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Walmart reverses an earlier limit on the height of order fulfillment carts in stores

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Dominick Reuter

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The push-and-pull continues for Walmart's online order picking teams.

The retail giant has reversed an earlier policy that reduced the number of bins workers haul on specialized carts, which was first reported by Business Insider in May and intended to improve visibility and safety. Under that guidance, workers were told to push carts unless they could not safely see ahead.

The online fulfillment carts are a key piece of equipment that Walmart store employees use to gather the items shoppers order for pickup or delivery.

Four Walmart employees in three states recently told Business Insider that their store leaders instructed their teams to return to hauling eight bins on their fulfillment carts and that they are now supposed to pull the carts rather than push them. Business Insider also observed the practice during a visit to a supercenter in Wisconsin on Tuesday.

A Walmart spokesperson confirmed the policy change, saying it followed a period of testing and evaluation. Reducing the bin load over the summer allowed the company to identify ways to improve the online order fulfillment process, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said the company's safety policies, which require workers to maintain control of their carts and a line of sight ahead, have not changed.

"Safety of associates and customers is absolute," the spokesperson said.

The original policy change in May came about after a short-lived April attempt to require the pulling of eight-bin carts. The requirement was widely criticized by workers for contributing to injuries and strains, such as twisted shoulders and wrists, clipped heels and ankles, and bodily collisions when a heavily loaded cart proves difficult to stop.

"This update supports a safer environment for associates and customers while helping make Walmart the best and safest place to shop and work," a memo at the time said.

The issue reveals a tension for Walmart as it navigates the balance between accelerating e-commerce operations and maintaining a safe environment for workers and customers. The company relies on its US fleet of more than 4,600 stores to fulfill the bulk of its online orders, and individual locations may handle several hundred online orders per day.

As the holiday shopping season starts to pick up steam, Walmart on Wednesday introduced a new express pickup option for customers to order items in the Walmart app for curbside collection in as little as one hour, in addition to its increasingly fast delivery options.

A worker in Texas said that when her manager saw her pushing her cart as specified by prior guidance, she was escorted off the sales floor into an office, where she was told that "some people may have to get transferred out" if they are unable to pull carts. The worker also said she has been unable to use her dominant hand to pull the cart behind her due to a wrist strain.

"Something that is so minor, you're not gonna go and complain, for the most part," she said.

Workers shared photographs of warning labels that say the carts should only be pushed, not pulled. Marketing materials from the cart's manufacturer show a comparable model with six bins that have a combined weight capacity of 240 pounds. The top surface is about 3.5 feet high and intended as a work area, the brochure says. With bins on top, the total height is about 5 feet, as measured by Business Insider.

Several workers told Business Insider that Walmart swapped out wheels on some carts to better position the cart's handle for pulling, but those changes have affected the carts' handling in some cases.

The spokesperson said Walmart did replace wheels to improve maneuverability when pulling the carts and to allow workers to adjust their position to maintain clear visibility.

Workers at a Michigan store said their colleagues have filed dozens of complaints to the state's occupational health and safety board over the issue. A response to one complaint said the agency was already investigating Walmart, according to a letter viewed and verified by Business Insider. Walmart declined to comment on the complaints or the investigation.

"I'm not willing to sacrifice my body and my health over this cart," a worker in Oklahoma told Business Insider.

Walmart has also faced multiple lawsuits in recent years involving customers who say they were injured by carts pushed by employees. Workers told Business Insider their managers attributed the changing cart policies to safety incidents at other Walmart US stores. Walmart declined to comment.

E-commerce sales are booming at Walmart. US digital sales were up 24% last quarter, including more than 40% growth of store-fulfilled deliveries and 20% growth in average weekly customers, CFO John David Rainey said in August. Last quarter was at least the ninth consecutive quarter of US e-commerce growth exceeding 20%.

Fulfillment speed is also getting faster, with roughly 40 US markets now offering delivery times of less than 30 minutes. Walmart US CEO David Guggina said at a September conference that this assumes about 15 minutes to pick an order and 15 minutes to drive it from the store to the customer.

"If you shrink that pick time — because it's a smaller order or we make it more efficient to pick in our stores with digital shelf labels — then you can deliver faster or you can deliver further at the same speed, and that's coming to life." he said.

But that acceleration is increasing pressure on stores' fulfillment teams, who are tasked with picking items from shelves quickly, accurately, and safely, workers previously told Business Insider.

The Walmart spokesperson said worker feedback to the company has been positive about the latest changes, especially the higher capacity to gather more items during each walk.

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Dominick Reuter

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Dominick Reuter is a senior retail reporter for Business Insider, primarily covering Walmart, Target, Costco, and other big box retailers. His stories tend to focus on issues and trends that affect employees and customers, such as affordability challenges and the growing race to provide ultra-fast delivery services on e-commerce orders.Prior to joining BI in 2019, Dominick worked for more than a decade as an independent photojournalist covering a wide range of stories for global wire services and newspapers, including Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Agence France-Presse.Dominick studied photojournalism at Boston University and later earned a Masters in business and economics journalism from Columbia University.If you're an employee or customer with a story to share, please contact me via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750.

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