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Utah-based YouTuber, wife bring 'hope again' through off-road wheelchair company

The Rig
Zack and Cambry Nelson navigate a canyon. Cambry is riding the Rig, an off-road bike produced by the Nelson's company, Not a Wheelchair. (Courtesy of Not a Wheelchair)

YouTuber Zack Nelson (@JerryRigEverything) and his wife Cambry Nelson are aiming to mass produce affordable off-road wheelchairs through their company, Not a Wheelchair.

“I’ve always known I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” Zack Nelson said, referencing mowing lawns as a kid and funding his mission to Guatemala through lawn aeration. Building things has always been a passion of his too.

Zack Nelson worked at Sprint fixing cell phones in college. Realizing there weren’t well-made videos on repairing phones, Zack Nelson started documenting his repairs on his YouTube channel, JerryRigEverything.

After a couple of years, the channel’s revenue matched what he was making at Sprint, so he made making YouTube videos his full-time gig.

Zack Nelson’s channel quickly gained popularity as he branched out from cell phone repair videos into technology durability tests and building his own electric vehicle. His channel now has over nine million subscribers.

“And then I met my wife,” Zack Nelson said. “She was the catalyst for the next chapter of my channel.”

An accomplished equestrian vaulter in her youth, Cambry Nelson was practicing with her vaulting team for the national championships when she decided to do an aerial dismount off her horse without telling her teammate, who was still on the horse.

“I flipped, hit him with my leg, changed my rotation in the air and landed on my back,” Cambry Nelson said in an interview with The United States Para-Equestrian Association. “I broke my back, severed my spinal cord and became permanently paralyzed from the waist down.”

When Zack Nelson met Cambry Nelson, he realized that the cost of a wheelchair could be astronomical, while the price of materials was much less.

“I knew that if I were to come in and participate in the wheelchair manufacturing, I could make something that was a substantially lower cost than everything else out there,” Zack Nelson said.

Prototype of the Rig
Zack and Cambry Nelson sit on one of the early prototypes of the Rig. Their company, Not a Wheelchair, aims to build affordable off-road bikes for those with disabilities. (Courtesy of Not a Wheelchair)

While he and Cambry were dating, Zack built a prototype of an off-road wheelchair for her by welding parts of two electric bikes together. Zack Nelson said the first one he built had two major problems: one, Cambry couldn’t get in by herself, and two, the bike didn’t have a reverse.

Shortly after Zack and Cambry married in 2019, the Nelsons' newly founded company, Not a Wheelchair, released their first product: The Rig — an iteration of the first off-road bike Zack prototyped.

According to their website, The Rig is not quite a wheelchair — hence the company’s name — but a “fully electric, super quiet, accessible bike that can go 12 mph with a range of about 10–20 miles.”

With four tires, a hydraulic brake system, and a solid rear axle, the Rig is designed with off-roading and adventuring in mind.

But they’re not done yet. Initially focusing on off-road wheelchairs, Not a Wheelchair’s product line quickly expanded. Since the company’s inception, they’ve started manufacturing the Kid Rig, the Big Rig (a larger version of the Rig with four-wheel drive capabilities), and a manual wheelchair, the Paradox.

“You’re solving problems. It’s just the problems change every day,” lead engineer Tanner Green said of his day-to-day work.

The process from idea to finished product is complex.

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BYU graduate Clark Roubicek assembles a Paradox, Not a Wheelchair's manual wheelchair. Roubicek is one of the engineers for the company. (Courtesy of Not a Wheelchair)

“Once you have a design set,” Green said, “you’re using some sort of process to take raw material like metal, cutting it to shape and size.”

The metal is then bent, welded, and finished with a powder coating before final assembly.

“It’s kind of like a puzzle,” he said.

After years at Intel and Raytheon designing equipment for large-scale operations, Green joined Not a Wheelchair in 2021 after being drawn to the company’s hands-on impact.

While working at Utah Valley Hospital, Savannah Barney’s friend Taylor Cutler—an employee of Not a Wheelchair— introduced Barney to the company. Barney, a resident of Delta, Utah, was paralyzed in a rappelling accident in April 2024.

“I wanted to join my family during the hunting season, and saw the Big Rig from Not a Wheelchair on their Instagram,” Barney said. “We wanted to try it out, so we messaged them and were able to borrow it for a weekend. It was awesome.”

Barney’s experience navigating rough terrain with her family highlighted the Big Rig’s four-wheel drive capabilities.

“It got me up a mountain over rocks, logs, hills, etc.,” she said. “To top it all off, it’s pretty fast, which just makes it fun to ride.”

Because the company doesn’t have large profit margins, the company is currently mostly funded from the revenue of Nelson’s YouTube channel, as well as donations people make through their website.

Zack Nelson said he hopes the company will eventually become self-sufficient as they continue expanding their off-road side of the business. But ultimately, they plan to do good.

“Independence has kind of been the driving factor of all of our changes and improvements,” Zack Nelson said. “If you’re in a wheelchair, getting back some independence that you might have lost after an accident or a sickness or a disability is kind of the goal.”

Kourtney Neuenswander, who owns a Rig, said she especially loves Not a Wheelchair because of the family that created it.

“(Zack) is truly wanting to help people with disabilities because him and his wife are in that same boat. It’s so important to me to support a business where they have actual true meaning behind all of this—it’s not just for the money,” Neuenswander said.

Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at age 14, Neuenswander was an active kid who loved camping, hiking, boating, skiing and snowboarding—anything outside.

“As soon as I was diagnosed, it got harder and harder and harder for me to be able to participate in those activities,” Neuenswander said. “Really mentally hard as well.”

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Kourtney Neuenswander shows off her Rig in St. George, Utah. The Rig is a product of Utah-based company, Not a Wheelchair. (Matt Neuenswander)

When she learned about it, she spent years dreaming of owning a Rig of her own. Then her husband surprised her with one for her birthday last year. Both of their families pitched in to help, which made the gift even more meaningful.

For Neuenswander, the Rig brought back a sense of freedom she thought she’d lost.

“It was just a game changer,” she said. “It just brought back a lot of those feelings and memories that I missed so much, and now I’m getting to be able to experience them with my family and my kids, which I wouldn’t be able to do if it wasn’t for the Rig.”

Neuenswander has seen the influence the company’s products have had on people's lives, and wants others to have the same experience.

“Just because you’re in a wheelchair or you have a disability doesn’t mean that your lifestyle has to stop,” Neuenswander said. “You can go out and have fun, make memories and enjoy life and have hope again.”