I can’t help but notice that the back wheels of shopping carts are fixed in the States and Canada because I recall such being not so much the case in other countries like Japan and South Korea where the shopping carts there are all swivel casters (yes, that’s including the back wheels!) with some additional grooves on one of the back wheels to keep it from falling down when customers go up these moving rampways (they’re kinda designed like escalators but instead of individual staircases they’re flat tiles forming a ramp to allow the shopping carts to also go up the floors with the customers).
In: Engineering
Other countries generally have smaller stores with tighter aisles than American supermarkets. People can use the tighter turning radius all four casters can provide. Here it isn’t really necessary so they save the cost.
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The US and Canada are huge, and therefore their shops are correspondingly big: wide, long aisles with deep cross-aisles giving plenty of room to swing a huge cart around with a fixed turning point. Other countries can’t afford to use so much real estate, so the shops are smaller with more compact spacing: a free moving cart is a lot more manageable there.
Can’t believe people in the Americans never get to experience a 360° rerack of a shopping trolley, or pretend drifting into the next aisle.
As one who has experienced both. Swivel casters on all 4 are the worse concept ever. I dislike the lack of control or extra struggle needed when cart is full.
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