Strawberry Cart Harvest Helper

Working in agriculture is not an easy task, especially picking strawberries. Strawberry workers endure long work shifts Monday-Saturday, sometimes even Sundays when it's strawberry season. These workers are paid hourly, by the number of boxes they’re able to make or a combination of both. Each strawberry box contains 8 baskets which go for about five dollars at your local supermarket. However, workers are only paid about $1.25 for each box they make. Making this one of the most hard working jobs. Although it might seem like picking strawberries is a non skilled job, it takes endurance, mental strain, sharpness and intelligence in order to make you day’s work. This means that making less than 50 boxes in 9 hours gets you no more than 75 dollars.

A piece of equipment that makes strawberry workers job easier is the small cart they use to carry their strawberry boxes. The cart follows the worker as he/she moves along the row and is inessential towards earning more money. The cart’s main function is to hold two boxes while the person fills up the boxes up along a row that is an 1/8th of a mile After filling both boxes, the workers then take the boxes to an inspector outside of the rows for inspection. Finally, if passed, the boxes are passed to the delivering truck and taken to a local cooler.

Another issue that workers face is the requirement of bending their backs to pick the strawberries. Working in these conditions can severely strain and injure the back even causing disabilities in some cases. On average a strawberry worker gets injured two times a year.

There is currently no solution where workers aren’t forced to bend down. To counteract this and reduce the number of injured workers I’ve designed a new cart to assist workers and aid them in optimizing their earning at the same time. The new cart design allows for workers to sit and pick strawberries simultaneously. A seat feature is added to the frame of the cart to discard the need for workers to bend down, thus, minimizing the risk of injuries. By replacing the back stand of the cart with a set of wheels, the cart can support up to 200 lbs. In turn the person will use their legs to move the cart forward.

Another new feature is the cart’s ability to hold up to three boxes at a time. Using a sheet metal in the middle of the cart, as seen in figure 5, the boxes are constrained from moving in the horizontal direction. The box stoppers are also tall enough to allow room for three boxes instead of two. The second stopper is design to be lower than the front since the user will have to reach over it to place strawberries into their boxes. Compare to the old design where the frame was the only critical element, the new design has several critical components. The main component for the new cart is the welded frame. It is the back bone to the whole structure. The rectangular pipes should be welded correctly to ensure a strong framework for the rest of the assembly.

#typography #lessons #expert