Ex-supermarket worker collects 65 shopping trolleys left abandoned on the street around his home near Tesco and stores them on his PATIO
- Bernie Lucker found 30 of the carts near his home in Andover, Hants, one night
- The father-of-three has since more than doubled his collection in three weeks
- Now the hoard of carts are finally set to be collected by a retrieval company
An ex-supermarket worker has collected 65 shopping trolleys left abandoned on the street around his home and stored them on his patio.
Bernie Lucker found 30 of the carts lying near his house in Andover, Hampshire – around half a mile from the local Tesco store – in just one evening and decided to take them home.
In the three weeks since, 65-year-old has more than doubled his collection, much to his wife’s bemusement.
Bernie Lucker has collected 65 shopping trolleys left abandoned on the street around his home and stored them on his patio
Mr Lucker believes they have become more tempting to steal since the supermarket stopped requiring people to pay a pound to use a cart during the lockdown
The father-of-three is now hoping the trolleys – which measure 260 feet when lined up – will finally get taken off his hands, after repeatedly contacting Tesco to get them picked up.
Mr Lucker believes they have become more tempting to steal since the supermarket stopped requiring people to pay a pound to use a cart during the lockdown.
‘Within about 100 yards of my house I had picked up about 10,’ he said.
‘I found around 30 that night. I was so surprised at how many trolleys there were, and I couldn’t believe it when we got to 50. I think it’s hilarious.
‘I must have a couple of grands’ worth of shopping trolleys sat on my patio by now.
‘You don’t need to put the pound coins to release the lock anymore.
‘They’ve been disabled because of Covid, so I think that’s possibly why there’s more of them around.
‘Also I think now people are cutting down their shops to one a week and getting bigger shops in – so they could be taking the trolley and walking it home.’
Mr Lucker – who worked for Tesco for 12 years and now has a job in a variety store – says that initially he had difficulty getting the supermarket giant to pick them up.
‘They kept putting me through to the wrong people, and I could never get through to the store,’ he said.
‘The third time I called they said they would pick them up within 48 hours, but it never happened.’
The manager of the local Tesco Extra store – where Mr Lucker himself used to work – finally got in touch on Tuesday, to say that retrieval company Trolleywise would come to collect them.
The father-of-three is now hoping the trolleys – which measure 260 feet when lined up – will finally get taken off his hands, after repeatedly contacting Tesco to get them picked up
Statistics published by Trolleywise state that over half a million trolleys were abandoned in 2017 alone, and that ‘trolly loss’ costs retailers more than £35m a year.
Mr Lucker says his 65 year old wife Jackie, a cleaner, can’t wait to see the trolleys go, adding: ‘She [Jackie] keeps saying ‘get these bloody trolleys out’.
‘She’ll be happy as Larry to see them go. The next door neighbours have got chickens in their garden – but we’ve got shopping trolleys .’
A spokesperson for Tesco said: ‘We encourage all our visitors to Andover Extra to return their trolleys once they have finished their shop for other customers to use.
‘We employ a specialist company to rescue our trolleys when they have been taken away from a store and we’d urge anyone who sees an abandoned Tesco trolley to let their local store know so we can get it back as soon as possible.
‘We’ve arranged for the trolleys stored by Mr Lucker to be collected and returned to our store and would like to thank him for his assistance and bringing this to our attention.’