QLK Case Study: Ride-Away

“If you want to do what’s right for your clients and your company, you’re sending a bad message when you stay with old technology,” says Lore. “We did exhaustive testing in looking at different products, and we feel very confident that, for our clients, QLK is the better product.”

If anyone should know what’s best for the users of adaptive driving equipment, it’s Lore and his team. With 16 stores all along the East Coast, Ride Away is one of the largest providers of wheelchair accessible vehicles in the U.S. and one of the largest purchasers of securement systems.

“I’ve used virtually every product,” Lore says. In doing so, he’s seen how different manufacturers deal with the industry’s top challenges of quality and change.

“In the past, there were small cottage-type manufacturers building interesting products, but not really building them with a level of quality, or — as I always say — the engineering budget of a Ford,” he says. “They wanted to do well and build a good quality product, but sometimes reality got in the way.”

He says that, regardless of size or budget, some manufacturers did not adequately keep up with continual change.

“Every September, all the vehicles change and every January, the wheelchairs change,” he says. “I think other manufacturers did a good job for a long time, but they ended up becoming stagnant. So now they’re in a situation where they’re selling a one-size-fits-all product, whereas Q’Straint is on the front lines making sure that their equipment meshes with new products.”

“If you want to do what’s right for your clients and your company, you’re sending a bad message when you stay with old technology…We did exhaustive testing in looking at different products, and we feel very confident that, for our clients, QLK is the better product.”

“It’s always a little preferable to not make changes for the sake of making changes,” he adds, “but I believe with Q’Straint’s new products, there are compelling reasons to change.”

Lore quickly ticks off those compelling reasons: “The new stabilizer is far superior to anything on the market. The electronics are far superior to anything on the market. And with the QLK, I could immediately go to a 3-1/2 or a 4-inch-high box without a lot of changes. On the competitors’ products, you have to stack 1-by-1 steel. Q’Straint was ahead of the curve by making lockdowns that were already taller.”

Lore is so impressed with Q’Straint engineering, he’s even switching to Q’Straint’s new DiOR (Drive-In-Occupant-Restraint) technology from his company’s own passive restraint system. “We’re throwing our tested design in the garbage in favor of the DiOR, because it works in a lot more applications, it is a lot more flexible and versatile, and it’s backed by a company like Q’Straint. We’d be crazy not to use it.”