Imagine this: You’re walking down the sidewalk in the twilight of the major metropolis nearest you. The air smells of exhaust and exhaustion, a tired old city that would love to sleep but just can’t find the time. As you pass a dark alley, a voice calls out from the dusty recess.

“Hey, buddy,” the voice says. “C’mere.”

Intrigued and a bit lacking in street sense, you draw closer. The voice belongs to a crusty, slimy looking fellow in a filthy trench coat and foul fedora. The man clears his throat and spits onto the sidewalk before looking at you out of the corner of his eye. With one hand, he pulls open his trench coat and makes his pitch.

“You wanna buy some wheels and casters?”

This is not a scenario you’re likely to encounter, unless you live near a very strange metropolis indeed, or happen to work for Wheel and Caster. They’re not the sexiest of products, truth be told, but it’s my task to craft some informative missives on the subject and fire them in the cyberspace, hopefully aimed in your general direction.

This chair caster is plated with gold. Awesome.

Full disclosure: I work for Wheel and Caster (and the above tale may or may not have been a lucid dream I once had). I’m in charge of trying to drive up our online sales and increase general world awareness to the existence of our site.

But in addition to being a marketing type, I’m also a guy who goes home at night and sits down in a chair and doesn’t want to think about the 5 wheels that allow it to roll across the floor. Some products just don’t deserve your attention – they ought to be easy to find, easy to use, and most of all, they ought to just work and not bother you.

So I’m not going to try and delude anyone reading this into thinking that I believe casters are the second coming of the Lord and wheels are His Mighty Angelic Army. They’re chunks of metal and plastic that serve a very simple function; my goal here is to help you find what you need, when you need it, as painlessly as possible. I’ll probably try to entertain you a bit on the side, because if I can’t write jokes on occasion sitting behind this desk I will eventually go outside of my mind.

Caster on your chair break? Dumb. It shouldn’t do that. I can ship you a new one. Lawnmower wheel wobbling? Don’t let it stay that way, eventually a small neighbor dog is likely to be killed as a direct result. I’ve got new ones in stock. Wheelbarrow tire deflating like an over-the-hill birthday balloon? Won’t move much horse pucky that way. I’ve got solid pneumatic tires that’ll keep that from happening.

Don’t know what you need? It’s a bit mind-boggling how much variety there is in such a simple product. Wheel types, stem lengths, brakes, materials, capacities – yikes. You just need something that works – I’ll do my best to answer any questions and give you links that point straight to what you need. You can also check out the neat Casters 101 the boys in the lab cooked up.

That’s all the words I have for you at the moment. I’m off to scour the interwebs for more interesting things to say about casters. Stay tuned, gentle readers.

Wheel and Caster is a locally owned business located in Spokane, Washington. We ship all over the country and strive to provide quick, helpful service. Wheel and Caster is a division of Norlift, Inc, which is also a pretty cool place. You can read more about it at the Norlift blog.