A shopping cart (also called a buggy, or a trolley in British English) is a cart supplied by a shop, especially a supermarket, for use by customers inside the shop for transport of merchandise to the check-out counter, and, after paying, often also to the car on the parking lot. Often customers are supplied the convenience of taking a cart in or near the shop and returning it on the car park, and personnel are charged with moving carts from the latter to the former. Sometimes the customer has to pay a small deposit by inserting a coin, which is returned if and when the customer returns the cart at a designated cart parking point.
This is also done for profit with luggage carts at many airports, where companies like Smarte Carte charge two or more dollars (or equivalent) for rental, and return a small token reward of a quarter (25 cents) for returning carts to the other end of any dispenser machine.
Shopping carts
In the United States, most shopping carts are made of metal or plastic and designed to nest within each other in a line to facilitate moving many at one time, and to save on storage space.
Shopping carts are fitted with four castor wheels, which can point in any direction to allow easy manoeuvring. However, when any one of the wheels jams, the cart becomes extremely difficult to handle.
Often there is the problem of theft of shopping carts; for example, shopping carts are often used by urban homeless people to carry their belongings. One of the solutions is a system of sensors around the parking lot which block a wheel. Sometimes shopping carts are physically prevented from even leaving the shop, but that is mainly a solution if few customers come by car. Retailers report more than 800 million dollars of missing carts in the U.S. alone each year.
An alternative for the shopping cart is a small handheld shopping basket. A customer can often choose between a cart and a basket, and may prefer a basket if the amount of merchandise is small. Small shops often supply only baskets, where large carts would be impractical.
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