The Forces Required to Pull Loads up Stairs with Different Handtrucks

Abstract

The present study evaluated seven different handtrucks on the forces (average and peak) required to pull different loads up a flight of stairs. Both human subjects and a constant-velocity winch were used to pull the loads during the trials. The results showed that there were significant differences between the handtrucks in terms of the average and average-peak forces required to pull the loads. Differences in average force could be attributed to certain handtruck characteristics (e.g., wheel diameter), but no such discriminations could be made for average-peak force. The results also demonstrated that average and average-peak forces were negatively correlated, indicating that low forces of one kind (either average or average-peak) were generally, but not always, associated with high forces in the other. In general, none of the handtrucks evaluated here produced both low average and average-peak forces when pulling loads up stairs.