Cart Bike

Step 1 Gather materials

You will need:

A bicycle
Shopping cart
Socket set
Hex key set
Dremel tool
Utility knife
Zip ties
Screwdriver

A note on shopping carts: Please don't steal them. This one happened to be floating around our downtown area for over a week before I grabbed it. The bicycle is almost ten years old and still works fine but I just bought the bike shop in town so suddenly have access to plenty of cycling materials.

Comments

[chotii]

Actually....just because a cart appears to be "derelict" doesn't mean it doesn't still belong to the store from which it was taken. People around my neighborhood sometimes use carts to push their groceries home, then abandon the carts a few blocks from the store. They still belong to the store, and unless you have written permission (at least in my state, it is against the law to have a shopping cart for which you do not have written permission from the store to possess it). Such carts should be returned to the store that owns them. Call it your 'good deed for the day'. If stores have to keep buying carts, they pass the cost of those carts on to shoppers...to everybody.

[johnny3h]

@chotii.  In spite of all the idiots saying go ahead, steal 'em," you are absolutely correct.

Here in Texas 8 to 10 years ago, shopping cart THEFT got so bad that the various industry trade lobbiests for the different stores that use shopping carts, got the Texas Legislature to enact a STATUTE making shopping cart theft A FELONY!!!!!   And the statute had the "PRESUMPTIVE" CLAUSE in it which means that whether your intent was to steal the cart, or not, IF you posess it OFF of the store's property, THEN you ARE PRESUMED to have known that you were stealing it. 

It does NOT MATTER if someone else took it off the property, and you "just rescued" it from the street, in Texas possesing a shopping cart off of the owner's premises is a felony.

And by the way a similar law applies to ANY railroad rails, ties, or scraps along the RR right-of-way!  The railroad companies say anything they leave / store on their right-of-way is THEIRS, and removing it is stealing! And other similar laws

 similarly apply to plastic MILK "CRATES" and plastic soft drink bottle "trays."

And a couple of years back, Louisiana passed a strict new TRESSPASSING law that says, that IF YOU ARE ON PROPERTY that you KNOW IS NOT YOURS, AND you DON'T HAVE SPECIFIC PERMISSION OF THE OWNER, THEN YOU ARE TRESPASSING.

These newer laws take the "fudge fact\or" [quibbling] out of law enforcement protection of people's property rights.

[nickstou]

don't be a dodo. while I agree that proactively taking carts from stores is not cool... well done and very original Mr. Zieak.

[pfred2]

Last time I priced out shopping carts they ran in the neighborhood of $250USD a piece. They may not look it but shopping carts are big bucks! Though their casters have made it into a few of my projects ... hey I found some at my town dumps.

[zieak]

I have picked up three carts since making this project. All at the dump. And they all needed work but can become use-able. Although I left a few behind!

[pfred2]

Dumps usually have a good return policy, double your money back! So some carts I've taken home, hacked their wheels off, then took the basket back to the dumps I got them from.

[bahaminb]

lol so take it from a store you hate and never like to shop at. well actually, i think walmart and sam's club could afford this.

[peufeu]

If I fish out the dozen or so shopping carts that are slowly rotting at the bottom of the city river, you think someone is gonna sue me ?

[bo88y]

They run about $200 each, I think.

[Wasagi]

Most people go with $75 - $100. (http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/06.03.99/shoppingcarts-9922.html)

[pdlbooboo]

i'd be surprised if 200 bucks is gonna even put a noticeable dent in the local "megamart's" income... just sayin

[pfred2]

But lets just say everyone that replied to this article took one would that add up to a dent do you think? Though there does seem to be a stream of legitimate shopping carts we can all draw from.

[maboy]

Plus I'd never get my quarter back from the annoying
Aldi's carts :P

[Awesomeness in a can]

I can help with that dent.

[Glockenator]

if its been floating around the city for a week i dont think its being used

[Denver395]

Theft of services is a crime no matter who else helped you.

[chotii]

Lost or stolen property still belongs to the person who paid for it. Unless you paid the store for the cart, the fact it's "floating around" is irrelevent. The only time one may take possession of an item, is when there is no possible way of determining the owner. Good example: I find and keep a $5 bill stuck to the ground in a wet parking lot. Bad example: I find and keep a set of car keys (envelope with large amount of money in it, watch, phone, iPod, ring, etc) on the ground in a wet parking lot.

[Wasagi]

This is going to sound like an Anarcho-Punk "burn the world" rant, but the fact of the matter is, if you find a cart floating around, the Grocery store hasn't done good enough of a job hanging on to them, and should rightly forfeit them. This is the case in many jurisdictions, though the Grocers' lobbies have started to turn this trend around. And to be honest, even if it is stealing, it's stealing from multi-million dollar corporations, that have done without that cart for however long it's been missing. Each store has dozens of extra carts, even with the periodic disappearances. These stores are tantamount to evil. They push out local chains with their severely reduced prices and corporate fallback, they import from halfway across the world, blatantly ignoring the contamination of many foodstuffs. They are the reason that locally grown produce is now a luxury, they've caused countless smaller operations to close and cost thousands their livelihoods. Furthermore, they hire people at minimum wage, barely enough to survive, and keep them at the bottom. These are not people that are being hurt, these are corporations. Corporations that are using their lobbying power to shift the blame away from themselves, and further ruin people's lives for the petty offense of possessing a shopping cart. That isn't fair. And any judge or jury that agrees that "stealing" a shopping cart should be damned.

[zieak]

I live on an island. Only way in or out is by airplane or ferry. This cart didn't match the carts used by any of the local stores. Trust me, i made a good effort to make sure i wasn't stealing. Since then i have picked up another shopping cart at the landfill. It needed some work to straighten it out but some time with a sledgehammer and a jack and it was sitting back on all four wheels. I bet that if you live somewhere where there are lots of grocery stores or other big box chains you could probably contact a manager about rounding up carts of theirs that are far off their property and bringing them back... perhaps trade finding ten carts for you packing off one of them. When i made my second one i just needed to borrow one so we went to a market and i put a $200 deposit down. I brought it back and they gave me my money back. I only say that to point out my voracious honesty!

[bo88y]

All good. You might also ask for their damaged carts. They might well give you some for free that you can cannibalize for parts. It might be a good idea to erase any company logos with a belt sander, in the way that used commercial-truck sellers paint over their logos before passing them on, so that no one comes back to them with liability claims. Who knows? If you ran over some guy's flower bed with your rig, and he noticed a "Food & Forage" logo on it, he could try to sue them.

[zieak]

Since making this project i have picked up two more shopping carts at our dump. For $5 citizens can (after signing a liability waiver) salvage from the metal and wood piles or from the junk cars. So i've got a collection of totally legally obtained carts that only required a bit of work with a jack and crowbars to sit on all four wheels and operate normally!

[bassclarinet23]

I like this idea...but I don't know where to get a cart.

[xerxesx20]

Look in the local streams, rivers, babbling brooks, canals, ponds, lakes etc. If you have a polariser for your camera, or better still polarised sunglasses (generally traded under "fishing sunglasses" you can often see all sorts of things submerged. The water near your local shops (ones that have shopping trolleys (or carts if you prefer)) will probably have one or two in them. There is a whole world of things out there nobody wants or needs, it'll either get recycled (if the object is lucky) or sit and rot. Across town from me my dad and I once pulled a moped out of the river, there was an eel living in the seat! It jumped back in of course. I can think of one other moped in the canal near ish to me.

[GEAR]

When I was little, I would help my dad pick up carts from all over town to bring them back to the store where he worked. Back allies and apartment buildings where the hot spots. Of course you could make a grappling hook and go cart fishing from the local pond. Have fun.

[zieak]

Consider going to local stores and offering to by a damaged one. New shopping carts cost in excess of $200 so don't steal one. I scored one cart that was bent up a bit that with just an hour using a jack and a sledgehammer finally sat on all four wheels. I got it for free.

[zieak]

Aargh. "buy" a damaged one - don't "by" it.

[abadfart]

thats ok i have bad spelling to

[masterochicken]

You're right. TOO!

[hellstudios]

my brother and sister stole a cart before. They we're going to put it on my bro's ex-girlfriend's front lawn.

[arpoky]

Lulz...

[bassclarinet23]

Ok I'll try that.

[verdantbeauty]

Do you think it has to be a metal shopping cart? I have a plastic one that was from a walmart... would that work too?

[zieak]

It sure will.