Inspired by a folding chair, he added wheels to the legs and a handle to push the thing around, with a basket resting on the seat

Every canal and stream in Britain seems to have a few jutting from its surface. They lurk in car parks and alleyways, drunks take ’em for joyrides, and every kid has probably shared one with his mum’s shopping. They have four wheels but even Lewis Hamilton’s cornering skills would be tested to the limit in the shopping aisle grand prix. They are so hard to steer that it’s surprising Ralph Nader didn’t also declare them ‘unsafe at any speed’ and have them banned.

Invention of the shopping trolley is credited to Sylvan Goldman of Oklahoma City, in 1937. Goldman owned a chain of grocery stores operating under the inspiringly mad name of Humpty-Dumpty and noticed that women tended to stop shopping when their wire baskets became too heavy to lug from shelf to shelf. The first law of retailing says more is definitely better, and Goldman sought a way to increase the shopping load.

Inspired by a folding chair, he got his handyman to make a metal version and add wheels to the legs and a handle to push the thing around, with a basket resting on the seat. The first effort desperately wanted to self-fold and an improved version was quickly knocked up, with a raised seat leaving room for a second shelf. Hey presto! Two baskets, twice as much shopping, twice as much profit.
 
Despite the obvious advantage of not having to carry heavy baskets around, the new device met with surprising resistance: men were too macho to push and women did too much pushing of babies in prams. Undaunted, Goldman hired male and female ‘plants’ to push the carts around his stores with fake shopping. The idea caught on and Goldman was soon advertising this new, efficient way of shopping, exclusive to his stores – but not for long. There was more money to be made selling shopping trolleys to other stores and, in 1947, Goldman started The Folding Basket Carrier Co. But competition soon arrived in the form of a better trolley.

Goldman’s trolley had to be folded for storage and erected for shopping but, also in 1947, Orla E Watson of Kansas City patented the tapered ‘nesting’ basket with flip-up rear panel. Goldman sued Watson over patent disputes but the pair settled their differences and production continued. Since then, trolleys have changed little. Goldman made his millions and sold his company in 1961.

The shopping trolley arrived in the UK in 1950 at Sainsbury’s Croydon store. Now, it’s estimated that each year the worldwide cost of ‘wandering’ trolleys amounts to  £500 million. One British supermarket eventually secured a prosecution for stealing a trolley, only to have the case dismissed on a technicality. Because the woman had put a coin in the slot to detach the trolley, she was deemed to have entered into a contract with the supermarket. This, despite the fact that when asked, ‘When did you gain possession of the trolley?’ she replied, ‘When I nicked it.’

Somewhat bizarrely, the world’s largest advertising conglomerate started life as a manufacturer of supermarket trolleys – well, sort of. In 1985 Martin Sorrel, the ex-financial director of Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency, set out to build his own empire. Looking for a listed company with which to launch his drive, he purchased a significant stake in Wire and Plastic Products, who made precisely that. However, dominating the glamorous world of shopping trolleys was not on Sorrel’s agenda; instead, he embarked on a marathon of media acquisitions and changed the company name to WPP.

Oh, and remember, if you have a touch of the Howard Hughes, shopping trolley handles, just like peppermints in restaurants, inevitably show traces of a whole range of disagreeable fluids – including the bodily.