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There are a lot of things that I’d never thought I’d need, until I find myself in a situation of needing it. With wheel dollies, I’ve seen them used at shops, but I never throught I’d need them. I can see how some shops need to move cars around that maybe aren’t running– I get that. But if your car is running, just drive your car to wherever you need it to be, right? Well, I found myself in a situation where even with the best driving in tight spaces, you simply just can’t get the car in the position that you want it in.
We just went through a home remodel, which left a smaller, L-shaped driveway. Because of this, I am left with a pretty tight space where it can fit two cars if they are parked perpendicular to each other. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t get my car parked to get the cars perpendicular to each other, which would give me the most room to work. Here’s where having a set of wheel dollies comes in handy.
Wheel dollies work by jacking up the tires of your car onto these roller bars, which roll around on caster wheels. This allows you to push your car around however you please.
There are a number of different brands of wheel dollies out there, but it seems that the Vevor brand wheel dollies were the lowest cost at about $100 each. I picked up four of them, so I spent a little over $400 on the set. Vevor also sells a storage rack, which might be useful if you want them organized.
VEVOR Wheel Dolly, 1 Piece Wheel Dolly, 1500 Lbs
VEVOR Car Dolly Storage Rack
The first thing I noticed about them when I got them in the mail was how big and how heavy they were. I guess it’s a good thing if they are so heavy and stout if they are meant to support entire vehicle.
The way these wheel dollies work is you position them so they are around the wheel/tire. Press the switch lever into the correct position, and jack up the wheel with the lever arm. It will jack up the wheel and lift the tire off the ground.
After doing this to all four wheels, you are free to move the car around. Keep in mind that it’s not going to be that easy to push the car around as you might think. You still have the full weight of the car bearing down on these wheel dollies, so you need to push with full strength to move the car. You may also need to push from different parts of the car to get it into the exact position you want it.
It also is extremely tough to get the car to start moving, especially if the wheels are not already pointed in the direction that you’re moving. Once the car starts moving and the casters start pointing in the direction that you’re pushing, then the car becomes easier to move into that same direction. However, if you change directions (which means the wheels will also need to change direction), then it is difficult to push again until the casters line up with the direction of travel. Sometimes it helps to manually use your hand to rotate the casters to line up in the direction of travel before you start pushing.
The wheel dollies work really well for me since it allows me to move my car into this exact spot. This gives me more room in the driveway to pull up another car. Without these wheel dollies, there’s no way I’d be able to get my car to line up like this.
When you need to drop the car back down, you just need to flip the switch lever on the wheel dolly and pump the lever arm which will now lower the wheel down to the ground. You can then remove the wheel dolly and store it out of the way.
I was really surprised how well these wheel dollies worked for me. It does cost about $400 to get four of them, but if you just have to move your cars around in tight spaces, there’s just no other way. Because they have limited use for cases like this and also take up so much room during storage, I’d expect you to be able to find them cheaper second-hand from sellers who are offloading theirs.
