Shopping Cart Elevator

Engineering notes

Designed for the trolley, loaded

A supermarket lift has to accept a trolley, its contents and the customer pushing it — often two trolleys plus two people. Cars are therefore wide (up to 2,000 mm) and the floor is flush with the landing so trolley wheels roll in without a lip to catch.

The car floor is a removable anti-slip deck plate over a drainage tray, so spillages are cleaned without entering the shaft. Skirting rails protect the car walls from trolley impact, and the door threshold is reinforced.

Doors that cannot catch a customer

Doors open wider and stay open longer than in a passenger lift. A full-height light curtain plus a door-holding function gives a slow-moving customer with a loaded trolley time to cross the threshold; nudging is gentle and repeated reopening is not counted as a fault.

Where the retail layout permits, a through-car arrangement with doors on both faces removes the need to turn a trolley inside the car — a detail that matters more at peak hours than any specification figure.

Traffic and reliability in a retail environment

Retail lifts run continuously, at higher ambient temperatures, and in a building where a stoppage is immediately visible to customers. We specify a machine with thermal margin, a controller that logs door cycles, and a remote monitoring option that alerts the store's facilities team before the queue forms.

For large stores we supply two units in a group, so service continues during maintenance — and we recommend a spare door operator and light curtain held on site.