Where Is This All Going?

If there is an upside to the apparent end of my motorcycle life, it might be that I sold the two motorcycles while there was still a market for them. I sold my “big bike,” my 2004 Suzuki V-Strom last spring for pretty much Blue Book list with almost 100,000 miles on the odometer. My Yamaha WR250X went this April for a decent price after two weeks on Craig’s List. I suspect the arrival of the economic stimulus checks had something to do with that sale, although the buyer was a 17-year-old kid from Wisconsin driving a newer pickup than I will ever own.

Rural Minnesota’s coronavirus lock-down isn’t overwhelmingly restrictive and my wife and I have taken a couple of leisurely drives along Wisconsin 35, south toward Lacrosse. With an immune deficiency disease, I’m the posterboy for this disease’s “most likely to suffocate” award. So, we don’t stop where anybody else is standing around, we don’t shop, stop for restaurant food, or spend much money. We’re just breaking the plague quarantine routine for an hour or so. The last time we made that trip, I counted 17 motorcycles for sale parked in yards and driveways in a 40 mile drive. It is a glutted market. The overwhelming majority of bikes for sale are cruisers and the dominate brand on that used market is Harley. 

Harley’s current economic situation, only slightly worse than before the Trump Recession due to a decade of declining sales, is reflective of that change in the seas. Motorcyclists and, especially, bikers are getting older, from a 1985 median age of 27 to a 2003 average of 41 and somewhere between 51 and 60-something (depending on whose stats you trust) by 2020. In the US, motorcycles are just expensive recreational vehicles to 99.9% of riders; most of whom are too incompetent and timid to commute or ride in city traffic. One aspect of those statistics is grossly and incorrectly skewed by the fact that practically every US driver who ever took a motorcycle license test automatically renews that endorsement for a few bucks every 4 to 6 years; because they can without any evidence of riding competence. So, actual rider age is probably lower than those numbers but actual motorcyclists’ numbers are also far smaller than the estimated 10 million households (who are mostly storing a motorcycle under a tarp in the back of a shed). Like that motorcycle endorsement, many bike owners reflexively pay the tabs every year for a motorcycle that rarely travels further than it takes to move it out of the way of the lawnmower or snowblower. 

What does it mean for motorcycling? Hell if I know, but I know a lot of people in the industry are beginning to hedge their two-wheeled bets into other recreational areas.

The owner of Aerostich, Andy Goldfine, has talked a lot over the years about the value of motorcycling to society and he and his company sponsor events that try to illustrate motorcycles utility; like Ride to Work Day. In his blog, Andy talks a lot about the motorcycle market from the perspective of someone whose primary business is selling gear to the tiny percentage of motorcyclists (not bikers) who ride every day and depend on their motorcycle for transportation. That group appears to be shrinking and Aerostich is looking around for their next market. It’s possible it might be serious eBike riders (the fastest growing segment of the US two-wheeled industry).

Our position in the world is reflected by motorcycle data, too. Lance Oliver, in his blog The Ride So Far, reflected on this in his essay, “The U.S. market is increasingly unimportant in the motorcycle world": “Here in the United States, we have a way of making ourselves sound bigger than we are. We call ourselves ‘the Americans’ even though we’re a small part of the Americas and we hold a World Series without inviting other countries to participate. In the motorcycle world, however, it’s impossible to mistake the fact that the U.S. market is becoming smaller and less important with every passing year.” The 2007 Bush Great Recession really illustrated that when a 90% reduction in Honda’s US motorcycle sales resulted in less than a 3% decrease in their world motorcycle sales. The world is growing and the American Century ended at the millennium. Maybe that was the real Y2K bug?

In this country, motorcycling is a lame excuse for “lifestyle goobers” and barely a recreational vehicle. I think that sucks. The old fat guys on Harleys, and their unemployable offspring, have sucked the life out of motorcycling as transportation. Their 500 miles/year posing flat out turns off anyone who might otherwise think a motorcycle is “cool.” Their pirate parades generate more hatred toward motorcyclists than all of the Hells Angel movies ever produced. Their insistence on white privileges without responsibility makes every motorist on the highway want to “unintentionally” wander into a motorcycle’s path just to watch the likely Laugh-In tricycle action. When a pack of biker gangbangers gets squashed on the highway, most people think, “good riddance.”

As cars become safer, quieter, more fuel efficient, tolerating incompetent and arrogant bikers becomes less sustainable. What do we do to try and mitigate that? We slap louder pipes on our lawnmower-motor “hawgs,” collect in even bigger gang demonstrations, campaign for special treatment and even more roadway privileges, and make greater “contributions” to highway crashes and mortality while fighting rational licensing, helmet, and traffic safety laws. Any fool could see where this is all heading, but we’re special fools and we’re going to drive this chopper right over the cliff.

Get Real Guys

eBikes ought to be a solution to a lot of the world's carbon transportation problems, but too many of the manufacturers are treating the market as if it is only occupied by 1%'ers. Yamaha, for example, is hustling its new Wabash Gravel model for $3500 plus $330 for a rack and fenders. Eric Buell's eBike, the Fuell Fluid, is going for $4,000 or $4,400 with a 2nd battery. Harley has some eBikes in the works and it's safe to assume they'll be asking prime prices. BMW's attempt at high tech eBikes will be in the $3000 to $4000+ price range. Ducati, as you should assume, will be offering eBikes at full motorcycle prices.

I think that is a huge mistake. Right now, Motorcycle dealers are ideally positioned to provide service for hundreds of thousands of eBikes of all brands, which would draw new customers to their showroom floors. Give the competition enough time and motivation and as motorcycle sales continue to tank that advantage will fade away. Bike dealers and mechanics are currently busy whining about having to cope with "complicated" eBike systems and hardware, but they too will either have to figure it out or vanish in the dust of business history. This, like all games, a zero-sum game; not everyone currently in the game will survive. eBike sales are cranking up all over the world and there will be big winners and lots of small losers.

Are Motorcycles History?

Scanning my old employer’s website, I noticed that Century College's Basic Rider Course schedule for 2019 includes fewer classes, in total, than I used to teach almost at that school in a single season: down from more than 100 courses on 3 ranges to 26 courses on one range. Dakota Tech is down by similar numbers: from more than 80 courses on 4 ranges to 41 on two ranges this season. According to friends who still teach, last year DCTC cancelled a lot of it's classes, often the day before the class was scheduled to run. St Paul College is scheduling 26 courses. I retired last year, after all of my classes in Red Wing and all but one at DCTC cancelled in 2017 and I had my first bout with double-vision. Staying certified was going to be more of a hassle and expense than it would be worth. (That turned out to be an understatement as my double-vision root-cause has been diagnosed as myasthenia gravis.)

At least in Euro-ville, 60% of all new bicycle sales are eBikes. I can't find a solid figure for the US, but based on the growth of a few name companies that can't keep up with the orders I suspect that's a shift here, too. The industry word is that ebike growth is exponential and motorcycle sales are in decline. If you do a Google search on "motorcycle dealers closing" limited to the last year only, you get a depressing number of hits; including insider stories about how motorcycle imports and exports are slowing up practically everywhere. These are interesting times. That “change” thing is proving itself to still be a constant.

Lots of dealers, like River Valley in Red Wing, didn't see much of a recovery in motorcycle sales after 2007-12 and moved on put more effort into boats and ATVs. A bunch of dealers (especially on the coasts) are adding eBikes to their sales floors. Yamaha, Ducati, and KTM either have eBikes to sell or are in serious development. Hardly just bought a kids' ebike company. Of course, HD could just be recognizing how lame their customers are and acting accordingly. Yamaha's eBikes are grossly overpriced: $4-6k, but they might figure it out before they totally lose their place in consumers' sights. KTM's offerings will probably need a mortgage refi, but their victims always seem to have spare cash or credit.

One of the funniest things I've read about this business and customer shift has been from traditional bicycle shops who imagine that repairing eBikes is "different" or more complicated than fixing a motorcycle. Current breed bike shops often charge as much as $50-80 to swap out an ebike tire, especially a back tire on rear-hub driven models. eBike repairs are different than motorcycle repairs, for sure; about 1Mx easier. Anyone who can troubleshoot fuel injection or electronic ignition could do anything necessary on an eBike without any training at all.

What We Don't Get

This winter, my wife and I took a cruise to Central America. While we were exploring Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, I found this flyer on a park bench. Practically every place we went I saw motorcycles that I've never seen before. All of those cool sub-500cc bikes that I've lusted after when I read British or Euro motorcycle magazines and stuff I didn't know existed. My wife got more than a little tired waiting for me to take pictures, ask questions, and ogle motorcycles.

I guess Katana is a ROW Suzuki label? There are so many models on this sheet that I'd like to test ride that I'm thinking a winter in Costa Rica writing about local motorcycles might be next year's plan.

For me, the CR-1, CRM, SMX-200, SM-200, CR5 250, SX2-250, CR6 300, and EN-125 all look aimed right at my target zone.

Costa Rica has great roads, paved and unpaved, amazing destinations, wonderful food, and incredibly friendly people and NO WINTER. I might have played out my interest in living through winters that get colder than 30-40F. I could see taking a couple of winters to explore the places we visited on our cruise.

We've never done anything like the cruise before. Hell, other than Mexico and Canada we've never traveled together outside of the US; most west of the Mississippi. The upside is that all forms of travel could be experienced on a cruise: from ocean liners to mini-taxis to trains and ziplines. The downside is the ship never stops at a port for more than a day, usually 8 hours of less. You don't get to know a place much in that little time, but we did learn that we love those islands, Aruba and Carsou, and the highlands of Panama and Costa Rica.

The Market Had Its Say?

This week, I made the once-every-couple-of-months Twin Cities tour with my wife. Mostly, she had chores and errands to do, but when she stopped at Har Mar Mall to buy art supplies, I snuck out to peruse Barnes and Noble. I got stopped at the magazine rack looking at electric bicycle magazines and articles. After a bit of that, I decided to see what is left of the motorcycle glossy press.

It took a while to find either motorcycle or car magazines. The “Transportation” rack is as far from the entrance and traffic as possible and appears to be barely maintained. Several of the magazines were May and June issues. That was true for the car rags, also. On top of that neglect, a good number of motorcycle “magazines” were actually retrospective “special issues” that could have been sitting on the shelf for months; or years. Along the same lines, a Rolling Stone “special issue” was about Mick Jagger, if that gives you a clue as to the currency of that magazine format.

On the other hand, the bicycle section was featured under “Sports” and there were a lot of magazines and articles about electric bicycles in both magazines dedicated to electric bikes and the more mainstream mostly-manual powered bike magazines. The big thing here was that there are a lot of bicycle magazines and there is a lot of interest in electric bicycles; for transportation and sport. A couple of the magazines were almost as fun to read as the old Dirt Bike magazine; when it was edited by Super Hunky Rick Sieman. None of the last twenty years of dirt bike magazines have even come close to that high bar. As I suspected, the traditional motorcycle guys are putting a foot into this water, too. Electric Bike Action magazine had a big feature about Yamaha’s new electric bicycle series. To be sure, in true bicycle and bicyclist fashion, there was a lot of incredibly stupid stuff inside those magazines.

A line that particularly struck me as hilarious in the Electric Bike Action Yamaha article was, “At first we wondered if they were going to sell the bikes at their powersports dealerships. They only plan to incorporate those e-bikes into powersports dealers that already have a bike shop component, and those are few and far between. There’s a big difference between knowing how to work on a motorcycle and and knowing how to work on an electric bike.” That is true, kiddies. Anyone who can work on a fuel-injected, electronic ignition, fly-by-wire throttle-controlled, ABS’d, and state-of-the-art motorcycle will find electric bicycles to be too simple to be interesting. The customer base will lower that bar even further.

Times are changin’ and they are changin’ a lot faster than many expect. Powersports dealers are beginning to scramble for new revenue sources. It’s no stretch to imagine that a dealer who sells a few motorcycles, a few more ATVs, even more boats, and a buttload of golf carts will find a lot of reasons to become one of those “powersports dealers that already have a bike shop component.” A few bicycles on the showroom will cost a lot less than a few motorcycles that can’t be moved at any price. If that’s what it takes to get in on the electric bicycle boom, I suspect it won’t slow many dealers down.

Motorcycle Economics

If you are a Minnesota motorcyclist, this is a heartbreaking, eye-opening wake-up call. When I moved to Minnesota, in 1996, the Hitching Post stores were the place for practically every motorcycle brand I am likely to own. The Hitching Post offered group rides for the Big Four Japanese brands every year where a rider could actually put a few miles on a bike Their service department was, at one time, pretty good (that’s the best I can say for any dealer service department). Some of their sales people were motorcyclists. Mostly, the HP stores were distributed all over the Cities and represented the motorcycle economy in our area. Now, they are gone.

Lots of that sort of thing is going on all over the country. Early this year, Polaris decided “to focus on Indian and the Slingshot” and closed down the Victory brand. Personally, I suspect Polaris is just quickly downsizing their motorcycle operation by getting rid of the largest part first. Triumph is downsizing its dealership position all over the country. Apparently, that country overestimated the demand for Triumph products. Eric Buell (EBR) gave it up one more time early this year. In the midst of the Great Recession recovery, Suzuki took the slow down opportunity to pare its dealerships by 20%. More than a few groups that had acquired facilities and brands from smaller dealer organizations gave up recently, such as Ohio’s American Heritage Motorcycles. Yamaha’s fans seem to have a better inside picture of the industry’s struggles than I get from the industry promo rags. They don’t paint a pretty picture, though. A Google search on “motorcycle dealers closing” gets you about a half-million hits with pages and pages of stories about motorcycle dealers giving up the economic ghost.

Somewhere, I read a guesstimate that if motorcycle dealers are going to survive into the next decade, they’ll have to be picked up by big pocket car dealers. Since one of my own favorite dealers used to be associated with a local car dealership, I doubt that is going to be much of a solution.

Foolish Motorcycle Stuff

The stock market gurus, the Motley Fool, had some foolish motorcycle statistics on their website in March. The title is a typically Wall Street puffed-up piece pretending to be a big surprise and delivering a little wisp of new information. It’s interesting to see some of what outsiders consider to be surprising, though.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/05/7-motorcycle-statistics-thatll-floor-you.aspx

12 Motorcycle Statistics That'll Floor You

The facts that explain the changing face of the motorcycle industry and those who support it. Motorcycles have come a long way since 1885, when Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built the first one in Germany. Called the reitwagen, or riding car, its engine had 0.5 horsepower and a top speed of 11 kilometers per hour. Fourteen years later, the first production bike was made by Hildebrand and Wolfmuller featuring a two-cylinder engine that produced 2.5 horsepower and topped out at 45 kph.

Today's motorcycles are obviously more powerful iron horses. Harley-Davidson (NYSE:HOG) recently unveiled its new Milwaukee-Eight engine that, on the 114 cubic inch high-end model model, has four valves per head and produces over 100 horsepower.

The industry has grown over the past 132 years serving a much more diverse crowd of riding enthusiasts. Although bike makers have struggled to recover from the financial-market meltdown a decade ago, here are 13 additional facts from the Motorcycle Industry Council that will blow you away.

1. Sales gains are fleeting. There were 573,000 new motorcycles sold in 2015, up slightly from the prior year, but sales are expected to have declined around 2.1% in 2016.

2. Harley is still hogging sales. Harley-Davidson accounted for 29.3% of all new motorcycle sales in the U.S. in 2015, followed by Honda Motors at 14%, and Yamaha at 13%. Polaris Industries (NYSE:PII) represented just 4.4% of total sales that year with its Indian and Victory brands. Yet Harley reported at the end of January, and 2016 U.S. sales fell 3.9% and were down globally 1.6%. Polaris, on the other hand, said its sales were up 1%, with Indian Motorcycle enjoying mid-20% growth.

3. Gang of eight. Eight manufacturers represented 81% of all U.S sales in 2015. In addition to the four manufacturers above, Kawasaki, KTM, Suzuki, and BMW round out the list.

4. Going back to Cali. California had the most new motorcycle sales, at 78,610, or 13.7% of the total. The next closest state was Florida, at 41,720, followed by Texas, with 41,420 new bikes sold. Despite being home to the annual motorcycle pilgrimage of Sturgis, South Dakota sold only 2,620 new bikes in 2015. Two motorcycle riders on wide open road IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

5. Wide open spaces. Even though California topped all states in new bike sales, because it is also the most populous state, its sales work out to just 2.9 bikes per 100, below the national average of 3.2 bikes per 100 people. Wyoming, with 7.0 motorcycles per 100 people, has the most. As a result, there are fewer bikes in the east, with 2.9 per 100, and most in the midwest, with 3.4.

6. Changing makeup of riders. Women represented 14% of all motorcycle owners in 2014, up from 6% in 1990 and 10% in 2009. It may be one of the most telling figures in why Harley is struggling; its core customer of middle-aged males has fallen from 94% of the motorcycle-owning population in 2009 to 86% in 2014. It's also part of the reason Harley introduced its Street 500 and 750 models, and Polaris came out with its Scout and Scout Sixty models to appeal to these riders newer to the market. However, IHS Automotive data says Harley-Davidson still has a 60.2% share of women riders.

7. A graying market. The median age of the typical motorcycle owner is 47, up from 32 in 1990 and 40 in 2009. And although its sales are slipping, Harley maintains a 55.1% share of the 35 and older male rider demographic. However, more troubling for the industry is the decline in riders under 18, which has fallen from 8% in 1990 to 2%, and those between 18 and 24 from 16% of the total down to 6%. Where will the new bike buyers come from if the industry is not attracting these younger people?

8. The great escape. Married riders comprise 61% of motorcycle owners, up from 57% in 1990.

9. Becoming a wealthy pursuit. Some 24% of motorcycle owner households earned between $50,000 and $74,999 in 2014, and as much as 65% earned $50,000 or more. The the median household income was $62,200.

10. And well-educated. 72% of motorcycle owners have received at least some college or post-graduate education, and almost as many (71%) were employed. Some 15% were retired.

11. Most weren't off-roading. Of all the new motorcycles sold in the U.S. in 2015, 74% were on-highway bikes, and the 8.4 million motorcycles that were registered in U.S. the year before was more than double the number in 1990. Motorcycles, in fact, represented 3% of total vehicle registrations.

12. Motorcycles do their part. The motorcycle industry contributed $24.1 billion in economic value in 2015 via sales, services, state taxes paid, and licensing fees, and it employed 81,567 people.

AUTHOR Rich Duprey Rich Duprey (TMFCop) Rich has been a Fool since 1998 and writing for the site since 2004. After 20 years of patrolling the mean streets of suburbia, he hung up his badge and gun to take up a pen full time.

Going Downhill

When I was a 19-year-old kid and was barely into ownership of my first car, I didn't know an open end wrench from a socket from an Allen wrench. Right after getting married, I bought an early-60's Opel station wagon (that probably looks a lot like the one at right, if it hasn't been crushed into a little rusty square). It was a great car that served us well and didn't cause any irritating problems, but it was destroyed by a lady who ran a light crushed my little station wagon with her damn Cadillac. She claimed I'd run the light and the cop decided to believe the well-dressed bitch rather than the long-haired hippy kid and I walked home $500 poorer and without a vehicle.

I went from good to bad. My next vehicle was a barely-used 1959 MGA convertible. It had been left in storage by a guy who went overseas for several years. My independent euro-trash mechanic/friend thought he was doing me a great favor in scoring this car for $500. In Dallas, an MGA is pretty much a 100-miles-between-major-repairs vehicle. The MGA's postage stamp radiator didn't even get close to dealing with Dallas' 100+ days and the car blew a head gasket about every other day. I sold it a year later and several thousand dollars poorer for $300 and it rolled away smoking like a "clean coal" power plant. I have had nothing by sympathy for sports car owners ever since.

A couple of unreliable but cheap vehicles came next, but the first one that mattered was my 1967 VW convertible. I loved that car, but less than 10,000 miles after I bought it (for $1600 with 15,000 miles on the odometer) the engine tossed a rod. I took it back to the dealership where I'd bought it and the in-house, real German mechanic rebuilt it for $500 (that number just kept coming up). I learned a few things from watching him work on the motor. I learned a lot more from John Muir's handy book, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive.

When I decided my growing family needed more room, I traded my beautiful convertible for a 1971 Westfalia Vanagon. That was my next-to-the-last experience with a car dealer. The VW dealer had spun the mileage back about 60,000 miles and the motor and transmission were held together with banana peels and bailing wire. After a brief moment in court, I walked away with some cash and a bad taste in my mouth regarding VW dealers. The company didn't do much for me, either, and I have never forgotten that. Over the years, I've learned to be wary of dealers. I hear pretty much nothing but horror stories from bikers who trust their rides to the place where the bike came from. Hardly anyone has anything good to say about the people hired to work on vehicles in dealerships.

But I don't usually think about that stuff much. I mostly do my own work and muddle through slowly but eventually. In looking at a how-to PDF on installing a transmission modification to my "new" motorhome, I ran across this statement, "Most VW dealerships have no idea that the ATF needs to be changed every 40,000 miles minimum (as per the shop manual fine print). Most dealerships have never done this job and have no idea how to do it properly. Additionally, most will tell you that the automatic transmission is a "sealed unit" and is never to be opened or changed. This is utter nonsense. Do not listen to them! In fact, my blanket advice is to never go to a VW dealership for any reason, if you can help it!"

Some things are, apparently, universal.

I was sort of thinking that when my two-wheel days are done, I'd graduate to a new front wheel drive Beetle convertible. Maybe not.

Getting Customer-Serviced to Death

My Montana retirement villa. The guy who lives  here
looks like some kind of ZZ Top refugee, but he only weighs
about 110 pounds. I figure I can do a Willard Romney on him
and send him on his way with a nice picture of me living in
his old place and a couple of bucks in his jeans.

 

This week was full of the kind of frustration that makes people like me buy an arm-load of guns and a station-wagon full of ammunition and move into the Montana "dream cave." (see at right)

First, a friend decided he wanted to look at buying a new bike. So, he and I wandered into the local "we got everything" dealership and browsed the pickin's. He was interested in Honda's NS700X and Suzuki's V-Strom DL-650 ABS (which the dealer had mis-labeled as the DL-650A and the salesman had to wander the halls for 20 minutes to confirm was, in fact, ABS). Both bikes would go out the door at around $10k. After looking at the two, side-by-side, he seemed to be settling on the V-Strom. The salesman was such a zombie that I had to get away from the flow of babble and I left the building to stare at the weird-assed Victory contraptions parked in the front of the building. Forty minutes later, I returned to Zombieland and found that the guys had filled out application paperwork and were waiting for the shop guys to give some kind of appraisal on the trade-in bike. They had hauled the bike into the shop about 40 minutes earlier and we were running out of time. When my friend reminded the sales zombie that he'd said it would take about "30 minutes to do the appraisal," zombie-geezer replied, "I didn't say they'd drop everything and do it instantly." Meaning, "It will take 30 minutes to do the appraisal but that 30 minutes begins when we say it begins. Maybe next month?" So, we bagged up our stuff and went on with out day, leaving zombie-fool to mutter about all the paperwork he'd done for nothing.

My friend had left my phone number with the dealer, since he's in-transit to a new job in another state, and when zombie-sales-fool called Friday morning to ask when we'd be back to finish the appraisal, I said, "You're fucking kidding, right? The dude's buying a Honda in Wisconsin." Zombie-sales-geezer-fool was offended and wanted to "reason" with me, but I had stuff to do and hung up. My best guess is that when economic times are tough, the dealer mismanagers get rid of all of their smart sales people and hire semi-retired idiots who would otherwise be Wal-Mart greeters. That tactic might also apply to the shop guys who imagine that a trade-in inspection on a $10k sale can wait until all the donuts are consumed and the cans of Mountain Dew are drained.

This was, by the way, the polar opposite of the qualities of the shop my editor likes to hit up for magazine reviews. Those guys were absolutely customer-service oriented and would be my first choice for all things Honda, Yamaha, Triumph, and Kawasaki if they were 30 miles closer to where I live. As it is, if I ever win the lottery and decide I NEED a new motorcycle, that's where I'll be shopping. Parts, unfortunately, I'll still buy on-line because I hate dealing with dealers' parts children.

Move to later in the week.

I'm still wrestling with getting the Garmin software to work with my old 2610/2620 GPS units. When my office computer crashed last fall, I recovered most everything that mattered (except for the incredibly critical Quicken Home and Office backup data that turned out not to be backed up by Quicken's "backup" function). One of the few things that hasn't come back to life has been City Navigator v8. I can sort of get v7 going, but it only recognizes the existence of my GPS units and won't actually "install the unlock "(a crazy phrase if I've ever written one) and give me access to my maps. The device isn't useless, but it's not a lot more than a compass, altimeter, and a US Interstate locator as it is.

So far, the "recommendation" I get from the Garmin "technical support" guys is the routine I have already followed, which doesn't work. They, also, recommend I buy a newer GPS. I don't need a newer GPS. The roads I travel haven't changed much in 40 years and I can get by just sort of knowing where I am. The sun and the stars fill in the data bits the GPS unit can't complete. I know my 2610 is "old." So am I. It has also survived a drop from my bike at 70+mph and continued to function for 5 years afterwards. If Garmin can guarantee that one of their new units will be that tough, I'll buy one (used and for less than $50, just like the 2610 purchase in 2007). I think Garmin's tech support is still out of Kansas, almost US citizens, but their comprehension of problem-solving might as well be coming from ESL characters in India. Honestly, this experience has made me more open to the idea that Garmin might not be the supplier to my next GPS device and that's probably a good thing.

Finally, my wife and I "celebrated" our 45th anniversary yesterday (Yeah, I know. I'm older than dirt.). While my friend hacked away at the maintenance of his Yamaha TDM, we did some Cities prowling. First, because she is a plant-person, we spent the afternoon at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. I have no complaints about that place, other than the fact that I'm allergic to practically everything growing there. Following that, we went to dinner at what used to be one of our old favorite bar/restaurants on the Minneapolis Mississippi River. That place has changed! $6 domestic beer? $48 for a couple of hamburgers and two beers and the beer was luke warm and the burgers were too. I swear the fries came from McDonald's trashcan. Add the mediocre food to the fact that the clientele was almost exclusively spoiled UofM rich kids with nothing more important to discuss than their latest Facebook entries and you have a moment to "disremember" (to quote our last frat-brat "What me worry?" President). Good thing the plants were cooperative. As humans we should begin to aspire to the high standard of lilies, hostas, and trees.

Call Me "Doubting Thomas"

My MMM editor, Sev, is convinced that I hold grudges for too long. I hadn't thought about this much, but after our conversation and a recent event I realized that he's right about the first half. Regarding the second part of that assumption, I think I hold my grudges for exactly the right amount of time. The conversation began when I doubted the validity of the surface-skimming review we recently published on the Hyosung GT250. The two page love-fest-without-a-fault puff piece seemed to be more of a marketing blurb than an MMM review. Even the loud exhaust system was given a PR polishing ("I had to repeatedly look behind me to see what big bike was coming up on me. The exhaust sounding so powerful, I was sure I was going to get lapped."). The oversized picture of the vintage-looking GT showed too much detail because the marginal quality welds were obvious even in black-and-white. The positive side of the review was that it appeared to be, mostly, promoting a good local dealer; Mill City Motors. The negative side was that it appeared to be more of an apology to Hyosung than an actual critical review.

My history with Hyosung has to get in my way, though. That's where this discussion began. The fact is, I am a firm believer in "Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me." I don't forgive and forget easily. In my studio service business, I have an unbending policy that says if you don't pay me 60 day after I invoice you, the next time you need me I'll ask for a retainer before I leave home. If I don't get it, I don't do the work. If you manage to find a way to stiff me for any amount of money, I'll block your telephone number from my business and any email will go directly to the Junk folder and be automatically trashed. I'm old. I have more work than I want. I don't need new customers and people who don't pay their bills don't even qualify as "customers." They're just freeloaders.

I was reminded of my habit, again, this past week. I did some audio work for MPR and the school where I work with students from one of my classes. We've done this project a half-dozen times with some pretty substantial local bands in the past. The most recent event was with a very local band with a minimal following and who drew a couple dozen people to the show we recorded. Afterwards, the band went prima donna on us and inserted themselves into an "approval" process of the show that will probably result in the the show's cancellation. Honestly, that works for me. And from here out, if I'm asked to do anything with that group or the group's members, I'll find somewhere else to be. Burn me once . . . you know the story.

I've applied the same logic to my vendors for decades. In the motorcycle world, I've been burned twice on motorcycles: once on a brand new 1974 Suzuki RL250 and once on a barely used 1986 Kawasaki KLR600. Both bikes were unreliable crap and the Suzuki actually cost me a bit of money when I had next-to-none. It was the second new motorcycle (and the last) I've owned. I bought it in 1974 for $1,100 and a year later Suzuki dropped the price on the RL to $700 to unload their 1974 inventory and bail out of trials forever. Obviously, I took a beating; value-wise. I didn't consider owning another Suzuki until the SV650 had been well shaken out and I bought a nearly new 1999 in 2000 for about 1/2 of Blue Book. I bought my 2nd Suzuki in 2006, when I bought my barely used DL-650 for 2/3 of Blue Book. The Kawasaki was a POS from the day I bought it and the longer I owned it, the more disappointing it was. Even selling that bike was a problem. I didn't own another Kawasaki until I bought my 2000 KL250, used and cheap, in 2005. That bike was also a disappointment and I don't expect to own that brand again. Compare those experiences with my Honda, Yamaha, and, even, Rickman/Zundapp bikes and I'm uninspired to experiment again.

There is a restaurant rule that says something like, "It takes $5,000 in advertising to get a customer to try a new restaurant and 5 seconds of poor service to push that customer back out the door. It will take 5 years of marketing to get that customer to try it again." Choose your numbers, but the fact is in a world with lots of options, you don't get a lot of chances to satisfy your customers. There are no do-overs in life or business. I may be a "moto-journalist," but that doesn't make me a sucker or a shill. I'm too old and too cranky to kiss up to a half-assed Korean manufacturer of questionable quality or character. I'll give them a decade and we'll see if they are still around to review after they've settled in a bit.

There are a collection of manufacturers that I won't buy from, based on past experience and an overwhelming number of acceptable alternatives: Tascam, Sony, Presonus, Adobe, MOTU, Toshiba (Toughbooks aren't), and ProCo are among the list. The list of companies I look for when buying is probably a lot longer. I'd bet you have your biases, too. I bet even Sev has a few. Why should I pretend to be different than I am? Why would I want to?

What Kills Local Dealers?

All Rights Reserved © 2012 Thomas W. Day

I was wrapping up a Basic MSF course a few weeks ago, telling the new motorcyclists about the 10% discount they'd receive on gear at local dealers by showing the completion card when one of the students asked, "Where do you buy your gear." Somewhat dishonestly, I named the usual suspects without thinking much about it. And I do try to buy locally whenever possible, but it's harder to make that possible all the time.

First, my favorite local dealer, Kline Motorsports, closed its doors last fall. Jim Kershaw, Kline's parts manager, went above and beyond my expectations for customer support and I, in turn, went way beyond my usual routine in making sure that I bought all of my V-Strom parts from him. When I was getting my gear ready for a 2007 trip to Alaska, I'd heard stories about how easily bad gas could wreak the V-Strom's fuel pump and I was all ready to buy a backup pump for the trip. When I explained my plan to Jim, he said, "Don't worry about it. I'll order one and, if you need it, we'll drop ship it to where ever you are." From then on, I bought everything from spare screws to gloves to repair parts from Kline. I didn't even go on-line to compare prices. I bought several hundred dollars worth of stuff from Kline every year and usually placed my orders over the phone. They didn't ask for advance payment and always delivered what I ordered within a few days.

My experience with two other local dealers goes back to when I first moved to the Cities, in 1996. I was riding a Yamaha TDM at the time and neither dealer stocked any parts for that bike, neither could get parts in less than a couple of weeks, and both required that I visit their parts room with a credit card before they'd order anything for me. I can do better than that on-line, without the hassle of dealing with the arrogant parts counter kids. Honestly, I sometimes think my usual on-line supplier is personally more interested in my business than the local guys demonstrated. Unlike most Americans, I have a long memory: "Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me." Almost 25 years later, I still have a more personal relationship with Beach Yamaha in California than I've managed outside of Kline. It didn't hurt that the service manager and I both rode XTZ550's (his was a way cooler Canadian white version), but that store actually bothered to take customer names and worked to maintain that database.

Recently, I ran myself through the local service cycle to see if anything had changed. I needed an air filter for my WR Yamaha and I wanted it fast. I called the local dealers. Nobody had a filter in stock or knew how long it would take to get one and everyone wanted a credit card number to order the part. I called my neighborhood store for an aftermarket replacement and . . . again, a credit card and an undetermined wait and the kid wanted me to call the order line because he was too important to transfer the call. I went across town, got a counter guy who claimed to be able to get the part in a couple of days. I coughed up the credit card and waited. A week later, I called about the filter and was told it was coming from the other end of the country and I'd be notified when it arrived. There was no option to cancel the late order or inclination to call to tell me the two day delivery wouldn't happen.

My favorite on-line supplier had it in stock and could have delivered it next-day if I'd have paid the extra freight. So, while it would be hip and community-oriented to always buy locally, it's often the hard way to go.

The problem is that local dealers aren't all that interested in local customers. Their employees are mostly Boomerang Kids who have been convinced that living in mommy's basement and working at a motorcycle shop makes them cool. They don't need the job, or any job, and don't give a damn about the store's customers or the store itself. The store owners are disconnected from their customers and their business processes. Yamaha doesn't do it's dealers any favors either. Yamaha's "Greater Twin Cities Yamaha Dealers" site lists six dealers, including dealers in Belle Plaine, St. Bonifacius, and Forest Lake. The Hitching Post, Delano, 61, or Starr Cycle weren't even listed.

I, clearly, have some habits to break if I want to buy locally. First, I have to give up entirely on the dealers who have been useless in the past, regardless of how close they are to where I live. Starr Cycle, for example, has been incredibly helpful in the past but the 90 miles to Mankato is an obstacle. The same goes for Delano Sports Center, 45 miles from my home. Two to five hours of road time is hard to call "local," but you do the best you can with what you have.

A depressed economy doesn't just weed out the weak and incompetent. According to some reports, Suzuki lost almost 30% of its US dealers in 2008-09. A lot of good businesses have failed in the last four years and a lot more are on the edge. It's almost impossible for a working class dealer to overcome competition that is backed by a substantial trust fund. The good dealers need all the support they can get, but it may not be enough to overcome a stagnant economy. Going through the maze of chaff to find the good dealers is enough to drive anyone to the internet (where we search for the dealers in the first place). This is exactly what kills local business.