Cargo Electric Fishing Trolley
13-04-2005. I have been thinking over the winter period of what I can do to make the task of taking tackle to a swim as easy and as pain free as possible. After much thought and deliberation I have purchased an electric fishing trolley from "Cargo". I could not find any information on the web as to how good or reliable this particular trolley was, so in the end I made a telephone call to the firm and spoke to Mike, and I explained that it was a lot of money to pay out for something that I knew nothing about. He said that virtually all of the orders that were placed for the "Cargo" were from anglers who had seen someone using one of them, and to cut a long story short I ordered one. The order was placed late on a Thursday evening and I was told that I could expect delivery on the Wednesday of the following week, and with this in mind I had arranged to go shopping with Doreen on the Monday and be at home for the next few days in the hope that the trolley would arrive as promised. At about 9 on Monday morning the bell rang and there was the trolley. This is a good start to any transaction when the ordered item gets to you on time or even before time as in this case.
I had to go shopping with Doreen so my excitement just had to wait until we got back home again. The first thing was to get the kettle on for a cup of tea and then I started to unpack the trolley. I don't know what I expected, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the trolley was all in one piece, and all that I had to do was to lower the front platform, click the handle up and put in the battery. My first impressions of the trolley were very positive indeed, and I just sat and looked at it for a few minutes. This appears to be a serious bit of kit and gives the impression that someone has put considerable time and effort into its design. The main frame is of powder coated steel, and my one is in green although I believe that you can get it in black as well. Compared to my trusty "Prestige" De Luxe matchman trolley this one is heavy even without the battery, and you could argue that this is due to the motor and gears etc, but it is also a much more robust chassis. I had to change the handle so that I could pull the trolley with my left hand, as all of the trolleys come as standard for a right hander. I had already mentioned this to Mike and he said simply remove the four screws that secure the handle, remove the handle and rotate it through 180 degrees and put back the screws. The electric motor is controlled through a knob that you can rotate with a finger, and is simple to use.
I had asked Mike if my old Shakespeare black seat box would fit the trolley and he said that he had exactly the same box, and once the plastic webbing under the box that joins onto the feet was trimmed back it would sit on the trolley perfectly. I had made the modification to my old box years before and when I placed it onto the trolley it did indeed fit perfectly. The great advantage of this trolley is that the wheels are set behind the platform and this means that no matter what width of box you have it will fit as there is no wheel base to worry about.
With the trolley fully folded, handle down and platform up. The depth from front to back is 14 inches and the height is 33 inches
The height with the handle up is 48 1/2 inches
With the handle is up and the platform down, the overall width from front to back is 27 1/2 inches. Note the wheels are set far back from the loading platform, making the carrying of wider boxes etc a simple task.
The battery is 12 volt 17 amp hour.
the finger tip control unit.
One of the questions that I had asked was would the trolley fit into the boot of my car, Mike said that it would probably fit in the boot of any car, and from the above measurements I have given you it probably would. I have no trouble fitting it into my motor.
I have taken the trolley down to my local clubs water and fully loaded it with all of my gear and went over the rough grassland to the most distant swim, and the trolley made light work of it. This type of terrain is about as bad as I will encounter so at this moment in time I am well pleased. I will continue this review with the passage of time and the walking of many miles to and from swims. It will be interesting to see just how durable this trolley turns out to be.
28-05-2005. I have put some more trips on the trolley, and I am still delighted with it. It took some time for me to fathom out the best way to get all of my tackle onto it, and strap it all down so that none of it moved about while traveling over the rough pasture land, it even goes over the cattle grids with no problem, in fact it is me that has the problem negotiating the grids with a stick in one hand and the trolley in the other, as I have to be careful not to get the stick down through the grid.
11-06-2005. More fishing trips added and the "Cargo" trolley is still outstanding.
16-11-2005. Still going strong and not a single problem has surfaced. This has to be the best bit of kit that I have, as without it I would not be able to go angling.
The "Cargo" web site is at
and their address is
Head Office :
PowaWalker Powered Trolleys
Unit 1, Crown Point, Valley Road
Barham, Kent, CT4 6NX, England
Tel / Fax : 01227 831317
Email: Mike@powawalker.co.uk
02-06-2007. Well as far as my "Cargo" trolley is concerned, nothing has changed. It is still as good as new, and I still rate it as my best angling buy ever by a large margin. However there is a change over at the "Cargo" web site, and much to my amazement, it can now be purchased at something nearer to £200-00 instead of the near £350-00 that I think I paid for mine way back in early 2005. I think that I had a good bargain then and I strongly suggest that you take a long hard look at this seriously good trolley, as its price now is unbelievable. For anyone who takes some gear fishing you need a trolley. You do not have to have bad knee's or a damaged spine like me, this is great for anybody.
Go take a look.
01-10-2007. I have managed to put a few more fishing trips under my belt, but the operations are making it very painful to do much so I thought that I would get all of my gear out in the garden and go through it all to look for signs of wear and tear, and to see what if anything needed replacing. As this is about my "Cargo" trolley I will just talk about that here.
This trolley has never given me a minutes problem since the day I purchased it, well apart from one tyre that would always go down a good bit, but I finally solved the problem by inflating them with the electric car foot pump to a pressure that was well above what I thought they would need, and since then no more problem.
Apart from having some paint removed in a few places where the trolley os folded and put in and out of the car, it is still pretty immaculate. I gave it a quick wipe over with a damp cloth and it sparkled like new. I am really proud of this piece of kit, as not only does it do the job it was intended for like getting me and all of my gear to a fishing swim and then getting back to the car park again, it is a tribute the the person who designed it in the first place. It is robust enough to absorb all the bangs and shocks in its everyday life, but it is worth a good close up look as to the quality of materials and design.
I still rate this "Cargo" trolley as my single MUST have fishing possession. It has been pressed into service any time I have large or heavy objects to move and has never let me down.
A product that is made to last forever.
16-10-2007. One of my friends who is about the same age as me and also with mobility problems has seen my trolley lots of times over the past couple of years and has said on a few occasions that he would get one, but never did, but when I told him a few months ago that the price had been significantly reduced he said that he would purchase one. Me, I thought I will wait and see. Well Monday he telephoned me to say that his new trolley had arrived and did I want to have a look at it. I said that I would drive down in the afternoon. I was curious to see the new version of my trolley and see what if any changes had been made to it.
When I got there he was in his back garden with the trolley loaded with his gear and walking it around the patio. I had a good look at it when it had been unloaded. There are a few differences, but nothing that could lead to the price reduction. I had taken my camera with me so I took some pictures of my trolley next to his. My one is the green one and as you can see has a few scrapes on it from transporting it and using it over the past two and a half years.
both trolleys together taken from the front. My wheels are a bit bigger than the black ones, and the handle is not only round the wrong way for me, but it is a much chunkier affair and now sports an on/off switch and a nice light. The reason that I have my handle round the other way is that I use my walking stick in my right hand and have the trolley handle in my left hand. I remember taking out the two bolts that hold the handle on and pulling the handle up and clear of the square tubing, turning it 180 degrees and then pushing it back on and putting back the two bolts.
the two trolleys taken from the side and you can see that the black one has a different battery housing.
my trolley has no battery fitted so the difference in design is clearer to see. The battery now has its own very smart hardwearing carry case, which I think is a neat touch.
this is the new handle and as you can see has an on/off switch and a warning light. I could feel that this handle was thicker than my one as soon as I put my hand on it.
picture of the very neat battery complete with its carry case with the "cargo" logo on it.
this is the electric motor which is the heart of the trolley.
this is a picture of the electric mother on my trolley and there is not a lot of difference to be seen.
The square down tube is slightly thicker than my one but the round tubing appears to be the same.
We loaded up the two motors and took the trolleys and tackle over to the lake, and once they were loaded we set out to walk right around the lake, which is about a mile and a half which is too far for either of us to complete in one go so we took a couple of shooting sticks with us so that we could take plenty of rests. At half distance we changed trolleys and finished the journey back at the car park. Apart from being very awkward for me to have my walking stick in my wrong hand and the trolley in the wrong hand we had no problems at all.
The question is, "is the new trolley better than my one" and I have to say I don't think that it is better, it is just newer and uses some newer components which probably means that it is theoretically better but in everyday use the differences would be hard to spot. When I brought my trolley I did think that it was a lot of money to pay for a trolley, but having had it for a long time now without any trouble at all, then it has been a bargain. The new one for about a hundred pounds less just has to be amazing value, and if you want to put it into some sort of perspective then it is about the same price as 40 packs of cigarettes.
