• Watch Out for Scammers!

    We've now added a color code for all accounts. Orange accounts are new members, Blue are full members, and Green are Supporters. If you get a message about a sale from an orange account, make sure you pay attention before sending any money!

Bike brands made in the USA?

earthquake

Area Man
Full Member
Minuteman
  • Jul 30, 2009
    2,960
    2,351
    USA
    Not sure if here or the Pit is the right place for this, but...I've been trying to find my 14 y.o. son a new bike for his birthday which was last month now. Every place around me is cleaned out due to the Rona and cabin fever. The ONLY place I can find something is Dick's :rolleyes: and all they carry are Chinese import bikes. Even though I need to get him a bike, I'll not give Dick's a cent of my money, especially for Chi-Comm shit. So with that, where are the decently priced USA made bikes to be found? I'm having a hard time tracking this info down on the web...probably for a reason. TiA.
     
    • Love
    Reactions: aljones_315
    Not sure if here or the Pit is the right place for this, but...I've been trying to find my 14 y.o. son a new bike for his birthday which was last month now. Every place around me is cleaned out due to the Rona and cabin fever. The ONLY place I can find something is Dick's :rolleyes: and all they carry are Chinese import bikes. Even though I need to get him a bike, I'll not give Dick's a cent of my money, especially for Chi-Comm shit. So with that, where are the decently priced USA made bikes to be found? I'm having a hard time tracking this info down on the web...probably for a reason. TiA.
    define "decently priced"
    Also, specify type of bike.
    Road, cruiser, mountain, gravel, hybrid, cyclo-cross BMX etc...
    Your best bet for a quality bike at a reasonable cost is a good used bike on ebay
     
    Last edited:
    • Like
    Reactions: aljones_315
    define "decently priced"
    Also, specify type of bike.
    Road, cruiser, mountain, gravel, hybrid, cyclo-cross BMX etc...
    Your best bet for a quality bike at a reasonable cost is a good used bike on ebay

    <$400 hybrid or hard-tailed mountain bike.
     
    I doubt such a thing exists in that price range, but taiwan has a long history of making decent bikes.

    For US owned and manufactured mtbs the cheapest I know of is Guerrilla Gravity. Great bikes and priced inside most of the competitors. Still $3k+

    I’d go to a bike shop over a big box store. They’ll generally have better quality stuff and importantly be better at helping you get the right fitment and setup. If you are in the Colorado front range I can point you to some good shops.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: earthquake
    Local bike shop for sure. You will not find a bike made in USA for any reasonable price that I am aware of.
     
    20-year-old Trek or Cannondale.
    A used high quality bike can be a great route and there are dozens of excellent US brands. This approach would require a fairly high level of bike knowledge to select a good one of the right size and set it up properly. I recently got my wife a used Turner in great shape with quality components for $1k (3yrs ago it would have been $6k). Totally non exhaustive list of quality US mtbs you might find:

    Turner
    Intense
    Foes
    Cannondale
    GT
    Pro Flex
    Ellsworth
    Klien
    Santa Cruz
    Trek (no longer us made, but I think might have been many moons ago)
    Specialized (see more above)
     
    Guerilla Gravity! Ridegg.com

    13989.jpeg
    13989.jpeg
     
    Same. First the mouth breathers hoard toilet paper, now bicycles. I went out to shop for one and EVERYTHING is gone. Even the bike shops are wiped out. I don’t need a $2500 downhill or electric bike. Sheeesh.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: HiDesertELR
    Or a old GT. This is my old I drive I'm sellingView attachment 7348458

    What's the model and age of that ride? My 1996 LTS1 was made in the US (as was the '92ish Zaskar that I passed down to my nephew), but I was under the impression that almost anything built after the Schwinn merger came from overseas.

    Back in college 20+ years ago, Trek invited a bunch of us engineers-in-training to visit their Waterloo plant where damn near every aluminum bike frame, carbon frame, and even many steel frames were welded and assembled by actual Americans. But by that time, domestic manufacturing of "affordable" bikes was already sharply declining. Gary Fisher (pre-Trek buyout) had already pioneered offshore manufacturing in Taiwan (Chinese manufacturing was still pretty scary), and companies like Specialized and GT quickly followed for everything but high-end aluminum stuff (material was the giveaway - 7005 frames were almost always welded overseas).

    Cannondale hung on for a while, but they went through enough financial turmoil with failed attempts at wheelchairs and motorcycles that Pacific and then Dorel turned the company from an innovative domestic manufacturer into yet another importer of foreign bikes.

    As others mentioned, Alchemy and Guerilla are doing carbon in the US, but that's all high-end stuff. There are also still some independents such as Frank The Welder and Rivendell, and a ton of smaller companies (I went to high school with Scott Quiring who runs his own shop in Free Soil, MI). There was a company in the Pacific Northwest (the name of which escapes me) that was an aluminum frame OE for mid-level/mid-volume bikes, but they stopped doing bike stuff several years ago.

    The bottom line is that "affordable" bikes are no longer made in the US. Hopefully that situation changes soon with the the tariffs and general fucked-upedness in China right now (the latter of which has prevented bike shops from restocking).
     
    • Like
    Reactions: BikePilot
    Check it out! My M800 the beast of the east. My grandpa bought it for me when I was 15 now I’m 44 I turned it into a single speed with some street tread on it about 10 years ago for ripping around town. Made in the USA!
    D093FB8A-CB7C-48D5-9DD6-32DA9FA3A67C.jpeg
    40BCEADC-7A2A-44DC-B637-57463D24EE11.jpeg
     
    Still have my first race bike which I completely restored in 2016 1981 mongoose blue max and my last race bike 8th and 9th grade on a Robinson all original except tires and bb bearings
     
    Regarding road bikes, Allied builds Road Bikes in Little Rock, Arkansas. Nice bikes, prices start somewhere well north of 5K. There are several frame shops that build custom steel and titanium framed bikes. As always, prices are not cheap.

    Wish there were more but previous recommendations are about as good as it is going to get for American build unless really lots of money is involved. What ever choice is made, take it to a decent bike shop and have them give it a good going over.
     
    What's the model and age of that ride? My 1996 LTS1 was made in the US (as was the '92ish Zaskar that I passed down to my nephew), but I was under the impression that almost anything built after the Schwinn merger came from overseas.

    Back in college 20+ years ago, Trek invited a bunch of us engineers-in-training to visit their Waterloo plant where damn near every aluminum bike frame, carbon frame, and even many steel frames were welded and assembled by actual Americans. But by that time, domestic manufacturing of "affordable" bikes was already sharply declining. Gary Fisher (pre-Trek buyout) had already pioneered offshore manufacturing in Taiwan (Chinese manufacturing was still pretty scary), and companies like Specialized and GT quickly followed for everything but high-end aluminum stuff (material was the giveaway - 7005 frames were almost always welded overseas).

    Cannondale hung on for a while, but they went through enough financial turmoil with failed attempts at wheelchairs and motorcycles that Pacific and then Dorel turned the company from an innovative domestic manufacturer into yet another importer of foreign bikes.

    As others mentioned, Alchemy and Guerilla are doing carbon in the US, but that's all high-end stuff. There are also still some independents such as Frank The Welder and Rivendell, and a ton of smaller companies (I went to high school with Scott Quiring who runs his own shop in Free Soil, MI). There was a company in the Pacific Northwest (the name of which escapes me) that was an aluminum frame OE for mid-level/mid-volume bikes, but they stopped doing bike stuff several years ago.

    The bottom line is that "affordable" bikes are no longer made in the US. Hopefully that situation changes soon with the the tariffs and general fucked-upedness in China right now (the latter of which has prevented bike shops from restocking).
    It's a idrive team, it's a 2000 if I remember correctly. It was the last year they built them here. At that time they were only building the idrive team frames, and the team BMX bikes, all the other lines had been moved to Taiwan. Then the Pacific cycles buyout, merger, hostile takeover happened.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: E. Bryant
    Here’s an idea, find a bike your son likes on ebay or some other site. A bike that needs restoration. Then as a father / son project you two can rebuild, restore it together. It will require some specialized tools, but it is doable. And the results will have far greater value than any bike/frameset you can buy will ever have. Below is a 1970’s era Schwinn that I rebuilt for my wife, Brenda.
    68ACF236-C3BD-4DD0-8586-81E324F9BB95.jpeg