OK, so what’s a beerwagon???

For those of you who go to Festivals, and multi-day outdoor gig’s like Cropredy, or Glastonbury, you always have a problem - beer is heavy, and doesn’t taste good when it’s warm.  Your beer may start off cold, but by the time you’ve hauled it up to the field from the campsite, it’s been shaken up, and by the time it’s safe to open, it’s warmed up.

The solution is simple - the mark one system was an old carry cot pram, with car batteries (note, this is something I don’t recommend - car batteries leak when bounced over a field, always use SLA’s as all my later models have) and a small 12V fridge.  However, as I’ve mentioned beer is heavy - especially when there are several of you, so the mark 2 version had an auxiliary drive wheel, this prove successful when the weather was good, unfortunately when was the last time you went to a gig and it stayed dry all weekend? Also, when the weather was bad the carry cot pram suffered due to the narrowness of the wheels and exposed axles which sunk into the mud, then jammed up with the straw that the organisers put down to soak up the mud.  The mark 3 version used a 4’ x 2’ garden truck with nice wide 4 inch tyres to stop it sinking into the mud.  Then finally 2 x 36V drive motors, developing up to about 3 horsepower, replacing 2 of the wheels on the garden truck, independent speed controllers for each motor, giving a better power distribution, and power steering, a much larger fridge, lighting rig, flagpole holder, rubbish bag holder and just about anything else you may need including space for tarps, rugs, chairs and of course a mounted bottle opener.  In general I find this gives enough space that you can bring up 150+ cans of beer, several bottles of spirits and mixers for them.  The total loading by the time 10 of us have gone up the field is in excess of 500lbs, but this can all be hauled up a steep gradient, using just two fingers, by my brother-in-law, who is slightly shorter than the average garden gnome.