Carcassonne Central

It seems I have been hearing the cart mentioned a lot lately in regard to it's limited function.  I was thinking about the cart a while ago and decided it's not so much limited in function, but simply under used, at least by me.  It seems like this should be the first follower placed on a city and especially a road.  For all intents and puproses, it's a freebie almost like the Phantom.  I will definitely be using the cart more often in future games (hoping to play more often).

What are your thoughts on the cart and what strategies to you employ?

I use wagon comparatively often. Most favorite tactics are:
1. Placing a tile with a cloister and connecting road/roads, at first I finish one of the roads, score it and when drive to the cloister. Few extra points always is good thing.
2. This occurs not so often, but is good tactic too: when my follower in a city was eaten by the dragon or seduced by the princess, but on the next move I've got a road tile with an intersection on it (or a tile with a city and a road, but with that tile I cannot occupy my city again), I finish any connected road and then drive back to my city.

the tactic involved is that my wagon is mostly the first follower on the board. I try to keep it on the board for as long as possible scoring a few to many points and basically always on a road. Lately i use it on 'backroads' ; waste draws featuring roads where crossings help to have an unfinished roads nearby. I'm sure there is an expansion where the wagon plays a bigger role, haven't printed one out yet, if anyone knows one to mention, please do.

My carts/wagons have not seen any action yet on account of nobody wants to play with me. :'(

I outlined my strategy with the wagon in a previous post. http://carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=1631.0 (http://carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=1631.0) is the link to the thread, it can also be modified to include the phantom as an additional piece.