[Jeff Waegelin]

It depends an awful lot on what you're building it out of. It's hard to say exactly how much a custom cart will cost, because there are so many ways you can do it. My advice would be to make a list of the materials you think you're going to need, and how much of each, then find out how much those materials cost. It'll give you a much more accurate estimate than any number I can give you offhand.

To add to that, if you're making a budget, you should always do whatever you can to make accurate estimates, or you can find yourself in trouble. Last year, some of the parents on my team were harassing our Build Team for going "over budget" because the guy in charge of budget only allotted $2000, because it was a number he'd heard our teacher toss around. That didn't include the $1000 we spent on the field, so we ended up around $600 over the budget. The moral of the story: any time you have more information available or attainable, use it. An educated guess is far better than a random guess when making budgets. Would a Fortune 500 company take a random guess at all their expenses for a year? I think not. Neither should a FIRST team.