Scholpp has a long and well regarded career in the heavy lift and transport business, working for more than 30 years with his family’s eponymous crane and transport business, where he was most recently managing director. The idea for the PowerCat came to him as an answer to the problem of moving loads like heavy presses into place in restricted indoor locations, where bigger sources of power (such as forklifts) may not be able to fit.
The PowerCat features an adjustable handle with a small electric motor driving two wheels. A ‘toe’ at the front of the device hooks onto unpowered skates, allowing them to be pushed and pulled as needed. The device is small enough to be carried in the boot of a car and controlled by a single operator, but big enough to move loads of up to 25t. For bigger loads, multiple PowerCats can be used together.
The first PowerCats were powered through mains supply. The latest model (and the winner of the CivEnEx innovation award) is the PowerCat Cordless, which uses lithium polymer batteries to supply the motor.
