In 1999, Liz Soden was paralysed from the waist down in a car accident. The mother loved all things outdoors, and the full force of her injury came when se realised that she could no long go camping.
"She was crying," her husband Brad recalled. "She couldn't go camping anymore and she said 'go on without me.' To me that was unacceptable, so I decided to do something about it."
With no formal engineering training or a college degree, Brad started experimenting in his garage.
While many people said that an all-terrain wheelchair couldn't be done, it took Brad "two years and bunch of beer in my garage to figure out the design."
"If people in wheelchairs got a problem we'll fix it, we don't care what the injury is," Brad told Bloomburg. "Get off the couch and go enjoy life."
Thus Tank Chairs were born, combining an electric wheelchair with the wheels of a tank, the chairs are perfect for off-road adventures. Each of the Tank Chairs are built to last 15-20 years.
Retailing at about $15,000, Brad doesn't operate for profit.
"Money does not drive me, this is all about the smiles on people's faces and the families that I've helped. It's an indescribable feeling."
