Mechanics Warn That Walmart's Budget Bikes Are Built To Fail
Bicycle mechanics in the U.S. have had enough of junky bikes that big box stores sell under the pretense of “budget bikes.” Mechanics say these cheap bikes from Walmart and similar retailers have been built to meet low price points for decades. But in the last ten years, their quality has declined so much that they’re not really budget bikes anymore. They’re now better categorized as bikes that are “built to fail,” according to a report from Vice .
In the report, Jalopnik alum Aaron Gordon quotes Mac Liman and Josh Bisker, mechanics from Denver and Brooklyn respectively, who warn that cheap bikes from superstores are flooding repair shops amid the bike boom from the COVID19 pandemic . More riders obviously means more bike repairs, but the problem is budget bikes are breaking too often too soon and aren’t actually repairable. From Vice :
[Liman’s] talking about the kind of bikes, hastily wrenched together out of flat-packed boxes by people with minimal training, that mechanics have long called bike-shaped objects : bikes with misaligned wheels, forks on backwards, and faulty handlebars, bikes that break after just a few dozen hours of use and that cannot be repaired.
