Carting Away

Insight on the News, Nov 6, 2000 by Stephen Goode

Everyone's seen them around at one time or another, banged-up and abandoned on lonely urban streets or being pushed around by the homeless who use them to carry their worldly belongings.

Retail-industry officials say a shopping cart is taken from a store in the United States every 90 seconds. Altogether, that amounts every year to 1.8 million stolen carts each costing $100 to $300. It comes to a big sum, $175 million, and it's an expense businesses pass on to their customers through higher prices.

But there is a solution. In Arizona, three Fry's Food & Drug stores have installed underground sensing systems that will cause shopping-cart wheels to lock when they're pushed over the system's boundaries, which usually will be the outer limits of the store's parking lot. It means that shoppers can take the carts no further than their Cars.

For the people thinks this may work, having on more than one occasion at a supermarket chosen a shopping cart (often, of course, the last one available) whose wheels locked inside the store the moment it was pushed.

Let us hear your ideas for this feature. Write to Insight, For the People, 3600 New York Ave. N.E., Washington, DC 20002. Or fax us: (202) 529-2484; e-mail: Insight@wt.infi.net.