Major Gary Sullivan with the SCDNR shakes hands with Pedego of Aiken owner Coker Day during a day spent testing the new electric bicycle being donated to the agency. Also pictured are Pedego of Aiken Manager Shane LeDonne (far left), SCDNR Lance Corporal Jeff Day (center) and Pedego of Aiken Mechanic Ryan Blane. (Below) Officer Day checks out the handling of the Pedego "Trail Tracker." [SCDNR photos by David Lucas]
In the early days of the then S.C. Wildlife Commission, legendary Lowcountry game warden Mac Flood was known to patrol on horseback, leaving his home in Moncks Corner to crisscross his district for up to a week at a time. Could a modern-day electric “horse” be of similar use to the men and women who enforce South Carolina’s game and fish laws today? Thanks to the generous donation of a new piece of equipment by Aiken County businessman Coker Day, the S.C. Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) is about to find out.
Day is the owner of a new Pedego brand electric bike dealership in Aiken. The popularity of “e-bikes”— bicycles with battery-powered motors that help riders power over hills or simply maintain speed with much less effort — has exploded in recent years. Day and his wife experienced the bikes on a vacation trip, where they used them to tour a historic city. The bikes were enormously fun to ride, said Day, and almost immediately a lightbulb went off in his head about how well the same type of thing might work in his hometown of historic Aiken. It wasn’t long before he was getting ready to open a new full-service Pedego bike shop in Aiken and thinking about ways the fledgling business could promote itself. Orange County, California-based Pedego provides support for dealers who want to donate a bike to a local organization, as a way to build community support and name recognition.
“I’ve always been a big supporter of SCDNR,” said Day. “I served on the agency’s Marine Advisory Committee for several years, and so when the company approached me with this idea, I immediately thought about my cousin, Jeff, [Lance Corporal Jeff Day, an SCDNR Officer in Charleston County] and how useful this could be to him and his fellow officers.”
So Day contacted SCDNR Deputy Director for Law Enforcement, Col. Chisolm Frampton, and offered to donate one of Pedego’s robust “Trail Tracker” off-road models to the agency to evaluate it for use by SCDNR officers in the field. That’s good for the officers, who are always looking for a new tool to help them do their job, and hopefully, also good for business, says Day. “Once the community sees the benefits of the Trail Tracker in use in some of our beautiful natural regions, maybe it will inspire them to try an electric bike themselves.”
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