A barrow that will not roll is usually the tyre
I have dragged a loaded barrow across wet slabs and blamed the path. The wheel would not turn. I thought the bearing had seized. I tipped the load, flipped the barrow, and found the tyre flat on one side with a split at the rim. The barrow was fine. The tyre had been soft since the last time I moved compost and I had not looked.
A barrow moves a load you cannot carry. Soil, wet stems, a bag of gravel, the contents of a compost bay. The tyre is the part that meets the ground. If it is flat, you are dragging a rim. If it is perished, the rim finds a slab edge and you spill the load you just lifted. The frame, the pan, and the handles can all be sound. The job still fails at the tyre.
I got it wrong the week I emptied the bay after September cut-back is a tool choice. I forked the waste out, the tool in A fork and a spade are not the same digging tool, and I piled the barrow high. The tyre was already down. I felt it on the first push and kept going. Halfway to the heap the wheel folded and the pan kissed the path. A compost bin is a box, not a bag of compost. It still needs a barrow that will roll to the box.
Pneumatic tyres need air. I check with a thumb, then with a pump if I have one, before I load. A tyre that looks round in the shed can sit oval under a load. I look at the valve. A missing cap fills with grit and then the valve weeps. I look at the sidewall for a split, and at the tread for a thorn or a nail. I spin the wheel off the ground. If it stops with a heavy side, the tyre is lumpy. If it will not spin, I look at the axle. That is rarer than a flat.
A puncture is a thorn, a screw, or a split where the tyre has sat flat against a rim for a month. I would mend a tube if the hole is small and the wall is still sound. I would not wrestle a perished tyre back on. The next load will find the same split. A replacement tyre has to match the rim you have. Measure the rim. I have bought a tyre that would not seat because I matched the look, not the size.
Solid tyres do not puncture. They also do not forgive a cheap wheel. I have had a solid tyre go hard and slick, then climb off a plank. Fine on a short path. Miserable on wet grass. I would not buy a solid tyre to solve a puncture I caused by leaving a pneumatic one flat over winter.
A tyre left standing in the puddle that blows under the shed door perishes at the contact patch. That is the same wet line as Gravel boards rot at the soil line, only this time the sacrificial bit is rubber. I would stand the barrow on dry ground, and I would not leave it loaded. A loaded barrow in January is a flat waiting for March. The pan is not a shelf.
Skip a barrow sold with no wheel size and no tyre type. Skip the idea that a new pan will fix a wheel that will not turn. Skip a replacement tyre with no inner tube if the one you have is pneumatic. Skip leaving the barrow as a shelf. When you want it, you have to unload a shed.
This is an autumn job first, because that is when the waste moves. Spring is when you notice the tyre you left flat. Summer is when a soft tyre on a dry path still rolls, so you ignore it, then a wet week finds you out. I now thump the tyre when I hang the fork. A shed hook that actually holds a fork is about the fork. The barrow lives on the floor. It still gets the same look. Winter tools need a wipe and a film of oil. The tyre does not get oil. It gets air, and a check for a split, and the load taken out of the pan.
I would rather pump a tyre I already own than buy a second barrow because the first one stopped rolling.
If I later add a buy link here, it will be a paid promo.