The Safeway close to me used to have those carts with wheels that lock when you push them past the parking lot (and if the lines in the pavement were accurate, the boundaries were sensible). They don’t have them any more. Since I didn’t see any news about it I have no idea why they did away with them.
What they do have now are chains that tie each cart to the next with a little slot that you stick a quarter in to detach the chain and free a cart. When you stick the chain back in, you get the quarter back. It obviously doesn’t stop anyone from stealing the shopping cart, but I guess it provides a little bit of incentive to put the cart back when you’re done with it, and perhaps it gives the [del]bums[/del] street people another way to get some spare change.
This is another option I’m seeing more and more - little lock boxes with chains on them that are released when you put a quarter in. When you return the cart, you link it to another cart in the corral, and it releases your quarter. It’s the best system, I think. Cheap for the market and easy to use. The only trick is remembering to keep a quarter on your person. (I keep one in the glovebox in a mint box so I don’t mistakingly use it for parking or laundry.)
The Buehler’s near my hometown has that system. Works nicely.
Where I live now, the city has a local ordinance requiring wheel locks on carts. I think they enacted it to reduce the clutter of junk abandoned by the homeless.
In Korea, they solve the problem by dispensing carts via deposit. You put in a coin and pull out your cart. When you return the cart, you get the coin back. I was skeptical that such a system could work, but Koreans reliably return their carts. I think having very cramped parking lots encourages compliance.
(On preview, I see others have brought up the deposit. Here’s another.)
I’ve never heard of these locking carts. What a great idea.
They should have those red dye packs built into them like the banks use when you rob them. It would be fun looking at all the red people.
I remember when i was a kid, we had a folding grocery cart that we’d bring to the store with us. Surely they still have these things, don’t they?
They have this sytem at some places in the UK, usually it takes a pound coin to release the cart. It is possible to buy a token the same size as a pound coin, with a hole in it (so you can use it as a key fob) which can be used for trolley release. As it is on your keys, you always have iy with you.
My local Walgreen’s recently put up signs all around their parking lot announcing they now had carts that lock up if you push them past a clearly marked line. Being the monkey that I am, I pushed a cart over the line just to see what would happen. Nothing did. Walgreen’s is bluffing!
This doesn’t seem such a good idea to me, having a token on your key ring that is.
You could release the cart, shove it home full of your shopping and then just dump it in the canal(or the Reebok after unloading your stuff, rinse and repeat as often as neccessary.
well, you’d have to keep buying a new token i suppose, and i would gues sthey cost a pound or more, so you could do that with a real pound coin if you really wanted. The Asda near thje reebok has no cart security features at all, so if I was so inclined I could take them all! I think they just rely on the fact that vast majority of people drive or get the bus to get there, so aren 't in a position to take the carts home.
At my local Target they do not have the magic locking carts.
Consequently, I have noticed that some nipplezit has a habit of pushing a cart out into the traffic lane running by the store and leaving it there. The cart is ALWAYS THERE in the EXACT SAME PLACE. No matter when I am driving past, day or night, THERE IT IS!
I have since concluded it is a subtly ironic public art display. (Hmm, if there were a thousand of them lining the street I would suspect Christo.)
My local Target switched to the lock-em-ups about a year ago. Unlike Emilio’s Target, the “line of death” is quite clearly marked here. For the first few months you’d occasionally see a cart abandoned at some odd location or other along that line, but it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen that. I think the people who are disposed towards stealing carts have finally gotten used to it and are taking carts from the other (non-locked) stores in the area.
My place of work is right next to a bus stop that happens to be the closest one to three different grocery stores. EVERY DAMN DAY there is at least one grocery cart blocking (Pick one: the entrance to our parking lot, the sidewalk, one lane of the road.)
And the damn things breed.* There’ll be one when I arrive, three when I leave for the day, the next day a half-dozen…
It has become one of my unofficial duties to call the grocery stores every day or two and beg them to come get their carts. So they’ll send out a truck and load them up…except they’ll only take their OWN carts. What’s with that? Couldn’t they make an agreement between themselves to take them all and drop the others off? Then they would only have to do every third run.
*Well, not a surprise when humans help them have sex all the time. That’s what happens when you shove the front on one into the rump of another. Not to mention the perverted daisy chains… Children, avert your eyes!
I just saw that for the first time at an Aldi store. My husband and I were wondering…is depositing a quarter really a deterrent against removing the cart? Seems like 25 cents is a pretty good bargain for a $200+ item.
I saw one in a catalog the other day. It wasn’t a shopping cart per se, but it had hooks where you could hang your grocery bags on, and was thus very light and small. I don’t think it would do for a fifty pound bag of dog food, but then a folding cart wouldn’t either.
I don’t know about England but around here taking a cart oustide the store’s parking area is illegal. The store I used to work at has the relevant county statue posted in such a way it’s the first thing someone sees when exiting the store.
I live in a neighborhood with a lot of senior citizens, and they’re the ones who steal the carts from the local grocery. These aren’t folks in their sixties and early seventies - these are Great Depression / World War 2 vet era people in their 80’s. The neighborhood was pretty blue collar when they moved in 40 years ago (this was a bedroom community for Boeing line workers,) and since then, it’s become pretty pricey to live here. These folks apparently can’t drive anymore (for whatever reason,) but are determined to remain self sufficient anyway. They walk all the way to the store themselves, then plod all the way back pushing the carts all the way. The fact that their self-sufficiency is a delusion in the face of their need to steal a cart to get groceries home eludes them. I respect this, though; we all delude ourselves to some degree.
When one of the carts shows up on my street, I call the store and they come out and pick it up. They have an employee who drives the neighborhood looking for lost carts every morning. The manager I spoke to told me they consider it a small expense since they get almost all the carts back in good condition. He told me “It’s just who some of our customers are. They’re doing the best they can, they decline our help when we offer it, they’re good customers in every other way, so we put up with it.” He told me they don’t encourage it and try to stop people who they see, but it’s easier to let them keep their dignity and resign to pick up carts from the neighborhood. This way they also become loyal return customers.
I realize this situation may be unique, but it’s my neighborhood. I like it here.