John Lemus loved his seven-speed Columbia Trailhead mountain bike.
“That thing could take a beating and keep going. It also very literally saved my life a few times,” the editor of Indie Comics Showcase told the Washington Examiner.
He went to retrieve the bicycle from his backyard in Hialeah, Florida, in early December. Someone stole it, and he found himself a victim of a rash of local bike thefts.
“It really pissed me off and also made me very sad. My bike is my main source of transportation,” Lemus said.
Lemus didn’t blame locals for the thefts but rather “out-of-state grifters.” He said it was atypical of the area, and the Hialeah Police Department has even put a “special investigator” on the case.
When he tried to get new wheels, Lemus was in for another shock — this time of the sticker variety.
“The frame was a carbon fiber composite reinforced by aluminum. I wanted to buy a similar one to that, but they were sold out everywhere. Get this: It turns out that since COVID hit, the bike factories in China have been shut down, so most of the major retailers have been selling off what remained of their old new stock,” he said.
Lemus had bought the bike in 2009 for $200 and change. He found the bikes that shops do have in stock are being sold at a premium, thus putting a Trailhead-like bike out of his price range. It is affecting the secondary market as well, pushing up prices and making bike thefts more lucrative.
Lemus called bicycle manufacturer Columbia and found that the company didn’t have any in stock to help him out.
Many people trying to replace bikes right now feel the same supply and price pinch as Lemus.
“Supply chain issues plus a surge in demand during the pandemic, presumably people looking for another thing to get them safely out of the house and maybe some substitution from mass transit,” are pushing up bicycle prices, Marc Scribner told the Washington Examiner.
Scribner is a transportation policy analyst at the Reason Foundation. He is also an avid biker.
“I was an all-weather daily cycling commuter for years. Now, I don’t commute, but I still have two road bikes,” Scribner said.
Scribner added that it isn’t only cyclists who feel the effects of global supply chain shortages on modes of transportation.
“Used-car prices are at record levels. Part of it is plants were idled or making ventilators in the spring. Part of it is people delayed spring purchases. And part of it is urban transit riders started buying cars,” he said.
Whether or not the supply chain shortage will suppress a bicycle boom remains to be seen.
In 2015, the Breakaway Research Group found massive potential for bicycles in the United States, with over 100 million people using a bike in the past year but little regular usage. Only 15% of riders had done so for “transportation,” including Lemus and Scribner.
One reason for that may have been that long commutes made bicycles impractical. As commutes shorten or vanish, it looks as though more people are giving bikes a second look, further driving up prices in the process.
Lemus eventually managed to find a new set of wheels at a price he could stomach.
“I ended up purchasing a Columba Folding Bike from Amazon. It was the closest one I could find to the one they stole. It’s not a bad bike at all, but [it’s] not as good as my Columbia,” he said.
Lemus is also determined not to be an easy mark for bicycle thieves in the future.
“I am no longer keeping my bike outside, chain or no chain,” he added.
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