It’s just a pushable basket you use to store groceries and skate cart ride around the aisles with, so why do grocery carts cost $100 a cart? Science Channel details how the shopping cart is made with 75 yard of a steel cage covered in Telfon, how the bumpers can withstand 30mph crashes, how the wheels use the same material as roller coasters, and more. It all adds up to a lightweight push cart that can carry 350 lbs of stuff inside and survive over 35,000 shops across the span of a decade.
But all that good stuff needs to be protected with its own anti-theft system. The wheels lock up if it passes a certain perimeter around the shop. There’s basically a trigger that sets off once a shopping cart moves too far and renders it unmovable by locking up the wheel.