Jay,

Ideas and their inspiration follow.

BACKGROUND:
About twenty years ago, the mother of my lady friend at the time earned a very nice second income making "sheet cakes" like you're discussing. She would spend long day(s) baking and decorating these monsters. Their base was 1/2" plywood which had been covered with kitchen countertop material, about half again as big as the cake width, with four shaped handles at the center of each side (they had a woodworker in the family who made them for her). She then covered that board with a large sheet of baker's paper for each cake to sit on. The cakes weren't nearly as tall as yours (except the wedding cakes, which were handled differently), so the covers she used were the big aluminum trays that caterers use as the base for buffet tables. Heavy, but effective.

Transporting these was a REAL pain. Another family member had a Chevy El Camino, so the normal method was to have two or three of us sit in the load bed of the El Camino hanging onto this thing. I spent many an afternoon on the "transport team" (and, of course, we got the extras and samples as rewards -g-).

Eventually, another brother who was an auto mechanic rigged up a contraption which was basically a big wheeled aluminum basket on shock absorbers, with a removable snap-locked top, which would accept these cake boards. It seemed to work pretty well.

IDEA(S):
Here's a crazy, quick-shot "MacGyver method" approach that might work:

1. Check with your local custom home builders -- they often have countertops that were built to the wrong size that you can pick up for next to nothing. Alternately, make one with 1/2" ply and scraps of countertop material from the same builders.

2. Take those boards to Home Depot or Lowe's and get them to cut a couple of handles in the countertop for carrying.

3. Then, contact a hospital or ambulance supply company and see if you can get an old child's sized gurney -- the kind they load into an ambulance where the legs snap up. Alternately, there's a small portable adjustable height composite-top table at Staples with "scissors legs" that would probably substitute well -- you'd have to drill a couple of holes in the corners, but it could also work.

4. Bungee-cord your countertop board through its handles to the side rails of the gurney or the drilled holes in the table -- and you're all set.

5. For a cake cover, you could use two metal legal size "hanging folder" frames from the inside of an office drawer, fastened together with plastic ties, then draped with cheesecloth or some other fabric. You -might- have to remove the bottom center cross bars, but they'd work. You MIGHT even be able to lift the cake and its base by the top center bars, depending on the strength of the frames.

6. Another thought -- for transporting -- how about a bus cart from a restaurant supply house? They're on wheels, they're steel, and the top should be plenty big enough. Also, Home Depot sells a small, wheeled scaffold with adjustable shelves and locking wheels (about a hundred bucks) that might do the trick.

HTH. If I come up with anything else, I'll let you know.

>One of the many things I do is make cakes. These are not your usual run-of-the-mill cakes, but rather tend to be of the 2' square, 8" high, 20+ lb variety. Lots of chocolate, candy, ganauche, nuts, fondant designs, airbrushing, etc. I do them maybe 4 times a year and the biggest issue is how to transport them. Usually what I end up doing is putting them on a sheet of masonite, then screwing that down onto a shelf board and I have to reach out and hold both ends of the board to cart it around. I'm really not the graceful and am just waiting for the day that I trip and destroy one.
>
>I'm trying to think of a way where I would use something strong (it can't bend at all as it could crack the design work on the cake) that uses a handle or something. I wonder if a piece of 5/8" plywood with canvas straps thread through slots at either end, meeting in the middle at a handle, kind of like a carry-on bag, would work. The straps could not touch the cake though. My newest creation will be delivered this weekend, so I don't have time to try out a bunch of ideas, so I came here thinking some of the engineering types might have some thoughts on what might work best. Oh, I don't want to buy something; as a resourceful dude, I would rather try to make it myself.