Secaucus Wal-Mart First In NJ To Unveil Pickup Towers

SECAUCUS, NJ — The Secaucus Wal-Mart is the first in New Jersey to unveil two new "pick-up towers" this holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart is the first retailer in America to feature something like this, and they chose Secaucus as one of their demo stores due to its incredibly high shopper volume.

The two towers were just installed at the Secaucus Wal-Mart earlier this week. If you buy a product on Walmart.com you can have it delivered to the Secaucus Wal-Mart for a discount. Then shoppers simply scan a bar code in their email, and a robotic elevator fetches their item for them from the towers. The towers are each about 20 feet tall and can hold boxes smaller than a microwave.

A Verona resident was one of the first to use the towers on Tuesday. He ordered picture frames online and had them shipped to the Secaucus Wal-Mart.

"I've always had my online orders delivered here and it was pretty slow waiting in line to get them, so this is much faster," said Eric Schoonmaker, 33, who lives in Verona, but works in one of Secaucus' many office towers. "You had to wait in line and then they had to retrieve the box from the back. There's been times I've been waiting like 10 minutes, so this is pretty cool. I usually shop on Amazon but this particular product was cheaper at Wal-Mart."

The Secaucus Wal-Mart is the first location in the New York metropolitan area to get the towers, and they choose the store due to the high volume of sales, said Wal-Mart spokesman Phillip Keene. The pickup towers are currently in 100 Wal-Marts nationwide; expect to see more of them coming in 2018.