Just to give people a rough idea of the costs involved in building
bikes.
It's been quite a few years, but if I remember correctly the total
cost of parts and materials for the Vanguard was about $700.
Welding per frame $40, welding per seat frame $30 Paint $80 ****pping
boxes $6 manufacturers liability insurance $50.
So before such things as rent, electricity, heat, telephone, argon gas
for the tig welder, etc. we had $906 into the bike. Labor costs? I
don't really know. Excluding the costs for welding the frames that we
paid a free lance welder for as mentioned above, we probably had about
20-25 hours into each bike.
The bike required a lot more labor because of the additional
complexity of the underseat steering. My typical work day started at
about 8am, worked till about 2pm, took a nap for an hour. Worked again
till about 11pm, usually standing at the milling machine making parts
for the afore mentioned steering stuff. Went to the local watering
hole and drank beer and shot pool till about 1am.
I should mention that when we sold the company to Mr. Peek part of the
agreement was that if he couldn't build and sell as many bikes as we
did we would get the company back. Even with their space age facility
and six people working they couldn't build as many bikes as we, (my
son and I and our part time welder) could. Mr. Peek was no stranger to
bicycle building and was building tandems when he bought our company.
He was and is a very successful businessman in such diverse fields as
manufacturing high tech wheelchairs and dragsters and as I have
mentioned before has done a great job with the bikes he is now
building. But at the beginning he felt he could successfully build the
bike here at a reasonable cost and found that he couldn't.
As I've mentioned before the basic Idea was to find a company that
could manfacture the bike at lower cost. Obviously I failed. Probably
because of all that beer drinking and pool shooting I did.
Dick Ryan
|
