Best rolling tool carts

Three open trays, two lockable ball-bearing drawers with EVA padding, side pegboards, and the only complete set of published figures on this page: 400 lb for the cart, 110 lb per tray, 33 lb per drawer. Three trays at 110 plus two drawers at 33 is 396, so the headline is the sum of the parts rather than a separate claim — which is exactly the kind of internal consistency this site looks for.

Thirty-three pounds a drawer is the honest constraint, and it is one drawer of sockets. Only two of the four wheels brake, no caster diameter is published and no steel thickness either, and it is the most expensive VEVOR cart here for two drawers.

The same disclosure at under half the price: 350 lb for the cart, 100 lb per tray, 33 lb for its single drawer, with the same lockable drawer, EVA padding and side pegboards. At 13.8 inches deep it is also the narrowest cart in this comparison, which is the difference between fitting beside a parked car and not.

One drawer means one lockable space, and 33 lb is its published limit. Three hundred and fifty pounds is the second-lowest headline here, nothing is published about the casters or the steel, and two fixed wheels mean the cart will not turn on the spot in a tight bay.

Two locking drawers on published 50 lb ball-bearing slides — the highest per-drawer figure on this page — under a top that slides open to a storage well and closes into a work surface. Ironton also publishes its caster size, 4 by 1.25 inches, which nothing else here does and which is the difference between rolling over a cord and stopping dead at one.

Two drawers is the least storage on this page for the money, there are no open trays so there is no per-shelf figure to publish, and no steel thickness appears anywhere. It is priced beside carts offering five levels of storage.

One millimeter steel panels and 2 inch casters with bearings, both published, on three shelves with rolled and raised edges that stop sockets rolling off when the cart moves. Its 330 lb headline is the smallest here, and given that it publishes the thickest panel steel of any cart on the page, that is the most coherent pair of numbers in the comparison.

No per-shelf figure is published, so the total still has to be divided by eye. Two inch casters are the smallest published wheels here and they are the ones that will catch on a cord or an expansion joint. There are no drawers and no lock: everything lives in the open.

The smallest footprint here at 26.5 by 13.5 inches, the lowest price, and a published steel thickness, which most carts skip entirely. Rubber casters with reinforced bolts, two of them braked, and side slots for screwdrivers and pliers.

Then the headline: 440 lb, on 0.9 mm steel, against a rival claiming 330 lb on 1 mm. Both cannot be describing the same kind of test. There is no per-shelf figure, no drawers, no lock, and at 30 inches tall it is low for working at standing height. Buy it for the size and the price, not for the number.