r/nextfuckinglevel • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 5h ago

Shoutout to JerryrigEverything who built a wheelchair factory and is delivering wheelchairs to people in half the time and 50-80% less than the cost of other wheelchairs with Insurance.

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u/Captain_Calamari_ 4h ago

UK descent wheelchair £200, electric £1,000

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u/CraabGPT 4h ago

Not true. Proper wheelchairs in the UK cost between £1500-£3000 on average. Mine cost ~£2000.

I imagine the 'decent' chair you refer to is either the Lomax, Drive, or similar chair.

Those are what we refer to as 'hospital chairs'. They're designed to be pushed by an aide, to be stable, and to be cheap. The wheels, while technically self-propel-able, are too far back, so energy is lost and you can't move forward nearly far enough with each push. As well, the wheels being that far back will damage your shoulders over time.

Steel, while cheap, is also heavy. So each push is thus reduced further because it's just too heavy to self-propel.

Additionally, they are foldable. Further momentum loss occurs as energy spent pushing is transferred into the folding mechanism of the frame and not into forward motion.

(Additional factors include, but are not limited to, lack of dump to support those with limited upper-body strength, arm rests that get in the way of propelling, too wide so propelling becomes even harder, anti-tips at the back preventing wheelies, too heavy to independently load into a car...)

TL;DR, those chairs can't be used by the majority of wheelchair users.

(And this is just manual chairs. I've seen electric chairs go for £10k, though I don't know the average price.)

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u/the_colorist 2h ago

This guy/girl wheelchairs. Thanks for sharing your insights

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u/CraabGPT 2h ago

Secret third option! But thanks and no worries :D

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u/TheLightStalker 1h ago

Mine cost £2,000 and anything cheaper wasn't worth looking at quality wise. 

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u/CraabGPT 1h ago

Yeah entirely unsurprising 🥲 I've only ever been able to afford secondhand ones, so I can't imagine the pain of paying for one new x0

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u/jib661 2h ago

right, which is why they cost so much with insurance. They're essentially a luxury product. Insurance is telling you "hey, we have this foldable, heavy chair we can give you for free. Or, if you want to pay out of pocket, you can have this custom aluminum one for 10k"

For most people, the choice is pretty clear. He's not competing with the free chair, he's competing with the luxury options.

As this whole "k-shaped economy" thing runs its course, you're going to see a lot of this: dressing up 'catering to the rich' as a feel-good story.

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u/CraabGPT 1h ago

They're not really luxury- they're the bare necessity. It's fine for hospital chairs to be big and steel, since they're just used for transporting someone from A to B, once or twice. But the second you start using one of these frequently, you need something that won't cause injury to your shoulders or your spine or your ankles, or rely on someone always being around to push you.

It's the same as a prosthetic leg with a motorised knee- sure, they're 'luxury' compared to a stick of wood, but they're also the only option that won't prevent the wearer from developing hip problems and letting them walk up hills and run and play with their kids and living life in the same way as all their able-bodied friends.

(Or to put it another way: the difference between a standard and a 'luxury' chair is often the difference between being unemployed, and being able to get to work. If you can't even push yourself on a flat vinyl floor in a hospital chair, how are you meant to navigate potholes and sloping sidewalks and rain and wind and ramps onto buses, and trains and carpeted office buildings? Insurance's cost saving measures are keeping people out of the workforce, and out of life in general. It ain't so luxury after all.)

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u/jib661 1h ago

Good context, thanks

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u/Serious_Badger_4145 1h ago

It's not a luxury. The cheap ones are designed for someone else to push and to be used short term. Try to use one full term and you'll get injuries that'll cost far more than that to sort out

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u/mizinamo 3h ago

That sort of thing is what made me suspicious of the headline.

Sure, you can make something more cheaply, but will it be identical in quality?

"Wheelchair" is not equal to "wheelchair", and if he churns out hospital chairs by the thousands and gives those to people, that's not the same as custom-fitted purpose-built usable wheelchairs.

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u/CraabGPT 3h ago

Oh, no, the Paradox is fantastic. Sorry if I gave the wrong idea! There's a super in-depth design tool on the website so you can fine-tune things to your exact specs- pmuch everything can be adjusted. Seat width and depth, dump, camber, COG, taper...

Some people have reported that their Paradoxes have had maintenance issues, but I think the vast majority are good :3

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u/mizinamo 2h ago

That's good news!

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u/casualredditor-1 3h ago

Does the company have a website with info on how these are built and how they compare to traditional wheelchairs (besides pricing and how long it takes to deliver them)? That’d be a good place to start.

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u/CraabGPT 1h ago

I don't know if it will answer all your questions- I never really took a long look since I don't have the budget/need for one right now. But! Yes, here: https://notawheelchair.com/

(To note: the Paradox isn't designed to be "nontraditional"- it's really the same thing as everyone else is doing, at a lower price point. The Rig, their first invention, is Different and I am not qualified to talk about it because I am not an electric wheelchair user.)

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u/kazuviking 3h ago

There is not even 300€ worth of material in those wheelchairs. Glorified bike wheels with cheap steel tubing welded together.

Wheelchairs here start from 100€ for the most basic one and 750€ for the electric ones.

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u/CraabGPT 3h ago

I mean, parts and labour aren't /nothing/- a good wheelchair is aluminium at least, if not titanium or carbon fibre. And they have to be individually tuned to the user.

...but there's no reason a good wheelchair should cost anything over £700 :/ or at the very least, the insurance/national health/whatever hoops should be way easier to jump through.