The Best Wheelbarrows of 2022

The True Temper wheelbarrow is useful any time you want to carry something heavy, bulky, or awkward through your yard.

It can travel over most yard obstacles and steps, and it holds more than 3 cu. ft. of mulch flat (or up to 6 cu. ft. mounded) in the spacious tray.

It makes everything easy. This model comes assembled at the store, so buyers don’t need to search around for extra screwdrivers or ratchet wrenches to put it together. The coated metal handles are smooth and strong. In our tests, it traveled easily over all but the largest branches in the obstacle course, and pushed through sand while fully loaded.

By far the best part of this wheelbarrow is how easy it is to control. Even when fully loaded with bricks, the True Temper never felt like it was falling or “running away” downhill. The single flat-free rubber tire is sturdy, but filled with a soft material that provides good cushioning for rolling over rough ground, rocks, and branches.

The single-wheel construction allows this wheelbarrow to pivot around a 1-foot diameter turn.

On the other hand, this wheelbarrow is big and it weighs almost 46 pounds. It can be stored standing on its nose end, but it still takes up a lot of space—and it’s a good idea to store this wheelbarrow inside.

The paint protecting the steel tray did get scratched by both bricks and the shovel during testing, which can lead to rust. If you must store your wheelbarrow outside, stand it up so water doesn’t collect, and cover it with a tarp.

The Marathon Green Yard Rover is a great lightweight wheelbarrow for small-to-medium loads of mulch, soil, leaves, or gardening equipment.

The Marathon Wheelbarrow’s wide rust-proof plastic tray easily holds 3 cu. ft. of mulch or hay without mounding. The loop handle lets you push or pull with even just one hand (and it makes it easy to hang on a wall hook for storage).

Its two pneumatic wheels are sturdy and roll easily over obstacles large and small, even up stairs thanks to the positioning of the tray supports. And weighing in at 26 pounds, it’s easy to lift into the back of a car.

Consumers have complained that the Marathon’s tray can buckle and give way under heavy loads of gravel or stones; when we filled the wheelbarrow with mulch, the air-filled tires did get briefly stuck on a large branch. Also, the double-wheel combo means that it can’t make turns as tight as our single-wheeled top pick.

The Marathon wheelbarrow comes shipped in a flat pack. Set aside 15 minutes to put it together if you’re handy with tools, longer if you’re not, and make sure you have a flat head screwdriver and a wrench handy so you can tighten the nylock nuts.

The Jackson Wheelbarrow is a solid, heavy-duty wheelbarrow that can take on big, heavy loads. Its spacious 6-cubic-foot tray is made of sturdy painted stamped steel, and the single air-filled wheel pivots to fit through tight spaces. Overall, its performance is similar to the True Temper wheelbarrow.

Unfortunately, the Jackson wheelbarrow’s handles are made of rough unfinished wood. If you’re using this wheelbarrow without gloves, you’re going to end up with scratches or splinters.

And while Jackson claims these leg stabilizers make the wheelbarrow “40% more tip-resistant,” they make it more difficult to drag it backwards up stairs than other models.

This lightweight loop-handled wheelbarrow will do a fine job of toting most garden materials. The wide tray is slightly more square than the Marathon, making it easier to put more bricks flat on the tray. And the pneumatic tire makes it easy to go over most yard obstacles.

The Goplus was one of the most frustrating wheelbarrows to assemble in our sample, with holes not quite lining up without a second pair of hands helping to squeeze parts together. And its wide, low undercarriage can make it tricky to go up large steps.

If you need to push heavy materials in wet conditions without worrying about your cart turning over, the Rubbermaid Commercial Big Wheel Cart offers a sturdy rust-free tray that’s less likely to bend than the typical plastic-tray wheelbarrows.

The Rubbermaid cart is extremely stable. Its large plastic tires travel over gravel and sand well, and its thick, rigid, high-density polyethylene plastic tray is far less likely to buckle under heavy loads than other plastic-tray wheelbarrows.

But sloppy manufacturing left large globs of ragged plastic at various places on the test model, making it difficult to fit the cart together snugly. Assembly requires both a flathead and a Phillips screwdriver, plus a wrench—preferably a ratchet wrench.

Also, there is no way to pull this cart backward up a step if you can’t push it forward due to the bulky bottom stabilizing structure.

The Worx Aerocart is best used to transport a variety of bulky or odd-shaped items over flat terrain. It requires only a minute or two of assembly, and it can convert from a cart to a dolly for carrying large pots or boxes. It also comes with several accessories for moving odd objects like large bags and potted plants.

Compared to a real wheelbarrow, the Worx Aerocart is heavy and awkward, especially while going uphill, and the small flat-free wheels struggle to get over small obstacles and gravel. The tray is small, shallow, and isn’t flat, so it’s hard to carry bricks and cinder blocks.

The Aerocart tilts enough in its cart configuration that it can’t hold much loose material like mulch or soil—about 1.5 cu. ft. if you’re careful.

The Gorilla Carts GOR4PS Poly Garden Dump Cart is great for hauling light- to medium-weight materials over flat surfaces and dumping out mulch and soil.

The Gorilla provides a stable, flat surface for carrying a variety of materials, and the pneumatic tires travel easily over most obstacles. As a bonus, its quick-release dump feature works to easy empty your cart without shoveling.

However, it is terrifying to pull a heavy load in a Gorilla Cart down a slope because it’s difficult to control and there are no brakes. This wagon doesn’t give you any of the mechanical advantage a wheelbarrow offers for pushing materials uphill.

The turning radius is fairly wide compared to one- and two-wheel carts and wheelbarrows. It’s fairly easy to assemble, but there are a lot of bolts to tighten.

Choose the Allsop Home and Garden WheelEasy LE when you’d love to use a tarp with wheels. The Allsop Wheeleasy can collapse onto the ground for easy loading with soil, mulch, leaves, or even large rocks. In between uses, it can be folded in stored in the space taken up by a stick vacuum.

Due to its wide handles, the Allsop WheelEasy has a surprisingly large turning radius for a single-wheel garden cart. Loads sit very upright when the Allsop WheelEasy is being pushed, making it hard to load mounds of mulch or leaves; this is a very low-capacity cart. Bits of mulch tend to dribble out the rear of the cart where there is a gap between the wheel and the cover.

The MacSports wagon is great for hauling lightweight materials on level surfaces—and you can toss it into a car trunk or a closet when you’re done.

There’s no assembly needed, and it weighs just 22 pounds. The flat rectangular bed is easy to load and stack, and the wagon collapses quickly and easily for storage. It even has two cup holders!

The MacSports wagon had the widest turning radius of any of the models we tested, so it’s not a great choice if you need to tote materials around tight corners. Like all wagon designs, this MacSports wagon is heavy and hard to control going up and down slopes, and it has no brakes for keeping it still while loading. Small, all-plastic tires make going up steps challenging.

The Garden Star Garden Barrow is a lightweight, plastic-tray wheelbarrow that would have been perfect for carrying small to medium loads if it hadn’t gotten a flat tire early in testing.

Assembly is straightforward—and the bolts are all the same size, so you can’t mix them up. But during the second test, when the wheelbarrow was filled with mulch, one of the Garden Star’s pneumatic tires collapsed. Although the flat could be fixed with the help of a valve core removal tool, the average homeowner is not a bicycle repair enthusiast with special tire repair tools on hand.