Too bad it pays for shit
I guess so. I was curious if there is a similar projected demand in the US. I don’t know if that info is on this page, but it does show the median annual wage to be $38k https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes493091.htm
Yeah that’s trash and I bet the only places with any actual job market for bike mechanics stateside are high COL areas.
I earn about that much and I own a car, a house, and have 4 years’ wages worth of savings.
Ok but do you live in an area where bike commuting is a viable option for a majority of people? Also just to be clear 38k is 23% below individual US median wage.
I’m not sure what bike commuting has to do with this but yes, it’s a 30 minute trip to the city centre from where I live and there’s a bike lane the whole way. Living expenses here are lower than in the US but not dramatically so.
Because bike mechanic isn’t a job that’s going to exist outside of areas where large amounts of people ride bikes, hence my original point of it probably not being a job outside high cost living areas in the US which tend higher density that the lower COL areas. So a 38k median wage isn’t going to be remotely livable in any of those areas.
Do smaller cities and towns not have bike shops in the US? My city has roughly 200k residents and I can think of at least 5 different bike shops on the top of my head.
Lots of AI-proof trades that pay well. HVAC, welding, plumbing, mechanics, etc.
HVAC starting wage of $18.00 in 2026? (quick search)
So, like 80s minimum wage ($6.00 an hour then is $18 an hour today). I made that at Qwik Stop. I’m not joking.
I’m sorry kids I am older and know I could barely make it in 80s and you have it so much worse.
I had to eat packets of ramen for years, always had roommates, couldn’t afford a car or pet. I’m really sorry
Not sure if that’s accurate but I make double that as a veteran diesel tech in a metro area.
A plumber’s salary bought me a house at 27 and now less than 10 years later I have enough savings to buy another if I wanted to. Of all my friends the only people who own the house they live in are the ones working in trades. Every single one of them with an office job is renting and doesn’t even own a car.
Ok, but a lot of plumbing is ripping people off. A neighbor needed a pipe capped for a shower renovation, a plumber charged them $300. I capped the remaining pipes when I heard this. Being a home owner means navigating around the sleazy trades, a combination of scam artists and “professionals” who fake the job.
But it comes down to people don’t know how to practically do anything any more. The idea of taking my bikes to a mechanic doesn’t make any sense.
There are some shady people in every profession, but most tradespeople aren’t ripping off customers too badly. It’s more like people who don’t work in the trades aren’t aware how expensive the operating costs are, like getting licensed/bonded/insured etc. Running a plumbing business is more financially complex than just buying materials and plugging them in to the clients’ home, so of course as a DIY homeowner you can skip a lot of nonsense. If you can do the work yourself, great! You save money and it gives the pros more time to help out folks who can’t do the work themselves.
Anybody with half a brain an allen wrench and an inclination can fix their own bike.
Yeah…unfortunately that act of self sufficiency gets more difficult when I have an electric motor on my back wheel and any maintenance on that wheel requires disassembling it.
I am a big advocate of telling people they can do things. And more often than not, it is very true. But at least the allen wrench part will not get you too far. At least “modern” bikes have so much proprietary shit going on.
Which is why I make it a point to buy bikes with standardized parts. I’m not giving money to companies that use proprietary parts.
I just bought a brand new Trek ebike, everything is metric Allan keys. Don’t buy proprietary parts from ebike only company’s. The bikes aren’t that great and are hardly legal as well.
there’s no money in it
Totally anecdotal, but in my area, if you try to book an appointment at any local bike shop for a repair other than a flat tire, they’ll give you a date a month away. We need more mechanics here too.
But I’m learning to do more on my own now.
Yeah, but how much are they going to pay them?
I worked in bike shops for a few years. Most repairs are dead simple once you understand the basic principles, and the harder things are more often replace rather than fix (e.g., most bearings are sealed cartridge units now, bottom brackets are serviceable, etc.). But the last place I worked, I was making only a little over minimum wage. Maybe that’s survivable in the EU; it’s not in Chicago.
No longer in the EU but UK minimum wage is comfortably survivable in most of the country. Might be fucked in London though.
It’s not survivable in the EU. It’s just that you would qualify for government assistance whereas in the US you’re probably told to go live in a cardboard box. The problem is it doesn’t really fix the underlying issue which is that as soon as anyone is offered a better paying job they’ll disappear.
No one’s going to put in the effort to get certified if the job is known not to pay very well.
… What government assistance? You got a job, who’s going to be giving you assistance?
This has to be the most American comment yet.
Don’t know about other countries, but in Germany, 72% (2023 numbers) of those who receive income support are officially employed. They just don’t make enough money to get by.
there’s certification for bike repairing?
Indeed. In Germany, I believe it is a two year apprenticeship.
Everyone thinks fixing a bike is simple until some ass hat routes cables through the headset
I just imagine brake cables incorrectly routed into the riders helmet, every time they apply brakes it smashes their face into the handle bars
No one’s gonna rent a room on a bike mechanic salary.
That’s because rent prices are extremely high, not because the salary is low.
both can be true. any salary that does not pay rent is demonstrably too low. argue with the economy as a whole, not your opinion of where acceptable should be.
I don’t know if I believe that 90% of people use the shop for their repairs.
I tried adjusting my own derailleur once.
Shop for me from then on.
That shit is black magic.
It’s not. Derailleur is set once when it’s installed onto the bike and you should never need to adjust it again. If the shifting is crap the issue is the twisted hanger and no amount of adjusting the limit screws is going to fix that.
So you’re saying it’s impossible to bend the derailelellueur enough for shifting to fail?
Why is it every time someone starts a sentence with “So you’re saying…” it’s then followed with misrepresentation of what was actually said?
No, that is not what I said. What I did say is that in the vast number of cases when your shifting is shit it’s not because of bent derailleur or badly adjusted one but it’s a bent derailleur hanger. That part is designed to bend specifically so that the derailleur itself doesn’t.
I think it is fairly common for the average rider in a bikeable area. Like a car sure a lot of drivers know how to change a tire, a lot fewer change the oil or brakes. Computers arent hard to build but 90% of people buy something premade.
The full quote is, “A lot of them now will come to cycle shops for pretty much 90% of bike repairs.” So not necessarily that 90% of people are coming in for every issue, but that there are people who rely on the shop for almost every issue.
I’ve learned a lot about bike repairs this year, and I’ve been volunteering as a mechanic at free bike repair events. It’s been interesting going from the clueless customer asking for a “tune-up” to being the one asked for a tune-up. If you ride but don’t have maintenance background you know that it’s possible there might be some problematic, or even dangerous issue; but you have no idea what that might be. And if you can identify a problem, as far as you know any work you do might brake something in a way you don’t understand. So I can understand people going to the shop frequently.
I’m surprised when I talk to people and almost always hear that they bring their bike to a shop for maintenance and repair. I’m usually the strange one who do his own maintenance and repairs. So I can believe that most people bring their bike to a mechanic. The 90% figure still seems high though.
More than half of the guitarists I know take their guitar into the shop to change strings. That seems crazy to me but it’s been my (anecdotal) experience. I didn’t even know guitar center offered that as a service till I asked someone what gauge they preferred. The folk at the table were like, “whatever guitar center puts on”.
That’s bonkers! I learned how to change my strings from my guitar teacher when I was, like, 12? I thought everyone did that? Wowee, I gotta get a job at guitar center or something
I worked as a mechanic in a bike shop for a few years: we were the Trek shop for the area. While there are plenty of things the average person can do and get pretty close to correct, there were soo many tickets that came in for botched repair jobs, stripped hardware, and shit setups.
I think everyone should be able to fix a flat tire and lubricate a drivetrain. But beyond that, bring it to a person who has the knowledge and very specific proprietary tools to do the job. It’s possible you can use some pliers and a hammer to do what you’re doing, but you’ll probably damage components and then need to bring it to a shop anyway.
I have been into 2 bike shops to ask if they stocked any chain wax. First one (Halfords) had no idea what that was and didn’t stock it. The second (Local independent) immediately knew what I was asking about when I mentioned drip on being used to top it up between immersion dipping it in melted wax, just didn’t have any stock of what I was specifically after.
Fair enough as it was a pretty small shop. But I know who I would trust more.
Yeah 99% of people have probably never heard of it, stop being a fancy snob. Most of us just oil our chains.
stop being a fancy snob
I don’t think its being a fancy snob to expect a bike mechanic to be an expert on bikes. Look up anything about chain lubrication and you will very quickly see wax being mentioned as an option, its hardly some obscure bit of secret knowledge. Other major chain shops which sell bikes stock it too, like Decathlon. Its just that I can get to Halfords in under 10 minutes while Decathlon is about an hours ride away going through like 3 towns.
Nothing is ai proof even skilled trades.
Use ai to come up with a cheap drive train that won’t wear out, or a chain lubricant that increases the life span of chains and gears 10 fold. Or Bike tires that last longer.
Siri, make me a bike better than has ever been made before
Reinvent the wheel don’t make mistakes
Lol
Look out, we’ve got a genius over here!
its not AI robotics proof though
