Niche Idea: Beach Rover
As an avid Jetskier who grew up along the Lake Michigan shoreline, Ryan Fogg had a chance to see the problems that plague personal watercraft owners.
Where Jetskis once were relatively light and mobile, easily moved by one person, the machines increasingly were sitting idle because they were too heavy to move.
As consumer demand drove the industry to build larger machines, upsizing them from one-person capacity to two persons and then to three, the problems seemed to get worse.
Manufacturers also shifted to four-stroke motors in order to meet environmental standards. The shift often meant adding 100 pounds, bringing the weight of personal watercraft up to 1,000 pounds.
“I could see that the SeaDoos were only getting much harder to move, so I decided to build something to try to solve that problem,” Fogg, owner of Shoreline Manufacturing in Hudsonville, said. His company makes the Beach Rover, a unique device for moving personal watercraft and inflatables.
The 29-year-old home inspector built his first Beach Rover a year ago. It was then called the Strat-a-Vette, a name he has since dropped. The device debuted in February at the Grand Rapids Boat Show. The invention he developed with high school friends Stuart Terpstra and Derek Prins drew plenty of interest. Fogg has sold 25 of the devices at $5,800 each.
Using the Beach Rover is easy. As Fogg demonstrated on the Lake Michigan beach at Holland last week, the motor starts with a gentle tug. Two joysticks control its progress forward and back, left and right. It travels at a gentle walking speed whether loaded or not.
Being four-wheel drive and equipped with large, knobby tires, it moves easily over loose or packed sand and can climb an embankment without difficulty. A simple overhead pulley arrangement and hand crank makes lifting and lowering the PWC a snap.
Photo by Ian Britton.
Jeff on September 21st, 2009 7:27 am
Strange company, they don’t answer their phone or return a message when one is left. How do you buy one? How do you get one fixed? How are they still in business?
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