I tried both and I find the rear-drive very awkward and very difficult while pivoting the mower to the other direction. With front-drive, all I do is raise the front and quickly turn the mower to the other direction. My target is to quickly and efficiently mow my lawn and not tinker with the clutch at all; who wants that? With rear-drive, I have to disengage every time when I need to turn directions ... making my expensive mower a push mower during the attempt and tremendously slowing my momentum ... and of course, I have to engage again to move forward. If you have the mower on fast while doing this, you will find yourself fighting the mower every time you want to start on the new direction. You are not controlling the mower, its controlling you. Think about it, being able to raise the front wheels will allow you to turn the mower on 2 wheels; that is turning on a dime. If you have 4 wheels, you are going to make several small movements to realign your mower to the new direction while stroking your clutch on every attempt. IÂm returning my rear-drive today for a front-wheel drive.

Large rear wheels are good for mowing in a straight line only. If you turn, even a little bit, you must completely raise the front wheels off the ground. If you do not, the side loads will make the cheap plastic spokes fail right where they meet the hub. And, no glue will fix it. It's plastic welding or 2 new Chinese wheels, which will fail again, but sooner.. Mine now has wooden wheels like a Stone Age (late Neolithic) oxcart.

Hey Adkinsca, I prefer my single wheel units I have at home vs. the double wheel one at work. The double wheel ones can haul more, but the handles are the limiting factor for weight. We break a handle a year. Also, it seems to take an acre to turn the thing. You pretty much dump straight forward and are not able to "shake" out the material you are hauling. Another thing I don't like is twice as many wheels equal twice as much maintenance. Pushing it empty to a loading site only to find one tire was flat is aggravating. I can only see the advantage of stability for someone with limited strength or on really rough, steep areas.

Hum, I don't know exactly what is in the Element, but I'd guess it is like the AWD Subaru. This is really one wheel drive, but the good news is the one wheel driven is the one that isn't slipping. This works rather well, but not as well as 4WD, which I'd call 3WD. In street machine 4WD that is normally Front Wheel Drive, also called part-time 4WD, when you engage the 4WD you end up locking the rear axel, both wheels to the drive line. Thus both rear wheels drive/push locked together, not good going around corners on dry pavement, that's why they are "part time", use only when the street is slippery. In addition to the two rear wheels driving, you also have the normal front wheel drive, which means if one of the front wheels starts slipping you have no pull/push from the front as all the power goes to the wheel that is slipping, that's why I call it 3WD. If you're not going off-road, Full time AWD is the best, it is just there, you don't have to think about it. That the way I understand it.