A thorn in the lion's paw

The other day, I heard one of our inside salesmen on the phone with a customer. Apparently the customer was commenting on how often their cast iron wheels would seemingly "lock-up". The salesman handled the call correctly, and here's how:

Cast Iron wheels are very hard, as that's the nature of cast iron. This presents a problem, however, as the wheels are susceptible to being stopped by floor debris. Since the wheel is hard and the floor, assuming it's concrete, is hard as well, neither will give. Thus the object, say a small nut, is stuck between the floor and the wheel. The wheel will no longer spin freely and the cart becomes hard to push, due to the increased friction. If the obstructing object is big enough, and the speed fast enough, the wheel can even crack.

So, how do you get around it? Well, assuming that your floors often have obstructions strewn about, there are some pretty simple solutions. Using a polyurethane or rubber treaded wheel will help alleviate this problem. Poly and rubber will give to the obstruction, allowing the wheel to keep on turning. The other option, if capacity is the largest concern, is going to Vulkollan, a special polyurethane designed for heavy and abusive loads.

It helps to keep this in mind, hard floors want soft wheels and soft floors want hard wheels.

Check out the caster selection at our website.