The professionals

A correspondent in Kent has drawn my attention to the trolley hunter's van left, snapped in Eastbourne.

When I first asked Bing or Google about 'trolley retrieval services', most of the hits seemed to come from the US, but this morning they seem to have got the hang of things and most of the hits come from the UK. Reference 1 is the first hit and reference 2 the second.

I learn from the first that our local councils have acquired some important powers to enable them to deal with trolleys. They are not deemed competent to run schools, but they are deemed competent to deal with the trolleys which litter our streets. Powers which seem to mean that they can let contracts for vans to run around their areas collecting up trolleys. The drill seems to be that the owners - Wilko, Tesco or whoever - are given a reasonable opportunity to claim their trolleys, after which the they are disposed of and the costs billed to those owners. No doubt there is some understanding about damaged trolleys which the owners do not really want back.

While the second appears to be the van snapped above. Which means that Wanzl are into both manufacturing and disposal of trolleys, which seems entirely reasonable. They are, for example, the supplier of the trolleys used in M&S food halls (see previous post). The supplier of the trolleys used at Heathrow Terminal 2 (see reference 3). And first coming to my attention in September of the same year (see reference 4).

Perhaps there ought to be a comparable arrangement with the suppliers of free newspapers: if you supply the free newspapers to the people using our trains and railway stations, you also arrange for clearing up the resultant litter in those trains and railway stations. On the grounds that it is not reasonable to expect the general public not to litter.

PS: the least likely hit turned up by Bing is now to be found at reference 5, with trolleys being built into the job description of certain nurses. Also a test of the OneDrive pointer capability, with the drill seeming to be that if you have the complicated key at reference 5 you have full rights to whatever it points at - in this case a small folder - although sometimes it asks you for your Microsoft credentials, a reasonably low bar. Let's hope that Microsoft have got it all right.

Reference 1: http://www.tc-service.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.wanzl.com/en_EN/service/wanzl-uk-service/service-innovation/trolleywise-service/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/11/trolley-12.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/09/trolley-5.html.

Reference 5: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AvPvDT7vzzpQhMELZAZSs7JrG0pZTQ.