Would You Rent Out Your Dirt Bike When You’re Not Riding It?

What's the protection against damage to my bike?


If I'm traveling and rent a bike, how do I get it to a track/riding area?

I've seen the way my brothers treated rental cars.

Hard pass. 

Haha not even a 1% chance.

It's a good idea. But the community on vital are not going to be the users of your service. You need to find casual riders/Offroaded that have toys that sit. 

NOPE

I second this!

Not my personal race bike, but if I lived in a mx "destination" warm state or lived near a popular track with open ride days (like Redbud or Millville)  I would buy a couple spare bikes to rent out if the financials made sense.

I would like to hit some tracks out of state and would personally rent a bike if I could.

I've loaned out bikes lots of times, but it's always under "guided" conditions.

 Aka I'm riding with the group as well and can watch what happens to my loaner.

Would be a whole different thing to watch someone load it up in a truck to take it to go riding. Wondering if it's going to the track/mountains near my house in Montana or if it doesn't get unloaded until say, Colorado and I never see it again?

The liability insurance would be a massive chunk with this rental idea. Someone crashes at the track, their insurance comes after you for perceived faulty maintenance on the machine they rented.

Not no, but hell no !!

That’s a keeper! Thanks! 🤣

I don't see how a third party could make this financially viable. You'd have to carry the liability insurance and have to have some type of pre-ride inspection to know the bike is mechanically sound. The bike's owner wouldn't rent it out if there was a chance of a renter coming back on them if they get hurt. You'd also have to have a post-ride inspection so the renter can pay for any damage. Then you have delivery. It's not reasonable to expect the renter to come pick it up from the owner, and if I was the owner renting out the bike, I'd expect the third party to pick it up and bring it back (which would also be the easiest way to do the pre and post ride inspections). Seems much more reasonable to buy a small fleet of bikes yourself, depreciate them, and then sell them after a season or two. Just my two cents though. I absolutely think there would be a rental market for bikes, but don't think there's a big market for owners renting out their own bikes through a service like this.

Then the renter gets hurt and sues me because the tires weren't brand new and the chain was 2mm too tight 

I'm considering going to Glen Helen and renting a bike for a few hours. If the company looks like they keep maintenance and repairs up, I would rent from them.
 

Only way I would consider renting my bike out is if a trusted third party did all the maintenance and repairs, and paid additional for the rental.

This is a great point- Let's say the bike seizes up on the face of a jump or some other failure. Or not even a failure, but dude hits a kicker that sends him over the bars..Blames it on the suspension.

Maybe the guy from EKS rents the bike for his son and the dude rips it off a berm..Lawsuit incoming..

Second thought- probably a hard no getting involved in this..

Nah, kinda like lending your lady out to the boys, but worse 

I've seen it be successful at private riding areas, especially when they are close to major cities or in destination locations.

However,
This idea requires that people would offer to rent their personal dirtbikes, laughable.

The people that have toys they don't use/care that much about, also don't need the $.  And they definetly don't want random renters coming to their house.

I know you can rent SxS's and farmer John quads at lots of ohv parks, but I haven't seen anyplace renting dirt bikes. It seems like anyone who can ride a dirtbike would already have one ?, you would need traveling dirt bike riders. Seems like a small demographic ?  You know what I would pay for ? A fleet of all the latest different brands and models at a track somewhere that I could test ride before buying. Like a demo day with all the brands.   The new KX327 looks awesome, but would I like the KTM HUSKY or BETA 300 2 stroke more ? Maybe the YZ250X or Beta X trainer would fit me better ? If I was seriously looking to buy a new bike I'd pay 3 or 4 hundred dollars to have a day to make the most informed purchase, maybe even 5 🤷‍♂️

Renting my bike out to a guy that's probably not a very good rider (or he wouldn't be renting one ?)  Naah been there done that. Might as well go grab a hammer and smash the levers and grips myself, maybe bend the bars a little while I'm at it, grab a surform and grind off some plastic and graphics... 😄     

I'd rather crash it myself. Or sell it.

Not just no, HELL NO!

Yeah it makes sense for a venue to have their own fleet they rent out themselves. But to try and source individually owned off road vehicles to rent out just seems like a losing proposition. 

No way in hell.

So you built a company and site and then decided to survey to see if there is a market? 

With threads like this, gonna be a longggg off season 😅

Couldn't open the thread fast enough to say fuuuck no

It seems like everyone is answering with my same, carefully calculated initial thought: No to the F no power of ten. 

But then I really thought about the value proposition and carefully reconsidered. Now it's No Fing no to the F no power of 20. 

covert advertising 😅

Marketing to the wrong crowd though. I suspect most vital members would rather loan out the wife than their bike!

Bingo on the insurance front.

These days, it's a great way to lose your net worth without proper liability coverage.    

There is a similar business for street bikes.  Rider Share or something like that.   Supposedly, Rider Share takes care of the insurance.   ...but you know in a significant injury/loss,  the lawyers are going to go after EVERYONE and EVERYTHING. 

You better be able to show maintenance records as well.