Good friends help friends in need. We had friends who needed to spread 13 yards of dirt on their lawn, so we loaned them our Lifetime Yard Cart to help make their work easier. What? Did you think I was going to say I offered to actually help spread the dirt? Hey, I said we were good friends, not great friends! (Just kidding. Marc & Jenna, we love you guys!)
Truth be told, the Lifetime Yard Cart was practically screaming for Marc and Jenna to borrow it. Why? Because Marc and Jenna live on an acre lot AND they own a 4-wheeler that can pull the Yard Cart in the trailer mode. This is the kind of dream job the Lifetime Yard Cart was built for. The measly six yards of compost that we spread on our yard by pushing the Yard Cart like a wheelbarrow was mere child's play compared the massive job that Marc and Jenna were going to tackle.
Needless to say, Marc and Jenna were more than willing to jump at our offer to borrow our Lifetime Yard Cart and give it a test drive in trailer mode. When Marc picked the Yard Cart up in his pickup truck (you're kidding yourself if you think this beast is going to fit in the back of your SUV), I armed him with the owner's manual in case he it wasn't intuitive how to convert the Yard Cart from a wheelbarrow to a trailer.
So, how did the Lifetime Yard Cart measure up? Marc gave the Yard Cart two thumbs up for making his back-breaking work, well, less back-breaking. He said it was much easier than with a wheelbarrow and he was able to move the dirt much more efficiently. When I asked Marc if he had to do the job again next year by using traditional push wheelbarrows like he did last year or pulling the Lifetime Yard Cart with a 4-wheeler like he did this year, it was pretty much a no-brainer. "That's an easy decision. Definitely the Yard Cart and 4-wheeler," said Marc. Ok, not exactly a shocking surprise there. Umm, let's see... man vs. machine, push vs. ride. Hmm. No contest.
One of my biggest concerns though was if the Yard Cart easily converted from a wheelbarrow to a trailer and how the dumping mechanism worked. (Embarrassingly enough, I haven't tried either since we don't have a way to pull it in trailer mode.) Good news! Marc agreed with Lifetime's claims that the Yard Cart is simple to convert to trailer mode, "you just move a couple of pins," he insisted. Whatever that means.
When it came to the dumping, Marc said it was super easy. Mostly he would dump the Yard Cart and then drive slowly dragging the tipped cart to let the dirt naturally fall and spread on its own. (Similar to the technique I showed in my spreading compost video.) The only problem he encountered was that it was a bit difficult to dump in multiple places (like on opposite sides of the yard) because the Yard Cart was heavy to flip back up and then it was challenging to get the lever to re-latch. Normally, if the cart was empty, the lever automatically latched when the Yard Cart flipped back down. However, with the cart still loaded and the weight had shifted to the end of the Yard Cart, he had to push dirt to the front of the Yard Cart in order to get the lever to latch. (I'm sure there's a physics lesson somewhere in there.)
Anyway, in a nutshell...YES, YES, YES to using the Lifetime Yard Cart with a 4-wheeler. But, if you want to see for yourself how easily the Lifetime Yard Cart converts to a trailer and then dumps with the pull of a lever, check out this from the At Your Leisure's Gadget Guy Bryan Lund. He'll demonstrate how to convert it in a matter of seconds and assure you that you really do "just move a couple of pins."