The Mother of All Wheelchairs

By Marc Krizack (krizack@sfsu.edu)
 

When it comes to wheelchair design, it seems a given that lighter is better. The old hospital clunkers, sometimes called "depot chairs" generally weighed 45 or 50 pounds, which as my 11-year old daughter would say, is "heckaheavy." Today's ultralight chairs now weigh in at well under 20 pounds. How then can the Brownstone company of El Paso, Texas tout its 100-pound folding wheelchair as light? Well, when you're competing in the bariatric class of wheelchairs, 100 pounds is pretty good.

Bariatric wheelchairs are wheelchairs built for people who are obese. The Brownstone chair was designed to carry a person up to 900 pounds. Pat O'Rourke, owner of Brownstone, reports that the chair has been tested to 950 pounds, but that most people who purchase it are in the 800 pound range. In order to make a chair strong enough to carry the weight, Brownstone used aircraft tubing and mountain bicycle tig (tungsten inert gas) welding. The side frames are built out of 6061 T-6 aircraft aluminum. The chair folds like a standard wheelchair, but it has two sets of cross bars instead of the usual single set. The cross bars are made out of chromolly steel. Chromolly is a steel alloy which includes chromium and molybdenum. It is more than twice as strong as mild steel tubing of the same size. It is also three to four times more expensive.
 

Size unlimited

The chair seat is 20 inches deep (front to back) and 30 inches wide. (A regular adult wheelchair is 16 by16.) The standard 24-inch diameter rear wheels are magnesium alloy, the same alloy used in automobile "mag" wheels. Since a 900-pound person with a wheelchair flat would need a Triple-A (AAA) card to get his flat fixed, Brownstone uses flat-proof urethane-filled tires.

Brownstone has sold between 200 and 300 bariatric wheelchairs. The wholesale price is about $1700. O'Rourke estimates the bariatric wheelchair market in the US to be between 4,000 and 5,000 wheelchairs per month!

The state of Ohio has three cities, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus, in the top ten list of cities in the United States with the highest percentage of obese people. Texas has two cities, Houston and San Antonio. The other cities that round out the top ten are New Orleans, Louisiana, Norfolk, Virginia, Kansas City, Kansas, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
 

Kansas City Beef

The dominant player in the bariatric wheelchair market in the US is Wheelchairs of Kansas. They sell chairs that are rated to handle persons up to 600 pounds and weigh about 75 pounds. O'Rourke noted that while his bariatric model has been specially designed for the bariatric client, "there are other guys who try to take their regular chairs and beef them up and turn them into bariatric chairs."

One-hundred pounds for O'Rourke's wheelchair might seem like a lot, but that's only 11% of the 900 pound weight of the heaviest bariatric rider. This ratio compares favorably to a more normal 35-pound wheelchair which adds 17.5% to the weight of a 200-pound rider.

Still, no matter how you look at it,100 pounds is a lot of extra weight to push. But I guess it figures that a 900 pound guy or gal isn't going to be whizzing around town or up and down the basketball court, so an extra 100 pounds won't restrict independent mobility too much. In fact, according to O'Rourke, most people who use the bariatric chair are pushed by someone else. But let's face it, you'd hate to be the personal assistant who has to wing that baby in and out of a car trunk.

The Brownstone bariatric chair retails for $2200. Brownstone can be found on the web at www.el.net/brownstone/