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Movie Scenes Involving Utility Carts: Fake Or Real?

6 June 2017

Leonard Campbell

Utility carts, with their rolling casters, are very useful things indeed. They can hold microwaves and dozens of school lunches. They can run into a wall and take a beating...or can they? Some of the ideas you have regarding bulk bins, utility carts, and heavy duty storage bins may have more to do with what you have seen in the movies or TV rather than actual facts. Here are some truths about these industrial products:

Utility Carts and Bulk Bins Cannot Hold a Human's Weight

Do not get any ideas about riding a utility cart or pushing an injured friend around in a bulk bin. While these industrial products can hold some weight, they are not designed for human weight, which is distributed differently and moves too much for carts and bins. More often than not, a caster will pop out, bust out from underneath, and or the whole rolling product will tip over on its side and throw the human off. Any scene you have ever seen of a person using these products for transportation is fake.

A Utility Cart Cannot Prevent Something Heavy from Falling

Using a utility cart to wedge beneath or between crushingly heavy objects will not work either. These carts may be made of either metal alloys or heavy duty plastic, but they still cannot take several hundred or several thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. That is not what they were designed to do. At best, you may be able to buy yourself one to two seconds more, and that is all. There is no way they can stop a falling steel girder or an electronic door from crushing you.

They Are Not Fireproof

Another misconception, thanks to TV, is that utility carts and bulk bins are fireproof. They are not. It may take longer to burn these industrial products, but they can and do melt. If they are metal carts, they may not melt, but they could fall apart. If the heat from the fire is hot enough, it could melt metal carts and bins, but it would take an explosion to create the kind of fire needed to melt the metal carts and bins. Truly fireproof items do not crumble or melt.

You Cannot Escape from Prison in Either of These Products

Prisoners are clever enough to try to escape in all kinds of carts and bins. However, a utility cart and/or a bulk bin/heavy duty storage bin is not going to work. Someone would notice the weight or the odd shape of materials on these objects and then the prisoner would be busted. It works for sitcoms and comedic movies because you know it is false, but it would never work in real life.

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