FROM Friday, Cleveland shoppers will no longer be able to take Coles trolleys outside the Stockland shopping precinct.
The retail giant installed electronic clamping devices on a new fleet of 306 trolleys that lock when they are within a metre of an underground cable.
The cable borders Shore, Wynyard, Queen and Bloomfield streets and includes some Redland City Council land and will also lock specially adapted Woolworths trolleys.
Locks are clamped on to the front wheel but the trolley can still be moved by tilting it on to its back wheels even when the lock is activated.
Coles Cleveland store manager Maxine Schipplock said the new trolleys would save her staff from having to travel up to 5km from the centre to retrieve trolleys.
She said the locks had worked well at Coles at Capalaba Park and the retailer had not considered a token-based system similar to that used at Aldi.
She said the new fleet would mean customers would not have to wait for trolleys and there would 103 more smaller trolleys.
Council said the trolleys could unlock the answer to keeping the city free from wayward trolleys dumped in creeks and on the side of the road.
In 2010, Redland local road laws were amended to give council the power to impound dumped trolleys and charge a fee for their return.
At the time, council estimated the trolley pickup scheme was going to cost about $160,000 a year to staff the pickup team with ongoing operation costs expected to be $125,000 a year.
But the council-run trolley collection program was never instigated after the large retailers found it cheaper to buy new trolleys from China than pay council a fine to collect an old trolley.
Prior to the council policy, wayward shopping trolleys posed a problem, which is why council also pushed the state government to draw up legislation forcing retailers to take responsibility for their trolleys.
