Meet David Walker

In 1975, David Walker was involved in a car accident which left him confined to a wheelchair. With a very young family, David was determined to get back to work, where he was the managing director of an engineering company, manufacturing shot blasting equipment.

In the years that followed, David became increasingly frustrated with having to rely on other people to load and unload his manual wheelchair into the boot of his car whilst not wanting either his wife or sons (the oldest of which was only 5 years old!) to lift something so heavy and awkward. Being fiercely independent prior to his accident, David began an extensive search for a means of him independently loading his wheelchair into the vehicle – this was many years before the internet and thus the search was long and hard!

After months of searching around the UK and much further afield, David realised that the product he needed simply did not exist. It was at this stage that David, as an engineer, decided to put his mind to developing a system that would enable him to travel independently.

After a year of development, the first ‘Autochair’ was made from wood and fitted to his car in 1979. It soon became apparent that wood was not the ideal material from which the box should be made and some months later David’s then unnamed gadget was fitted with a brand new, light weight, fibreglass box which also offered much better protection against the weather. This was the birth of the ‘Autochair’, roof top wheelchair carrier.

Over the next year or so, David was asked on many occasions where he had bought this wonderful gadget from which was exactly what other disabled drivers needed, also craving their own independence. Being an entrepreneurial type, every time David was asked, he took the people’s name and address and said that he would let them know if he ever started to produce them.

With a list of 40 names and addresses, David decided that there was a sufficient demand to justify further development and then production of his gadget!

6 months later, in 1983, David contacted his list of 40 potential customers and asked “what colour they would like their newly named ‘Autochair’ to be painted”! This was the very beginning of Autochair the company, which has since served over 35,000 customers across the World and is still going from strength to strength to this day.

With an ever increasing product range, Autochair is still probably the largest direct supplier of vehicle adaptations to the general public in the UK and in 2007 was the largest supplier of vehicle adaptations to the Motability Charity, which itself serves some 515,000 customers.

If you have a need that is not addressed by any of our current product range, please feel free to email David directly david@autochair.co.uk or even write an old fashioned letter to our Alfreton address and tell us how we could help you to become more independent – you never know, your ideas might be the beginning of the next Autochair and be sold across the World, helping other disabled people with similar problems to you!

Thank you for taking the time to find out how we started, we look forward to serving you for the next 25 years, as Autochair remains a family business, now run by David’s eldest son, Matthew, ably assisted by his two brothers, Nick & Jonathan.

David's favourite product, as a disabled driver, is Servicecall at £14.95. See www.service-call.net another Autochair product.