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Cycling industry needs 45,000 mechanics right now, and it's an AI-proof job
(www.cyclingweekly.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026
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micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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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"
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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.