micromobility·micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobilitybyFartsWithAnAccent
Cycling industry needs 45,000 mechanics right now, and it's an AI-proof job
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/people-come-to-shops-for-90-percent-of-bike-repairs-the-industry-needs-45-000-cycle-mechanics-right-now-and-its-a-job-thats-ai-proofOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
134 replies
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
there's no money in it
Not until you get drafted as mechanic on one of the big bicycle Formula 1 teams like red bull or McLaren OH WAIT
A reading from the book of the prophet Scott Biram:
Well you can spend all your life makin lots of money, but only Jesus gonna save you honey
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.
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.
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.
there's certification for bike repairing?
Indeed. In Germany, I believe it is a two year apprenticeship.
... What government assistance? You got a job, who's going to be giving you assistance?
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.
But don’t they know if they just hand out free money they’ll all just turn into freeloaders and stop working??? If all those poor people have money they’ll just go out and spend it all on drugs and hookers! Clearly Germany is failing smh my head. ^/s^
This has to be the most American comment yet.
No longer in the EU but UK minimum wage is comfortably survivable in most of the country. Might be fucked in London though.
Anything related to repair is in demand, but not for the right pay. I quit doing my job--different field--to do something else. Got tired of it. I really enjoyed the morons that tried to fix it themselves or cut corners find out how expensive the bill is to fix their mistakes.
I do it all myself and just follow guides very slowly. Haven't had a problem in 7 years, not everyone that does DIY is a moron.
And some things don't need professional quality. Did my own plastering for some patches of wall. Is it as perfectly smooth as getting a plasterer in? Maybe not if you look very closely. So just stop looking so closely at the wall. Plus learnt for next time if I need to do it again I can probably do a somewhat better job.
I commend you for that. I have no problem with anyone fixing their own things. My only gripe is fixing other peoples mistakes. 35K espresso machine breaks, catastrophically, I spent a week fixing it as I've never seen this kind of damage. Then basically spent a few hours interrogating the customer if they changed the settings. Finally they cracked and said yes, the milk wasn't working so they turned it off. They didn't. So the entire system kept running and created calcification all throughout the path and blew out all the connectors on the boiler. I should have charged double for that experience; hence why I don't feel like doing that line of work anymore.
"X" needs [underpaid] workers right now!
Too bad it pays for shit
And you kinda need to be a pothead 🤣
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.
One of the reasons I personally dislike electric bikes is that you are just adding a point of failure. Can get so much further on a regular bike without the battery dying. A bike is a perfectly paired down device and that is its whole power to me.
Yeah I've lived in towns around when the e-scooter rental craze was at its peak and people don't respect that kind of property. Why would they when often these companies just go and dump their rentals in the middle of the city and create a bunch of problems in doing so. The rental companies themselves seem to have no ownership of their vehicles, so why should some rando respect it? Car drivers getting peeved about bikes is a problem as old as bikes and cars though.
the point of rentals is that you either can't afford, don't want, or want to abuse the item tou are renting
Don't tell Bike Farmer that he will have a meltdown.
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.
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.
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.
Post anything on the internet and someone will take it too literally. Any reasonable bike can be fixed with a handful of tools that can fit in a bag below the seat.
I wish my ever growing pile of tools could fit into something that small.. My most recent addition is a brake bleed kit.
But yeah a roadside maintenance kit isnt too much.
That works for typical maintenance tasks, but when you have to service suspensions, adjust bearings, true wheels, bleed brakes, replace a casette, even change cables and housing, it helps to have experience and the right tools, which bike mechanics have, but you'd need to specifically acquire if you just ride bikes.
It is worth learning how to fix a flat (you'll need to buy tire levers), clean and lube a drivetrain, replace brake pads and adjust brakes and derailers, and in general be able to turn wrenches and screwdrivers to fix things. It is also worth paying someone else to do some of that stuff if you're not interested in learning.
For more involved work you pretty much need the tools and experience of a bike shop, whether you're doing it yourself, or taking it in for service.
Idk about all bikes, but on my mountain bike with hydraulic brakes I replaced the line, filled and bled it just fine. Has been maintenance free for years. I did buy the tools for it, but it's not as hard as people make it out to be. Just gotta go slow and learn the process.
If you have the time to learn, and are mechanically inclined, it can be very rewarding!
Most bike mechanics don't go to school for this stuff (i didn't) we just learned from other bike mechanics. So you can buy the tools and learn too -- which makes you a bike mechanic also :)
Re: brake bleeding specifically, a lot of the mechanics i worked with didn't like doing it, and we had one person who did all of them. I'm not exactly sure but i think it was because the brake fluid wasn't nice to work with (unless you were lucky enough to need mineral oil).
Pretty much all of those things (except bleeding breaks, but again just dont buy a stupid bike) are very easy to do. Fact of the matter is a bike mechanic is just never going to have enough expertise that they can command higher pay when the average person is just going to do the repair themselves if you charge more. Car mechanics aren't particularly well paid for that matter, and a car is an order of magnitude more complicated than a bike. You can take most of a car apart with a one ratchet set. The tools you need to do anything on a bike won't exceed a 100 dollars unless you go and buy all park tool stuff. The average person doesn't ride their bike enough for it to even need maintenance more than once a year. Basically that leaves bike mechanics with a customer base of enthusiasts with more money than time on their hands, at least in regards to where most of their work would come from. Used to like to watch this bike mechanic on youtube, I think he ended up selling his shop because fixing old bikes to sell them wasn't making enough money.
Agree to disagree i suppose.
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
Practically starvation wages. Especially nowadays. These stats are from 23
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
heh years ago, my GenX ass was working 3 jobs to afford rent and ramen, along with potatoes and herbs (super cheap in the Chinese market), and had a Boomer tell me "you young kids must be eating lots of mac and cheese!".
I did take a pleasure in telling him "mac and cheese is rich food, it takes milk and butter. You must have been well-off if that's your mark of poverty".
And compared to how fucked the young after me are, I was living high on the hog.
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.
That's great.
But, we have 300 million people and the trades aren't going to keep them all feed and housed. Look at the big picture.
Glad you've done well. I'd wager you're an owner of your own business, and not a plumber working for an owner. Would I win that bet?
(I didn't start to make money until I left the work force and became an "entrepreneur". I made more money with dog walking as an owner than I ever did as an employee)
I don't see how it's an argument against finding a job in the trades that not literally everyone can do that. Not everyone can be a doctor either - doesn't mean you shouldn't chase that if it's what you want to do. Tons of people are more or less succesfully climbing the corporate ladder and have no desire to do anything else. This advice isn't for those people but the ones that are struggling with that or worrying that it is not AI proof - there are alternatives to it.
And yes nowdays I do own my bussiness but that wasn't always the case. I had a higher income as an employee. I traded that for more freedom and meaning.
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.
Not sure if that's accurate but I make double that as a veteran diesel tech in a metro area.
gotta make money to spend money
I used to volunteer at a co-op repairing bikes and running a repair course. When I couldn't teach the course one of the local mechanics would teach it, I don't know how any of them could survive on a single income
Well if you're volunteering, isn't that part of the problem? Stop fixing bikes for cheap. Charge people more. If cheap/free places no longer exist, you can make money as a bike mechanic.
That's just capitalism for you.
If this is referring to me specifically I don’t work in the industry. The wrenches I know are mostly my age and do it for the love of the game and the support of their spouses.
It isn't a robotics proof job.
It is for now. We can revisit is ten years and see where technology is, but right now there isn't any robot that can diagnose and fix the things mechanics deal with. Mechanics of all kinds are going to be the some of the last jobs to go away due to robots.
What kind of robot do you imagine replacing a bike mechanic? Short of some kind of science fiction synthetic human I can't see that happening. Let alone at a cost that would make it economical.
And you don't need to learn anything because it's not hard at all!
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.
I know what you're talking about! I've been mixing paraffin wax and oil together and dipping my drivetrain for awhile. Did I mention I started as a hobby mechanic?
There is definitely a difference between a BSO retailer and a LBS, but also between shops for the different types of riding. Some shops specialize in mountain, some road, some commuting. I imagine that some are now even specializing in ebikes, but I haven't seen it with my own eyes in the wild. Go where the knowledge, tools, and parts are for your ride... which is probably the local independent :)
Yeah 99% of people have probably never heard of it, stop being a fancy snob. Most of us just oil our chains.
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.
Yeah I was taught by a bunch of punks how to fix up old bikes including my own. Recently trued my wife's wheel
That is exactly how I got started! Your next step is to quit your corporate day job and apply at your LBS and then we'll be twins ; )
Curious where you're located that any shop is turning away repair work if you didn't buy it there.
I can lube a drivetrain but I cannot and I repeat cannot tune one. I tried and fucked my trek bike up. All the tutorials aren't helpful to me
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.
No it isn't. Read Zinn's repair book or watch any video from Park Tool by Calvin and once you understand how simple it is, adjustment is trivial.
I've watched a dozen videos and completed as many alignments but it's just never right.
Calvin alone has taught me so much.
Rear derailer is usually trivial; only gets tricky if you're adjusting the body screw and/or messing around with the chain. Front derailer sometimes necessitates adjusting the position on the bike frame. And especially with cheap 3x bikes can be tricky, or even impossible, to get it just right.
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.
I had to re-index my gears ~2 years after I bought my new mountain bike... It's not "hard" but if you've never done it before and don't have a place where to properly work on your bike I can see why people would rather pay whatever the fee is at a shop.
Like with most stuff you do it a couple of times and it becomes easy.
Well maybe (even though I do think a bit of a bent hanger can be compensated for) but even then it’s only true until you change cassette/chain or the shifter cable, which you will have to do at some point.
A new chain or cassette doesn't affect the derailleur. A new cable does, but the tension is adjusted from the shifter, not by messing with the derailleur adjustments. It's true that god-awful shifting due to a bent derailleur can be mitigated to some extent by messing with the adjustments but it'll never be good. It can't be because the derailleur is bent. Then when you replace the hanger with a straight one the shifting goes to shit again.
Whenever my derailleur catches on a rock or a stump and the shifting goes to shit all I do is remove the derailleur from the hanger, use the hanger adjustment tool to straighten it out and once I re-attach the derailleur it shifts perfectly again with no adjusting at all.
It does tho. Not all cassettes are built on the same tolerances and different brands might have different interpretations of the standards, so always check the limits.
Cable tension more often then not can be dialed on the derailleur as well.
Worn chains can impact shift performance, and sometimes adjusting tension or derailleur height can improve things.
These are things that aren’t noticed when everything is new and clean, but can slowly creep up as an issue.
So yes. I agree with your sentiment that a well set up derailleur should keep shifting, in practice it’s more nuanced.
Shit like this is why I will never own a derailleur bike again. Too much maintenance. I was constantly catching the derailleur on rocks and curbs and things like that, then having to do the finickiest mechanical work known to man. All just so I can go uphill slower?? Crazy technology!
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.
Because we're trying to clarify what it is you're saying.
Really? Gears are easy, mounting rays is hard.
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.
When my kids were younger, I got them to advertise bike fix Saturdays on my driveway. I got 10-12 bikes to 100% typically. Most popular bikes were just neglected or more commonly, not assembled correctly at the big box store by Todd. Fucking Todd...
But, most kids had no interest in learning how to fix a bike. These people will grow up and depend on others for everything, overpay or get ripped off.
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 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.
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.
In NL/BE it’s so bad that most settled bike shops won’t even plan your repair if the bike was not bought at that store. Why? Because there’s still more then enough work with only your own customers.
So you’d ask yourself, why don’t repair only places open? Because the knowledge required to start fixing bikes has evolved a lot with the multitude of e-bike systems, and moreover people already find the repair prices too expensive when the costs are slightly subsidized by the people buying bikes at the shop.
Thanks, I actually asked myself that very question recently. I wonder if just selling parts and doing repairs could replace the bike sales though?
I considered the idea of a mobile repair van instead of a shop too.
The problem with mobile repair is you drive around telling people their bikes are not worth repairing. People balk at a $60 bill on a $140 Walmart bike. Now with fuel prices Trumped, not a great business model. Unless, you can specialize in dentists bikes.
I think yeah, a mobile repair biz would have to be aimed at the high end.
I've been watching this series on the topic and found it very helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyrzdtb1C50
Around Toronto, mobile bike mechanics are quite popular, they have an entire shop in a van. But, they don't make much money because most bikes are not worth repairing and it's a seasonal job.
Most stuff on bikes are pretty simple to repair, but probably people work a lot more to live so they have less time to learn, also social media steals a lot of time, there are few specialised things, top of my head comes spokes aligning and tightening and oil brakes.
I taught myself to rebuild a derailleur and cassette (after fucking it in a fall) and it was a rewarding process but I'm already inclined toward mechanical problems and it wasn't easy. I don't really expect average people to invest in the specialized things.
What do oil brakes need that is special? I topped mine up the other day with a hex screwdriver and a plastic funnel. Got a few other bits in the kit to push oil through it if necessary but it didn't seem necessary to do.
Well the kit for starting and the mineral oil needs to be taken to a special facility.
Are we thinking of different things? I just poured a little oil into the funnel that was in the bleed port. Tapped it to let gravity work any bubbles out, squeeze the brakes repeatedly. Didn't bother with the syringes because it was doing a good enough job with just the funnel. Is there a tiny bubble in there that didn't get removed? Maybe. But it isn't enough to cause a problem.
its not AI robotics proof though
Imagine your brain works. Now retry your comment
Yes it is. AI robotics might one day make new bicycles, but fixing/maintaining them? I doubt it will ever work, and that’s most of what bike mechanics do.
Also, the bicycle industry is relatively low margin (compared to cars), I doubt it would even make business sense to develop AI robotics hardware and software for bikes.
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
Or you go to jail
Hey siri if I turn up the wattage of a laser cutter or use a plasma on a lower amperage but slower feed, would a significant HAZ develop on a cut sprocket to harden the teeth and increase service life with out the need for further heat treatment.
Claude told me to short circuit a lithium ion battery, so yeah but nah.
Also, if you have access to that equipment, why don't you try that solution out and share the results with the class? AI can't bypass original research. It's not a fortune teller.
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard and that's saying something. What did that exact prompt give you? Why aren't you a tillionaire yet? Lol, you absolute and complete knob.
Look out, we’ve got a genius over here!
You're the perfect example of wasted tokens.
i agree that nothing will be unchanged by ai and that nothing is fully ai proof, but your examples are very bad.
There's "fully LLM proof near-term" and "fully AI proof". There's no way you can know there won't be a model that can do precise drawings in a few years. Even with LLMs, something to consider is that drawings can be expressed as code and that just gives you a python script with changeable parameters to generate the drawings.
For the wood on a table saw - are you sure it'll stay that way forever? We already have CNC machines, so obviously precise computerised control of machines is possible.
and make no mistakes
edit: props on a quality shitpost 👏👏👏
Pretend you are a Marvel universe bicycle mechanic and invent adamantium bike parts
The important point when talking about AI and jobs isn't the susceptibility of specific jobs to AI, it's that all you have to do is have a sustained period of time where the rate of job elimination exceeds the rate of job creation. That's all it takes to destroy the fundamental functioning of any economy. If that happens, people won't have any money to pay all the plumbers, mechanics, etc. who still have jobs.
When that will happen, within a decade or within a human lifetime, is a matter of open debate, but it is almost inevitable that it will happen someday.
I found some jobs that’s surprisingly AI-proof: Writing, and artwork!
(Yeah, in case it’s not clear, I am still literally seeing everything it outputs to be crap)
Lol
Have you ever wonder why those initially cheap chinese product suddenly hike in price when they started to went into more high end stuff? Because they realise high end stuff requires high end production line and better material, and those aren't cheap.
Also capitalism, it's gonna cost a huge lot.
Easy as that!