About the Inventor

Michael Jenkins is from Adelaide Australia but has spent the last 3 years working in China with leading carbon composite sporting goods manufacturers on the design and development of Wheelskates.

He is an electrician with factory maintenance, construction and mining experience but has also had his own businesses both as an electrical contractor and manufacturing fibre-glass aerodynamic wind deflectors for trucks. In his youth he frequently went skating at the Elizabeth roller-skating rink and then the Payneham ice-skating rink in Adelaide, and was a keen cyclist; a year or so after completing his electrical apprenticeship he cycled around most of Europe and spent the winter working and skiing in Zermatt in the Swiss Alps.
With Michael’s skating, cycling and skiing experience he realized that a skate with a large wheel could incorporate the dynamic benefits of all three genres.
Using his technical experience from his trade and previous fibreglass manufacturing business he built a couple of prototypes secretly in his garage whilst on R&R from his mining job. After the completion of the second prototype he filed a provisional patent then finished work in the mines, and completed a third prototype at home; then with the help of family & friends as investors, went to China to work with suitable carbon composite sporting goods manufacturers on four more prototypes.

He is now a director of Chariot Skates Ltd a Hong Kong company which will manufacture and market Wheelskates under the trademark of Chariot Skates to the international sporting community.

Inspiration:

When Michael cycled around Europe in the early 80’s he felt the seat and handle bars of a bicycle were restrictive and uncomfortable compared to the freedom experienced when skiing or skating. He has always considered that having each foot suspended below the axles of a pair of large wheels with pneumatic tyre was an obvious benefit over roller or inline skates, because they would enable skaters to travel and commute over uneven & rougher terrain much like a bicycle.

He always considered it such an obvious development that he wondered why no one else was producing such a device, then in December 1999 when the foldable aluminium scooters were all the rage he was talking to a good friend Rick about how could, something that is more impractical than regular scooters with larger wheels, suddenly be so popular, and that someone should come up with skates with each foot suspended below the axles of a large wheel. They then talked together about all the problems that such skates would have, then after going home that night the answers to all the issues divinely came to him and he made some sketches and kept things to himself until the end of 2004 when while walking and praying one night in the outback while working at Challenger Gold Mine, he felt led to start developing Wheelskates.