The Long Walk to the Water That Sold Me on a Kayak Cart

The launch I use on Claytor Lake has a gravel parking lot, and the water sits a couple hundred yards downhill from it. Part gravel, part grass, ending at a concrete ramp. For three years I walked that stretch dragging a 10 foot sit-on-top kayak by its bow handle, and for three years I told myself it was fine. It was not fine.

It was fine right up until it wasn't. The boat weighs about 50 pounds. By the time I reached the ramp my lower back had that hot, tight feeling and my right shoulder was pulled forward. I am 5 foot 5 and 58 years old. I am not fragile, but I am also not built to haul 50 pounds of plastic down loose rock twice in one afternoon, once in each direction, with a paddle and a bag of gear in the other hand.

Some mornings I waited for my friend Sheila so she could take the other end. That worked. It also meant I launched when Sheila was free instead of when I felt like it. In April 2026 I bought the Bonnlo kayak cart on Amazon with my own money, and I have rolled that boat down on it every trip since. It was the last of five things I bought for this kayak, and it is the one that changed the most about a paddling day.

The first trip was clumsy. I set the kayak on the cart in the parking lot, ran a cam strap I already had in the truck over the deck, and walked to the ramp with one hand on the bow. No dragging. No waiting on anybody. At the concrete I took the strap off, slid the boat in, and folded the cart up while the kayak floated beside me. Twenty seconds of folding, maybe.

By the third trip I had the order down. Vest on in the parking lot, cart out of the truck bed, kayak up on it, strap, walk. What used to be the part of the morning I dreaded is now just steps I do without thinking about them.

The cart did not make me a better paddler. It deleted the ten worst minutes of every trip.

Here is what the Bonnlo cart actually is, in plain terms. A folding aluminum frame, about 5 pounds, rated to 200 pounds. Two solid PU tires, 10 inches across and 3 inches wide, airless, so there is no tube to go soft in a cold garage over the winter. Two ratchet straps come in the box. It folds down flat enough to ride behind the truck seat, which is where mine lives between trips.

The airless tires are the part I did not appreciate until I had used it a while. I have had a wheelbarrow tire go soft on me in July, and I did not want a second thing in my life that needed air. These are solid. Over the grass section they roll smooth. Over the gravel they jolt, and I feel it in my wrists if I walk too fast. Slowing down fixes it. That is the honest tradeoff, and it is the only one I have found.

The other thing to know is balance. The kayak has to sit centered on the frame. My first couple of trips I set it too far forward and it wanted to nose down and tip on me. Once I started putting the middle of the boat over the axle it tracked straight and I stopped fighting it. It is not complicated, but it is not automatic either, and I would rather tell you that than have you find out on a ramp with people watching.

Both of those are small complaints next to what it replaced. It hangs on a hook in the garage beside the kayak, and it gets rinsed with the hose after every lake trip along with everything else. Seven months in, nothing has loosened up and I have not once gone back to dragging the boat by the handle.

Sheila still carries her own boat by hand. She is 60 and stubborn and she has watched me roll past her twice now. That is her call. What I would say is that the cart did not make me faster, or stronger, or any more of a paddler than I was in 2023. It took the worst ten minutes of the morning off my back, and I get to spend those ten minutes on the water instead.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If we were sitting at my kitchen table and you asked me whether to buy one, I would ask you a question first: how far is your truck from the water? If you can back right up to the ramp, save your money and put it toward a better seat, because that is where my back actually hurt while I was paddling. If you are walking a couple hundred yards over gravel and grass like I am, and you are doing it alone, this is the simplest thing you can do for yourself short of finding a second person. I would tell you to set the boat centered the first time and not learn it the way I did. I would tell you the gravel is going to jolt and that is normal. And I would tell you that if your back or your shoulder already hurts in a way that worries you, talk to a doctor before you buy any equipment at all, because a cart moves the load, it does not fix a body.