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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cart Caddy Gathers Shopping Carts -- Increase Productivity and Lowers Labor Costs, Too.Subtitle of announcementLittle Falls, Minn., March 11, 1997 -- Lindbergh Manufacturing's recently introduced Cart Caddy™ is being warmly embraced by its initial customers who are reporting significant gains in productivity and lowered labor costs associated with gathering and recycling shopping carts from store parking lots. The Cart Caddy is a battery-powered unit that is used to push shopping carts from parking lots back to the store's staging area or customer entrance. The unit, which can be operated safely by one person, is capable of pushing as many as 50 standard-size shopping carts at one time. Cart Caddy units are already in operation in six states, and retailers are unanimous in their praise for the Cart Caddy's performance. For example, one customer, Cash Wise Foods in Minnesota said they were able to cut significant labor hours each week from their cart gathering operations. As a result, Cash Wise found it was possible to use five cross-trained employee who could gather carts as well as perform other customer service and stocking tasks. Using the Cart Caddies has allowed this chain greater overall flexibility in the scheduling of store personnel. "In the very first week we used the Cart Caddy, we were able to reduce time spent in cart gathering by a full 25 hours," said Jean Honer, Personnel Director of Cash Wise. A Wisconsin chain was even more enthusiastic, saying "It is the best labor savings device ever invented. The Cart Caddies allowed us to cut the hours necessary for cart gathering by 50%. The units have paid for themselves in just a few months." Joe Berg, the company's president, said the idea of the Cart Caddy came to him and his partners as they were commenting on the amount of physical strength necessary to retrieve and return shopping carts from the parking lot to the store. "We'd see the store employees struggle with long lines of carts and thought to ourselves, 'there must be a better way,'" Berg stated. Looking deeper, the company found that cart gathering and retrieval is a big problem and major expense area for many retailers and store managers. There were some universal factors that emerged in the company's field research of larger retail operations:
These factors, plus other, were considered carefully as the Cart Caddy was being developed. Since younger employees with lowest seniority usually find the cart gathering tasks assigned to them, the company wanted to make sure that the Cart Caddy would be a safe and easy device for these employees to use. Berg said that training takes less then an hour typically. The Cart Caddy is about the size of a small garden tractor, but the operator stands behind the unit and "drives" it like a self-propelled lawn mower. Or, using the remote control feature, the operator stands and steers at the front of the "cart train," using the remote control feature to start and stop the Cart Caddy's electric motor. This "no ride" feature of the Cart Caddy is another important safety feature that was "built" into the unit's design. Since the operator is usually at the front of a long "cart train," the risk of colliding with other carts or pedestrians is substantially reduced. And because younger people use the Cart Caddy in many store parking lots, Berg Stated that the Cart Caddy does no present any temptation for younger employees to "drive" the unit as they would drive a golf cart. The basic Cart Caddy is powered by three, 12-volt batteries. It can push as many as 50 regular shopping carts. Depending on use, the unit must be re-charged after a standard shift (10-12 hours of use). The unit comes with built-in charger and sell for just under $5,000. Lindbergh Manufacturing is a privately-held manufacturing company headquarter in Little Falls, Minn.
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