Market carts pass theft test

Wilmington – The developers of an anti-theft shopping cart said Wednesday their product passed trials with flying colors and the Albertson’s grocery chain has agreed to use the cart sin eight more stores.
The deal to put the trademarked UnCart™ in more Albertson’s has the MIND WURX^® LLC principals gearing up to make their mark in the grocery industry.
“We are getting a lot of interest from a lot of interesting people and a lot of talented companies,” said MIND WURX's™ James Prather, of Yorba Linda.
A meeting at Boise, Idaho-based Albertson’s on Wednesday could land MIND WURX^® a contract that would put carts at all of the grocers locations.
According to figures compiled by MIND WURX^®, the supermarket industry records more than $300 million annually in losses to cart theft. While industry officials are tight lipped about these losses, the number could be as much as $800 million, Prather said.
Since the introduction of the modern wheeled shopping cart at the end of World War II, grocers have searched high and low for a solution to the problem of stolen carts. There are hundreds of patents with the U.S. Patent Office for shopping cart theft prevention, but few have excited the industry.
A three-month field test at an Albertson’s in Wilmington, where only one out of 200 UnCart™s put into service turned up missing, has Albertson’s officials excited enough to order enough carts for eight more stores.
Prather said that MIND WURX^® will deliver more than 1,000 new carts Albertson’s wants for six stores in the Los Angeles area, one in San Diego and one in Las Vegas, Nev. Specific locations and precise numbers of carts have not been locked in.
The UnCart™ uses a patented device that activates when the cart is pushed outside a perimeter in a store parking lot. When the device activates, the cart can be pushed only in a gentle circle. Despite numerous attempts at the Wilmington store to disable or tamper with the device, no one defeated it.

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