A cart retriever and an electric tug are two important pieces of equipment that perform the same functions at different levels. While a cart tug is a intended to push and tow heavy carts and other pieces of gear that have wheels and whose mass can be as high as 50,000 lbs, the retriever takes back up to 50 shopping carts. Thus they both work with carts but in different ways and are needed by different kinds of businesses. One is used by any business that has a high number of shopping carts, and the other by big companies whose main activity is moving materials.

Moving materials with the help of big wheeled carts and the help of an electric tug can prove to be less costly for your business than using a forklift vehicle for example. While a forklift is consuming gas or diesel, a mover is battery powered. Also if an accident happens with a forklift vehicle it is more likely that the materials and the cart itself will be damaged worse than if a mover is involved in an accident. The reasoning behind this is that a forklift has to lift the cart full of heavy materials and transport it where the material is needed. The mover pushes the cart at a relatively slow speed, 3 miles per hour, but the consequences of an accident are minimized. A cart tug has also been proven to be easier to control and operate than a forklift. With its two speeds, forward and reverse, and its padded pushing part, the electric tug is becoming a more and more valuable piece of equipment.

If a cart tug is used for heavy weight carts used in the moving and material industry, a cart retriever is used by most of the big shopping centers, supermarkets, airports, and all the other places where shopping carts or small transportation carts are available. The retriever appeared to fulfill the need of collecting all the carts in a timely way. If one or two men could move a line of 20 carts, the retriever needs just one operator and can move up to 50 carts. This is a compact piece of equipment, battery operated in manual or automate mode. Activated by a remote control, the retriever can easily work in small or crowded spaces without any risk of major accidents. Most of the people return their shopping carts to the designated areas. However some leave their empty carts in the parking lot or they simply abandon it after they take their shopping bags.

In a struggle to become more effective and give more customers the chance to use a cart while shopping in a store, a lot of businesses purchased at least a cart retriever that can cover large areas of parking lots and bring back up to 50 carts. Other businesses developed a system where if you want to use one of their shopping carts, you have put in a coin in order to be able to release a cart. If at the end of your shopping you return your cart you get your coin back. However if you abandon your cart in the parking lot where the cart might become dangerous to other customers, you lose your coin. Even businesses that use the coin system bought retrievers to help bring back the carts from the designated areas.