How to build a market cart

Welcome back to The Shak.


I am quite excited about this post. It has been a long time in the making. Of course, I do the work before I do the post; although, in this case, because the post is very long and it is stupid hot outside again, I am writing before the work is entirely finished.


I do not know exactly when all this began. It was an idea for some time. It became a design when I drafted a picture of the idea. After collecting the materials, almost everything came from one pile of junk or another on the property, I made it a reality. “What is it?”, you ask. It is a market cart.

I drew this when I was ready
 to begin turning an idea into a reality.

The idea here was to build a mobile, though not road-worthy, cart with a flat deck and shading roof. In addition, it has to withstand the heavy winds here. My intention is to use it as a place to sell extra produce, give information about obtaining rabbit meat and chicken eggs and generally draw attention.


I will leave it, for the most part, unattended. Prices will be clearly marked on all produce. There will be a “cash hole” in which to put the money. It is “on your honor”. There may not always be produce available, but I will have pricing and contact information for rabbit products, chicken eggs and whatever else I happen to come up with as time goes along and for health reasons cannot sell off the cart. If you want something that is available but not kept on the cart, simply call the phone number, and if I am on the property and can fill your order, I will fill your order right away. If I am off the property, I will set up a time for pick-up.


All that having been said, let us get on with the fun.

I began with this.

Collecting the parts took time. I began by dismantling an old trailer I found while reclaiming the lawn between the big barn and the machine shed. Somewhere in the neighborhood of the apples trees I pruned in an earlier post. The trailer was a mash of “fixes” and “reinforcements”. Happily, none of these were very permanent arrangements. The welds were superficial and easily popped with a chisel or cut with an angle grinder.

Plywood deck gone.
The chain hoist made this much easier
 than it could have been

It was, for the most part, an old car or truck rear end with a deck welded on. I removed the rear end hoping to use the axle shafts. They were too small for the bore of the wheels I intended to use. What I wanted most off the trailer were the side rails where the leaf springs mounted and whatever salvageable steel I could use for the market cart.

Useful parts

After wandering around the property with a micrometer set to the size of axle I needed, I finally found an axle with bearings and brackets attached to the rusting hulk of an erstwhile who-knows-what in the machine shed. After stripping off a couple of pulleys and spacer bearings, I was left with an axle which perfectly fit the wheels. The whole thing was a nice bit of luck.

Pretty nice to have a couple of these lying around

The wheels had been laying against the garage in a lilac and flower bed. They are 40” tall and even heavier than they appear. I drilled and tapped a hole on the inboard side of each hub. With a wheel on each end of the axle, I tightened bolts into these holes. Though it will be hard to turn, it will go straight very well. Which is fine. The wheels will stay on. My plan does not require it to be roadworthy, just mobile.

Wheels and axle together

I then cut four, 3/16” x 3” steel plates and two sections of 3” diameter tubing. The tube came from the drive-shaft which had been part of the trailer.  I cut it with an angle grinder at the base of the housing and slid it off from around the shaft. Then using the chop saw, I cleaned up the edge and cut the sections. The plates were cut from a 48” piece of plate I bought new. I drilled alignment/clearance holes on the centers of each plate. To the top plates, I added two sets of two holes 2” apart. These holes will hold the D-bolts which connect the leaf springs and side-rails. To the bottom plate, I added two ½” holes to bolt the whole thing to the bearing brackets and axle.

Riser parts ready to be welded.

Riser bolted to bearing.
The bolt securing the wheel
can be seen in the background.

 After welding the plates to the tubes, I fixed the riser to the bearing bracket with ½” bolts, nuts and lock washers. Moving to the top of the riser, I attached the leaf springs and side-rails. I had cut the side-rails from the rest of the trailer frame with an angle grinder armed with a cutoff wheel. Here, I was not concerned with the different lengths of the side-rails or the fact that they had a certain bow to them which made them ride higher in the middle and lower at the ends. This will work out just fine as you shall see.

Leaf springs and side-rails

Leaf spring and side-rail D-bolted to the riser.

Both springs and side-rails in place.

Next, I cut the steel runners that I had removed from the trailer and a couple sections of bed frames I found at the County Landfill, into sections. The idea is to make two 18” sleeves in which to slide pressure treated four-by-fours. These will eventually hold the roof posts. They also provide a lot of lateral strength between the side-rails when welded in place. I also added two diagonal braces between the post sleeves and another between the risers. These are just re-bar cut to the needed length and welded in place.

Materials ready to be welded
into a post sleeve.

Welded and ready for installation.

Forward post sleeve welded to side-rails.

Both post sleeves installed.
Looking from what will be the back

Because I am making this an “on your honor” thing, I need a “cash hole”. For this I used the battery tray from an old Jeep Cherokee most of the parts of which I found variously located in the yard. Luck had it that the ammo box fit wonderfully in the battery tray. And fortuitously, I had a hinge just longer than the ammo box is tall. This I welded to the tray. To the ammo box lid I welded a tab with a hole drilled  through it. The top screw hole on the hinge and the hole in the tab align to accommodate a lock. I have yet to cut a hole in the box lid for the money to enter and finish it. Other things had to be done first.

Jeep Cherokee battery tray
with hinge and ammo box.

Tray welded to the front
of the front post sleeve.

The cash box

As you can see, the chassis of my market cart is a rusty old mess without a square corner or a true angle. I can easily fix that. If all else fails cover it up by aiming for averages. Having noticed that the side-rails were bowed, I aimed toward their ends to find level. I welded a rectangle 6’ x 41” out of square stock. Just inside were the post sleeves attach, I added cross members of the same square stock, which, yes, I found in the yard. These two cross members rested atop the chassis and level with each other. The rectangle being wider than the chassis, it hung over nullifying the bow of the side-rails. 

My rusty pile of mess with deck frame,
 a.k.a. "the rectangle" in place.
Yes, it is tough to tell what is going on.

The rectangle, having both leveled the chassis and provided a solid surface to screw wood to, holds the deck. The deck is made of still more of those boards I used to make the chicken nest boxes in Chicken Shak. Thanks again friend. The surface measures 8’ x 48 ½”. I clamped each board to the frame and drilled through wood and frame together. 60, 10 x 1 ¼” sheet metal screws hold them fast.

This should help clear it up for you.
For the first time, it looks like something.

With the deck on, it is really beginning to look like something. Now for the roof. I want the cart to stand 8’ tall. Toward that end, I need two 6’ posts. One for each end. To mount the roof beams to the post I cut four 3/16” x 2” pieces of plate steel to 9 ½” . One for the inboard and one for the outboard side of each post. In these plates I drilled a series of ½” holes. The center hole holds a 9” lag bolt. The four other holes have ½” x 4 ½” bolts with nuts and lock washers. The beams are cut at a 20 degree angle on each end. This gives me the rise of 1’ 6” to a run of 4’. The lowest part of the roof is 6’ 6”. It gives me few inches clearance and should be good for most people.

The five pieces that will make up one roof post.

The holes are drilled and outboard
plate and hardware are ready.

Detail of tops of roof posts.
The close one is the outboard side.
The far is the inboard side.

Roof posts in post sleeves
and cross post in place.

I slid the posts into the sleeves and connected the two posts with another four-by-four. This is held in place by the aforementioned 9” lag bolts. The slats are 1” x 3” x 8’ furring strips. These I did purchase new. I fixed them with 10 x 1 ¼” all-purpose screws at a distance of 1 7/8”. This is made very easy by using two spacers after getting the first board in place. Place the spacers between the last mounted board and the next to be mounted, check the ends are even and screw it down. Repeat until done.

If you look closely, you can see the roof slat spacers between the bottom two slats on the near side. They await my getting two more furring strips. Rookie mistake.

You see how much better it looks from the finished side.
 There is still work to be done;
however, this is a blog post not a Russian novel.

There will be updates on this project. For the moment, this will have to do.


Thank you for stopping. Come again soon.