If you’ve been to a Penn State football home game in the last decade, then you’ve likely seen a slew of bike rickshaws zipping up and down Curtin Road.

The goofy-looking pedicab bicycles can be seen, and heard, before and after almost every game. They transport fans around campus to tailgates, Beaver Stadium, the Lion Shrine, and everywhere in between.

It’s a small, yet successful, economic ecosystem that booms on Saturdays in the fall. Some bike rickshaws have advertisers and sponsors on them, others have lights and blare music, but they all compete to take advantage of the demand for efficient game day transportation.

“On gameday, there’s no better way to get around because traffic is a nightmare,” said Todd Miner, the general manager and founder of Vamos! Lion Chariots.  

Vamos! Lion Chariots typically use three or four rickshaws regularly and Miner said he has about 10 bikes total. With 10s of bikes on campus during gamedays, Miner’s bikes are easy to identify. They are bright blue with a small front wheel, and a “Vamos! Lion Chariot” sign on the back and the top of the chariot.

Miner’s main, three-seat bike also has speakers and plays music while giving rides to create a unique transportation experience for its patrons.

“This is transport-tainment,” Miner said. “It’s a hybrid of transportation and entertainment.”

Miner’s business is the only locally-owned bike rickshaw service in State College, despite the 10s of other bikers who show up on gamedays. But without Vamos! Lion Chariots, there would be no bike rickshaws at all.

Miner is from Buffalo, New York, and graduated from Penn State in 1992. He then received an advanced degree in meteorology in 1995 and worked in the industry for almost 20 years.

“I’m a weather guy,” Miner said simply.

As a “weather guy,” Miner worked for the Department of Meteorology at Penn State from 1995 to 2010 then worked for AccuWeather from 2012 to 2016. In between the two jobs, Miner took a trip to San Diego, California, where he saw bike rickshaws for the first time.

“And it just kind of clicked. I’m like ‘Wow, this is kind of neat,'” Miner said.

That was the moment he got the idea for his future business venture. Miner started his position at AccuWeather and at the same time, he developed the business model for Vamos! Lion Chariots. Miner received help from the Small Business Development Center at Penn State, and in 2012, the enterprise was off the ground.

But it wasn’t as simple as that.

Miner said there were lots of hoops to jump through before starting the business. Most of those involved insurance, identifying potential risks, and meeting with Penn State and the State College Borough.

“I knew if I just showed up riding this thing in the middle of town or on campus, somebody would say ‘What’s going on here?’ Miner said. “I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen, so I met with these folks. They had some concerns. I alleviated those concerns.” 

After working through the logistics of starting a small business, Vamos! Lion Chariots was approved, and Miner purchased his first bike, which he said cost from $4,500 to $6,500 brand new at the time.

Miner started by giving students rides downtown and on campus every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night during what he described as the “late-night bar crawl.” He said it was “the bread and butter of the revenue.”

“It was fun. Late hours. That’s how it was the first several years,” Miner said.

Miner said he even used to decorate the bike for Christmas, Halloween, and St. Patrick’s Day.

“So that tied into the entertainment aspect. It would just make it fun,” Miner said. “If you’re walking around downtown, and it’s just before Christmas, and everyone is in the Christmas spirit, here comes this bogey coming down the street playing Christmas carols and it’s all decked out. You just want to get in it.” 

But that all changed in February 2015 when Uber was introduced to State College and Lyft came shortly after in September 2016.

“Students were ordering Uber and ordering Lyft and not taking this fun thing as much,” Miner said as he signaled to his chariot. “From that point forward, I had to refocus the business model a little bit to start finding new sources of revenue.”

Miner pivoted from a late-night transportation service to a Penn State touring service. He began providing customers with a variety of tours including sightseeing tours, ice cream tours, and romance tours. He also introduced rides for birthday parties, graduations, festivals, and family and company reunions.

“These tours are for anybody. It could be for prospective students, it could be alumni, it could be people just visiting the university for the heck of it, or maybe they’re here for a conference and they have some free time and they want to see the school and learn about the history,” Miner said.

Although Miner has a menu of tours available for customers, he also enjoys taking specific requests.

“I had done a tour from someone who graduated 50 years ago, and he wanted to show his wife where he was a student over in East Halls,” Miner said. “So we made sure that we did that, and he sat on the bench where he used to always sit, and he was just really happy, just to do that.” 

“I once had a tour where an elderly couple wanted to go back to the Eisenhower chapel and walk inside to see where it is that they had gotten married,” Miner said. “They were the second couple to have gotten married at that chapel. This was back in the late ’50s, and so that was fun.” 

The added services meant Miner had to expand his business too. He bought more bikes, hired independent contractors to drive for him, and added sponsors as the business grew. Those local partners included the Allen Street Grill, the Penn State Learning Center, and more recently, Oliv.

“This is one of the fun things about being an entrepreneur is you get to do a little bit of everything,” Miner said. “You get to play marketer/advertiser. You’ve got to be a risk manager. You get to be a secretary and scheduler. You get to do taxes, so you got to be the accountant. So you get to do all these little parts to it, and that keeps you busy, for sure.”

As a former meteorologist, Miner is aware of the limitations of the bike rickshaw business due to the central Pennsylvania weather. Although he used to give rides in January when the business started, Miner said he limits the season to post-spring break to the end of the football season.

Football season is one of the most competitive times of the year for Miner’s business. Every week, other bike rickshaws show up on campus and provide similar services as Vamos! Lion Chariots.

“I think the other weekend, we had some people from Providence, Rhode Island, because they were just passing through on their way to Pittsburgh to do the Steelers game on Sunday,” Miner said. “So, they just load them up in trucks and then they do special events. Penn State football is considered that, of course.” 

But the competition isn’t what worries Miner. It’s preserving his company’s image.

“They never jumped through the hoops that we had to in order to start this business,” Miner said. “Before I started this business, [bike rickshaws] were not permitted to be on campus, so the fact that they’re actually here earning money, I greased the skids for them to be here, and they just ride those coattails.”  

“My main concern is that they do a good job, and they generally do with their customers, [but] if they don’t, then people may associate them with my business and think it’s all the same and you want to be careful with that,” Miner added. 

Despite his concerns, Miner said his business does well between the money made per ride and tips. But when Miner isn’t on his bike rickshaw, he makes some extra cash by driving for his former in-town competitors: Uber and Lyft.

“Can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” Miner said jokingly.

Vamos! Lion Chariots’s 12th year is coming to a close. Miner hopes Penn State can clinch a home playoff game in December for one more day of business before calling it a year. But even after the changes of his nearly 13-year-old business, Miner still thinks fondly of when everything started.

“That was a whole different era,” Miner said. “To be honest with you, in some ways, I miss those first [few years] because I had closer relationships with the students because I was constantly around them. Taking them to this bar or that bar. I got to know them a lot more. That I missed a little bit.” 

For more information on Miner’s business, go to the Vamos! Lion Chariot website, Instagram, and Facebook. You can also email [email protected].