By George Anderson
The problem has been around as long as there have been shopping carts. Customers, or others, go to a store location and push shopping carts off the lot and then leave them on city streets and in lots.
For many cities, towns and retailers, the situation only appears to be getting worse with each passing year.
A number of local communities, reports The Orange County (CA) Register, have hired cart-retrieval services to clean up strays. Anaheim's service picked up 35,000 carts in the past year.
Many retailers, particularly grocers, pay services to retrieve carts and some offer services, such as rides home to discourage shoppers from removing carts from store lots. Others make use of technology that locks a cart's wheels once it has reached the perimeter of a parking lot.
Retailers such as Aldi require shoppers to rent their carts. Customers insert a quarter to use a cart and are reimbursed the quarter when they return the cart to its queue.
Moderator's Comment: How big an issue is this for the retail industry? What do you think is the most cost-effective system for keeping carts on store lots? - George Anderson - Moderator