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| Trying to make some sense out of all this, I started to make some notes at to the origin of these carts as I stumbled upon them. To my surprise, the vast majority of these things have made quite a trip. Apparently, "local" carts either get repossessed or are left alone out of respect for the vendor. The neighborhood has a funny sense of pride that way. Either way, I was impressed to see carts from as far away as West Memphis and as old as SAVE-A-LOT and K-Mart, two vendors who no longer even exist in any zip code. |
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| the counter-story |
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| Now as any Memphian will tell you, getting robbed really sucks. Not only is it inconvenient, it is expensive as well. So I started to wonder just how much this completely accepted "broad daylight" form of theft must be costing the vendors, and whether or not it was worth doing anything about. After all, some manager somewhere has to be losing sleep over this right? |
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| Enter GateKeeper Solutions and their GS2 "Comprehensive Cart Containment" alliteration system. According to GateKeeper research, a shopping cart is stolen every ninety seconds in the US, and it is my guess that most of these thefts happen right here along Vance Avenue in south Memphis. |
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| With an average cart costing between $75 to $100 dollars, cart theft costs retailers over $200 million a year. Furthermore, in today's world of razor-thin margins, a grocery store must sell $15,000 worth of groceries to make up for the cost of every cart that goes missing. That's a lot of dinosaur chicken. However, depending on store layout and cart quantities, the manufacture claims that in most cases, the system will pay for itself in 12 to 18 months. That was as deep as I was willing to dig before being directed to a "sales force" person who started tossing around some cart technical jargon that made me nervous. <click> |
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| the test |
| But why take their word for it? After all, this is information posted on the internet we are talking about here. What we need is some Testing 1,2,3 in action. So I went to a couple of the local Walgreens here in town where the system is installed, grabbed a cart and did some shopping. |
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| Once on site, the first thing I noticed was that there was a sign posted in every cart with the following warning instructions. |
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| This shopping cart will lock if taken beyond the parking lot boundary. The boundary is marked by distinctive yellow lines. |
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| As an added bonus, there was a danger man style representation of the calamity that would ensue if one were to dare approach one of these "distinctive yellow lines". I could hardly wait to put it to the test, but first I wanted to check under the hood a little more. So while pretending to shop for the best deal on cough meds, |
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| I stooped down and inspected the wheels on the cart. |
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| At first glance, it was clear something "electronic" was going on with one of the front wheels as there appeared to be little ball bearings spaced all the way around. Assuming that this was the locking device, I was really at a loss as to what was up with the rear wheel. While it certainly didn't appear to be stock, I couldn't figure out what purpose it served... until later when this "test" made it all the way out into the parking lot. |
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locking front wheel |
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"anti tilt" rear wheel |
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| After completing my shopping and loading all the loot into my truck, I decided to put my cart through a few "simulated theft" attempts. So while roaming around the parking lot, I began to notice the cuts in the pavement where the boundary line had been buried. And while it was obvious to see, there were no "distinctive yellow lines" other than the ones that marked the individual parking spaces in the lot. A point that might stand up in a court of law if you are a homeless guy with enough wherewithal to hire the likes of T-Flowers to defend you. (Come on, we've all seen cases shakier than this stand up.) Anyway, I pushed on towards the trench and, sure enough, the front wheel began to lock. |
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| And not only did the thing lock forward, it wouldn't let me retreat back into the "green zone" either. I was completely stuck. Then, almost instinctively, I pushed down on the handle bar in an attempt to get the locked wheel off the ground so that I could wheelie my way out of the DMZ. (Que the "ah-ha" music) Remember the thing on the back wheel I couldn't figure out earlier? Well, it's called an "anti-tilt" bar and it's sole purpose is to prevent you from beating the system by keeping the front wheels on the ground. Simple, but effective... assuming you are not the cart retrieval guy for the store, because now I had no choice but to abandon my cart where it was. Short of picking it up off the ground, this cart wasn't going anywhere without a reset. So as far as I was concerned, the "field" portion of this edition of Testing 1,2,3 was complete. |
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| Once back at the rv.com lab, I logged onto one of the internets and started to do a little more research on the GS2 System. Below is a graphical explanation from the company web site that explains what I've attempted to verbalize USA Today style. It is my guess that you will find it more informative than any of my previous ramblings. |
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| the results |
| So as you can see, the GS2 is basically hot rodded electric fence that, instead of tasering your dog, activates "a self-braking wheel". And while I tend to be a sucker for high-tech solutions to really basic problems, I have to say this this is actually really effective solution assuming that the $math$ all adds up like the manufacture says it does. One thing is for sure however, in the over 20 varieties of carts that I have photographed since I started this project, none have been from Walgreens. Somebody might want to tell that to those Rite-Aid guys across the street. |
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| Bounty Opportunity |
| Have any photos of carts that I may have missed? Well I am offering 5 RVPR bounty points for each successful submission to a new "shopping cart gallery" I'm working on. Action photos are best, but feel free to use your imagination on this one. |
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- 1/27/2007 10:31:04 PM
