Polymule is a camping and overland brand headquartered in Park City, Utah. It was founded in 2015.
In March 2025, 70 volunteers in El Cariso, California, moved more than 5 tons of dirt out of a buried creek bed in one day, in a place where heavy equipment was not allowed. They hauled it in 40 donated Polymule carts. The company behind them, now run from Park City, builds an oversized handcart for ground a wheelbarrow will not cross.
The idea came out of Idaho. The company says that in 2015 its founders were living in a remote cabin in the Idaho mountains and could not find a cart that would haul camping gear and also survive years of firewood and rocks. Founder Dennis Draleau, then of Grangeville, Idaho, gave up on garden carts and wheelbarrows and looked back to the pioneer handcart instead.
His prototype took more than 980 hours on a 3D printer. A Kickstarter campaign followed in 2017, offering early-bird carts for $319 with 26-inch wheels and 20 inches of ground clearance, New Atlas reported. The production version did not turn up until the Outdoor Retailer summer show in 2023, six years later, which is about how long most of us take to finish one garage project.
By then The Salt Lake Tribune found the company headquartered in Bluffdale and taking preorders at about $675. Its pitchman told the paper the polymer basin had held up in minus-40-degree temperatures. The current model, the Warrior, sells for $1,200.
The design runs on leverage. The handle sits out front and the load balances over the wheels, so you pull standing upright instead of hoisting a wheelbarrow. An Uphill Assist keeps the wheels from rolling backward on a slope, and the company says the wheels and handle come off without tools in under three minutes. The never-flat tires got a field test in 2025, when the team picked up trash and broken glass along Highway 80 near Park City.
The company has changed hands along the way, and the Deseret News reported in 2025 that new owners were running it. Its news page now calls Park City home. The warranty is one year, and it does not cover carts used in a rental operation.
A few weeks before El Cariso, the team tried to help after the Los Angeles wildfires and could not get past the fire lines. So they set up at Stoner Park and handed out 31 Warriors to people who needed to haul debris and salvage what they could.
Team Rubicon has since used Polymule carts on fire cleanup in Altadena and on Mount Baldy, according to the company.
