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BY RICK SHAPIRO-INVENTOR
The idea for a pancake thin wagon first popped in my head during a summer day while at Virginia Beach. I thought about locals carting their big, bulky, overstuffed wagons or carts on and off the beach to their vans or SUV's. Because we didn't have a van or SUV, carrying such a large contraption was out of the question for us. I started to daydream about a folding wagon or cart, one that would fold up flat in even a small car trunk. They say that necessity is the mother of invention…
 Since my "day job" is being a plaintiff's personal injury attorney, designing such a device wasn't my "day job." However, during law school I had worked as a patent searcher for a prominent patent law firm in Arlington, Virginia. My job was to search the U.S. patent office library and report on the patentability of client inventions. At times fascinating, at times very boring, but I learned a few things...
THE EARLY PLAN: THINK LIKE A MANUFACTURER
Daydreaming turned into drawing and doodling ideas about folding wagons and carts. Then I developed a plan: I would think like a manufacturer. I had done patent searches for big companies,where their mission was to search the "state of the art" for all patents covering one area and then improve on it. I resolved to do this and located and studied all patents showing methods to fold walls, wheels or parts of carts & wagons. I concluded that very few practical folding methods had evolved over the last 100 years. I did see many ideas that were unrealistically complicated.
My goal (obsession?) was to create a new method to make the thinnest wagons and carts and I believed there had to be a better way. I studied hand trucks, wagons, anything that folded looking at ideas everywhere. I built mockups out of cardboard, wood, & foam insulation in my garage  over many months. One day an idea popped in my head to have the entire wagon wheel and axle support unlock, and then fold and pivot right in to the wagon bed. I hurriedly drew some sketches, and then began cutting out and modeling with cardboard to be sure that this pivoting wheel assembly idea would really work. I knew right away this was my first very unique idea, and would solve the biggest design obstacle which had prevented the design of a truly pancake-like wagon in the past. My "eureka" moment soon evolved into months, and years, of design drawings and a dedication to refining the designs into working concepts and ultimately prototypes.
FROM MOCKUP TO PROTOTYPES
 Wow, it's a long way from rough mockups to working prototypes, to final production! There were so many details: from how to mount the pivoting wheel in a simple way, to how to have folding walls collapse but snap together when upright, handle methods, size, etc, for each product design. I worked on my initial patent applications with my old patent attorney boss, Ross Hunt. Today, many patent applications, 14 US patents, internaional patents and hundreds (maybe thousands) of design drawings later, we have many exciting products designed and on the drawing board.
PROTOTYPE REALITY
The first prototype wagons and carts each folded to about three inches and easily fit in a car trunk, along with other stuff. Actually, the first Pancake designed wagons for sale in the U.S.A. are solid plastic wagons that fold flat to 8 inches thin, as shown below (two fit in the standard trunk shown).
MOVING ON TO OTHER "FOLD FLAT" WHEELED PRODUCTS
Pancake Wheel was formed to design and license the various technologies which are evolving from the unique pivoting wheel axle. We are now actively involved in both marketing and licensing these unique Pancake Wheel designs to manufacturer/distributors in the USA and around the world. The U.S. Patent Office granted my first pivoting wheel axle technology patent in April, 2001, and now over 14 other U.S. and International patents have been granted and are pending for adaptations of the pivoting wheel to other products.
I would venture to say that there are only a very few (if any)United States personal injury victim's lawyers who also are inventors, much less of fold flat carts, wagons, wheelbarrows, and jogging strollers! I actively practice with a Virginia Beach law firm and serve as editor of a Virginia Beach personal injury law blog on the Injuryboard network. The background of having handled faulty product cases for prior injured clients goes a long way in helping design safe, sturdy, fold flat products.
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Inventor Shapiro In Montreal working on details of the world's thinnest wagon — the Pancake Flat Wagon. | |
As can be seen on this website, we have also been focusing on applying the pancake "fold flat" technology to the world's thinnest folding kid's funcars, jogging strollers, tricycles, bike trailed carriers and other similar wheeled products (some are still confidential).
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