At the United Bicycle Institute campus in Ashland, students are hunched over their work tables, closely examining the spokes of bike wheels. Instructor Zach Wood moves among stations, grading the final projects of a two-week course in bike mechanics.
“Skewer orientation, hub orientation are correct,” Wood said while examining one student’s work. “The hot patch is centered over the valve, so that's just exactly what we're after.”
UBI has attracted students from around the country — sometimes the world — since opening in 1981. Currently, it’s the only stand-alone program offering certified training for bike mechanics in the U.S. People might come to begin a career or for a refresher after years working at a bike shop. Others are hobbyists just looking to learn.
The one thing they share — a love for bikes.
Student Angela Fosburg manages a bike shop at a homeless shelter in Vancouver, Washington. For her, bicycles mean freedom.
“Transportation can open that door and change, like where you can go to work, if you can go take your visits with your kids, if you can go to your meetings,” Fosburg said.
She’s seen bikes change the trajectory of lives, including her own. Four years ago, she was homeless. Then she found Open House Ministries and bikes. She graduated from a program at the shelter, volunteered in its bike shop and then decided she never wanted to leave. Now, she helps others while living above that bike shop.
“It is my whole life,” Fosburg said.
She said Open House Ministries gave out hundreds of bikes last year. Mechanics at her organization regularly atttend UBI. Fosburg likes to remind instructors of their influence outside the classroom.
“The impact that they're having out there is huge,” she said. “It's not just we get to fix things. They’re changing lives.”
Zen and the art of bicycle mechanics
UBI president Ron Sutphin said his school has trained more than 20,000 bike mechanics. People from all walks of life make the pilgrimage to Ashland. In today’s class, there is a veteran attending with help from the GI Bill.
“We've had trained professional opera singers that could evaluate spoke tension by plucking a spoke and assessing the tone,” Sutphin said.
He has been working on and around bikes since the late 1970s, after leaving a big salary in the wood products industry. He said his family thought the career change was crazy. But he had this notion, which he admits can sound naive, that if you work passionately at something you love, then success will come. And what he loved was working on bikes.
“I think what attracted me, and still attracts me to the bike, is its elegant simplicity,” he said. “Being able to look at it and kind of see what's going on and be[ing] able to repair it yourself, upgrade it yourself.”
Although bikes can still be elegant, the industry said goodbye to simplicity long ago. He said bikes can now be more complicated than motorcycles, offering features from long-travel suspension to hydraulic disc brakes to wireless shift systems. Nowadays, a mechanic might need to update firmware along with fixing a flat.
“Unfortunately for bike shops, the kind of knowledge base requirement for mechanics has gone way up, but the pay hasn't really gone up nearly as much,” Sutphin said. “So a lot of bike shops are very challenged.”
Challenges and opportunities for bike shops
Bike shops have faced some volatile years as of late, said Heather Mason, executive director of the National Bicycle Dealers Association. During the pandemic, demand for bikes boomed. Just as stores caught up with inventory, the market dipped. Dealers were left with extra stock.
“Inventory imbalances and cash-flow pressure remain top of mind, especially for stores that were forced to overbuy during supply chain disruptions,” Mason said.
More people are also buying their bikes online. UBI instructor Zach Wood, who has worked in bike stores since he was a teenager, has seen the change on the shop floor.
“It's a whole different atmosphere than it was 10, 15 years ago,” he said. “Now, if you're a bike shop, your main supplier is also your main competitor.”
Meanwhile, tariffs have made imports more expensive. Many bike components come from China. Last year, federal data show the U.S. imported the fewest number of bikes in a decade.
“Another major challenge is uncertainty, whether that’s around consumer confidence, interest rates or evolving regulations related to e-bikes and lithium-ion batteries,” Mason said.
She said that for many store owners, it’s not enough to just sell bikes anymore.
“It’s about running a more complex, service-driven business in a rapidly changing environment,” she said.
But it's not all bad news. As long as people are riding bikes, Wood said, they’ll need bike mechanics. And bike ridership has never been higher.
“The need for professional, well-trained mechanics is greater now than ever,” Wood said. “Because of how sophisticated and advanced a lot of the technology in bikes is… what we do here is as important as ever.”
Mason said service and repair continue to turn a profit and drive customer loyalty. There are also other opportunities for speciality bike retailers to thrive in today’s market.
“Community engagement — through group rides, clinics, events and local partnerships — is another area where specialty retailers clearly differentiate themselves from online competitors,” she said.
UBI student Dylan Rockwood, a bike mechanic from Ohio, aced his final project. He hopes a certificate will help him continue to do what he loves.
“It's very satisfying to take something that doesn't work so well and is quite dirty and make it nice and kind of new feeling again,” Rockwood said.
Right now, he’s not worried about market trends or tariffs. He’s just happy to be working on a bike.
