BOTTOM LINE : Carted Off

Samantha Green is a peddler, a businesswoman who makes a living with a traveling cart. If that sounds Dickensian, think again.

“I started with one in San Diego,” says Green. “I called it the ‘Cash Cow.’ Everything on it was about cows--and it produced a lot of cash.”

Now, barely two years later, Green, 25, operates 25 carts in malls from San Diego to Los Angeles. With two partners supplying the carts, she pays mall operators a small rental fee and hires people to work the carts, which sell everything from license plate frames to temporary tattoos.

The mall cart phenomenon started back East more than 20 years ago and migrated west. Nationally, there are now an estimated 7,500 mall carts. Green may not have been a pioneer, but she is blazing new trails with her carts: The rodeo and fair circuits. “No one’s done it before. We go all around the country. Del Mar, Sacramento, Texas, Ohio, the Florida Strawberry Fair. I truck the carts over there, hire about 60 people and keep the supplies flowing.” A cart can take in as much as $1,800 a day selling water and trinkets.

She likes the 19th-Century simplicity and toughness of this carting life. “We can’t just open our doors and wait for customers. We’re like migrating birds, tracking business opportunities around the country.”