Stretcher Gurney

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Stretcher Gurney

Trolleys: the Wheel Thing!

There may be some slightly negative connotations – no-one wants to be ‘off their trolley’ or ‘trollied.’ But most of us use trolleys every week, and they can be found in car parks, supermarkets, stations and airports across the world. The sheer variety of ways in which the word can be Used is bewildering. In the US, for example, trolleys were what the Brits termed trams or streetcars. There are now several museums in America devoted to commemorating this kind of transport. Equally, when some people say trolleys, they mean gurneys or stretchers, used to convey people or bodies. But, mostly when we say trolleys now, we mean what our Stateside friends call carts – or sometimes shopping carriages, bascarts, baskets or buggies. They generally come in metal or plastic, and are designed to nest within each other so lots of them can be moved at once, saving on storage space. It is common practice to pay for their use with a small deposit. Trolleys are usually fitted with four caster wheels which can point in any direction to allow ease of maneuvering for getting round those tricky corners. However, when any one wheel jams, trolleys can become extremely difficult to handle. Many only have swivel caster wheels on the front, while the rear ones are on a fixed axle. Anyone who has ever been to a supermarket, railway station or airport will have experienced the frustration of jammed trolleys, and those which refuse to travel in the right direction. Trolleys come in many sizes, the larger ones able to carry a child. (According to official reports, some 24 children a year are hurt in America in accidents involving shopping trolleys.)

The first shopping trolleys were introduced in 1937, the invention of Sylvan Goldman, owner of a supermarket chain in Oklahoma City in the United States of America. With the help of a mechanic, Goldman based his design on a wooden folding Chair. They built it with a metal frame and added wheels and wire baskets. Another mechanic took the innovation towards mass-production by inventing an assembly line capable of forming and welding the wire. The invention was patented number in April 1940. These trolleys did not catch on immediately. Men found them effeminate; women found them too suggestive of a baby carriage. "I've pushed my last baby buggy," one offended woman complained. After hiring male and female models to push his new invention around his store and demonstrate their usefulness, shopping trolleys grew popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire. Goldman continued to modify his original design, and the basket size increased as stores realised that this made their customers buy more. Today, they are so popular that theft deterrent systems are commonplace in many shopping centres. Trolleys can be big business, too – successful manufacturers export trolleys around the world and use robotics to improve product design. Which just all goes to show: love them or hate them, trolleys are part of our everyday lives – and here to stay.

About the Author

Since we started in 2004, we have been sending out thousands of parcels every week to homeowners and businesses within the UK and Southern Ireland. Http://www.bigdug.co.uk

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