263
Cycling industry needs 45,000 mechanics right now, and it's an AI-proof job
(www.cyclingweekly.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026
263 points (96.1% liked)
micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
3734 readers
67 users here now
Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles, heelies, or an office chair: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
Recall warnings available here.
Feel free to also check out
It's a little sad that we need to actually say this, but:
Don't be an asshole or you will be permanently banned.
Respectful debate is totally OK, criticizing a product is fine, but being verbally abusive will not be tolerated.
Focus on discussing the idea, not attacking the person.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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
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.
Yes, there are several bike shops in my big town of 100k in the USA
This is highly anecdotal but I live in a suburb of the 3rd largest city in my state I know of one bike shop in the area and Google tells me there's a hand full of others within like 20 miles of me. Also for good measure the reviews on one of them says it's staffed by volunteers.
I think my broader point still stands. There are things one can influence and there are ones they can't. Where people live is one of the things they can. Living in a large city is expensive so one needs to earn more to sustain that. However that's not the only place to live. I most certainly have the lowest income of my friend group but I'm also by far the wealthiest because of how much cheaper my living expenses are. My mortgage for a house is half of what they're paying in rent a month for a small apartment equally far away from the city centre. They just choose to live in the capital so their living expenses are so much higher that despite the higher wage they have nothing to show for it. Also, I started my own business because I got tired of working for others and despite having zero experience and nobody helping me I still managed to make it work so if I can do it, anyone can.
I just get incredibly frustrated with the apparent apathy online of people just blaming external factors about their circumstances as if they've got no control over anything themselves. So many of the struggles people deal with are self-inflicted. This equally applies to my fellow entrepreneurs as well who are not happy where they're at. They have all the control over their business but they still choose to follow the same path as everyone else while expecting different results.
Ok cool but my main original point still stands 38k median in the US is not a good wage.
Below average doesn't equal bad. If the wage covers your living expenses and you have money left over even after that then what does more money achieve? Nothing. Unless you want to keep up with the Joneses.
Ok but average across an entire country is not average in low cost of living areas, if a person is making the countries median in a low cost of living area that would mean their making of the median for the area they live in. Wages will rise and fall depending on cost of living.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
And you kinda need to be a pothead 🤣
gotta make money to spend money