Human beings have been seeking ways to make life easier since the dawn of our existence. From coming up with ideas like the wheel, yogurt in a tube, electricity, and nuclear weapons, we’ve been making the world a better place since day one….mostly. Some of the neatest feats of engineering in human history have come in the field of construction. From the materials and techniques employed to build things to the actual equipment that does the job, people have always been looking for ways to make things fast, less physically taxing, and more profitable. Enter the Hover-Barrow. As the name suggests, this was a wheelbarrow that instead of wheels, had a gas motor, a fan, and operated like a hovercraft. A builder in England came up with the invention and it seems to work great in this funny video about the creation.
We say funny not because the thing is a failure but because of the cheerful English announcer, deafening noise from the little gas engine powering the thing, and massive size of the Hover Barrow against the normal wheelbarrow that Joe sad-sack pushes through the mud. The Hover Barrow heads right over all terrain as easy as pie and the operator doesn’t even seem to be breaking a sweat, more just like walking behind it and guiding it along. The downsides to the idea are kind of obvious when you see the load placed on the machine. They’re careful to balance it out side to side and while it may be capable of moving heavier loads than a standard wheelbarrow the hovering unit has the motor and fan in the center which pretty much limits it to stuff like bricks, bags of cement, boards, etc. You couldn’t move an real quantities of loose material on it. The other downside is that every guy on the job sit would want to punch you in the face after 8-hours of listening to the noise that thing made.
The next time you are struggling to move a load in a wheelbarrow, remember this video and think of the world we could be living in if this technology had only been adapted and refined. Damn you ” big barrow” for stopping this in its tracks!
CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO SEE THE VIDEO!
Don’t try to carry concrete in that thing. Ray Rice could use that to carry his fiancé to their room!
Seems solid! The highway used to buy Flymo’s from the place I worked – hovering lawnmowers, no wheels. They would tie a rope to them and swing them back and forth to mow the grass next to the really steep bridge abutments. Build a better mousetrap?
Hovering lawnmowers?! Sounds like something from a horror movie.