Why are shopping carts always broken?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/17/business/shopping-carts-wonky-wheel-explained/index.html

by sys_64738 • 2 years ago

76 262 2 years ago

The percentage of shopping carts that are broken tells you about the character of the local population.

The article's byline credits Eva Rothenberg, whose LinkedIn lists her as living in New York City. There must be horrible people there.

Here in Waxahachie, TX, there are almost no broken shopping carts, and people help when there is a broken cart.

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

I’ve never used a shopping cart in Manhattan.

leviathant2• 2 years ago

Horrible people is certainly one way of describing the population of an area with extreme income inequality.

mc322• 2 years ago

What’s income have to do with how you treat a shopping cart? I’ve been to in places in Asia with very poor (poor compared to the poor people in the US) people and they treated their shopping carts better than wealthy people in the US.

There is better social cohesion and respect for other people's property. Now, there are some oddities in that if they find you lying on the street hurt, most will pass you by and kind of look at you quizzically, but they also do have good samaritans, just not as many. The reason is often people will suspect the person who stopped to help stopped out of guilt, not because they were just trying to help.

zonkerdonker• 2 years ago

What an absolutely wild conculsion to draw from the article. What even is the impetus for it? Just your bog standard lib owning? Or do you genuinely believe that the shopping carts are in better shape in your neck of the woods because the people are what...? Of higher moral fiber? Not ...i dunno, maybe due to the presumably massively higher usage of the carts in the big apple? Or the harsher weather? Or literally dozens of other more plausible reasons?

chrisco2553• 2 years ago

NYC leaves trash on the streets all week and will let vagrants dominate and degrade their subway systems, parks, and sidewalks without any recourse. NYC just doesn't care about keeping things nice. There's urban environments with even harsher weather than NYC (ie Stockholm) and even denser (ie Tokyo) that are nicely kept. There's really no excuse for it. They just don't care.

o11c• 2 years ago

True, but it also tells you about the budget of the stores in the area.

A significant factor is also whether the local areas uses salt on the roads or not.

There are at least N failure modes for shopping carts:

* shopping cart wheels not coplanar

* shopping cart wheel does not turn

* shopping cart left in parking lot during weather

* shopping cart removed from parking lot entirely

add-sub-mul-div• 2 years ago

There's a lot going on here.

rafram• 2 years ago

People in New York City don't use shopping carts too often. Fewer people own cars and drive than in Waxahachie, and they tend to go shopping more frequently and buy less at one time. I doubt that this was a story based just on the author's own experience in NYC - we've all dealt with wonky shopping carts! Waxahachie looks nice, but you should visit NYC sometime. It's a cool city and I think you'd learn a lot about the people and be less likely to write them off as "horrible" if you visited.

dguest• 2 years ago

how do they help?

dsego3• 2 years ago

Oh man, I visited NYC recently and was shocked when I went into the local CVS and Walgreens in Williamsburg. Almost all shelves had plastic covers with locks on them, so you can't pick up anything by yourself. Coming from a relatively safe country in Europe and to see something like that, not a pleasant experience at all.

justinclift5• 2 years ago

Grocery store carts are more likely to have carts with wonky wheels than ... drugstores

Do countries other than the US have shopping carts in their "drug stores"?

twodave• 2 years ago

I live in the US and haven’t ever seen a shopping cart in a drug store… maybe that’s why they stay so nice :)

chrisco2553• 2 years ago

They exist, but they're smaller than supermarket shopping carts.

anotheruser133• 2 years ago

In Chicago, shopping carts used to be commonly found in Osco Drugs, mostly because they were attached to Jewel Food stores. A few Dominick's groceries had Walgreens drugstores attached, but there weren't many of those.

al_borland2• 2 years ago

For those outside of the US looking to answer, here is some context from the US. “Drug stores” in the US double as convenience stores. There is a pharmacy in the back along with over the counter medications, but they also sell cosmetics, basic prepackaged food, toys, alcohol, magazines, greeting cards, and other such things. It’s not like Americans are buying carts full of drugs. I also think drug stores generally have the small baskets, not the large carts one might find at a grocery store.

slimsag• 2 years ago

Really it's the opposite. It's called a pharmacy, but in practice it is a convenience store first, and a pharmacy second. Often times the pharmacy is closed, has restricted hours, is understaffed, etc.

chupchap• 2 years ago

alcohol

Please tell me it's not the drinking kind?

kapep2• 2 years ago

I would describe German drug stores in the same way (except that they don't contain a pharmacy and can't sell over the counter drugs). Smaller drug stores in big cities have a few small carts if any but often it's just baskets that you carry. Larger ones usually have carts. I don't think it's odd for them to have carts though, drug stores sell a lot of cleaning stuff which can be heavy and toilet paper which can fill up a cart pretty quick.

justsomehnguy2• 2 years ago

Do people in other countries buy paracetamol and aspirin in 10L bottles so they wouldn't need to run their F4999 trucks to a drugstore every week?

freddie_mercury• 2 years ago

Most countries have laws limiting the size of paracetamol & aspirin bottles to reduce overdoses & suicides.

The UK passed a law in 1998 about it and saw suicides from overdoses drop 21% and liver transplants from paracetamol poisoning drop 66%.

"Numbers of tablets per pack of paracetamol and salicylates decreased markedly in the year after the change in legislation on 16 September 1998. The annual number of deaths from paracetamol poisoning decreased by 21% (95% confidence interval 5% to 34%) and the number from salicylates decreased by 48% (11% to 70%). Liver transplant rates after paracetamol poisoning decreased by 66% (55% to 74%). The rate of non-fatal self poisoning with paracetamol in any form decreased by 11% (5% to 16%), mainly because of a 15% (8% to 21%) reduction in overdoses of paracetamol in non-compound form."

rnewme3• 2 years ago

Yea. Look up DM

rnewme3• 2 years ago

Not sure why I'm being down voted for this but dm is definitely eu drug store with carts :D

jackson1way• 2 years ago

In Germany you have something close to „drug stores in the US“ but minus the pharmacy. For example: dm, Müller, Rossmann. The bigger ones (especially dm) actually always have shopping carts. It‘s very common for people to buy large things in these stores, like toilet paper, baby diapers etc. which can easily fill a shopping cart.

rob74• 2 years ago

Yup, actually dm is short for "Drogeriemarkt", which could be translated as "drug market". And yes, due to legislation in Germany, they can only sell things like vitamin supplements, "real" drugs (even non-prescription ones) can only be sold in pharmacies.

Semaphor3• 2 years ago

Germany was mentioned, South Africa is another country that has drug stores, including the Pharmacy, e.g. Clicks.

ta12433• 2 years ago

I've certainly been to big Boots stores in the UK with small trolleys - the ones that are like a basket on wheels at waist height

wisty• 2 years ago

Australian ones have a retail section with band-aids, non-prescription medicine, vitamins, nappies, sunscreen, skincare, hair care and "natural medicines" most of which are borderline frauds.

Maybe no trollies though.

koliber• 2 years ago

For people from Europe not familiar with the big drug stores the parent is referring to: these drug stores are more like a Rossman with a pharmacy counter in the back.

dsego3• 2 years ago

Not familiar with Rossman but with german DM (drogerie markt) & Muller being well represented in my country (and I presumed other ones in Europe) for over a decade or more, I thought this concept had already been established in all of Europe.

al_borland2• 2 years ago

I worked in several grocery stores when I was young, I was never aware of any procedures for wonky carts. If there aren’t systems in place to identify and fix problems, it’s no wonder the situation is what it is.

I had never heard of the conspiracy theory that it was done on purpose to slow people down. That doesn’t really pass the smell test. When I have a bad cart I want to leave as soon as possible to minimize my time with it. It also makes me view the store in a negative light. These are both bad things, and it seems pretty obvious that they would get damaged over time from abuse.

Rapzid• 2 years ago

I very rarely encounter broken shopping carts. Maybe once in like 20-30 visits I encounter one with a wobbly front wheel that pulls.

daemonologist• 2 years ago

Interesting, my experience is that almost all carts get the job done* but have a small amount of pull, usually insignificant enough that it can be compensated for by pushing out at one end of the handle. My recollection is probably biased but it seems pretty rare that I get a "perfect" cart. Might be down to the different stores having different carts and maintenance approaches.

*this one fact probably goes a long way towards explaining why they don't get fixed

Semaphor3• 2 years ago

FWIW, I also encounter those issues in Germany, where we have the coin deposit.

puzzledobserver• 2 years ago

I don't use shopping carts because my groceries typically fit in a shopping basket.

What I find frustrating about my local grocery store is when they inexplicably rearrange items. One week, bread is stocked in one aisle. Suddenly, on my next trip to the store, the same brand of bread has moved two aisles over.

Part of the reason why I switched to having groceries delivered.

acover• 2 years ago

They do it so you have to explore and buy the high margin items, not bread.

MBCook2• 2 years ago

A year or two ago my grocery store got rid of hand baskets. Now you can only choose between a short cart, a full cart, or holding everything in your arms.

I hate it. They’re not bringing them back, I’ve asked.

tzs2• 2 years ago

Did they get rid of free plastic bags at checkout earlier?

I ask because some Walmarts got rid of hand baskets. When they stopped providing free plastic bags at checkout there was a big rise in people carrying their purchases out in the hand baskets and then not returning the baskets. Those stores often decided to stop replacing the baskets.

I would not be surprised if the same thing happened at other stores.

dtgriscom2• 2 years ago

That's nasty. If I expect my goods to fit into a hand basket, I grab one. Better maneuverability in a crowd.

Freedom2• 2 years ago

I wonder if it's based on demographics? Here in Waxahachie, TX, there are no hand baskets at all, however speaking to people with a similar background to me in other states where they are a larger part of the population, and hand baskets can be easily found everywhere.

Semaphor3• 2 years ago

Wow, that sounds extremely annoying. Stuff sometimes gets rearranged here sometimes as well, but it’s more like 1-2 times a year. Or even less.

pixl972• 2 years ago

This article doesn't seem to actually answer the question well...

If you want to see the problem, watch carts being put in the cart storage pens and watch carts being returned from those pens to the store.

A very small percentage of the carts will end up in pens off kilter, then pushed in by the entire line of carts behind them. This bit of pressure can bend the wheel attachment. Now you say "this is only one or two carts", but in a busy store that cart can be cycles 5-10 times a day so this abuse adds up.

Then, watch the carts get returned to the front of the store. The handler pulls out a 40' long 'cart snake' that is unwieldly and heavy. You'll watch them drag the entire line sideways at points to get it in line with traveling the right direction and to line up with the return lines. Getting dragged sideways both wears flat spots in the wheels and it can bend the castors or pop the soft part of the wheel of its rim.

FireBeyond• 2 years ago

The other part that affects things is the locking wheel to deter theft. All that does is make the person taking the cart drag it, flattening out that wheel.

dTal2• 2 years ago

Getting dragged sideways both wears flat spots in the wheels and it can bend the castors or pop the soft part of the wheel of its rim.

This may be an American problem. In the UK and many European countries, shopping carts ("trolleys") have castors on all four wheels; they will quite happily glide sideways. This makes them more maneuverable in the smaller stores, at the cost of being more difficult to control - more like the ship in Asteroids than a go-kart.

pixl972• 2 years ago

Ya a few places have these in the states, but as you say the control issues are problematic. The whole, an object in motion stays in motion tends to mean if you're pushing one of these heavy carts and try to turn it will rotate about its own axis rather than make a corner.

iSnow• 2 years ago

I am from Europe and we have storage pens with a roof (no idea if it's the same in the USA) and coin locks. Carts still rotate a lot over the day, but I know that blocked or off the ground wheels basically stopped being a problem once those pens with coin lock became a thing.

And yes, we don't usually have those 10m cart snakes, only if one pen overflows and workers take a huge chunk to relocate them.

maxglute• 2 years ago

Stores cheap out on more expensive and durable wheels. News at 11. I remember going to a boughie grocery store and being impressed by their Rolls Royce shopping carts. Or maybe formula1, hard to describe, great grip and mobility. Probably very expensive / extra. I do wish those wheeled basket carts with wagon handle were built better.

calvinmorrison• 2 years ago

based on my anecdata, close to 100% of shopping carts have a faulty wheel that drags when I select it.

blinkingled2• 2 years ago

Not Costco's - have been to many over the years and they have some of the best maintained, good quality carts you don't mind dragging across their gigantic parking lot.

jbandela1• 2 years ago

Also Publix tends to have pretty nicely maintained shopping carts. Part of the reason might be that they provide complimentary cart service where someone will push the cart out to your car and help load the groceries.

blinkingled2• 2 years ago

Ah yes forgot about Publix - and yeah more than once I have been asked by Publix employees if I needed help pushing the cart - they seemed to be happy to do it too!

zaptrem• 2 years ago

Also Ikea. It’s weird how quiet and easy they are to push.

DavidPeiffer3• 2 years ago

I bet the long path through every department IKEA nudges you to take forces their hand a bit compared to, say, a grocery store.

thsksbd4• 2 years ago

Their carts' stack is FIFO, not LIFO so they get worn evenly.

bluedino• 2 years ago

The simple answer is the store managers don't care that much and it costs money to have the carts fixed.

Stores like Target buy nice carts and they last longer, stores like Menard's buy even cheaper carts (they might even make their own, they build their own electric scooters for in-store use).

I worked at a company in an adjacent business, most store chains either have their own service techs, or outsource it to a service company. These guys repair anything with wheels, from shopping carts to bakery carts to those hand carts and jack lifts. But there's only so much budget to go around and the carts get replaced every couple years anyway, it's easier to just recycle them.

thrill• 2 years ago

Why are rental cars often trashed?

tzs2• 2 years ago

I've been impressed by the carts the few times I've shopped at WinCo. Their carts always seemed to be fantastic.

I've been extremely annoyed by Walmart carts. The carts themselves are usually fine once I get one separated from the rest. It's the separating them that is annoying.

When a cart has other carts nested into it from behind, that raises the back flap. The two straps on that flap that are used to strap in small children when they are riding can dangled down through the grill of the flap on the nested cart. The clip on the end is big enough that if it twists at all it can get jammed in that nested grill, and the carts are then stuck together.

If you don't realize that the strap is caught and just think the carts are pushed tight, pulling to loosen them wedges the strap clip in very tight. Then you need to reach under to lift the bottom flap to relieve some pressure, while trying to un-wedge the clip. It's awkward and although I've not yet done it it looks like it is possible you get get an annoying pinch if you let go of the flap at the wrong time.

tonymet2• 2 years ago

I'm sure I'm weird but I find pushing shopping carts around to be degrading and clumsy. If I must use a cart, I usually park it somewhere discreet and scramble around the store clasping items until my arms are overloaded and then I deposit them in the cart. This allows me to be nimble and dodge between sloths who are burdened shuffling around squealy carts from bin to bin.

It's a greasy, screechy trash bin-walker hybrid full of food.

a4000• 2 years ago

Do they not have the hand held baskets there? In most other countries I have been too in Europe, Asia, Australia the supermarkets have both wheeled trolley and hand held baskets or even only baskets for smaller convenience type stores for those needing less items.

tonymet2• 2 years ago

Yeah I’ll use those when they’re available.

daft_pink• 2 years ago

Are those coin locks really to protect the carts from the elements, or because Aldi doesn’t want to pay someone to haul them back and forth.

domh2• 2 years ago

Little bit of both? Also probably to prevent the temptation of theft. Even though the fee is nominal, it seems to be enough of a detractor?

knallfrosch• 2 years ago

I don't think "theft" is the correct wording. Rather "taking it with you and not returning."

If it really was about stealing (taking and intentionally keeping), the 1€ or free plastic coin you can get at the counter wouldn't deter you at all.

Symbiote2• 2 years ago

The main purpose is to encourage users to return them to the correct place in the car park, rather than leaving them in an empty parking space or the roadway, where they are likely to end up colliding with cars.

xref2• 2 years ago

At a Winco there was a box fan full of tools and parts parked at the end of the parking lot with a hundred or so carts in front of it. It was a repairman going through every cart, took several days as he made his way through all the carts at the store. Had never seen that before.

Reminds me of summers spent working for the school district, replacing the glides on the feet of the metal tubed classroom chairs so the broken ones wouldn’t wobble or tear up the linoleum tiles. https://www.allglides.com/metalbase.html

All part of the hidden world of keeping shit working I guess

DwnVoteHoneyPot• 2 years ago

I know a business that fix shopping carts. They don't repair at the store, they load up the broken ones onto a truck and take it to the repair shop. The repair shop is a part of large industrial parts store. It's very expensive for the shopping store to repair because it's typically a repair man who has some welding skills that fixes these things. Not sure why other people in this thread would think there is a specific person at each store who is going to fix these things.

az09mugen• 2 years ago

You described a more professional version of what Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys does to earn his money.

jtbayly• 2 years ago

I was trying to figure out what the box fan filled with parts was going to be for. Took way too long. Not enough caffeine yet today.

xref2• 2 years ago

I reread it 3 times and still left a typo in there, guess it’s good I didn’t become an editor :facepalm:

rstuart4133• 2 years ago

The fan thing also fooled me, but I came here expecting the story to be about web shopping carts. In recent year's I've been prevented from ordering something by a broken web site far more than I've been frustrated by physical shopping cart. The real thing is far more reliable in my experience, and finding another physical cart is so much easier than invoking the web debugger to get past a broken site.

The real story was well worth the read, but I only read it once I twigged what the fan had to do with the story.

londons_explore• 2 years ago

Over here in the UK, pretty much every cart (trolley) has fully functioning wheels...

The only exception to that is wheels that auto-lock to stop you stealing the cart when they cross over the property line of the shop (and they then require manual unlocking).

I suspect US cart designs are just bad...

ta12433• 2 years ago

And it's very rare to have to put a coin in a trolley as the article asserts. It's not 1999 any more.

hef198987• 2 years ago

Coins are still standard in Germany so! It is extremely rare to have a broken one around where I live.

pxeger1• 2 years ago

I wouldn’t say it’s very rare. Maybe 50% of supermarkets have coinless trolleys?

mbork_pl2• 2 years ago

It's very common in my country, and I think it's actually a very good idea. What's wrong with putting coins in the carts/trolleys?

amszmidt• 2 years ago

In Sweden it is very common, and this is mostly a cash-less country. You can usually get these plastic coins to use as a substitute, and I don't think I've ever seen a broken trolley here

daveoc64• 2 years ago

In the UK it really varies based on the area the supermarket is in.

There are two large Sainsbury's supermarkets near me - one is right next to a university and suffers from students taking the trolleys back to their student accommodation - these have a coin.

Then there's another in a more affluent suburb - no coin.

oliwarner• 2 years ago

I'm not sure where you got that idea from.

The last three trollies I've used all had sticking wheels. Waitrose and Tesco. And many times before. And I regularly have the same problem in France.

But yes, auto locking wheels are universally worse.

olig15• 2 years ago

My local shop is a Waitrose, and quite often I see 10/15 or so trolleys in the rack have handles that say ‘on loan from trolly services’ or something. I wonder if this is because some are out on repair.

user39393822• 2 years ago

I recall an episode of some sitcom where the protagonist has had enough and builds some insane super shopping cart.

123ert• 2 years ago

Could it be trailer park boys?

user39393822• 2 years ago

I think it may have been Married With Children.

hbarka2• 2 years ago

IKEA carts if you want to simulate driving over oil. Why are they made with all four wheels turning?

actionfromafar• 2 years ago

Because for some weird reason, IKEA doesn't cheap out on the trolleys. (As opposed to what's in them.)

mgbmtl• 2 years ago

It's easier to maneuver, way easier to turn.

hbarka2• 2 years ago

How do you guys do it? Without a fixed rear axis, it’s difficult to roll in a straight direction. You’re constantly fighting the pull of gravity. With American grocery carts, I can maneuver through a needle even in Costco, because it goes in the direction I point to.

cameronh90• 2 years ago

Trolleys in the UK and most of Europe have all four wheels turning. Except for Costco which use the US-style ones.

I find it much more maneuverable, which is important in our smaller aisles. US-style ones would be a nightmare.

That being said, I think both Costco and Ikea should probably conform to local standards.

nerdawson• 2 years ago

To combat this, grocery retailers in Europe, such as Aldi, Tesco and Lidl, have coin locks on their carts.

Thankfully I haven’t been to a Tesco in as long as I can remember where the trolleys have been coin locked.

Coin locks were made for a different era. When everything is contactless, there’s little reason to carry cash. If you aren’t paying for things in cash, you don’t have change you can use for a trolley either.

Mashimo2• 2 years ago

People often use little plastic coins. Even though it's worthless piece of plastic they want it back and thus deliver the carts back as well.

logtempo• 2 years ago

Even more if in your childhood memory it is engraved as something fun. As a child, and I believe others too, getting and returning the cart with the little coin your parent gives to you was cool.

mathverse5• 2 years ago

You can unlock the cart with the tip of the sn european key. No coins needed.

dgellow• 2 years ago

You can just keep a coin with you. You don’t need to be paying in cash to have a 1€ coin in your wallet. But as others said, it’s common to use a token instead of an actual coin.

Accacin• 2 years ago

Odd, the large Tesco near me has no coin required for the trolleys. However, the Lidl and Sainsbury's do. I don't carry cash, but I keep a few pound coins in the car just in case.

At least with Sains', if you ask the security guard near the door he'll unlock one for you anyway :)

theginger• 2 years ago

This article misses a very big reason. It's a scheduling type problem. They rarely have good systems in place to deal with taking bad trollies out of service, so they stay in service and sit at the front of the stack, because some people notice and reject the trolley but they generally find their way back onto the stack. If you always take the first trolley of the stack and regularly find it is busted it is probably because you are often taking other people's rejected trollies

milliams• 2 years ago

At my local there's often a few columns of trolleys next to each other. I always go for the column with the fewest trolleys as I assume that the trolley sitting at the head of the longest column is likely to have an issue.

dmarto• 2 years ago

I do the same, but for a different reason. In my mind, they are less accessible, as the end of the line usually has metal guardrails, thus leaving the closer and easier-to-reach carts for other people.

On the other hand, in my area, I have never seen a broken cart, perhaps because they require coins to operate.

aqfamnzc• 2 years ago

I'm enjoying learning about shopping cart / trolley-based game theory. Haha

bombcar6• 2 years ago

It depends on how they’re loaded into the queue - some are back loaded “fifo” from an employee door, others are “lifo” from the customer side.

FIFO is more likely to keep pushing the bad one to the front, whereas lifo will eventually have the far carts be the bad ones.

But I’ve rarely if ever had a bad cart so maybe this is an issue somewhere else. It is amazing to realize that at about $200-400 a pop, the average Walmart has something like a quarter million dollars worth of carts.

batushka3• 2 years ago

As non american, I can't relate to this article. Such a niche problem. All our cart's are with coins - can't remember when I got broken.

herbst• 2 years ago

Same here. Carts are often even free but there is no visible broken cart issue worth talking about here.

lupusreal• 2 years ago

The article is greatly exaggerating. It's been years since I've encountered a broken cart.

prmoustache2• 2 years ago

My understanding is that most carts aren't broken but something is stuck in the bearings/bushings that allow the wheels to rotate on both axis. Just desmantling the wheel once in a while, cleaning it and regreasing it would do the trick.

It is just that shops do not care nor are willing to pay someone to spend the 15 to 30 minutes[1] every day to it takes check and fix them.

[1] if they were checked daily, most of them would stay in shape so a very little amount of them would need a fix per day.

0xEF• 2 years ago

something stuck in the bearings/bushings

This is tracks with my experience. I used to work for a mid-sized US grocery chain in the Midwest (Farmer Jack if anyone remembers those, gone now) and I once got reprimanded for cleaning the cart wheels. I didn't even have to take the wheels apart most of the time, just get in there with some WD-40 or pop out the small bits of concrete or rock with a screwdriver. Apparently that was a waste of time in my manager's eyes since "the carts were always broken anyway" and I was supposed to be unloading stock.

emiliobumachar• 2 years ago

I'd classify that as "broken, but easily repairable". Maybe I'm a spoiled desk jockey, but if I'm "dismantling" anything that size and weight, I ain't just cleaning it.

prmoustache2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't call a bicycle that has a draggy old bottom bracket or wheel hub as broken.

In need of service yes.

Yizahi2• 2 years ago

Shopping carts are always broken because the store doesn't give damn. For instance in my current city giant Auchan store has literally every single cart busted, unmaintained and completely rusted top to bottom. Similarly sized Carrefour has normal carts, mostly without any issues, just like Ikea and several other medium and small stores. Kaufland even has some fancy new carts, which not only work fine but have some modern ergo handles. It's just some Auchan middle manager has decided that they aren't interested in the carts and that was the result. And adding more insult to the injury - those Auchan carts have fully indoor use, because parking is inside same building, and Carrefour and Ikea have open parking lots with carts experiencing weather and rough pavement.

We can try to blame weather, people, stack problem, ethics, cart design, economic downturns or taxes, but that's all a misdirection. The blame lies squarely on some middle manager who either enforces maintaining and replacement of the carts or he doesn't.

blagie3• 2 years ago

You can blame one middle manager.

You can't blame a million middle managers. If all middle managers are doing something wrong, that's a problem of org design.

The same is true across the board. One corrupt congressman? Bad apple. 100 of them in a government? Something is wrong with the way the system is set up. One bad teacher? Bad apple. Most teachers are bad? You're looking at some issue with hiring practices, training, salary, incentives, management, accountability, transparency, administration, or something else.

These problems get hard to solve when blame is misplaced. You can't fix an org structure if you can't talk about teachers doing bad things since people confound that with bad teachers. The exact same person can be the most and the least competent based on the situation they're in.

bryanrasmussen• 2 years ago

the original saying about bad apples is that one spoils the barrel, which applies in some organizational cases.

Sure you can't blame a million middle managers, because they are all in different barrels, but congress people are in the same barrel, and if one is corrupt we might assume that non-corrupt ones will be corrupted over time by exposure.

Many systems can be set up to ease spoiling, thus creating a two-tiered problem, when the teachers are all bad because the system promotes bad teachers you can't fix it just by fixing the system because you have a crop of teachers in their barrels waiting to rot any newcomer and also rising to positions where they can put regulations in place to ease rottenness in the future.

bombcar6• 2 years ago

All it takes is inventories of carts periodically done, and you’ve created the incentive to never take a cart out of service, because now there is paperwork involved.

If instead you can order a few new carts “when you feel low” there’s nothing preventing someone at the store putting the annoying dead cart into the dumpster.

Never underestimate the friction paperwork causes.

Yizahi2• 2 years ago

Of course in the human society there are no things that are simple single step problems. There is a problem and someone/something was causing it directly, but that cause usually had a cause of its own, and again and again, in a chain, branching indefinitely. So yeah, the cause of that manager making bad decision is his bad education and bad hiring decision by an upper tier, and the cause of his bad education was a bad teacher or mentor, and the cause of that was a bad education and bad hiring of the upper tier, and so on and so on. Indefinitely.

whiterknight2• 2 years ago

When almost everything is broken the organizational problem is in society.

deprecative• 2 years ago

Yeah, the issue is capitalism. It requires costs be minimized and profits go up. Why buy quality carts? Why pay employees good wages? Simple: you don't because every other business is doing the same thing.

whiterknight2• 2 years ago

Real answer: customers don’t give an damn and break and steal them.

c2xlZXB5Cg1• 2 years ago

My mind went to "eventual consistency"... time to switch off the internets

tamaharbor• 2 years ago

Fact is, shopping carts are not always broken.

HenryBemis• 2 years ago

This is why I was impressed that Tucker Carlson was impressed about the coin in the shopping cart. I've been to the US a bunch of times (a decade ago), and if memory serves well Walmart didn't have coins on their carts. In Europe though this mechanism exists in majority of the super markets (so I'm not surprised Russian super markets are also doing the same).

resolutebat2• 2 years ago

This is probably partly because a 1/2 EUR coin is still worth something (= can be used to buy numerous supermarket products), while a single US quarter is close to worthless. What item in a US supermarket costs under $0.25 these days?

jccalhoun2• 2 years ago

In the USA Aldi has them but I don't know of any others that do.

tsuru• 2 years ago

It's been 20 years but I still miss the all-wheel steering of my grocery in Japan (jasco). Every cart now feels broken without it, even Costco's.

thsksbd4• 2 years ago

European carts are like that, but I dislike them.

Four wheel steering solves a very nasty problem for Japan and Europe - need to turn on tight corners. Expensive real estate -> narrow aisles -> no room to maneuver the cart.

Win for four wheel steering.

The problem, however, is that the fixed rears anchor the cart. They help the cart to take a straight line. The greater steering effort is more than offset by not having to constantly juggle a cart trying to spin on itself. So if you have wide, long aisles like in the US two wheel steering is a lot less effort.

Pro tip - if your cart is very heavy, and there is a tight corner, steer it from the end opposite the handles. It'll literally turn on itself with very little effort

dwighttk• 2 years ago

This kinda sounds like out of touch big city reporting or something…

I’ve experienced broken carts, but not often enough to say “man, those things are always broken”

catchnear4321• 2 years ago

this is an ad. of sorts. you are to be upset at grocers, for not paying for high quality wheels. (go on now, get upset at the right people. this was expensive, relatively.)

cnn is news entertainment.

While the rubber wheels cost twice the price of the standard polyurethane ones, Diaz said P&H Casters’ natural rubber wheels can last for about a decade, barring mistreatment from customers. In a busier store environment, they can hold out between four and five years.
However, many retailers choose cheaper parts because the upfront price is typically higher for more durable material, Poulos added.

quitit• 2 years ago

It's not entirely fair for the author to draw conclusion on this particular topic, especially ones as provoking as "cost cutting".

Shopping trolleys are one of those topics where the more you look, the more you find: especially when it comes to the wheels.

For example despite the article mentioning rubber as being superior to PU - it's not always suitable, or even safe. Such as for malls which use ramp-style escalators which allow a shopping trolley to be moved between floors. These must employ PU wheels which have grooves that match the escalator. This lowers the shopping trolley sufficiently for a rubber-brake to press against the ramp, preventing the trolley from moving.

An example of the grooved PU wheel and rubber-brake can be seen here: https://www.industrial-casterwheels.com/china-escalator_trol...

DinoCoder99• 2 years ago

I'm more pissed that supermarkets removed baskets so you HAVE to push around a behemoth that squeals and drags to the right

Suppafly• 2 years ago

> While the rubber wheels cost twice the price of the standard polyurethane ones

Which seems insane because if you buy replacement suspension parts for cars, the long lasting polyurethane replacements always cost more than the OEM style rubber ones.

evanjrowley• 2 years ago

The article picture is from the Costco in Wheaton, Maryland. That particular Costco is built into a shopping mall, Westfield Wheaton Mall, which is in the process of being sold. The Costco was the main business keeping the place alive. This part of Maryland is between Baltimore and DC, and for whatever reason, everything in between is kind of run down in general. There seems to be a cultural apathy around here that results in social malaise, like shopping carts not being cared for, etc.

JoeAltmaier• 2 years ago

Like, why do I always get in the slow line?

Because, there are many lines and the chance you get in the fast line is like 1-in-N where N is the number of lines.

chasd00• 2 years ago

They get broken enough to be annoying but never broken enough to replace.

HPsquared• 2 years ago

Lots of things exist in an "annoyance equilibrium" like this.

bookofjoe• 2 years ago

Great insight.

Examples:

Leaky faucets; squeaky cabinet/door hinges; door thresholds that let water inside only when it's a huge storm with heavy winds and rain; cars that only start after several attempts; my blog host which requires several failed attempts before uploading an image; grocery stores (Kroger and Harris Teeter, for two) that have only a single checkout line manned by a person — often new or old and slow — so as to "encourage" customers to use the many self-checkout stations; credit card readers that require several attempts before acceptance; gas station pumps which increasingly require more personal information before allowing you to put the darn nozzle in your car; phone and tablet touchscreens covered with fingerprints and skin debris and dust etc. but still quite usable; eyeglasses with the same issues; clothing you know isn't fresh but that's still wearable if the alternative is doing the laundry; running out of coffee beans and using instant as opposed to taking the time and effort to buy fresh beans.

I'm sure others here have equally amusing exemplars....

DebtDeflation• 2 years ago

I have literally NEVER seen anyone do preventative maintenance or repair on a shopping cart. All I ever see are attendants collecting them from around the store and parking lot, stacking them, and pushing them back to their holding pen.

bombcar6• 2 years ago

It’s like pigeon nests - you never see them but they happen.

Usually it’s a cart maintenance company that comes in the middle of the night when the store is closed. Only time I’ve ever seen one is at a 24-hour store.

wildpeaks• 2 years ago

Interesting, I didn't realize the coin locks were only a European thing.

jccalhoun2• 2 years ago

Aldi in the USA also does the coin lock. I don't know why other stores don't do it. Maybe because Aldi is seen as the cheap store and they don't want to be associated with being cheap.

quesera• 2 years ago

Aldi is a European chain of course, and I suspect they carried that tradition over to their US stores.

I dislike this system. I don't go to Aldi very often, and I never have change on my person or in the car. So I grab a cardboard box (which Aldi makes available to customers) and fill that up as I walk around the store.

So I buy less than I would if I had a cart.

euroderf• 2 years ago

And hey y'all, it's not nearly as "oppressive" as you might be imagining.

jmclnx2• 2 years ago

To combat this, grocery retailers in Europe, such as Aldi, Tesco and Lidl, have coin locks

Where I lived, decades ago one store tried this. They ended up folding because no one wanted to deal with inserting coins, why:

1. What if you had no coins ? Most people in the US dump all coins in a big jar when the get home. I would guess back then, about 30% of the people never carried coins, so the chain instantly lost some market share. Now it is more like 90%.

2. These days, just about everyone under 35 do not carry cash, never mind coins. Back then, this was not too much an issue.

3. At the time, homeless people would cruse the parking log, breaking the device to get the coin. The store would have to replace the devices often.

FWIW, where I buy food, I would sat only 10% or less carriages have issues. Years ago it was much higher but I guess the chain does something different that other chains.

philshem• 2 years ago

Points 1 and 2: you can get a plastic or metal store-branded token for free from a cashier. Or many of us carry our own token attached to your keychain. No coins needed.

Point 3: doesn’t make sense. The carts don’t have coins stored when they aren’t in use by a customer.

jmclnx2• 2 years ago

For # 3 -- Back the, some people would not bother returning the carriage to get their coin. They just left them where their car was and moved on.

You saw this was decades ago :)

For the plastic tokens, almost no one in the US (at least were I live) would deal with these plastic tokens. I very much doubt that would be accepted.

Also we have deposits on bottles, most people here just toss the in the trash, not bothering to return them. I am sure forcing carriage returns would lose the chain many customers.

For it to work, every single chain would have to adopt this at the same time. Not going to work where I am in the US.

m-p-3• 2 years ago

Re: Point 3 that would be cart left with a coin by a careless customer who didn't bother bringing back the cart to have their coin back.

rarenovareed2• 2 years ago

In Estonia you can just pick up a little plastic tag that fits in the coin slot from the store infodesk, it's actually really simple.

jrochkind14• 2 years ago

What happens if you don't return it?

Chico75• 2 years ago

I mean Aldi stores across the US have this system and they seem to be expanding not folding, I'm not sure you can pin this store issues to that specific point.

Plus once it's a generalized system and all carts require coins, it's not like you have the choice anymore.

matwood• 2 years ago

I think it’s a great system.

Reminds of a big festival I went to in Germany. Beers were 5 euro and came in a sturdy plastic mug. Bring the mug back and get a euro back. 5 mugs and a free beer. I’ve never seen a place so clean after such a large party.

anotheruser133• 2 years ago

And Aldi cashiers will lend you a quarter if you don't have one.

hammock• 2 years ago

I don’t understand how coin locks keep the carts better maintained.

With coin locks, customers are still “pulling carts through bumpy parking lots, wrestling them across the threshold of doorways in and out of the store, and forcing them up and down the curb.”

The only difference maybe is they are all being returned to a covered cart shed that is protected from the elements.

Then why blame the customer with all that stuff above?

sgerenser• 2 years ago

Aldi does the quarter thing in the U.S. and I’ve never seen it as a problem. Just always keep a couple of quarters in the car (I rarely carry cash otherwise). I never see carts scattered around the parking lot there like I do at most other stores, despite it being only a quarter.

overstay8930• 2 years ago

round here it’s just homeless people destroying them

ubermonkey• 2 years ago

I live in the middle of a very large American city.

I never encounter broken shopping carts. It's just not a Thing, at least in Houston.

1letterunixname• 2 years ago

Tragedy of the Commons and cost.

Shopping carts are significantly durable for their acquisition cost and must be a design buyers are satisficed by.

Target larger store shopping carts seem more rugged and smoother rolling than conventional all metal ones.

Boundary antitheft systems generally address the theft problem. Perhaps these can be extended with app to leave a deposit for disabled, elderly people, and others to temporarily borrow carts for community neighbors without transportation.

PS: In the 80's, it always annoyed me when my aunt would "borrow" a shopping cart and then keep it until going to the store next like it was her personal property.

Log_out_• 2 years ago

My personal favorite is when they maximize user input only to throw it all away after user registration.

_tom_• 2 years ago

This used to be the case. Always a bent wheel or something. I was just reflecting recently that this was no longer the case, and has not been for years.

People learned what broke (front wheel that were slammed into things) and redesigned/reinforced appropriately.

Why are shopping carts always broken?

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