Answering a phone call from someone wanting a bed liner installed in a truck, Jason Beard takes the order by clinching the flat end of a mouth stick in his teeth and applying the pointed end quickly and precisely to an iPad.
        When another customer walks into the Line-X Southeast Customs showroom to ask about tinted windows, Beard rests the mouth stick in one of two holders for these on the desk top of his motorized chair and speaks to the customer without missing a beat.
        "As technology evolves, I usually get more productive," Beard said.
        Now 39, Beard has been quadriplegic since a diving accident in the Savannah River when he was 18, the Fourth of July after he graduated from Screven County High School in 1995.
        At Line-X Southeast Customs, Jason Beard's voice is the first that most callers hear. His face is the first that most customers see when they enter the door. He handles about 90 percent of the in-store sales, schedules customer appointments, issues payments to vendors, and does some of the billing.
        "Jason, he's the face of the store, the front, as well as behind the scenes, he does a lot of the actual bookwork," said his brother, Trenton Beard.
        In high school, Jason Beard was a three-year starting defensive end on the football team. His senior year, the Screven County Gamecocks under Coach Chuck Conley finished second in the state in Class AA, losing the championship to Washington County, which fielded future NFL linebacker Takeo Spikes and an unusual number of rising college players. So it's no surprise that Beard remains an active sports fan, and especially enjoys attending Georgia Southern University Eagles games.

Adapted for hunting
        But he also enjoys going turkey and deer hunting.
        "This time of year, turkey hunting is the priority," Beard said with a chuckle.
        He is able to aim and fire a shotgun or rifle using a combination of a joystick and a sip-and-puff air tube control. Award-winning turkey caller Kerry Terrell is his hunting buddy.
        For work, Beard's adaptive devices are limited to the mouth sticks he keeps handy and the sip-and-puff that steers his wheelchair. Otherwise, his mobile desk top carries the iPad and a phone such as anyone might use, plus a wireless keyboard and mouse for accessing the office computer.
        The interface with the office system is necessary only for QuickBooks invoicing, with files too large for a tablet to easily handle, he said. For everything else, he loves the iPad's touchscreen.
        He used voice command software to good effect when he was taking classes at Georgia Southern, writing papers by talking to his computer. But in a business setting where he is constantly talking to people by phone and in person, multitasking with voice controls would not work well, he explained.
        Both Beard brothers took a number of courses at Georgia Southern, but got too involved with their growing business to graduate.

A family story
        As CEO, Trenton Beard, 34, runs the shop, manages the employees - six at last count besides the Beard brothers and their mom, Wanda - and handles the outside sales. These two men have been working together in this evolving family business since their father, Earl, a diesel mechanic, started with help from his boys in his backyard shop in Sylvania in 1997. Earl Beard is no longer active in the business, having turned it over to his sons.
        Trenton has been part of it since he was a teenager learning to drive. First, father and sons had fixed up a pickup for Jason to drive when he turned 16. When it was time for Trenton to benefit from the same rite of passage, he wanted a sprayed-in bed liner, and when the Beards couldn't find anyone in the area whose work gave them confidence, they attended a Line-X demonstration in the Atlanta area, he said.
        In 2003, the Beards made Line-X and vehicle accessories a full-time business in Sylvania. The location worked as long as most of their orders were wholesale, through car dealerships, Jason said, but as car dealers struggled in the recession years, the Beards wanted to reach more direct retail customers.
        They moved to a Statesboro shop at the end of 2009, opened it in the spring of 2010, and expanded in 2011, the brothers said.
        As the name Line-X Southeast Customs indicates, it is a Line-X franchise. But they sell and install more than bed liners. Employees include Line-X technician Benji Wiley, suspension and 12-volt specialist Dylan Bacon, window tint specialist Rusty Deal, administrative assistant Monica Otero, and, part-time, GSU engineering students Zack McPherson and Christopher Ryjkoff.
        When interviewed two weeks ago, the Beards were advertising to hire a full-time mobile electronics specialist.
        The electronic accessories they carry include navigation systems, in addition to car and truck audio. For trucks, they also sell tool boxes, grill guards, lift kits, wheels and tires.
        "We do most any after-market accessory to cars or trucks," Jason said.
        For now, Line-X Southeast Customs is at 801 South Main Street, Suite B, in the building with Party Impressions. But the Beards expect to announce a move to a new location, probably keeping the current one for warehousing, this year, and possibly within a month.
        "This year will bring the third expansion in basically six years," Trenton said.

        Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.