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Clever Invention: The GoJak Wheel Dolly for Moving Disabled Vehicles

If you’ve ever witnessed an auto show being set up, or poked around in a mechanic’s shop, or happened to be inside a shopping mall when workers positioned a raffle-prize car in the atrium, you’ve probably seen a set of these:

Those are colloquially called go-jacks, after the original GoJak model invented by the Connecticut-based Zendex Tool Corporation (specifically by company founder Al Coccaro) in 1984. “Working in his own auto body shop,” the company writes, “Mr. Coccaro needed a way to quickly and efficiently move disabled cars into his shop and paint booths and so the GoJak® was born.”

Their largest model allows one worker to move a full-size pickup truck–even a dualie–easily:

GoJaks come in different sizes to correspond with a range of wheel diameters and run from $280 to $380 apiece. You can buy cheaper knock-offs from Harbor Freight for about $90 apiece, but reading reviews of those reinforces that you get what you pay for.