The familiar clip-clop, clip-clop of horse-drawn buggies along Lancaster County roads echoes a long-distant past before the advent of automobiles.
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At first glance, those 21st century carriages appear to mirror those of that earlier era, but that's an illusion.
The humble buggy hasn't been standing still all those years. It's been moving forward.
Some parts, including wheels, may now be made of fiberglass or metal instead of wood, say the folks at Fairview Coach Co., near Lititz, and most carriages these days come equipped with hydraulic brakes and electrical systems.
The latest innovation, they say, is an electrical alternator to charge the battery that powers the running lights.
Reuben Lantz, partner and general manager of Stoltzfus Coach Supply, Lebanon, was busy last week delivering units from the first factory shipment to carriage shops around the county.
The only buggies that have had the alternators up to now — mostly just a handful around Lancaster County — have been those equipped with prototypes.
With 1,600 factory-made alternators sitting in a barn south of Lebanon and another 400 on the way from China, that's about to change.
The inventorLantz credits his uncle and partner, John Stoltzfus, with coming up with the idea for the alternators.
Stoltzfus, who is Amish and drives a buggy himself, saw the need for such a device, Lantz said, and as a designer for Automatic Farm Systems, Lebanon, Stoltzfus had the machine-shop experience needed to develop it.
Lantz said Stoltzfus asked him what he thought about the idea and then enlisted his assistance in developing and marketing the product.
"I've grown up driving a carriage, and then started driving a [motorized] vehicle and realized the danger of carriages being out there at night," Lantz said. "I thought it was great."
The law requires buggies to have flashing running lights at night, he said, and most are powered by marine batteries that are designed to be drawn down before they're recharged.
That usually requires pulling the battery out of the buggy and hooking it up to a diesel-powered generator.
"For an average carriage, they would usually charge them up once a week, unless it's someone that drives more at night," Lantz said.
In addition to being more convenient, an alternator eliminates the danger of the battery going dead along a darkened road, thus reducing the chance of a collision with a car.
Adding an alternator to a buggy is not a new idea, but as far as Lantz knows previous efforts have been limited to attaching a car alternator to the buggy's wheel through a belt-and-pulley system, an approach that produces an excess of drag.
Stoltzfus' alternator eliminates that drag by attaching directly to the wheel and axle.
"He took a look at a regular alternator and flipped it to have the copper coils on the inside," Lantz said.
On a car alternator, the coil is attached to a stationary housing, with the magnets mounted on a rotating shaft in the center.
On Stoltzfus' alternator, the coil is attached to the stationary carriage axle and the magnets are mounted on the housing, which is attached to the wheel and rotates around the outside of the coil. A patent is pending.
Road testedThat basic design has undergone a number of revisions from its inception until the first factory order was placed, and those revisions were tested with daily use on a number of buggies, including four prototypes that were installed by Fairview Coach Co.
"We've had bugs to pick out. But the ones that have them, they are pretty much pleased with them," said John, Fairview's owner, who is Amish and asked that only his first name be used in the newspaper.
Most of the revisions were in the size of the wire in the windings to obtain the optimum output for the average speed of a buggy, Lantz said.
With the buggy clipping along at 10 mph, the alternator produces all the current needed to power its lights. At slower speeds, the lights draw off the battery. At higher speeds and during daylight hours, there's enough excess current to replenish the battery's charge.
The first prototype was installed early in 2007 on a buggy owned by Amos, one of the workers at Fairview. It survived a wreck caused by a runaway horse, which destroyed the buggy itself about a year later.
"That unit could have been reinstalled [in a new buggy], but we had made a couple of upgrades," Lantz said.
Amos' new buggy and alternator have been in use since May 2008, and he said in all that time he's never had to remove and recharge the battery. He was also able to switch to a small lawn-tractor battery instead of a heavy-duty marine one.
"They've worked good for me. No problem," Amos said.
Rolling 'em outWith a workable version of the alternator in place, the next step was to find a manufacturer.
"The main thing we ran into with production issues, we had a hard time finding a company capable of winding these [alternators] without very much cost," Lantz said.
A contact in Ohio who had a trading company in China recommended a company there that became the manufacturer.
"The work that they put into them and the quality is excellent," Lantz said. "It exceeds our expectation on quality."
The alternators have a suggested list price of $499, he said, and the manufacturer estimates each will keep running for "the lifetime of five horses."
Lantz said the biggest challenge he now faces is setting up a distributor and dealer network to market them.
The dealers will be the carriage shops that install the alternators.
"The only way you can install them is if you go through our training course," he said.
In addition to Fairview, other area shops that are lined up as dealers are Weavertown Coach Shop, Bird-in-Hand; Country Lane Coach Shop, Paradise; and Lapp Carriage Shop, Lebanon.
Lantz said he believes there are at least a dozen small carriage shops that serve the Plain community in Lancaster County, and he says Weavertown Coach Shop will be the local distributor as well as a dealer.
He's also lined up distributors in Holmes County, Ohio, and in Northern Indiana, and is looking for a distributor for Canada.
Right now, the only product that Stoltzfus Coach Supply carries is the alternator, but that could change down the road.
For one thing, Lantz said, the alternator doesn't produce enough current to charge the batteries of the large, slower-moving carriages used by commercial ride operators, and the company may develop a second model adapted to that use.
For another, he added, "We're actually looking possibly at the brakes. We're thinking there should be a way to put electric brakes in a buggy."
The main advantage would be in reduced maintenance from eliminating the hydraulic oil, he said.
But as much as the company pushes the evolution of the buggy, one thing is unlikely to change — the clip-clop, clip-clop that powers it along.
Dennis Larison is editor of the business section and can be reached by telephone at 291-8753 or by e-mail at dlarison@lnpnews.com.
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