1. You answered your own question: it’s there for curb-side pickup. I guarantee it’s there for corporate’s industrial engineers to figure out how they can improve the process (and reduce the costs).

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   1. Makes sense…

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2. When they put up the high Security fence with only one gate, maybe you’ll have your answer…

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3. There are a lot of those things in and around Nashville, and they’re usually in big box or mall parking lots. You see them every Christmas. They’re theoretically there to be conspicuous and deter criminals from breaking in to cars and stealing Christmas presents.

   Nashville PD will also deploy them any time there’s a huge (entirely peaceful) crowd expected downtown, like for CMA or the NRA Convention. They don’t deploy for “mostly” peaceful crowds because those things are easily destroyed and very expensive.

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4. I saw them all the time when I worked in Hialeah/Miami Gardens/Miami Lakes. They were pretty much permanent fixtures in the Home Depot and Brandsmart parking lots. Several along the streets around the warehouse/import stores in the 57th & 826 area.

   All of them had Miami Gardens PD decals on them.

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5. They started with construction site surveillance, but soon branched out into retail. All of them around here (Houston) are privately owned and the company name is pretty prominent. They are put in place here to monitor and control homeless bum activity, to watch and record crime, and to act as a deterrent to same.

   I have been looking for old crank up light towers to buy and convert into setups like this to start a part time business in my retirement.

   Couple thou for the trailer and solar, couple thou in cameras, and you’ve got what is known in the security business as Recurring Monthly Revenue, which is the Holy Grail…

   The round thing at the top of the mast looks like a 5ghz or 2.4 ghz wireless data link. If the company is local, they can probably get the data back to the office that way, without having to use the customer’s IT at all.

   I don’t know if they actually work- our local Costco/Lowes/BestBuy retail cluster has a couple but still suffers from purse snatchers, and vehicle breakins. The one at our troubled Kroger store seems to have caused the “urban outdoorsmen” to move along, to the great joy of actual customers. Seems that bums and drug abusers don’t really like to be on camera 24/7. In that case the local Business Improvement District pays the rent on the cameras.

   nick

   -added- it’s funny, the bums didn’t seem to mind the store’s cameras, but they don’t like the additional cams.

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6. That thing on the top looks like a microwave data link. So it’s a surveillance system with a wireless link to a data collection point, which may be the store owning that parking lot or some other place. Can you see where that antenna points and find a matching antenna on the store roof?

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7. You people on the east coast just can’t be trusted! (sent from Ft. Myers)

8. They’ve got something similar parked at the Wal-Mart across the street from my apartment complex. I suspect it’s more a visual “safety display” than anything else, and the speaker runs a loop announcement regarding mask-wearing and social distancing.

   Meanwhile, the hobos hang out begging at every street entrance, and are probably running trains on any unsecured goods whether in the store or in the lot/vehicles.

   Hang some autoloading paintball guns loaded with pepperballs on that tower, and add an ED-209 voice modulator. “YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON WAL-MART PROPERTY. LEAVE NOW. YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS TO COMPLY. 20… 19..bzzztrrt 2… 1. COMMENCING FIRE. HAVE A NICE DAY.”

   I’m an asshole, though.

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