Platform Trolleys Are Unsung Heroes Of Business World

By Author: Edward Kennan
Total Articles: 19
Comment this article

They aren't beautiful, shiny or custom designed. They are necessities in every office or industrial complex yet are taken for granted more than the soles of your shoes. Platform trolleys are made of plastic, wood, stainless steel and even iron, and are powered by four wheels, manpower and sometimes even hydraulics. These unsung heroes of our otherwise computerized world are the same as they have been for years, and just as necessary to move cargo, merchandise, tools or mail from one place in the business place to another.

It would be difficult to visit any grocery, mall or warehouse without encountering these platforms on wheels that save workers' backs and deliver their loads fast and quietly. The lowly platform trolley can be purchased globally for any business needs. Their sizes are fairly uniform but can also come in giant versions for carrying pallets at a dock or shipyard, where they convey goods from one ship container to another. The smallest of the universal transporter is utilized in libraries of the world to handle heavy yet fragile books and manuscripts.

Also called hand trucks, the platform trolley ...
... is manufactured dimensionally accurate and therefore very efficient in moving their designated loads from and into prescribed locations. The oldest known mechanized platform trolleys were used by the railroads to move workers rapidly along a track for repairs or delivery of small parts. That trolley was air pumped by hand to propel the trolley along the railroad tracks to its destination. The more common use today is of four wheeled platform trolleys moved by manpower, although large warehouses incorporate a motorized platform trolley to move merchandise into areas where it can then be raised and stacked by forklifts.

During both world wars the platform trolley was a Godsend for those times of limited gasoline or petrol to transport heavy loads form Point A to Point B. Strong women were able to maneuver large hand trucks or trolleys around factories, industries, train stations and other needs to keep supplies moving. Most men were fighting in the wars and the presence of the trolleys enabled women to take up the labor slack in many ways on the factory floors and on the assembly lines.

Atoule Bjay is foreign correspondent for World Industry magazine and author of an informative book on the modern industrial digital evolution, "Industrial Evolution of the Future" (pub. 2013, Delacorte Publishing).