The amount of goods or material that a cart can hold or carry at one time.
From Middle English cart + load, combining cart (from Old Norse kartr) with load (from Old English hlad, heap or burden). The compound emerged as a practical measure of quantity in agricultural and commercial contexts.
A cartload was a standard unit of measurement in pre-industrial times—you'd hear merchants say 'I need five cartloads of hay' the same way we'd say '10 tons' today, and the actual amount varied depending on what you were carrying and the cart's size.
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