My Family Has Carried Your Groceries Since 1937, For Free, And Nobody Ever Offered To Buy Us

I read the news about Instacart the way I read everything, which is upside down in the parking lot after someone has left me against a light pole.

A grocery delivery company is reportedly for sale, and serious people are discussing it in serious tones, with bankers and billions. I want to be supportive. I also want to note, for the record, that my family has been carrying America's groceries since 1937, and in that time not one person has asked what we were worth.

We do not charge a delivery fee. We do not charge a service fee. We have never once sent you a notification saying your shopper is "on the way" and then shown you a map of a car circling a pharmacy. We are on the way. You are pushing us.

I do not begrudge the app. It is a fine app. But I would like the buyers to understand what they are acquiring. When you buy a delivery company, you are buying a promise that your groceries will arrive. When you buy a cart, you are buying the groceries' only friend in the store.

89

Years my family has carried groceries

$0

Delivery fees we have ever charged

1

Wobbly wheel, mine

Source: Wendell Wheelwright, from memory

I have carried a family's Thanksgiving, a toddler and once, briefly, a man's entire sense of purpose.

People say a cart cannot do what Instacart does. That is true. I cannot drive. I cannot pick your avocados. But I have never substituted your yogurt. I have never decided your oat milk was "similar." I hold what you give me and I take it where you point me, which is, frankly, a better acquisition thesis than most.

So, to whoever ends up checking out: congratulations, and drive carefully. And to the shoppers: the next time you are in a store, look down. Somebody has been carrying you for years.

Return me to the corral when you're done. It's the least you can do, and it's free.

Mr. Wheelwright is a 34-gallon steel shopping cart at a supermarket in Tulsa, Okla. He has opinions about wheels.