Sizing Up the Shopping Cart Competition

The carts grocery stores offer are the most overlooked aspect of grocery shopping. In most cases, there is very little in the way of variety available to shoppers.

 

While food prices are important, but cart design matters for the customer experience. Some shoppers, specifically parents, even took to social media to express their displeasure when Target redesigned their carts in late 2024. They argued the updated cart features were less safe for their children who are frequent passengers on family grocery shopping trips.

 

That’s why the FinanceBuzz team wanted to get a better “handle” on how shopping carts stack up against one another. The team went out and collected data (literally with a tape measure) from nine major retailers across the U.S. to find key differences at different stores. Using those measurements, we were able to calculate how much total volume each cart affords customers, how comfortable each cart’s handle height would be for the average person, and more.

 

Carts at Sam’s Club have more volume than any other store, with a basket volume of 15,548 cubic inches. Aldi’s carts are the second largest, at 14,947 cubic inches.

 

Dollar Tree has the smallest carts of any chain, at 6,720 cubic inches of basket space, followed by Trader Joe’s at 7,765 cubic inches. Both carts have less than half the storage space of the carts at Sam’s Club.

 

The tallest handles of any shopping cart can be found at Costco, where they are 45 inches off the ground. Handles at Dollar Tree are more than half a foot closer to the ground, with a height of 38 inches.

 

Sam’s Club, Aldi, and Costco are the only stores with carts that have child seats that can fit two children.

 

All this goes to show, a cup holder, more space below, or even an extra child seat could turn a trip to the store from a painful task into an enjoyable errand.