‘UnCarts™’ can outsmart potential thieves

Mary Gutierrez can’t stand it when her Wilmington neighbors walk their groceries home and abandon shopping carts on her street.
“They are always parked on my yard,” she said. “There shouldn’t be no shopping carts anywhere.”
Now, Gutierrez and her neighbors say they are noticing a change. Fewer carts are showing up, thanks to a new electronic device that’s being tested on about 125 shopping carts at a nearby Albertson’s supermarket.
The device, known as the “UnCart™,” makes it virtually impossible to wheel a shopping cart away from a supermarket parking lot. Those who try find themselves going in circles, and so far, Prather says, not a single cart has been stolen since the testing began Sept. 18.
The UnCart's™ inventor, James Prather, says the device will save money for the supermarket chains and customers, and help clean up the blight resulting when shopping carts are left in neighborhoods.
“We’ve had a real impact in this little community here,” Prather said of the neighborhood surrounding the Albertson’s at 1022 N. Avalon Blvd. “Before we started the test (the carts), it looked like a shopping cart junkyard.”
Shopping cart theft has been a problem for the supermarket industry since carts went into full use after World War II. Today, industry officials say, a shopping cart is stolen from a U.S. store every 90 seconds, adding up to more than 350,000 carts a year.
Supermarket chains are forced to replace the carts – at an average cost of $125 each – and pay thousands of dollars to companies to retrieve them from neighborhoods. These costs get passed on to consumers in increased food prices. For every $15,000 spent on shopping cart retrieval, stores must sell $75,000 worth of groceries to recoup their costs, Prather said. Although only about 5 percent of the customers at the Albertson’s on Avalon try to remove carts, the numbers add up.
For years, supermarket chains around the country have tried devices to thwart customers from taking shopping carts. Numerous companies have invented electronic locks that prevent wheels from turning when they are activated, and many are in use across the nation.

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