Why Does One Shopping Cart Always Have a Bad Wheel?
The Real Answer
Shopping carts develop wobbly or locked wheels due to wear, debris, and impact damage. Wheels collect hair, dirt, and plastic that jam the bearing; swivel joints deteriorate from constant turning; and the caster (the wheel assembly) gets bent from hitting curbs, cart racks, and other obstacles. Stores often don't repair individual carts because replacing the whole unit is cheaper than labor costs. The 'one bad wheel per group' observation is accurate — statistically, about 10-15% of cart fleets are in rotation at any time, and broken wheels aren't evenly distributed.
A shopping cart is a public object that hundreds of strangers steer once and then abandon, and somehow the store expects the wheels to survive this. You've personally contributed to at least four dead carts by yanking the handle at an angle while thinking about dinner, and you've got the audacity to be annoyed when you pick the broken one.
Basic sketch — the funniest questions get upgraded to a full cartoon.
Why People Ask This
This is pure lived experience — almost every shopping trip includes the moment you grab a cart, take three steps, and immediately realize you've got the lemon. People ask this because they want to know if the store is just negligent or if there's a physical reason they all seem to break. The real answer is a mix of both, which somehow makes it worse.