OUR STORY

A message from the founder of TT Dynamics, Tyler Taschner

It all started on a brisk fall evening on November 5, 2011. It was an extremely windy day and while I was sitting in a tree stand bow hunting for deer an adjacent tree snapped in the wind. The broken tree then fell into the tree I was sitting in, slid down the tree and landed directly on my back. The fallen tree broke my T11-T12 vertebra and severed my spinal cord. Coupled with the broken vertebra the 15ft fall also broke eight ribs and punctured a lung.

Immediately after the injury I was taken to Sanford hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where surgery was preformed to stabilize my spine. I stayed in Sioux Falls for nearly two weeks before I was flown to Craig Hospital in Denver, Colorado. This hospital specializes in brain and spinal cord injuries. Over my two-month stay in Denver I was taught what it would take to continue on in life living as independent as possible.

A key factor in remaining an independent person after an injury is finding a vehicle. Once it came time for me to try and find a vehicle to drive I realized how few options there really were for disabled individuals. Basically, you are faced with driving a mini van, which in many cases spinal cord injury happens to younger males and they feel like with driving a van they are losing one of the few “man cards” a person has. The other option you are faced with is driving a car and the problem with a car is that the wheelchair needs to be disassembled every time and you need to wrestle it into the cab of the car. The vehicle that I really wanted to drive post injury was a pickup because before the injury I was an avid sportsman and even post injury I have continued to fish, hunt and do all the other activities that I used to do before the accident. There were a couple options available for me to possibly drive a pickup but in reality they weren’t very affordable. So this is the point where the wheels in my head started to spin.

After I was released from the rehabilitation hospital I graduated from Hamlin High School a few months later. After high school I decided to continue my education and pursue a Mechanical Engineering degree from South Dakota State University. I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in May of 2016 and the final class of my college career was to complete a senior design project. I figured what better time to come up with an affordable way for disabled individuals to drive a pickup than doing it for my senior design project. With the help of a few classmates over the course of a semester we came up with a process and a rough prototype that accomplished the task.

After college with the help of my dad and brother we continued to refine the prototype into a dependable, durable, finished product. The design is now patent pending and is ready to help provide an affordable option to drive a pickup over a minivan or car for other disabled people that have drawn the short end of the stick on life.

Thanks & Regards,
Tyler Taschner, CEO