I’d guess that any time you’re anywhere with shopping carts there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get a cart with a cruddy wheel. It doesn’t turn right cause it has gum on it (because people are disgusting slobs) and keeps going blonk blonk blonk blonk blonkblonkblonkblonkblonkblonkblonk, or gets such a big chunk of crud on it that it stops spinning altogether and does that horrific screechy skid.
I get frustrated REALLY quickly with junky carts. To prevent frustration I stand there and look for what looks like the best cart, then I test it for like 20 steps and if it sucks I’ll keep going back and trying cart after cart. Even still, you can be in the middle of a store and run over some gum or something and have to hop on one foot while you drag your toe on the messed up wheel trying to knock off whatever crud got stuck on the wheel. If that doesn’t work you have to go get another cart transfer all your stuff, and ditch that cart.
Well check THIS out.
This was the wheel on an IKEA warehouse flat cart (not a shopping cart).
Best shopping cart wheel ever
I don’t know about the history of these or what other stores have them. All I know is I’ve never seen them and they they don’t get gum, or candy, or other crap stuck on them. They have those little grooves with the scraping fingers riding almost on the surface to scrap off any crud. This is the back of the IKEA cart wheel, or the part that faces you while you push the car forward, so any crud that gets on the wheel gets shoveled off on the way up and around the back.
They still seem to be susceptible to plastic wrap or twine wrapping around the axle part on the sides of the wheel but I’m not sure what can be done about that. I’ll start thinking about it. Any ideas?
In the meantime I’ll go practice steering those IKEA carts with the 4 wheels on castors.
7 Comments
Emily
You should get comped to sell that into Wegmans, Target, Home Depot…
Anonymous
I should go into cart wheel sales.
Emily
Plus, and I haven’t looked it up yet, but CartWheels would be a sweet business name. Flippy.
Emily
Plus, and I haven’t looked it up yet to see if it’s taken and it probably IS, but Cartwheels would be a sweet business name. Flippy Dippy.
Mandy
LOL I love that I stumbled across this post. I work at IKEA and I can tell you a couple of things about why our cart wheels are they way they are. First, while the grooves with the fingers DO keep things from getting stuck in the wheels, our wheels are made that way so that they lock into the grooves on the escalators and, all of our carts have these wheels (at least at my location in CO). Second, the reason all four wheels on our carts move in every direction (like castors) is to prevent tipping. If the back wheels only went straight (like on a regular shopping cart) and you turned a corner with a cart full of stuff it can tip over. However, with all wheels being able to move in every direction the back wheels can accommodate the turn and prevent a tip over. =) I really enjoyed reading this and agree that all cart wheels should be like this because I hate when I roll over a pebble or something and the whole cart is messed up!
Pete Fazio
Wow, cool perspective from an insider. At which IKEA do you work? The “castor” style of wheel is good for preventing tipping but man they are frustrating when turning a corner. The only thing that cancels the frustration is that you can pull off spinning 360s mid-walk and get sideways Bo and Luke Duke style around ever corner.
Mandy
I work at IKEA Centennial in Colorado. And, I agree with you, other than being able to do fun tricks, I wish the back wheels locked. It can make the carts very hard to push. Especially when you have to move more than one of them! LOL