Honestly for me it's about was the lot designed by an idiot. Large stores like Walmart and home depot are the worst offenders. If I need to park in the far out of reaches of the lot there's never any fucking cart returns there.

All of them are grouped up right near the fucking front of the store where it's least needed, and then there's nothing at the outer edges. I make sure my cart is somewhere it will not move even in strong wind, but the designers of the parking lot can go fuck themselves for not putting a cart return stall at the outer edges where it makes sense in those massive lots.

Other stores like WinCo and costco seem to have this figured out. Cart returns at regular intervals across the entire parking lot. So no excuse not to return there