Mobility Marvel Trike

BACK IN November of 2009, Tim O’Loughlin was happily doing his thing as a reputable property maintenance man when the unthinkable happened—while surveying a customer’s roofing needs to prepare a quote, he slipped and fell from the roof and suffered some debilitating injuries in the process.

“I fell off the roof while working with my franchise, a gutter cleaning business (it was the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s house). I suffered a complete T10 vertebrae injury and completely crushed my spinal cord at this level. This left me paralysed from the waist down.

“A couple of years later I saw an advert for a ‘wheelchair accessible trike’ in a spinal injuries magazine. I already had a licence to drive a car with hand controls, but this sounded like an interesting idea, so my brother and I went to see it… and after the first ride I was sold. I purchased the trike and it changed my life. Freedom and independence are the two words that describe it best. It is a lot of fun to get around on besides being extremely practical.”

Tim had never ridden a motorcycle of any description before the accident but found that the trike offered him a new-found feeling of freedom.

“After riding it around for a while, I was amazed at the amount of interest the trike generated. People had never seen anything like it, and so many of them had relatives or friends who they believed would love to own one.

“So I did some research on the internet and found out that the company that made mine did not make them anymore, and I could only find one other site that made larger trikes down in Sydney, and I found out that he was selling his business. He wasn’t selling because of lack of demand, it was the very opposite, he couldn’t keep up with demand from not only Australia but overseas as well.”

“So what started out as just a mission to find someone I could refer all these interested people to, became a decision on whether we should take this issue on ourselves and buy the business.

“My brother Peter, our brother-in-law Eric, and I, decided we would buy it! We knew how important these trikes were and if we didn’t do it, the whole idea might never take off. We also purchased a 650 cc trike that was available at the time.”

The new trike was somewhat of a prototype, and Tim, his brothers Peter and Mick, and Eric, have been fine tuning and adding many mods to make the trike more user-friendly for future customers. Not only that, but it looks so cool, it would give Batman a twinge in the nether regions.

“When the first units hit the road, it will be a truly inspirational moment to we see the faces of these people as they ride off knowing, as we do, how much their lives will immediately be changed for the better.”

A very honourable concept to not only kick off a fledgling Aussie owned business but to provide a wicked alternative to the usual style of mobility scooter, etc. You can contact the man at the helm: Tim O’Loughlin: tjoloughlin18@hotmail.com.

Report by Chuck U Farley