Attribute Schema Library
Attribute schemaindustrial MRO

Material Handling Carts Attributes

Material handling carts covers platform trucks, shelf and utility carts, stock and service carts, panel trucks, and instrument carts: non-powered caster-mounted decks rated roughly 300 lb to 4,000 lb. Buyers are plant maintenance, DC supervisors, lab and hospital facilities, and food plants. Most volume is replacement and expansion, bought off a filter rail against a capacity number and a deck size.

The supply base is dozens of small welded-steel fabricators, and most publish a catalog matrix rather than a per-SKU datasheet: one table where a row is a model number and the spec sits in the column header. PST-2436-95 encodes a 24 x 36 in deck and a wheel code. Ingesting that table gives you a row, not a record.

Then variants multiply. One frame crossed with deck size, wheel diameter, tread compound, and handle style yields hundreds of MPNs, and the wheel choice silently moves deck height, overall height, tare weight, and sometimes rated capacity. Capacity itself arrives as 2000#, 2,000 lbs., and 907 kg from three suppliers in the same week.

Core

Every SKU needs these. Without them the record is not a product, it is a row.

Cart Type
enum
Platform Truck

First facet on every distributor rail. Platform trucks, shelf carts and panel trucks are different buying decisions carrying different specs.

Load Capacity
number · lb
2000

The number buyers filter on first, and the one that gets the cart rejected in safety review if it comes up short.

Deck Size (L x W)
text
30 in x 60 in

Decides whether the load fits and whether the cart fits the aisle. Buyers filter deck length and deck width independently.

Deck Material
enum
12 ga Steel

Drives environment fit: steel for shop floors, aluminum for wet or chemical areas, stainless for wash-down, hardwood for finished goods.

Deck Height
number · in
9.75

Sets transfer height to a bench or conveyor, and it moves with wheel diameter on the same frame.

Overall Height
number · in
40

Clearance check for doorways, box truck rollups and mezzanine lifts. Handle-up height, not deck height.

Caster Configuration
enum
2 Rigid / 2 Swivel

Two rigid plus two swivel tracks straight down an aisle; four swivel turns in place. Buyers pick by aisle width, not preference.

Wheel Diameter
number · in
8

Bigger wheels cross floor seams and dock plates with less push force. Also sets deck height on a given frame.

Wheel Tread Material
enum
Mold-On Rubber

Floor protection, noise and capacity trade off here. Polyurethane carries load; mold-on rubber runs quieter and is kinder to epoxy.

Handle Type
enum
Removable Tubular Steel

Removable and folding handles matter for truck loading and storage density. Fixed ergonomic handles are a separate SKU family.

Manufacturer Part Number
identifier
PST-2436-95

The key buyers reorder against and the join key back to the manufacturer catalog matrix. Encodes deck and wheel codes on many lines.

GTIN / UPC
identifier
00841276108934

Required by Amazon Business and GDSN. A missing GTIN blocks the listing no matter how good the spec data is.

Differentiating

What buyers actually compare on. This is where catalogs win or lose the filter.

Number of Shelves
number
2

Shelf and utility carts are bought by tier count. Two-shelf versus three-shelf changes clearance and is a hard filter.

Brake Type
enum
Total-Lock Foot Brake

Anything used on a dock, an incline, or as a work surface needs one. Total-lock stops swivel and roll; a wheel brake only stops roll.

Deck Edge Style
enum
1.5 in Retaining Lip

A flush deck lets cartons slide off; a retaining lip holds them. Functional split that platform truck buyers filter on.

Product Weight (Tare)
number · lb
156

Sets freight class and tells the buyer what one person moves empty. Also needed to size casters against total load.

Compliance & identifiers

Standards, regulatory data, and the identifiers channels reject you for missing.

NSF/ANSI 2 Certified
boolean
true

Gate for food processing and foodservice buyers. An uncertified cart gets pulled in a health inspection.

Country of Origin
identifier
United States

TAA designation decides whether the SKU can sit on GSA Advantage. Also a customs and Buy American Act field.

The fields that aren't in the schema at all

What most material handling carts catalogs are missing.

The table above is the schema most catalogs already have. These are the attributes that usually aren't in it — each one surfaced by a signal from the live market rather than by an audit of what's already there. This is what Anglera's Schema Foundry does on a real catalog, in this category.

Supplier signal
+ Ergonomic Push/Pull Force (lbf)

Suppliers market 'ergonomic' handles and plant ergonomics teams ask for initial and sustained push force in lbf. Catalogs carry the marketing word in the title and no force field to filter on.

A plant with a push/pull limit in its ergonomics program cannot qualify the cart from the PDP and calls the manufacturer or a competitor for the number.

Search signal
+ Wheel Tread Operating Temperature Range

Tread compounds diverge: TPR runs roughly -40 to 180 F, polyurethane tops out near 180 F. Buyers search 'freezer cart' and get title keyword hits, not a temperature filter.

Polyurethane treads harden and chunk in a -10 F freezer. The cart ships, fails within weeks, and comes back as a warranty claim rather than a clean return.

Supplier signal
+ Load Rating per Caster (lb)

Caster suppliers publish per-wheel ratings established by ANSI ICWM endurance testing. Cart PDPs stop at the deck number, so the rating behind the capacity is nowhere on the page.

Buyers cannot size replacement casters or verify capacity on uneven floors, where practice assumes three of four wheels carry the load. The wear-part sale leaves.

Search signal
+ ESD Surface Resistance (ohms)

Electronics MRO buyers need a documented dissipative surface, 1x10^6 to 1x10^9 ohms per ANSI/ESD S20.20. Catalogs put 'ESD safe' in the title with no resistance value or test method.

The cart cannot be entered into an EPA audit without a documented resistance range and test method. The RFQ goes to whoever publishes the number.

Review signal
+ Replacement Caster Part Number

Carts outlive their casters, and the caster is the first thing to fail. PDPs list wheel diameter and tread but not the caster MPN or the top-plate bolt pattern.

The service part gets bought from a caster specialist instead. The distributor sells the cart once and never sells the wear part it was going to need.

How Schema Foundry finds these

Messy in, governed out.

The same value, spelled every way industrial MRO suppliers spell it. A filter only works once they agree.

Wheel Tread Material
PolyP/UUrethanePolyurethane on Cast IronPU
Polyurethane

Poly and rubber behave differently on epoxy floors and at temperature. Collapsing them to 'poly' breaks the floor-protection filter.

Caster Configuration
2R/2S2 rigid 2 swivel(2) Rigid (2) Swivel2-Swivel, 2-Rigid2 fixed / 2 swivel
2 Rigid / 2 Swivel

Tracking behavior is a real buying decision. Free-text arrangements are unfilterable, and 'fixed' and 'rigid' mean the same thing.

Load Capacity
2000#2,000 lbs.2000 lb cap907 kg2000 LBS
2000 lb

Unit and delimiter drift breaks numeric range filters. The pound sign and metric values arrive in the same feed week.

Deck Edge Style
FlushFlush Edges1-1/2" Lip1.5 in retaining lipLipped DeckRaised Lip
Retaining Lip, 1.5 in

Flush decks let cartons slide off; lipped decks hold them. Six spellings collapse to two functional choices buyers filter on.

What buyers ask

Every one of these should be answerable from the attributes above. If it isn't, that's a gap.

  • Will it fit through a 36 inch door and roll under our 42 inch conveyor?
  • What does it actually hold if two wheels are sitting on a floor seam?
  • Will these wheels mark up our epoxy floor?
  • Can I pull the handle off to load it into a box truck?
  • Does it lock so it won't roll away on the dock incline?
  • Is this NSF rated? It's going into a food plant.
  • Is it made in the USA? It has to go on our GSA order.
  • How much does the empty cart weigh for freight?

What channels require

The same SKU, different mandatory fields per destination.

Distributor's own faceted catalog
Cart TypeLoad CapacityDeck Size (L x W)Deck MaterialWheel DiameterCaster Configuration
Amazon Business
GTIN / UPCBrand + Manufacturer Part NumberProduct Weight (Tare)Item DimensionsProp 65 WarningCountry of Origin
GSA Advantage
Manufacturer Part NumberCountry of Origin (TAA designated)UNSPSC CodeProduct Weight (Tare)
GDSN / 1WorldSync
GTIN-14GPC Brick CodeGross WeightPackage DimensionsCountry of Origin

Material Handling Carts data, in practice

Why do two carts with the same deck size list different capacities?

Capacity is set by the weakest link in the stack, not by deck area: deck gauge, frame welds, or the casters. A 12 ga steel deck on a reinforced frame with 8 in mold-on rubber casters rates differently than the same footprint in 16 ga with 5 in poly. Caster ratings under ANSI ICWM are established by endurance testing (static load at 4x rating for one minute, a dynamic roll test, and an impact test), not by calculation, so you cannot infer cart capacity by multiplying four caster ratings. Load is never shared evenly. Common practice is to size per-caster load as total load divided by three, assuming one wheel is off the ground on an uneven floor.

Should the wheel option be a variant or a dropdown on one record?

A variant. Changing from a 5 in to an 8 in caster on the same frame moves deck height, overall height and tare weight, and it can move rated capacity and the tread's temperature range. If those live on one record behind a wheel picker, every derived dimension on the page is wrong for at least one selection, and the facets index against whichever value happened to be the default. Model each wheel code as its own SKU with the dimensions recalculated, and carry the shared frame as a parent so the family still merchandises together.

What is the minimum schema to turn on faceted search for this category?

Cart Type, Load Capacity, Deck Size, Deck Material, Wheel Diameter, Wheel Tread Material, Caster Configuration, and Overall Height. Those eight answer the way buyers actually narrow: what kind of cart, will it hold the load, will the load fit, will it survive the floor, will it fit through the door. Everything else, including brake type, shelf count and deck edge, is second-pass refinement that only matters once the result set is under a few dozen.

Where do the specs actually live if the supplier does not send a feed?

In the catalog matrix PDF, the model-number key, and the drawing. Manufacturers in this category typically publish a page per product family: a dimension table with model numbers down the left, a legend that decodes the suffix (wheel code, handle code, deck code), and a dimensioned side view. Deck height and handle height are on the drawing, and overall height is often only on the drawing. Capacity is usually in the table. Per-caster rating is usually on a separate caster page toward the back of the same PDF, keyed by the wheel code in the suffix.

More industrial MRO schemas

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