Mechanical Ramblings
Every now and then, after the roller door and the sun have both gone down, I like to type out some thoughts about workshop life. The vast majority of them never make it to a screen outside my own computer, but occasionally I’ll hit SAVE & PUBLISH. This is one such entry.
I remember, years ago, when I was slowly filling up notebook after notebook with ideas about how this business might work, it always made me feel more confident being able to think of ALL THE THINGS we’d be able to offer people. Points of difference. Niche offerings. Technical service procedures that traditional bike shops were unwilling or unable to offer….and so much more.
It was a scattergun approach that really only served two functions: It filled up as many notebooks as I could buy, and it gave me the confidence that I wasn’t throwing away a sensible career for a fanciful one. Here we are almost 6 years later and although we do offer a VAST array of services for our clients on a weekly basis, they all fall into one of 3 categories:
- Road bike maintenance and upgrades
- Mountain bike maintenance and upgrades
- Fork and shock (suspension) maintenance and upgrades
Categories 1 & 2 can then both be broken down into half a dozen more subcategories including drivetrain, brakes, hubs, headset, tyres, spokes…Forks and shocks can also be broken down into dampers, springs, lower legs, air cans, mounting hardware….and then ALL of those can AGAIN be broken down into even more specific part groups. It’s endless. Experience, specific knowledge of the anatomy of every single component as well as a fair helping of intuition is required for every single bike we work on.
The proof is easy to find – I got 5 years of non-stop, highly detailed and storyboarded content for the TLS Facebook page purely because there is just no end to the variety of jobs that come across the bench. I stopped putting that kind of effort into socials a long time ago. Time constraint, having real work to do and an ever increasing dislike of socials has halted that kind of posting – definitely not a lack of content.
Suspension gets its own category alongside MTB maintenance because of the immense amount of tooling and training it requires. Routine service on functional equipment is pretty straightforward, but solving hydraulic flow problems inside a complex system where various parts influence each other is an inescapable trap for the inexperienced. We know because we’ve had plenty of those nightmare jobs! But, we always saw them through to completion, kept the customers informed, and kept everyone onside.
Road bike riders typically blend some sort of weekly commute with a group ride here and there, or a social ride with a friend or two. Seasonal servicing (every 3 months) covers the vast majority of their routine maintenance requirements, with the occasional panicked phone call in between if something crops up. Hydraulic disc brakes on road bikes, with the exception of the latest generation 12 speed stuff, continues to be a love/hate experience for the riders. Within the road crowd, there is a very solid line drawn between the fair-weather riders and those who would just ride underwater if it were possible. These two groups have massively different needs and wants.
The MTB crowd ebb and flow to a much more noticeable degree than the more consistent roadies. Mountain biking isn’t really a summer sport in Perth. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been out in the hills nice and early pretty much every Saturday since last September, but a 7am start very quickly becomes a 10am finish…..no all day epics on a 38+ degree day…. MTBs tend to get a big birthday every 12-18 months and everything in between is usually crash repairs, brake bleeds or a tyre change. I expect winter to be a big one for MTB work this year, for various reasons. This year has already been a bit weird so far, given that today is the 14th February (Happy Valentines Day!) and I’ve seen almost nothing but mountain bikes since we re-opened on January 3rd. 6 straight weeks of big filthy bikes, forks and shocks to work on (not a complaint!)
The mobile service component of the business has also found itself with a select few riders who have us take care of every single part of their cycling life, across multiple bikes. These riders engage us monthly (sometimes more) to handle various things they notice. A broken or worn out cleat on a shoe (or even a new pair of shoes needing cleats fitted). A flat tyre that requires a spare wheel to be rotated off the bike, and the primary wheel fixed and fitted again. Yes, there are plenty of riders out there who own spare wheelsets to avoid ever waking up to a flat tyre. They’re not the majority but they definitely exist! When the customers own hourly rate far exceeds that of their bike mechanic, there’s no such thing as too many call outs. Something I never predicted (but had to learn) early on was just how much trickier mobile work can be. If you are missing ONE tool, or forgot to ask ONE critical question….the job is instantly a write off. It’s one of the reasons we’ve gotten so damn good at event support over the years – we were supporting the Ride to Conquer Cancer YEARS before TLS even existed. Luck favours the prepared, and every single year we outdo ourselves in terms of the equipment, spare parts and consumables we carry across both vehicles. Being the only supporting business to bother bringing their own shade tents was a notable highlight on the 2023 ride…..But that’s what we do. We think ahead. We anticipate future needs based on historical trends.
Within each of these 3 major categories (plus the mobile component) that we support, we’ve developed internal best practices to streamline bookings, assessment, and just getting on with the job at hand. For a long while I considered a Strava group that our riders could be members of, just so I could keep a better eye on the exact stats of any given bike, but up to this point good old fashioned Q&A between us and the customer has been perfectly fine. I am reluctant to engage with yet another digital platform that adds minimal value, if any.
Something we’ve worked hard to establish and maintain over the years is an incredibly easy experience for the customer, no matter how much technical, mechanical, logistical, or even administrative work goes on behind the scenes. Let’s imagine a first time customer calls to book a ‘major service’ – here’s what we need to know:
- Make and model
- Age and km (estimates are fine, we can extrapolate from weekly averages if we need to)
- Groupset (Di2, AXS, Campagnolo, cable shift, rim brake, disc brake, etc)
- Tubes or tubeless
Plus of course people always have their own reasons for making a booking, and we need to be mindful of listening to their queries, and ensuring we address that one exact thing they were concerned about, even if it turns out to be the most trivial thing needed)
Experience is the key to all this. Managing a workshop full of bikes, a mobile service vehicle with it’s own schedule and customer requirements, stock levels, special orders, jobs that go a bit sideways, jobs that go MASSIVELY sideways….we handle it all, customers just need to keep riding their bikes 🙂