Rag-and-bone man, Streatham, London, 1985

Among

horse-drawn vehicle A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have m ...

s, a trolley was a goods vehicle with a platform body with four small wheels of equal size, mounted underneath it, the front two on a turntable undercarriage. The wheels were rather larger and the deck proportionately higher than those of a

lorry A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame constructio ...

. A large trolley is likely to have had a headboard with the driver's seat on it, as on a lorry but a smaller trolley may have had a box at the front of the deck or the driver seated on a corner of the deck and his feet on a shaft. With a very small trolley, the 'driver' may even have led the horse as a pedestrian. They were normally drawn by a single

pony A pony is a type of small horse ('' Equus ferus caballus''). Depending on the context, a pony may be a horse that is under an approximate or exact height at the withers, or a small horse with a specific conformation and temperament. Compared ...

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million yea ...

but a large trolley would have a pair. It was primarily an urban vehicle so that, on the paved roads, the small wheels were not a handicap. In any case, the axles would normally be sprung. It was typically used by market fruiterers and

greengrocer A greengrocer is a person who owns or operates a shop selling primarily fruit and vegetables. The term may also be used to refer to a shop selling primarily produce. It is used predominantly in the United Kingdom and Australia. In the Uni ...

s but commonly also by

coal merchant Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

s. These would have a headboard to stabilize the front row of sacks which then held up the next and so on. The deck was at a good height for taking the bags onto the coalman's back and there was no protruding rear wheel to obstruct his access to them. Many ended up with rag and bone merchants who were likely to add side and tail boards to keep their purchases aboard. The largest and sturdiest trolleys were those used with lift vans. As in many fields, as time went by, people used the word without understanding its detailed meaning so that it became applied less precisely and other configurations were given the name and some trolleys were known by other names. For example, the electric

milk float A milk float is a vehicle specifically designed for the delivery of fresh milk. Today, milk floats are usually battery electric vehicles (BEV), but they were formerly horse-drawn floats. They were once common in many European countries, ...

is more a trolley than a float, as is the brewer's 'dray' seen at horse shows.

References

*Ingram, A. ''Horse-Drawn Vehicles Since 1760'' (1977) *''Oxford English Dictionary'' (1971 & 1987) {{ISBN, 0-19-861212-5 Wagons

See also

References