Shopping cart

This article is about physical shopping carts. For digital "shopping carts", see shopping cart software.

A row of parked shopping carts equipped with a coin-operated mechanism.

A shopping cart (also called trolley, carriage, shopping carriage, buggy, bascart, & basket) is a cart supplied by a shop, especially a supermarket, for use by customers inside the shop for transport of merchandise to the check-out counter during shopping, and often to the customer's car after paying as well. Often, customers are allowed to leave the carts in the parking lot, and store personnel, referred to as cart attendants, return the carts to the shop.

Design

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Nested carts being returned from a parking lot to a Target store

A child-driveable shopping cart in Japan

Almost all shopping carts are made of metal or plastic and designed to nest within each other in a line to facilitate moving many at one time, and to save on storage space. The carts can come in many sizes, with larger ones able to carry a child. There are also specialized carts designed for two children, and electric mobility scooters with baskets designed for disabled customers. 24,000 children in the USA are injured each year in shopping carts. Some stores have child carts that look like a car or van with a seat where a child can sit. Such "Car-Carts" or "Beans", as some call them in the cart business, may offer protection and convenience by keeping the child restrained, lower to the ground, protected from falling items, and amused.

Shopping carts are usually fitted with four caster wheels which can point in any direction to allow maneuvering. However, when any one wheel jams, the cart can become difficult to handle. Many carts only have swivel caster wheels on the front, while the rear ones are on a fixed axle.

An alternative to the shopping cart is a small handheld shopping basket. A customer may prefer a basket for a small amount of merchandise. Small shops, where carts would be impractical, often supply only baskets. A collapsible utility cart has a basket pivotally mounted to a forward facing, C-shaped cart frame. As the lower portion of the C-shaped cart frame is moved under a flat bed (station wagon, etc), the upper part containing the basket slides onto the truck bed. The frame is then pivoted upward around the truck bumper and about the basket and conveniently stored around the basket. U.S. patent 5,503,424 details this invention, which is marketed as Autocarts.

History

One of the first shopping carts were introduced on June 4, 1937, the invention of Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma City One night, in 1936, Goldman sat in his office wondering how customers might move more groceries. He stared idly at a wooden folding chair. Put a basket on the seat and wheels on the legs. Goldman and one of his employees, Fred Young a mechanic, began tinkering. Their first shopping cart was a metal frame that held two wire baskets. Since they were inspired by the folding chair, Goldman called his carts "folding basket carriers". Another mechanic, Arthur Kosted, developed a method to mass produce the carts by inventing an assembly line capable of forming and welding the wire. The cart was awarded patent number 2,196,914 on April 9, 1940 (Filing date: March 14, 1938), titled, "Folding Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores". They advertised the invention as part of a new “No Basket Carrying Plan."

The invention did not catch on immediately. Men found them effeminate; women found them suggestive of a baby carriage. "I've pushed my last baby buggy," an offended woman informed him. After hiring several male and female models to push his new invention around his store and demonstrate their utility, as well as greeters to explain their use, shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire. Goldman continued to make modifications to his original design, and the basket size of the shopping cart increased as stores realized that their customers purchased more as its size increased. Today, most big-box stores and supermarkets have shopping carts for the convenience of the shoppers.

Recent studies determined that cartless retailers such as Sears and J.C. Penney have suffered slow sales in recent years. Retailers that do use shopping carts, Wal-Mart among them, have had booming sales. In large part this could be attributed to the ease of shopping made possible by the shopping cart.

Rental

Shopping trolleys locked with a chain

In many countries, the customer has to pay a small deposit by inserting a coin, which is returned if and when the customer returns the cart to a designated cart parking point. The motivation behind the deposit systems is not theft deterrent since the trolley is worth significantly more than the deposit, however through this fee the retailer seeks to reduce the expense of their employees having to gather the carts that were not returned, and to avoid damages by runaway trolleys.

Although common in Europe, the deposit system has not been widely adopted in the United States, with the exception of some chains like Aldi, who require a $0.25 deposit. Other stores such as Costco and ShopRite also use the coin deposit system, but it is not used at all of their locations.

In Australia, deposit systems are common in some local government areas as they have been made compulsory by local law. Usually, all ALDI stores, and most Coles and Safeway stores will have a lock mechanism on their trolley which requires a $1 or $2 coin to unlock. $2 coin devices are now becoming more common however.

The deposit varies, but usually coins of higher value, such as €1 or £1 are used. While the deposit systems usually are designed to accommodate a certain size of domestic coin, foreign coins, former currencies (like DM coins) or even appropriately folded pieces of cardboard can be used to unlock the trolleys as well. Trolley collectors are also usually provided with a special key which they can use to unlock the trolleys from the trolley bay and get the key back.

Some retailers sell "trolley tokens" as an alternative to coins, often for charity. A system similar to the shopping trolley deposit is also used for profit with luggage carts at many airports, where companies like Smarte Carte charge two or more dollars (U.S.) (or equivalent) for rental, and return a small token reward of a quarter (25 ¢) for returning carts to the other end of any dispenser machine.

Theft prevention

Shopping cart theft can be a costly problem with stores that use them. Often the carts end up in apartment complexes, low-income housing, bus stops or locations where the person doing the shopping is unlikely to own a car. The carts, which cost between $75 and $100 each, have been used for such purposes as barbecue pits, go-carts, laundry trolleys and even shelters, or they are simply abandoned. Because such losses can be substantial (up to $800 million globally lost every year), stores have resorted to various systems to prevent theft. Stores may use one or more of these systems (i.e., cart retrieval and electronic).

Cart Retrieval Service

Some stores utilize a cart retrieval service, which collects carts found off the store's premises and returns them to the store for a fee. The drawbacks of this measure include that it is reactive instead of proactive (i.e., it can only be used once a cart has been taken from the premises), can become costly, and does nothing to deter hoarders. Some retrieval services have also been caught taking carts from the store's parking lot and turning them in as stray carts.

Electronic

Electronic systems are being increasingly used by stores because of their successful deterrence. In principle, the system is similar to electric fences that give dogs' necks a yank when they cross an underground boundary. Each shopping cart is fitted with an electronic locking wheel, or 'boot'. A transmitter with a thin wire is placed around the perimeter of the parking lot. The boot locks when the cart leaves the designated area. Store personnel must then deactivate the lock with a hand-held remote to return the cart to stock. Often a line is painted in front of the broadcast range to warn customers that their cart will stop when rolled past the line.

Physical

A less high-tech form of theft prevention is with the use of a physical impediment, such as erecting bars at a store entrance to keep carts from being taken into the parking lot. However, this method also keeps out physically disabled customers, which is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Another method is to mount a pole with a height higher than the entrance onto the shopping cart, such that the pole will block the cart. However, this method require the aisle of the storefront (including lights, piping, and fixture) to be higher than that of the pole.

Name

The names of a shopping cart vary by region. The following names are regional-specific names for shopping carts:

• trolley - British, Australian English, and New Zealand English
• carriage/shopping carriage - New England region of the U.S.
• buggy - Southern U.S., Canada, and Pittsburgh; the latter case often being considered a word related to Pittsburghese
• bascart/basket - various regions
• shopping cart - various regions

See also

• Watson Systems

References

• Ted Morgan, On Becoming American (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), pp. 245–6.

External links

• Shopping trolley hazard alerts
• A history of Sylvan Goldman, inventor of the shopping trolley
• Shopping Cart–Related Injuries to Children American Academy Of Pediatrics
• BBC News story
• The Stray Shopping Cart Project
• cartart.org - The abandoned carts have stories to tell. We try to tell them.
• Shopping Trolley Risks in the Retail Industry
• Paper on the history of the shopping cart
• "June 4, 1937: Humpty Dumpty and the Shopping Cart" (Wired.com, "This Day in Tech")
• Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart (W. Belasco and R. Horowitz, Eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)