Storage of hand-propelled vehicles
OwnerDon L. Sandfordinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A storage facility for stackable trolleys, as in a supermarket, comprising a unit, such as a display unit against a wall or forming an island, which has a trolley inlet to its interior spaced from a trolley outlet, each adapted to pass one trolley at a time inwards or outwards, and a conveyor for transferring an introduced trolley to the back of a stack and for advancing the stack to release a trolley through the outlet on demand, particularly by action of a coin-freed mechanism. The conveyor is a belt which lifts the front end of a trolley frictionally to drive it on its rear wheels along a guide, while permitting slip to occur beneath a stationary stack of trolleys on demand. In order to encourage trolley return, introduction of a trolley at the input releases a coin in repayment for the coin used to effect trolley release.
Claims12
A storage facility for storing independently movable and stackable trolleys, comprising:
- an inlet through which trolleys can be introduced one at a time,
- an outlet through which trolleys can leave the storage facility one at a time,
- a conveyor means for conveying trolleys introduced through the inlet in a direction towards the outlet to stack an introduced trolley with any previously introduced trolleys remaining within the facility,
- means for releasing trolleys one at a time from the remote end of the stack through the outlet,
- means for sensing that the facility is empty and for providing an indication of the empty condition,
- sensing means for generating a warning signal when the facility is full and for indicating the full condition, and
- gates at the inlet which are locked shut when a full condition is sensed.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.