Back trouble is a serious problem in the United States. It causes unhappiness and costs money in medical payments and missed work. You may think that back injuries are caused only by the trauma of an accident, but that is not always true. Back pain often builds up over time when little stresses build up. The most obvious source of these little stresses is the carrying of heavy objects every day. Often times, grown-ups tote heavy laptops, brief cases and shopping bags. Many children carry book bags back and forth to school. There is one obvious fix for this problem. This solution came into being thousands of years ago: the wheel. We need to put our heavy loads on wheels. Many varieties of hand carts are available to ease the load on your shoulders. A collapsible hand cart makes it easy to get your heavy loads where it needs to go.

One of the heaviest load that we have to carry is the suitcase. Suitcases were given wheels between twenty and thirty years ago. The first question is, "Why did it take so long for someone to put wheels on luggage?" Remember the times before wheels. A full suitcase can be very heavy, and carrying this weight can cause a hard pull on the bones and muscles of the shoulders and upper back. The best solution for handling luggage in a safe manner was to pay a porter or, later, a skycap to put the luggage on a push cart along with the luggage of other people to get it where it needed to go. These payments added to the cost of travel.

The next burden to be given wheels is the laptop. For years after laptops became a necessary need of the business person, they were carried on the shoulder. A weighty bag puts stress on the shoulder and the upper back muscles. While laptops are getting smaller and lighter, wheels on the computer bag remove the heft from the shoulder on the ground to be pulled behind. These new wheeled computer bags are large enough to contain everything that the business person might need during a busy day, such as binders, notepads, the phone, and other needed office supplies, or even a change of underwear.

Thirty or more years ago, young students began to stow their schoolbooks in backpacks. But these backpacks hold things other than books such as notebooks, binders, pens and pencils, a calculator, keys and, of course, lunch. Textbooks weigh a lot, and school kids are small. The recommended method of carrying a backpack is with both straps on the shoulders. However, just about all of them find it more convenient and "cool" to use only one strap. A correctly placed backpack puts a lot of stress on the small bodies of the students, but a single strap is even more harmful. These growing backs need the protection of a backpack on wheels.

If we look back, though, we can see that wheels are not a recent addition to all carry-on bags. The wheeled grocery cart has been seen back to the first half of the Twentieth Century. Women without cars knew it was impossible to carry the groceries for the week without some type of cart.