ah! So this is what those blocks on shopping carts mean at supermarkets in Zoetermeer

You have probably seen them when you do your shopping at Hoogvliet in the Dorpsstraat: the red blocks on the wheels of shopping trolleys. Is that for decoration or do the blocks have a function?

The blocks are there for a reason. They prevent the shopping carts from being stolen.

Lost shopping carts

Bert Plomp is director of Rocateq† The company specializes in shopping cart security and maker of these red blocks. “Shopping cart theft is a major problem. A car costs about a hundred euros to purchase. That is a significant cost item for supermarkets and hardware stores where many cars are stolen. I know of cases of shops where previously twenty to thirty cars per week disappeared. These are of course extreme situations, but every supermarket and hardware store has to deal with theft of shopping carts.”

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Radio signals underground

How exactly does that work with those red blocks? Bert explains: “In such a block there is an electronic system. When a shopping cart moves outside a certain zone, the wheel locks and the cart no longer functions. There are cables one and a half meters under the ground that allow the wheel to block via radio signals.”

Round Markers

You can often spot red tiles around supermarkets and hardware stores that use this system. But around the Hoogvliet supermarket you see round stainless steel blocks with an image of a shopping cart on them. You can see them in the Dorpsstraat and at the parking lot on the Osylaan. “A lot of people think there’s something in the tiles, like magnets, but that’s not the case: it’s purely for clarification for shoppers as a marker of the zone.” The moment you pass this point with your shopping cart, the cart will block and you can’t walk any further with it.