Expats living in Australia ‘blown away’ by supermarket trolleys

It might look like an average shopping trolley, but little did we know our humble “cart” is far superior than our American friends. Here’s why.

There’s a lot of things that make Australia special – and one of them is apparently our “clever” shopping trolleys.

An Australian shopper has shared a video marvelling at an abundance of features a Coles trolley has, listing its “independently” moving wheels, no coin requirement and a safety feature that stops them “flying away”.

According to the shopper, who goes by the TikTok handle @pnuks, shopping “carts” in America don’t have these features – making ours superior.

“On Australian trolleys the wheels move independently from each other as you can see,” the TikTok video begins.

“The other thing is that our wheels look like this.”

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An Australian shopper has shared the differences between supermarket trolleys here and in the US. Picture: TikTok

The camera then pans to show the indents in the two back wheels, visibly different to the front two which appear solid, before explaining what they are there for.

“A lot of our shopping malls, we have travelators not escalators – and there’s a reason why,” he states.

“They are flat but they also have grooves. So if we’re shopping and we want to go from this level to bottom level, and we have our wheels designed like this, they stick in the grooves so you don’t have to worry about it flying away.”

Our back wheels feature grooves … Picture: TikTok

These lock on escalators to stop them slipping away. Picture: TikTok

Understandably, expats living in Australia have reacted in either shock or agreeance, revealing trolleys were a real novelty when they first moved Down Under.

“I’m a Canadian studying in Sydney, the back wheels moving freely blew my mind when I got here,” one wrote.

“I saw this when I was in AU and I thought it was the COOLEST thing #American,” another said.

“I’m American, mind blown,” one guy agreed.

Other expats raged that the wheels moving in different directions was in fact, infuriating, and definitely not a good feature.

“I will not lie, my least favourite thing about being in Australia aside from the heat is when I’m trying to push a trolley and it wants to go in circles,” another scoffed.

“The carts in Aus for me are too hard to control. I’ve lived in Australia 11 years and still hate that the back wheels don’t lock,” another agreed.

Another Canadian wrote: “There are MANY things I love about living in Australia, but the fact the trolley wheels move is not one of them.”

How the back trolley wheels work. Picture: Supplied

Many Australians were also surprised, asking: “What do American trolleys look like then?”

While another wrote, “the wheels don’t move separately in other countries?”

As one stated they had “no idea” about the wheels sticking in grooves because they’d only ever visited supermarkets on the ground floor.

Why Australian trolleys lock on escalators

The safety locking feature on trolleys has been used in Australia for many years to prevent accidents and injuries. They running discs in the wheels slot into the grooves on the travelator surface that activate two external braking shoes to ensure the trolley stops securely.

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