Most every purchaser of a wheelchair or scooter is also a candidate to buy a vehicle-mounted lift. Still, it is seldom an easy sell, what with all the various objections that come up—objections not from customers but from bureaucrats. “It is as though the government one day went looking around and said, ‘Hey, here is something we don’t yet have our noses in—wheelchair lifts—so let’s start regulating those too,’” says Darrell Frank, manager of Lift Aids Inc in Euless, Tex. “The regulations we have to deal with now are unhelpful, to say the least.”

One of the ways lift regulations muddy the water for sellers is by inhibiting product innovation upstream at the factories, Frank suggests. “There really has not been much new in lifts, other than a lot of add-ons or modifications to existing technology as dictated by government rule-makers,” he says. “For instance, on most vehicles, we are required to have an interlock system that prevents the lift from operating unless the emergency brake is engaged; but, now, instead of requiring just one interlock, the government is mandating six or seven per vehicle—which only makes things more complicated and increases the potential for things to go wrong. In fact, of the vehicles that come into my shop with a malfunctioning lift these days, 99 out of 100 times it is due to problems with the interlocks.”

Elevated Risk
That might not be a bad thing, if providing service for what you sell is part of the equation, but Tim Harrell, general manager and acting CEO of Van Products Inc in Raleigh, NC, believes the lack of innovation in lift systems reflects a changing preference among consumers in favor of ramp systems. “Most people who buy a wheelchair or a scooter,” he says, “are faced with a choice. They ask themselves, ‘Do I want to put a lift in a vehicle I already own or do I want to buy a dropped-floor conversion minivan that comes with a ramp system? Do I want to spend $3,000 for the lift or do I want to buy the minivan and ramp system that I know I’m going to need anyway in another couple of years because of my deteriorating physical condition?’ People weigh all that and, lots of times, they decide to buy the van because, to them, it makes better economic sense.”

However, he adds that many potential owners of minivan conversions—whether equipped with a ramp or a lift—will not buy so long as the vehicle remains an optional purchase. Blame that on the stigma they associate with ownership of something they think calls unwanted attention to their disability, Harrell explains. “They will put it off until they feel they have no choice,” he says.

Happily, though, today’s minivan conversions look nothing like the lumbering, ambulance-style vans used by the disabled years ago. “They are sleek and stylish; you can’t even tell these are vehicles for the disabled—plus, they are pretty decent on gas mileage,” says Harrell, whose outfit takes in as much as $15 million a year in sales of converted minivans.

Meanwhile, the decision of whether to go with a ramp or a lift typically boils down to matters of convenience, according to Harrell. “The more difficult it will be for a person to transfer from the wheelchair to the vehicle, the more attractive a ramp becomes because it eliminates the hassles that could deter him or her from leaving the house and getting behind the wheel,” he says.

Today’s minivan conversions look nothing like the lumbering, ambulance-style vans used years ago.

However, ramps as a possible chair-and-vehicle-mating solution rank low over at Frank’s place, where sales of lifts and related modification work represent annualized revenues in excess of $1 million. “Using a ramp requires the person in the wheelchair to have a tremendous amount of skill and control, otherwise it is real easy to go over the side,” he warns.

Frank contends that hoist lifts are best suited for use with minivans—vehicles possessing “the right design to accommodate the hoister. It has good vertical clearance in the back and affords ample swing-in room,” he says.

In contrast, he identifies the poorest choice of automobile as a sport utility vehicle (SUV). “With an enormous effort, you can make a lift sort of work with an SUV,” Frank sets forth, “but these vehicles really don’t have the appropriate design characteristics. It is not a suitable application when you get right down to it.”

He does not think that is a deficiency automakers will be in any rush to correct. Neither, he says, will they be eager to come out with factory preinstalled lifts and ramps in general, a move that would hurt business for Frank and others. “Detroit already has enough liability issues without having to deal with those that would come from catering directly to people who use wheelchairs,” he asserts. “As such, I don’t think the auto industry will ever get into that line. If they did, they would probably be out of it in a hurry.”

Heavy Lifting
For many lift dealers, a big challenge these days is working with patients classified as severely obese and, as such, requiring oversized wheelchairs. “Four or five years ago, the number of wheelchair customers weighing more than 300 pounds was relatively few,” Frank says. “We would get a call from someone in that category maybe once a year. Currently, we are getting calls just about every other week. Bariatric patients are about 20% of our business now.”

Frank is at a loss to explain the trend. But his company is not alone in encountering bariatric patients more often. Wheelchair manufacturers have of course responded with products specifically oriented to the obese. That is helpful to the wheelchair-sales side of Frank’s operation, but where the headaches begin is with the bariatric patient wanting a lift installed on the family sedan rather than on a more suitable vehicle. “A lot of times, the lift can’t be safely installed on the car in question because the wheelchair is so big,” he explains. “In some cases, the chair itself seems about as big as a car.”

There is not much he can do for them in that situation, apart from recommend they switch to a minivan, or perhaps a Lincoln Continental or Crown Victoria (among the few full-size passenger cars able to accept a Class 3 trailer hitch, the kind required to handle an extra-big wheelchair). “If I were to go ahead and install the requested lift on the back of, say, the typical import car, the weight of that very large chair would cause the rear of the vehicle to drag the ground,” Frank says. “The front would ride high, and you’d have an unstable, dangerous driving situation—even the addition of heavier springs in the back wouldn’t solve the problem.”

Large or small, paying for a lift can be a crushing load on some pocketbooks. “Generally, we do not finance,” says Frank. “The closest we come to that is taking major credit cards.”

The decision of whether to go with a ramp or a lift typically boils down to matters of convenience.

An exception at Lift Aids is the drop-floor minivan conversion, a road machine expensive enough that the company finds it necessary to work hand-in-glove with a commercial financing firm to put these vehicles in people’s garages. “We are then able to offer customers the option of payments, much the same as if they were buying a car from a showroom and using dealer financing,” says Frank.

And that is precisely how it is handled at Harrell’s Van Products Inc. “Because the price of a van conversion can be steep, we couch the sticker talk in terms of monthly payments,” Harrell says. “We don’t tell the customer you have to come up with $35,000 to drive this van off the lot. We do what they do at car dealerships; we tell the customer he can get into this vehicle for only a few hundred dollars a month. That makes a huge difference.”

It also proves advantageous that Van Products takes older vans in trade. Consequently, the company can offer customers a choice of brand-new or—at significant savings—a quality used vehicle. As to buyers of lifts-sans-vehicle, many who can not afford to pay out-of-pocket have recourse in the form of grants and other special funding through various state agencies. Unfortunately, some of those agencies are experiencing budget crunches, the result being that “it’s becoming more and more difficult for people who really need wheelchair lifts to get assistance,” Frank reports.

Rising Up
It is also becoming more difficult for them to get true satisfaction. Again, Frank points to government regulation as the culprit. The situation, though, is far from hopeless, of that he’s certain. “There is going to be agitation someday on the part of the disabled that will bring about a rollback of the regulations,” he predicts. “The bad news is that, at this stage of the game, relatively few are aware of the regulations and so are not going to be protesting them.”

Until, that is, they start running afoul of those rules. Says Frank, “If you have to replace your vehicle due to a road accident, you are going to find that the lift you bought last year at a price of $4,000 can’t be taken off the old car or van and installed on the new one, because the regulations require you to buy a new lift.

“Ultimately, that hurts businesses like ours rather than helps because people who are affected by this sort of thing look for work-arounds. The owner will just go out and hire some backyard jasper of a mechanic to do it for him. Very likely, the job won’t be done to code, and the vehicle owner will be completely unhappy—if not in danger on the streets.

“If I had my way,” Frank laments, “government regulation of lifts would be held to a reasonable minimum. Right now, they are anything but that.”

Rich Smith is a contributing writer for Dealer/Provider.