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Yea full disclosure I don’t know how much someone gets paid to prep a track. But from my operating experience 30-35/hr is going rate for an experienced operator doing skilled work(not just loading dump trucks).
Club tracks are the answer imo. My club costs 1000 to join, they groom 3 times a week minimum, access any time as long as they aren’t prepping. Yea it’s a substantial amount of money but if I ride 20-30 times its well worth it. You can bring a non member for a 35$ gate fee that goes to the club for operating costs.
Yes I understand. I'm glad gave a quick review of it. It's interesting content that the moto media won't dare discuss!
So you know what tracks are paying the dudes that run their equipment huh?
In my original post can you tell me what you disagree with? Because I clearly stated I 100% support paying the $50 to a track being ran as a business, putting work in to prep, etc. But recommended they bring back en evening reduced rate, and maybe a reduced rate on as-is days with zero prep or maintenance
But I don’t support a track operating under the table, not prepping, maintaining, etc charging the same as the track operating as a business, paying taxes, employees, running costs, etc.
Or are you arguing because you disagree that I don’t believe 100% of upfront cost of a write off should be passed down to consumer (but will happily pay if they are maintaining the track actively)?
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Yes I literally worked for one, running equipment, as a kid for 4 years throughout school.
Would you change out those t-ts in your profile pic for genuine? Or keep the fakes? Askin for a friend.
Gotcha.....so your experience at Chicken Licks raceway years ago is the exact experience at every track in existence....got it. Holy shit that's a wild line of thinking.
I know for a fact that one track local to me pays $40 an hour for their operators. So, ummmmm you're....what's that word....or yeah, wrong.
You asked what I disagreed with, it's this: Not 100% of business costs are pushed down to the consumer. But for a lot of tracks, they are. Equipment running costs are a write off if you operate as a proper business.
It literally make zero sense. If 100% (plus some profit on top) of costs aren't passed to the consumer....the business losses money and goes out of business. But I'm sure you understand that right? Or do you run your business to only cover 80% of your business costs and just lose money every year?
Just to fuel the fire a little bit, check out this helmet manufacturer's customers:
A note of caution, just because a customer helmet is manufactured by the same firm, possibly even at the same factory, they are likely built to customer specifications.
So I wouldn't worry that a 6D or TLD helmet is the same as a Simpson or Revzilla house brand, that's not the case.
Not at all what I’m saying. You are arguing a literal micro point. Incredible.
I’m saying you do not pass every single cost onto the consumer. You mark up the services you do pass on, and those cover the expenses that you are expensing, anyways. Whatever your costs ended up being on those expensed things gets covered. But marking each individual service up and passing it onto consumers is bad practice.
My point is in business we mark every service up. To cover for certain things we don’t factor in to consumer costs. I run a members only boxing academy. From North America to the Gold Coast of Australia. I have a monthly fee. $200 per month. I maintained 36,000 members per month in 2023. That $200 per month factored in everything from rents, insurance, wages, equipment fee’s, cleaning fee’s, etc. I do not factor in me or my employees driving company trucks around club to club to advertise or check in. I did not factor in flying me or employees around the world to meet with potential new customers. I did not factor in all the money I put into advertising campaigns, etc. all that was expensed. That is the cost of doing business. I also don’t factor in random expenses like maintenance issues, such as a roof top unit going out last month. That is the cost of doing business! When you are profitable, not every single thing is passed on. It’s how the monthly rate never changes.
If you go to a pay-per-use club you could be spending $70 for 4-5 coaching hours. Whereas you have unlimited access at my clubs to all of it. You can get $1500 a month in value going 3-4 days per week.
Long story short, you mark up non deductible expenses and it covers what write offs ended up costing you. You absolutely do not mark up up front costs of write offs
For apparel / soft goods the mark up at the retailer is typically 100% sometimes a little more (keystone and keystone +, are the terms for that), a t-shirt that wholesales for $15.00 from the manufacturer retails for $30.00 in store. It's the retailer that makes the most money.
Anyone know where I can find knock-off Pro-Circuit parts....
Asking for a friend.
Safe to say you've never worked in the motorcycle industry then. I know in many retail types that is true but definitely not the case in moto.
I make all my own clothes and riding gear!
I wish that was the case , but so far it is not even close at the levels that most dealers are buying stuff at.
There’s two very easy ways to avoid this.
Moto truck: $30,000
MX bike: $7,000
Gear: $1,000
Tools, fluids, parts: $1,000
Track: $50 (waaaaa cry moan bitch)
You know FXR has been made in Vietnam for good 5 plus years now? I just picked up a 24 FOX Airline kit from my local dealer. Made in Vietnam. These companies are cutting their own throats doing business there. FXR was made in Pakistan around 2018, real quality stuff then. They switched two manufacturers to end up in Vietnam. In FXR’s case, they don’t make boots, don’t do helmets, and pretty sure their googles are made from a different google company. So how much r&d are they doing.
Pit Row
had mates buying the same deal with golf clubs ..ping, Calloway etc up in hong kong.....they were legit just a back door scenario.....
Actually our family has a very large logging outfit which is why I KNOW it doesn’t cost that to put on a practice day. It’s not that hard on equipment to pull a till around either. Neither is it “hard work” for a dozer to be pushing dirt on a few jumps.
where I can’t and won’t comment is on property and water costs but I’ve yet to visit a track that didn’t have a pond. Insurances and taxes as well. Can’t comment there.
bottom line - a practice day does not cost $1000 to host. Period.
You behave feminine.
What if it's not counterfeit, but is stolen?
I’ve been wearing FXR since ‘17 and other than their gloves, my gear had held up great. Most comfortable pants/ jerseys, gloves run small and fingers have blown out out on a few pairs.
Some track owners don't care if the track makes money, it's a cash business which can be used for laundering money from other less reputable sources.
You only ride once?
When I was a youngin’ and worked at one of our smaller MX tracks while I was in school, this is how a typical summer week worked out:
this was over a decade ago, and a pretty small track. Purely for perspective on operating costs. Our weekly riders were bigger tracks daily averages on a weekend
350 riders per week, usually most traffic Sat-Sun which was around 150 on a sat and 100 on a Sun. 100 throughout the week.
$30 entry at the time
$10,500 per week (average)
Groom 3 days a week Thurs, Sat, Sun
Total equipment run time combining all equipment was around 7 hours per week.
10 gallons per hour = 70 gallons per week
Price of dyed diesel at the time was $4.90 per gallon
fuel cost per week = $350 typically
Watering was done via irrigation system fed by an on-site pond. We ran the irrigation system 1 hour per day, all 5 days we were open. Cost per day was around $30 in fuel
$10,000
Now insurance.. at that time Insurance was $250 per practice day. We were open 5 days a week. $1500 in insurance per week.
$8500
There was no flaggers on any day, 3 employees. One at front counter, and 2 maintenance/labours. All were paid $15 cash at the time for each of the 5 days we were open for the entire 8 hours per day.
Wages: $360 a day - 1800 a week
$6700
That was pretty much it for weekly operating costs
No property loan as it was owned for 50+ years
Property tax around $3500 per year.
Equipment cost was $1500 per month in financing
Give or take, $6275 per week post expenses, $25,000 a month.
Of course this doesn’t factor in absolutely everything. But it’s just some perspective into day-to-day running costs.
It’s a good gig considering it was a smaller track that only averaged around 350 guys per week: some bigger tracks get that per day
I have some experience in this, when a brand is sold through dealers it has a few hands to go through. Let’s say a jersey costs $7 to make:
$7 manufacturing cost
$21 distributor cost + shipping & duty
$35 dealer cost
$49.99 RRP
Nobody gets rich here, the manufacturer invests in R&D, it has employees and it signs those high value internationally recognised athletes. The distributor has the storage and financing, employees and also does some regional/national sponsorship and marketing. The dealer has his building, his employees and also supports local guys and helps out with discounts.
Circumnavigating this and buying from Temu is contributing to lowering the investment in our sport that so many are saying is dying. When buying through official channels your dollars or pounds are being spent to support a network of people that develop these products, market them and introduce them into a sales channel, not just a CEO who you think is making $43 off a jersey.
How do you know from your computer that stuff is fake?
Because i have experience with this topic from my job. Every serious brand has processes in place to ensure that their supplier doesn't sell stuff through the backdoor and those processes work very good. Contracts include hefty fines and in the end, its also not in the interest of the manufacturer to loose customers.
Price too high is a lame excuse for buying counterfeits. Nobody is forced to buy the 200$ goggle or 300$ pants. There are alternatives for much less. But if you're honest, the reason you're not buying them but rather the cheap copy is because they're not cool enough and you want the big brand logo to brag with.
And the reason you want the big brand logo is that you see the Pro's and all other cool guys wearing it. Which makes complaining about sponsoring, because it increases prices, the most stupid argument of all.
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