Peer Rejected

rejections > th.PH > REJ:2026.08.16.0001

REJ:2026.08.16.0001th.PH (Theoretical Physics)PRJ-2026-0047Vol. 3, No. 8Status: Rejected

The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease: A Detuned-Caster Specification, and the Silent-Fleet Failure

Rune Vestergaard1, Adaeze Nwankwo2

1. Laboratory for Contact Mechanics, Nyholm Institute of Technology · 2. Fleet Metrology Unit, Cabot Municipal Standards Office

Submitted and rejected August 16, 2026 · 10 pages · 8 figures · review duration: 15 minutes

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Abstract

Every supermarket trolley has one bad wheel. We show that it was put there on purpose. A caster shudders when its swivel trail is short enough for the wheel to enter a self-sustaining oscillation at the speed it is being pushed, and trail is a quantity a factory chooses. Across 12,904 trolleys audited at 214 sites, 96.8% carried exactly one caster tuned below that threshold and three tuned above it — a distribution no process of random wear can produce, since the count of worn parts on a four-wheeled object cannot pile up on the number one. Teardown of 1,606 units found the short trail held to a tolerance 2.7 times tighter than the trails that carry the load, invariant across six competing manufacturers, and not drifting with age: the ratio of short trail to nominal is 0.33 (95% CI 0.32–0.34). We then removed it. In 32 sites randomised to fleets whose casters were all made quiet, bearings ran to seizure four times as often, grease consumption fell to almost nothing, and customer satisfaction went up. A depot can only service what it can hear. The trolley is not complaining. It is reporting.

keywords: caster shimmy · Hopf bifurcation · condition monitoring · fleet observability · swivel trail

Cite this rejection

@article{PRJ20260047,
  title   = {The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease: A Detuned-Caster Specification, and the Silent-Fleet Failure},
  author  = {Rune Vestergaard and Adaeze Nwankwo},
  journal = {Peer Rejected},
  year    = {2026},
  note    = {Rejected manuscript, PRJ-2026-0047},
  url     = {https://peerrejected.com/papers/the-squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease}
}

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