County tries to get a handle on roving shopping carts

Adrienne Packer

Monday, March 8, 1999 | 10:42 a.m.

What do compulsive gamblers and shopping carts have in common? Telephone hotlines have been established to aid each of them.

Thanks to Clark County decision-makers, residents distressed over abandoned or runaway shopping carts now have somewhere to turn: 593-CART. The reason? Stray grocery carts can harm others.

"This is not only a public nuisance, but also a safety issue," a county announcement says. " 'Wandering' shopping carts find their way onto roads and other public rights of way."

But don't expect the hotline to be a one-phone-call effort. To return a shopping cart to its rightful store, finders must be as determined as they would be reuniting a lost puppy with its owner.

It also helps if the caller is up on county zoning because one of the first questions posed by the recorded hotline operator is, "Is the cart in a public right of way?"

The determination is vital because if the shopping cart is in the public right-of-way, the caller must phone the county's public works division. If it's in a residential area, one of two shopping-cart recovery services must be called.

The simplest method might seem to be calling the store, whose name is typically emblazoned across the cart's handle just for that reason. The stores' labeling strategy must not be effective, however, because there are two thriving cart-retrieval companies in Las Vegas.

The competition between Sundance Recovery Inc. and Cart Recovery Inc. proves that reuniting grocery carts and stores is serious business.

"Kids get a hold of them and bang them into things, people steal the wheels off them and auto parts stores cut them down and use them to haul things around," said Craig Thom, owner of Sundance Recovery Inc.

Sundance and Cart Recovery Inc. are hired by various grocery and department stores to scour neighborhood streets, gullies and ditches for hijacked and abandoned carts.

Usually the missing shopping carts -- which are worth about $100 -- are within a half-mile to a mile radius of the store, Thom said, but some have strayed even farther.

"One that belonged in North Town was found in Henderson," Thom said. "We even found one from Ralph's market in L.A. up here."

Sundance has eight to 10 drivers who recover between 300 and 400 carts each day. When the county's hotline begins ringing off the hook, business is sure to pick up for the two companies.