On 28 Jul 2003 00:10:50 GMT, (Tfmccarley) wrote:

Just think what it would have been if it had been made in France.

It would likely have one big advantage -- the local underprivileged or
lazy or cheap wouldn't be stealing them from the market and leaving
them on the front lawn or nearest streetcorner for the truck to pick
up again (there are areas in the Los Angeles area where the stores
regularly hire a service to round up their missing carts from, uh,
certain ethnic neighborhoods.)

The French have solved this problem. There's a shopping cart
manufacturer named "Caddy" near Strasbourg. Their carts are clever --
they stack and lock together. To unlock your cart and go shopping, you
have to insert a coin. As I recall it was 10 Francs, a good amount of
change (think Kennedy half or Susan B. Anthony dollar).

You get your coin back when you return the cart and stack it with the
others. There's a "key" on a chain just long enough to reach the next
cart in the stack. Once you put the key from your cart in the lock of
the next cart, your coin comes back out.

Other than that, they steer just like 'murikan carts.

Pete
who used to go across the border to France to shop because they have
American-style supermarkets, malls, and longer hours than the Germans.

I've seen these locks in a couple of places in Canada too, Moncton and
Vancouver. The only type I've seen up here is the type with two fixed
wheels and two casters.

chem

Peter Albrecht wrote:
[snip]

The French have solved this problem. There's a shopping cart
manufacturer named "Caddy" near Strasbourg. Their carts are clever --
they stack and lock together. To unlock your cart and go shopping, you
have to insert a coin. As I recall it was 10 Francs, a good amount of
change (think Kennedy half or Susan B. Anthony dollar).

You get your coin back when you return the cart and stack it with the
others. There's a "key" on a chain just long enough to reach the next
cart in the stack. Once you put the key from your cart in the lock of
the next cart, your coin comes back out.

Other than that, they steer just like 'murikan carts.

Pete
who used to go across the border to France to shop because they have
American-style supermarkets, malls, and longer hours than the Germans.

On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 04:02:07 GMT, "ATP"
wrote something
.......and in reply I say!:


I reckon that human anture is such that any desposit that guarantees
the return of something will be too large for people to willingly pay
in the first place.

Somebody gets $20.00/hour as pay. They "think" to themselves "it takes
3 minutes to return the cart. That's got to be one dollar deposit to
be just worth it". I reckon some enterprising soul would make a
fortune at $1 per cart, just picking them up. Or better still "return
your cart for 50c" G

With a cart, at least there is the fact that you _have_ to have the
acrt, so a large deposit may be possible.

Sam's Club tried them for a while but gave up on the system, I'm not sure
why. I think it was more to try and get people to return the carts to the
proper place than to keep people from taking them off the premises.



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'round here, they just put them back to back, lock them together and
recover both coins. I strongly suspect that they bring two carts at a
time so's they can do this.

Before the Germans visiting France figured out that you're supposed to get
money back, I would regularly grab an abandoned cart, return it to the stack,
and get some free money...

Pete