightness.
Then I grabbed a tape measure.
The top arms for the two middle uprights are nearly half an inch taller. This means that if I place a long board across all 4 arms, it is only really supported by 2 of them.
Short-term, I loaded lighter boards and shorter cut-offs that don’t span the full length.
Long-term. I’m going to have to make a shelf or add shim boards for the two outer arms.
I loaded it to the max to get as much off the floor as possible, and will then unload and rearrange it. It looks like a lot, but the vertical 2x boards are cedar and don’t weigh a lot.
Some of the lumber is for short-term projects, others I’ve kept for a while and probably won’t use anytime soon. I need to get my lumber situation under control. There’s more – a lot more. This should help.
I was tempted to build my own with 80/20 extrusions, but I needed something now. Or rather, ToolGuyd needed something now.
I have a lot of other projects and work to get to, and so this was a business need that I bought a quick solution for.
This is not a “forever” shop fixture. Maybe it could be, but I plan to work my way through the wood boards and then buy only what I need for short-term projects. Ideally, all of my overflow or cut-offs should fit on a single shelf of a mixed-use storage rack.
It’ll take me months if not a year or two (at least?) to work through the wood. There’s much more than is shown in the above photo.
The main reason I went with the Grizzly is because it has 4 arms. I found rolling cantilever material racks from Vestil and Little Giant. Those brands’ carts are more expensive, but they also look far stouter. The problem is that they only have 2 arms. The Grizzly has 4, and that means it can hold shorter boards.
The Grizzly can fit a 40″ board, but Vestil’s and others’ cannot.
Once I get everything under control, it’s possible that the Vestil will serve me better, but I’m not thinking about that now.
I will need to fix the problem of the Grizzly arms being different heights for the top tier.
On top of the other observations and issues I brought up, everything just felt cheap.
This rack is supposed to have 16 gauge steel construction. The casters fastened down securely, but none of the other connections ever felt tight.
If I wasn’t paying attention to how the split-ring washers looked, and how they were fully depressed, I would have kept tightening things down. You’re supposed to tighten things down and then feel a secure metal-metal hard joint connection once the fastener is fully seated.
Instead, it felt like I was fastening something to a wood stud, where you’ll feel a shift in resistance but can keep going as you overdrive the fastener.
I wasn’t even using a lot of torque, just combination wrenches.
This seemed like the best solution for my immediate business needs.
In the future, maybe the the sturdier-looking Vestil cart in 30″ x 48″ size would work well for my 5ft and 6ft boards, and a shelf on my wire shelving rack for everything smaller.
Price breakdown: $432 for the cart, $34 for liftgate service, $199 for shipping, plus tax. I also tipped the delivery driver $20.
(I’ve hard the same freight driver before, and he’s awesome.)
At the time of this posting, the price went back up to $480, not including freight or liftgate service.
Summary
The Grizzly mobile lumber cart isn’t great, but also not too terrible.
The mobile lumber cart holds true to what I’ve heard about Grizzly products, that nothing quite works perfectly right out of the box. With the cart, I’ll need to do something about the 1/2″ height difference between the inner and outer upper arms.
I considered complaining to Grizzly, but what are they going to do, send replacement arms that might also have mismatched heights?
Maybe I’ll make something sturdier in a couple of months, but right now my priority is to reclaim floor space so I can work on more projects that’ll whittle down my lumber stockpile.
I could have made one out of wood, but I really wasn’t keen on buying wood to make a cart to move my wood out of the way so I can work on my larger wood projects.
I get a tax deduction on business-use equipment. While the same is true for materials to build equipment for business use, my time is not deductible. This seemed like the most economic option.
I wish it had all-swivel casters rather than 2 swivel and 2 fixed. Grizzly sells these on their website for $59.95 each.
As mentioned in the title, I feel it’s janky, but serviceable. While disappointed a bit, I’ll be keeping it and will break down the packaging tomorrow.
I would have spent more for a better product, but I couldn’t easily find any better lumber carts like this.
Tyson
I would call them and tell them about your issues and they will refund you some $ for the troubles. It’s worked for me in the past and they typically have great customer service.
Plain+Grainy
This gave me an idea about a wooden frame rack. Maybe a skeleton of 4×4 lumber, with loading & unloading from the ends only. I’ll have to do some online browsing for some ideas/ tips.
Nathan
That’s where my head went when looking at the price. 660plus and it’s not right
Bonnie
I’ve done that and unless you strictly keep to consident full length boards it ends up being more trouble than it’s worth.
If you have the ceiling height nothing beats vertical storage for lumber. Once you start stacking stuff on top of other stuff there starts becoming a lot of little extra time costs to any project.
Stuart
That’s what I’m thinking too, for long-term. But right now I need it all to be mobile.
Vertical racks are easier to make and fairly inexpensive to buy.
MM
I bet you could easily make a mobile double-sided cantilever rack from wood. Put a row of vertical supports down the center. Attach the horizontal arms crosswise to the verticals. You could probably make the whole thing out of 2x’s.
CMF
You probably could, and I have. Not quite like you describe, more like the Grizzly one.
Big thing is that wood is soft, especially 2x’s. So nails or wood screws are nice at first, but long term the wood starts smooshing. A little play, then more play, especially if it is on wheels and you move it. You eventually get where you move the top 6 inches and the wheels haven’t budged yet.
Make it with carriage bolts, washer, lock washer then nut. A 1/4″ will work but 5/16 or 3/8 is better. Drill your holes so the carriage bolts need to be hammered (lightly) through the holes. Two carriage bolts on opposing corners is good, 3 in a V or 4 in a square is even stronger.
Of course better wood is stronger and more solid, but even with 2x’s, there is the econo which will make a lot of work go bad, and grade A or select grade will be better.
If you put casters, use big like 6″ or 8″. It is not the weight capacity, it is the force needed to push and allow the casters to swivel that smaller than 6″ will struggle. Don’t go with the temptation to use 6 or 8 casters…again, you are creating more resistance. If your base sags because of just 4 casters, reinforce the base with a metal frame. If you don’t need rubber or anything else on the caster, plain Jane steel is the best.
Over the years I have built many things with version I, tear it down and make version II, then III, then somewhere around version VI or VII I finally get what I want. I have learned to not cheap it out, and then think of resistance, applied force and whatever else to cut down and be successful with the 2nd or 3rd version. Wood is awesome, but you have to understand its weaknesses also.
MM
Yeah, once play starts to develop around fasteners in wood then it quickly grows. The trick is to never let it start in the first place. Hammering in fasteners into slightly undersize holes is good. Glue joints in addition to using mechanical fasteners. Add diagonal braces and/or flat shear surfaces whenever possible as they add massive strength, sort of like how a section of 2×4 framed wall is quite floppy but once sheathing is attached to the studs to it it becomes very strong.
I think for a rack like this clever design of the vertical supports would make it both very strong and cheap. Picture the following method for constructing one vertical support:
Start with a 2×4 however tall you want. Glue & screw the cross-arms in place. Measure the spacing between the arms and cut sections of 2x to fill those gaps exactly. Glue & screw them to the main vertical 2×4, doubling up its thickness and locking the arms in place. If you wanted to take it a step farther you could put a 3rd full-length 2×4 vertical on top, sandwiching the arms and the spacers between two vertical 2×4’s. Repeat that for however many vertical supports you want. I’ve built shelving like this before, it’s fast and easy because it’s all 90 degree cuts, and it’s very strong.
I agree with you about bigger casters, if this is something you need to move often then don’t skimp on them, especially if its being moved on a rough surface.
S
The warp in the wheel mount is a welding issue. The mounting plate wasn’t clamped flat, so as the weld cooled, it pulled the plate upwards. The other welds point to rushed hand assembly
The price point is right at the upper fringe of the quality received in my opinion.
If I was building this, I would’ve done it all out of 1/4″ wall material. But my raw material cost before paint, hardware, and time would be near or over their completed assembly cost.
Jared
That’s what I was thinking too – it sounds like a lot of problems for the price of the product. Because the materials to weld this up myself would also cost quite a bit, it’s hard for me to say that it’s way out of line – but when you’ve cumulatively paid ~$700… I would not be satisfied with the end result.
Bonnie
The freight charge is the killer here. Just looking at it as a $450 rack… The problems aren’t surprising and you’d be hard pressed to find better at that number.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like this is one of their products you can get shipped to a closer dealer for pickup.
Irving
“….my time is not deductible.”
Nor is it refundable.
This the biggest problem I have with companies who produce (or procure) and sell substandard tools and equipment. The primary reason I am buying from you is time.
This Grizzly rack is a prime example; I can design a much, much better rack, buy the steel, cut it, weld it and paint it. I’ll buy steel a gauge or two heavier, casters with at least 50% greater capacity and better swivel bearings, use Grade 5 SAE-threaded bolts and so on. But…the time consumed by doing all that is time I could put to much better use – generating business revenue. So, the ROI on buying your lumber rack better be worth the revenue-generating time I have to expend to pay for it.
If I have to contact you to get a problem fixed, that’s revenue-generating time consumed in non-revenue generating activity. Yes, you can ship me another rack but you’ve already taken X hours out of my week with the initial bad rack you sent, then more with the time required to assemble the 2nd rack and move the lumber over.
I consider that theft; you offered to sell me a product of reasonable quality and defaulted on that contract, costing me – now – 2X hours of revenue-generating time, 1X for the initial, problem-infested rack, and 1X for the replacement.
That’s why, Tool and Equipment Sellers, I care less about your after-sale warranty than your before sale quality. I have more to do in 60 hours per week than I can get done, I do not need you adding to that burden.
Which is why I read ToolGuyd, and I thank you, Stuart every day; it’s selfish, but I’m glad it’s you going through the pain and not me. Your efforts have saved me from many a debacle with tool and equipment companies.
Scotty.
Love the statement about caring less about after sale warranty than before sale quality.
Every manufacturer should have signs on their walls with a version of this statement. Many of us have struggled with a poorly made product that had to be tweaked to go together completely. Very frustrating.
Stuart
It’s not just monetary cost, but enjoyment. Designing and building a lumber cart would be a disruption to what I would prefer to do instead.
Like you, I have far more I need and want to do than I have time for. Buying, assembling, and even making the cart more usable is a small speed bump. Fabricating my own would have been a much longer detour, and one that might have taken me a while to get to.
I typically decline to post about business purchases because not many people can share or understand the cost justification mentality.
The message here isn’t “yes, buy it,” or “no, avoid it,” but “know what to expect.”
For me, the experience supported what I’ve heard about Grizzly products. Sometimes there are going to be better quality alternatives (e.g. Precision Matthews for metalworking machinery), but there are still some unique products like this one and the HEPA fume extractor I’ve been considering.
TomD
https://www.uline.com/BL_1873/Chrome-Mobile-Shelving
It’s not made for purpose but it holds 1000 pounds and short boards.
Andy
Oh cool, that’s a good solution for shorter board storage. I’m going to keep that in mind for my space.
Also makes me think a baker’s rack might be a good option for wood storage. The racks could function either like static shelves, or pull out like drawers, and it would give you lots of flexibility since they can easily be moved.
Stuart
I thought about it last night, and I think my long-term plan might be this one or a shorter Vestil for 5ft and 6ft boards and a shelf on my existing wire shelving rack for short boards and cut-offs.
I didn’t go for another wire shelving rack now because it’s very awkward to grab boards from. The Grizzly cart is more mobile and its larger wheels contribute to that.
Bonnie
I use one of the heavier husky garage shelves for all my short offcuts and turning stock. Loaded short end up to 18″ and sorted by length. Works well for all the little exotics I can’t bring myself to just burn.
For 5-6′ boards I would strongly recommend going for a vertical rack rather than horizontal. Keeps everything accessible and nothing gets buried. You can use one of these metal racks, just throw a plywood backer between the uprights and over the base, it’ll hold any weight you throw at it.
Bonnie
Commercial Kitchen equipment in general is a great place to look for shop stuff. I have a heavy duty stainless rolling prep cart and half a dozen large wire shelves I picked up dirt cheap used.
Matt_T
Reading the article it sounded like the typical issues with chinesium until I got to the price!!!!! This rack seems very expensive for what it is.
For folks who can spare the wall space the Bora racks are cheap and take a few minutes to put up.
Stuart
Bora’s 4 and 6 tier racks are extremely cheap – https://www.amazon.com/4-Level-Organization-Space-Saving-Building-Materials/dp/B0B31YS5H2/?tag=toolguyd-20 – but I don’t have permanent wall space and wanted mobility.
I considered building a mobile platform with uprights that I could attach the Bora rails to, either on one side or both, but the cost and time projections ramped up fast.
John
Learning to weld is a lifelong skill. That Grizzly rack is insanely overpriced all in. That would be a very simple project to build on your own with steel and not silly 80/20. I taught myself welding 10 years ago and have built more things than I can remember for me and for clients.
Accumulating wood cutoffs doesn’t happen overnight so instant necessity for a rack seems odd.
MM
Agreed. This is a very simple welding project. It’s not even 5 minutes to sketch the basic design and whip up a BOM. Then take the truck to the steel yard and buy a couple sticks of square tube and one of angle. That might take a little while depending on how far you have to drive, but once you have the materials, the welder, and a metal-cutting chop saw that is a very simple project, and you could probably make something twice as strong for half the money, and that’s assuming you’re paying full price for the steel. You could do a lot better if you can recycle material.
Here’s a great example: I recently set up two new belt/disc grinders in my shop, both from Jet. Jet wanted about $400 for a stand for the larger model and about $200 for the smaller one. Instead of spending $600 plus freight on mediocre stands, I went to the local recycling yard and bought scrap steel for a few cents a pound. I got a piece of 8″ pipe for the columns, a semi truck wheel and brake drum for bases, and a piece of 3/8″ thick plate that I could cut up to make the tops and to fill the round holes in the center of the wheel & drum. I paid under $100 for all that material and there’s a lot left over for other projects. My stands are much heavier and sturdier than even the most expensive option from Jet, and they cost maybe $60 each to build once I factor in paint, primer, welding gas, etc. It took me an hour and a half to build both stands, and that included adding quite a few extras. Both stands have brackets for storing their miter gauges and the wrenches used to adjust the belt arm to the horizontal position. The one for metalwork also has brackets for a water pot–that was a stainless steel 1.5 liter bain-marie I found for $5 on Amazon.
I like 80/20 for some projects but it is costly and it’s not all that strong. It can also be fiddly to assemble whereas once you know what you’re doing it’s very quick to weld steel together. It’s great if you want to make a safety enclosure for some lab test. It’s not so good for making a cantilever rack.
isosceles
That scrapyard sounds awesome lol. There’s a scrapyard very close to me but from driving past I don’t think they’d have the stuff you bought (from the road it looks like 90% cars/trucks/trailers).
I poked around online and found one not too too far away that looks to have huge quantities of almost everything. No pricing info tho. In your experience is <10 cents a pound typical?
Stuart
Yes, but I’m not interested in finding the time to learn it or the space to store a welder, welding table, clamps, and what-not.
My boards were neatly stored away in 5 different areas, mostly vertical against the wall in between machines. I want them in 1 or 2 areas so that I can reclaim space and rearrange and organize everything.
Some are cut-offs, most aren’t. Most of the 2x cedar and 8/4 maple are for pending projects.
I also have a couple of 2×2 boards from HD that was purchased for a project, but I quickly pivoted a few steps in.
My current mission is to rework my garage; rather than simply thinking “where will this go?” I’m asking “where will everything go?”
Thus, all the interstitial wood storage should be consolidated.
Learning welding, buying a table, buying a machine and upgrading the electrical or finding gas storage, and other related needs makes zero sense right now.
Maybe one day I’ll learn to weld, but even then designing and building a lumber cart just isn’t an appealing task I want to be burdened with right now.
Is it worth learning to weld? Absolutely. Is it worth my learning to weld right now, so that I could build a better lumber cart? No.
I’m sure I could have found a local welder to build a better lumber cart. For less money? Definitely not.
If I were your client, how much would the BOM cost for a project like this, and how much would have charged for labor?
Even if simple for you to build, could you have done it for under $600 to my door?
MM
The thing with learning to weld is:
a)the longer you put it off, the longer you have to pay ‘the I-don’t-weld-tax’, and it adds up.
b) welding, at least in this context, is very easy.
There have been many times when I’ve been reading Toolguyd over the past few years and though to myself: why’d Stuart buy that when he could easily have welded it instead? A while back it was a table for your CNC machine. Today it’s this lumber rack. There will be countless projects in the future: workbenches, shelving, tool stands, brackets, repairs.
Now to be fair, you do need to buy the equipment, and that may well be a legitimate problem. But please don’t think that learning is a major or even significant obstacle. You can learn sufficient MIG skills to make this lumber cart in under one hour.
Greg
I have a tiny little bit of welding experience, and there’s no way this is a one hour project.
– sourcing stock, figuring out how much you need. Figuring out hardware, casters, …
– making space in the workshop to get into “welding & fabrication” mode
– figure out all the cuts, struggle with the bandsaw, etc…
– figure out welder settings, and get welder setup
– prepare the stock for welding with grinder etc…
– weld
– grind
– grind more
– paint
– second coat
– assemble
To me this is a 2 weeks project minimum, and i’m usually pretty delusional on how long things actually take me to do. Meaning this will probably turn into a 2 months project.
I’m not discarding welding as a useful skill, but saying this is a 1hr project for a beginner that doesnt do welding on a daily basis is a misrepresentation to say the least 🙂
MM
Sorry, I just realized my comment was poorly written.
I meant that the process of learning basic MIG should take no more than one hour. I did not mean to say that it would take one hour to build this specific project. that’s on me, I worded it badly.
That said, I don’t think this is a complex project at all. There’s no need to fool with bolts if you’d be welding it yourself, so simplify the design to get rid of them: weld everything, including the caster plates to the frame. If you want to bolt-on the casters because you think you might need to change them in the future then you can buy inexpensive pre-cut caster mounting plates that fit many common size casters. These are commonly sold at the same places that sell steel and welding supplies. There’s rarely any need to grind newly bought steel prior to welding, it’s usually clean enough as is, and this is not some super-critical application where every bit of strength is required. Cut it to length and go straight to welding. Use angle iron to make the corner gussets and they just lay right on without the need to fool with mitered cuts or complex clamping arrangements. Once it’s welded up you need to paint it, and that requires prep. Most of the time you could hit it with an RO sander and wipe it down with acetone, that could be anything from 10 min to an hour depending on how rusty/dirty the steel was. Paint could be as simple or as complex as you care to make it. For stuff like this I do one coat of Rustoleum self-etching primer and then a couple coats of paint. It does take time to dry, but little time to apply. It’s not a one-hour project, but if you had the material & tools on hand and we’re not counting time for paint to dry? Easily under half a day.
Stuart
One of the reasons I really like using 80/20 extrusions is because it’s a non-permanent approach.
A lathe stand today can be a workbench tomorrow or a lumber cart next time.
If dimensions change, I can swap parts relatively easily and then add extra parts to my spares bin for use with future jigs or projects.
Welding produces permanent solutions to specific problems, which can be great.
For most projects, I would still choose 80/20 over welding. There are times when I am held back by not having welding equipment or skills, but it wouldn’t replace my proclivity for t-slot construction.
I’ve been meaning to design a CNC stand but haven’t yet. Even when I do, maybe welding would be a better approach, but I find great appeal in 80/20 allowing for transient or permanent designs.
For welding, if you want to make changes you need to bust out a lot more tools and maybe even have to order fresh materials.
MM
In my opinion steel construction is less permanent and more flexible than 80/20. Weldments are easily cut apart and repurposed into other things. I wrote elsewhere in this topic how I turned semi truck wheels and old oil well casing pipe into grinder stands. My shop is full of stuff like that, and a lot of it is cut-up or modified things I built previously. It has ultimate flexibility because you can join parts at any angle and with any shape. You have something welded in the wrong spot or you changed your mind and want to move something? No big deal. Cut it off, weld it in the new spot. Simple. Welding can fill holes and gaps which allows you to compensate for imperfectly cut materials.
80/20 involves drilled holes and milled pockets for the special hardware to fit. If those aren’t where you need them for a new project then you have to machine them in new places, and you have to deal with the old pockets being unused. 80/20 requires a lot more care when you cut it. If you have short pieces of 80/20 but you need long ones there’s not really any good way to butt-join them forcing you to buy new material, whereas you can easily butt-weld shorter sections of steel together to make longer ones.
Now I don’t want to poo-poo 80/20, I think it has a lot of advantages for many applications. I like it for enclosures because you can insert sheet goods into the slots. It has a certain industrial look which is very appealing for some projects. The t-slots are very handy when you need to make something that requires frequent adjustment. But I don’t think that highly of its ability to be repurposed into other things.
Stuart
Ever since going with anchor fasteners, the most I usually have to do with 80/20 is cut legs to size and retap the end holes for smaller feet or mounting brackets for larger leveling feet.
It’s not going to work for everyone, but it works for me.
If I have the legs but need different cross-members, I either use bolt-on brackets or reorder pre-cut segments machined for end fasteners.
For consumers or personal use, the value proposition is horrible. For business use, it’s the next-best option* aside from turnkey and store-bought products I only need to assemble. *For me.
Irving
RE: “Welding is easy”; I’ll challenge the premise, and yes, I did read your addendum posted below.
Welding, whether oxy/acetylene or electric, or TIG / MIG is definitely A Learned Skill, one that is extremely useful (so is brazing, which we often use rather than welding and easier to learn).
But…..”welding” needs its own dedicated workspace area; one cannot successfully weld on a wood-top workbench (well, maybe it can be done once….) but an all steel table purpose-built for welding, in a welding area. Purpose-built because one frequently uses magnetic angle braces, and usually a large assortment of various sized clamps, some involving dogs, because welding involves a LOT of concentrated heat and things expand, and shift, under heat.
It also requires some attention to fire hazards – a shop that does mostly wordworking is not a good place to also do a lot of welding. Wood, in all its forms, burns and burns quite well, especially thin planer shavings, sawdust and small wood chips, and trust me, the sawdust goes everywhere no matter how good your dust collection is. A shop that does mostly woodworking needs a very, very good cleaning before breaking out the torch, and needs to be big enough that there’s adequate space around the welding area. In the most recent example, Stuart’s Grizzly rack is 61″ long; steel comes in 20 ft lengths (yes, the supplier can cut it for you but he’ll charge for that and you better specify it a little longer because none of the steel suppliers I use guarantee better than 1/8″ accuracy on length cuts) so you’ll probably be dealing with long lengths if you do the cutting and that takes plenty of room, most likely floor and bench space.
“Well, I can do all the cutting and welding outside the shop.” Unless it’s raining, snowing, very windy, dark, or that space is taken up by company vehicles. And if something comes up you can’t just turn off the gas or unplug the Lincoln and walk away because you’ve now got money in materials and equipment sitting outside.
We do a little bit of metalwork and welding – custom bracketry and small fixtures – and that permanently occupies an entire dedicated corner, about 140 square feet including a welding curtain (electric arc really needs visual shielding) plus the forced ventilation required by OSHA (and common sense), for the bigger stuff we do the engineering drawings in CAD and contract out to a couple local fabrication and welding shops we’ve come to trust because trying to do it in house upsets almost everything else our shop is trying to get done that day. Plus, they can do heliarc much, much more easily than we ever could (really good heliarc is almost an art, especially when dealing with tight tolerances) which allows us to use aluminum – which is cheaper than any grade of stainless steel – for rust-proof bracketry.
So, yes, I get that welding is a very valuable skill – we couldn’t do without it and I encourage everyone to learn at least the basics – but for most businesses that involve mostly woodworking (our jobs also frequently involve custom cabinetry, which has its own “large space” requirements) anything more than very small scale fabrication and welding is not a good fit. Bringing everything to a halt for 1-3 days to do a large steel fabrication and welding project, like a lumber rack, would require moving some equipment around to clear space and really impact the business, which is why I try really hard to use “Other People’s Expertise” and use it well, whenever possible, and I very much prefer to depend on before-sale quality for that rather than after-sale warranty fixes.
MM
If I’m understanding correctly, your objections can be summarized as welding requires space and requires being mindful of fire hazards. That’s absolutely true, but I also think the hassles aren’t enough to get in the way of learning. I own a variety of serious welding equipment but I regularly weld things balanced on top of a single pipe stand in my driveway, or perhaps directly *on* my driveway, kneeling down on the concrete, because that’s a lot easier than clearing out safe space in my shop. Those grinder stands I mentioned? I welded those in my yard, on top of two 2×8’s laid across sawhorses. I made sure to wet down the grass & leaves all around the work area to prevent fire, and I had both a hose and an extinguisher at hand. You do need to think about the safety risks with welding but it’s not some big insurmountable challenge that requires massive expenditure. If you’re doing fancy projects you can need a lot of extra tooling, but I’d say that I do 90% of my projects with maybe one or two F-style clamps and a couple magnetic squares. I do own a wide assortment of welding clamps but it’s rare that I have to bother to get them out.
Brazing is very useful, I agree. It works at lower temperatures than the welding so it can be used for very delicate things that are difficult to weld. It also allows you to join dissimilar materials. Though I disagree about it being easier to learn than basic welding (MIG or stick). Brazing requires cleanliness and good fitting joints. Many of the materials involved are highly toxic (cadmium-containing alloys) and corrosive (fluxes). Brazing requires the parts to be held still while the joint cools which can sometimes be a challenge, whereas a lot of welding can be done without any sort of clamping or fixturing. If you are brazing with a torch then you need to know how to control the oxygen ratio in the flame. By comparison, basic MIG welding or stick with a good ‘ol 6011 doesn’t really care about burrs or light rust on the parts. It fills gaps easily. It sticks nearly instantly so you can hold parts by hand and tack them in place. You don’t have to know how to adjust a flame, you just read the chart for the thickness of steel & electrodes you’re using, set the knobs, and go.
Now Heli-arc or TIG welding is a whole other ballgame, and I wouldn’t call that easy by any means. That is absolutely a challenging skill to master because you’re having to do three things–control the arc power, position of the torch, and feed the filler rod–all at the same time. I can do passable work but I’m nowhere near the level of the experts.
MM
Sorry for the second post, I hit submit a bit too soon.
I want to bring the focus back to my original point that I feel we’ve drifted away from. I do agree that things like buying the welder & associated gear (including PPE), and space, are legit concerns. But I wanted to emphasize that the act of learning welding shouldn’t be thought of as an obstacle in the slightest. If someone can’t afford the gear or doesn’t have the space for it? Those are real concerns. But don’t let worry about ‘how hard it might be’ become an obstacle, because it’s not.
Nathan
I get not wanting to spend the time. But that price is a bit ridiculous and of the time how much time did you research it vs buy it? As opposed to looking up a plan or such to work from. I have to imagine there are plans for this sort of thing
It’s a shame it wasn’t better made I have never been very impressed with grizzly stuff but I do have 2 grinders from them. Back when I didn’t have to pay shipping to get something they were local to me. Good luck
Stuart
I’m not interested in building one from wood. Can you propose alternatives that hold as much or more?
I learned about the cart passively, when looking through Grizzly’s YouTube videos. I then did a little research, competitive alternatives research, debated about alternatives a little, and then placed the order.
Building one out of 80/20 would require custom ordering or a lot of work and testing to configure one with parts I already have.
If building one myself, maybe I’d get to it a few months from now, but I wanted a workable solution NOW.
blocky
I suspect 80/20 would take significant design consideration to avoid failure from leverage forces. Steel or wood is the way to go. Pipe and fittings might be the simplest to design without welds, but I doubt it would be significantly cheaper. Pipe and wood, perhaps, but it points back to the time and cost assessment you already ran.
Feels like you got an appropriate solution, but one that we all grimace it.
I think there’s a simple solution to the top rack height differential — lay in a piece (or strips) of 1/2″ plywood. It could be cut to fit. It could even be screwed or glued to the central 2 supports and would allow even smaller pieces to go on the upper rack (turned shelf).
Stuart
I was thinking maybe HDPE, using 3 rectangular strips for a shallow inverted U configuration, and just being sure to be mindful of the loading until then. Maybe UHMW PE if it doesn’t cost much.
It came with low-friction strips, and so plywood might work well short-term but I like having low-friction plastic to help slide boards in place.
There are calculators that can tell you the strength and deflection of 80/20 beams. I’m sure I can design something at least as strong as this one, but it’d likely cost more and require time I don’t have right now.
Yadda
Good info. Thanks for sharing.
Franco
Last year I purchased the Grizzly T34007 lumber/plywood cart from an independent dealer. The price was excellent (beating Grizzly (direct) and upon checkout, they only charged $8.75 for shipping and for some reason I wasn’t even charged tax. Total was $508! I went back to the site the next day because I couldn’t believe my luck, and sure enough, the price and shipping were corrected. By a lot! Sometimes you get lucky. Checked price today and it’s $1277 plus the sales tax applied, but shipping was free. The cart itself is excellent.
Frank D
I would for sure call them up if it can’t align the braces to a proper level.
It is supposed to keep stuff flat across the 4 braces.
If they fail to help you and make it right; I would try to swap inners to outside and then try to shim up the centers, so it would be level. Should not be necessary, but no way I’m storing flat boards on something uneven to warp them.
Frank D
PS: On second look; I see now that the braces and verticals can’t be swapped due to how it is fabricated.
Aram
What about strut channel / Unistrut? Cheaper than 80/20 (at least when I last looked?) and a wide range of available accessories.
I built a mobile wall using some, and it was rock-solid. 6ft across, 9ft high, on casters that locked. Pretty cheap, pretty easy (would’ve been easier if I’d had an angle grinder at the time rather than just a hacksaw, but that’s life for ya).
Stuart
I never considered it for this.
isosceles
Stuart, funnily enough, I just built a material handling cart out of strut channel (a modified sort of panel cart for moving steel plates). It wouldn’t take you long at all to plan or assemble a lumber cart and I think you probably would’ve come out ahead in the end.
At a quick glance, replicating the Grizzly cart would take what, maybe 80 feet of channel? Although you could possibly cut that down with a more efficient design. 10′ sticks of channel are ~$35 at my Home Depot, so you’re $250-$300 there. I bought 4x braking swivel casters (Vestil) with 6″x2″ flat-free wheels (617# capacity per caster) for $82 total from Amazon. They are fantastic casters and I was pretty thrilled with that price.
Then there’s all the hardware – that adds up fast, especially if you use strut-specific stuff for every connection. I got about half my hardware from Zoro (with a 20% coupon) and the rest from Home Depot, which has very good prices on magnetic SuperStrut brackets.
So, while $500-$600 and a couple of trips to HD might not be major savings, I think you would have ended up with a much much nicer cart. The 1.5″ 12 gauge strut is pretty beefy stuff. It’s also very easy to cut, especially with a bandsaw. For one trip I brought my M18 and cut the 10′ sticks in half in the parking lot.
Stuart
Ideally, sure. Realistically, committing to a design, to casters, to 80/20 vs steel strut – I know myself and this would have been added to half a dozen other projects I still don’t have the time or mental bandwidth for.
I also don’t know what my needs will be in the future. Although pricey, this was a low-energy purchase with little other investment.
If it turns out I need a long-term solution, then I’ll treat the Grizzly as a test/review opportunity to learn from, and can then put the energy into designing a more capable solution out of 80/20 (most likely), strut, or maybe wood (I doubt it).
That mentality helped me with decision paralysis.
Ordering from Grizzly allowed me to move forward. Designing my own, even at lower cost (probably not) would have resulted in my standing still on this for weeks if not months.
isosceles
I gotcha, I didn’t at all intend for that to sound like a recrimination of any kind fwiw. We are very much alike in the way that something like considering 80/20 vs. strut can end up pushing a project back months, ha. So I definitely understand the value of a solution that moves you fwd right away.
I mostly typed all that out bc I was struck by the coincidence of the strut suggestion – which runs even a little deeper bc I chose strut bc I’d been putting off teaching myself MIG welding bc I want to put a 240v outlet in the garage… (and I actually have the welder too… and maybe even the steel…)
A bit more generally, this was my first time using strut and I was struck by how much you can do with it. If you’ve never flipped through e.g. the SuperStrut catalogues (Home Depot has downloadable PDFs on the product pages) I think it’s worth a few mins to get a sense of all they offer, just to have it in your back pocket alongside 80/20 for future projects. It’s a pretty neat product line in my opinion. Plus, it’s never excluded from Zoro’s coupons and they stock pretty much a full line of Zoro Select hardware, brackets, etc. (all of my orders arrived the next day with free shipping).
MM
I don’t like using it for anything other than electrical work because I think it’s ugly, but I must admit you can do a lot with it. It would be plenty strong enough for this kind of application. This rack is not highly loaded at only 66 lbs per arm. I think that’s a great idea to look into.
CMF
As mentioned by others, it would be tough to get just the materials to make this for the price of the Grizzly. I like what I see and although far from perfect, this would make a great starting point to reinforce areas, then re-weld, or use grade 5 or better nuts and bolts to finish with an ultimate wood dolly.
I did not see anywhere what the price of the Vestil carts are, anyone know?
Stuart
$800+ plus freight, but coupon codes can bring it down a bit.
EBT
I like how you caught that you put the bolts on reversed, resolving the wheel issue.
I bought some Gorilla racks (made by Whalen) back in 2012 that I moved to my last home’s basement and added casters, along with wire racking. This allowed me to dry the sawn oak 8/4 and 5/4 I was given in trade for use of my 3/4ton truck.
Wood takes time to dry. Make sure to have a moisture monitor tool (pinless or pinned).
While you stressed you needed this now, I would imagine if you had time, welder and access to steel, could have fabbed something close. Man, I’d love to be friends with a fab shop that has a water cutter/plasma table and steel scraps in the 2-4ft tubing…
WastedP
I’m really against fabricating shop racking or carts, wood or metal, for all the reasons listed in the comments. When I have needed either, I want to buy something modular than can be broken back down and moved or sold easily. I don’t want to spend much, if any, time on assembly.
I always liked the Hafele lateral parts carts, but then I found that ShopCartsUSA.com could make something just as good for a lower price, and domestically. I have bought a half dozen of these carts through the years. Their lateral parts cart only has three levels of storage, but they maneuver easily through tight spaces and can hold a literal TON of material. They can also be reconfigured, tool free, to hold sheet goods on edge. They run $50 more than the Grizzly cart here, and the shipping in the past was under $200. I have bought a half dozen of these carts through the years and will buy more when I need them.
The lead time to receive a cart after ordering ranged from about a week (mostly shipping time) to three weeks during the pandemic. If you contact them, they can design and price custom carts, so if you just wanted to change to locking casters, then can quote it. I had them design a flat cart that could hold full units of lumber with outdoor-quality locking casters. I don’t remember the cost, but it was bombproof and worked great for material handling in a tight space without having to break down full units to load large cantilever racking.
Stuart
Thanks! I never came across that brand in my search, I’ll keep them in mind for the future.
I am liking that the Grizzly is open on one long side.
WastedP
I wanted something like the Grizzly rack when I moved to a new shop last spring. I balked at the pricing and quality concerns and just punted, buying heavy duty teardrop racks, which still lets me load smaller stock from the sides, longer stuff from the ends. I was just looking at ShopCarts again this week to hold material on a project by project basis, instead of the racking for “the stash.”