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The scooter, of course, is the best thing since sliced bread. It allows
you to go anywhere you want, faster than most people can continually walk.
You can carry lots of stuff, and your companions soon realize that you are
more mobile than they are.
But then you have to get the scooter into the car. All of a sudden that mobility has a big price tag.
At first, I just took the scooter apart and put it in the trunk. Then, I bought a new car, and the all the scooter parts didn't fit in the trunk any more. Then, I realized that I wasn't going everyplace that I wanted, because I needed the scooter every time, and it was so time consuming to get it out of the trunk. Finally, my MS got bad enough that I was having a rough time wrestling the scooter out of the trunk and re-assembling it. I had to do something.
I tried one of those small cranes that lift the scooter out of the trunk and set it on the pavement. But I had to take the scooter apart to get it to fit. It took a lot of time, and used up my strength too quickly.
A friend of mine has a van with a scooter crane in it. You don't have to take the scooter apart, but he and his father took almost 10 minutes loading it up. The scooter needed to be tilted to get it in. All that extra money for the van and the hoist, and it still needed too much help, and took longer than anything I'd ever seen.
I got one of those electric lifts that picks the scooter up off the ground, and carries it on the back of the car. Expensive, but what the heck, it worked. One day, the electric went out (the cable that the hitch installer put in). I spent a tedious, and physically demanding, half hour fixing it. Luckily, I have the skills, and I have a tester in the trunk, so I could fix it. Still, the lift was heavy, and ill-balanced, and it made my car handle funny. I've got some racing experience, and if I thought the car handled weird, it must really be dangerous for the average driver.
Then I saw a hauler that had no motors, and was light enough. I made one to fit my smaller hitch receiver. You pull out a ramp, and then the whole platform would tilt back and forth. Great idea. The car handled OK, and I was unloading in 25-30 seconds. Everything was great for a couple of weeks, until one time it flipped down too fast, and threw me to the ground. I was knocked out for a few minutes. When I came to, there was a crowd of people standing around. It took me a couple of days to get over that. Needless to say, that Rube Goldberg invention is out behind the shop, where I hope it dies.
I was getting close, I couldn't give up now. So, I designed this carrier. It's light enough, nicely balanced, and it fits the 1 1/4" hitch receiver on my small Chev Cavalier (The ScooterHitch can fit any size receiver, from class 1 to class 4. Other lifts require a class 2 or even a class 3 receiver). The platform stays in one place, and the hinged ramp folds down easily (and safely!!). I'm unloading or loading in only 15 seconds. It's so easy to use that I unload every time we get out of the car, even if I'm not going in. That quick unloading time, and ease of operation is especially nice when it's raining out.
It's so easy to install, there's no electrics. I don't need to buy a big car or SUV to mount it on. I can switch this over when I get a new car. I'm as happy as a clam.
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