Using a cart retriever to corral and keep track of shopping carts does not just address safety concerns; it addresses fiscal concerns as well. If you provide shopping carts for customers to use, then the upkeep of the carts is a part of your overhead. If they are damaged, you need new carts to replace the ones that can no longer be used. However, if a number of carts never make it back into the store because people take them and put them to use in other places, you will spend money you could use for other things to buy new shopping carts.
A 2006 article from The New York Times said that in 2005, one company that hired people for the specific task of getting back shopping carts found that their “retrievers returned 86,000 carts from the streets of the metropolitan [New York City] area.” At this time, the carts were $90 each, so finding them saved quite a bit of money.
A DJ Products shopping cart retriever helps employees to quickly gather carts and keep them close to the store so there are fewer stray carts available for those who would be tempted to take a cart for their own use.
The retriever attaches to the back of the line of up to fifty shopping carts. The cart retriever pushes the line of carts from behind, following the direction that the operator steers as he guides them from in front. Once he gets to the front of the store, he is free to head back out to the parking lot with the shopping cart mover to collect more carts.