Q & A with Peter Wurmer, Chief International Officer / Owner of Eagle Rider
Q & A with Peter Wurmer
Chief International Officer / Owner of Eagle Rider
By Jose Carlos de Santiago
Pow Wow 2011 – San Francisco, California
As a company that deals with the rent of Harley Davidson motorcycles, Eagle Rider gives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ride across the continental United States on the most powerful and celebrated bikes the world has ever known. In this exclusive interview with Caribbean News Digital, vice president and owner Peter Wurmer takes readers into his company, the kind of services it provides and the different routes it covers.
How many routes do you cover around the U.S. in a single year?
We have around a hundred different tour itineraries for bike and hotel options. For guided tours, we deal with approximately fifty groups.
How many bikes do you own?
In the United States we have around 3,000 bikes. Out of that total some 2,800 are Harley Davidson and the rest are Honda, BMW and other brands.
Q- How many offices do you have in the U.S.?
A total of 84 offices in the United States.
Is this the only Harley Davidson rental in the U.S.?
We started in 1992 with four bikes in my garage and the first location was in Los Angeles and then we went to San Francisco, Orlando, Chicago and we spread it out. We’re actually a franchise system with sixteen locations that belong to the company and the rest are franchised, just like McDonald’s.
What’s your favorite bike?
My favorite motorcycle is the Harley Davidson Street Glide, which is a touring bike.
And what’s the most popular bike in your rental?
Probably the Harley Davidson Heritage Soft Tail which has the old look and it’s a lower bike. The typical Harley that everybody thinks of.
What’s your total rental revenue every year?
Around $20 million without counting the sale of the bikes.
So, you also have a bike sale business, don’t you?
After the bikes come out of the rental we have to sell it because we don’t lease the bikes, we buy them from Harley Davidson. Eagle Rider is Harley Davidson’s biggest single customer. So, we purchase the bikes, we rent them and then we sell them.
After what mileage do you try to sell the bikes?
After they have clicked 20,000 miles. Sometimes it’s a hard sell because these bikes accumulate mileage very fast. If you ride a bike from Chicago to Los Angeles down Route 66 for one rental, that’s 2,500 miles. After you’ve made that rental ten times, you’ve got 25,000 miles. That means we have to renew the fleet every year because in a single year a bike accumulates somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 miles.
What’s the most popular route in the U.S.?
The two most popular routes in the States are Route 66 and the one we call Wild West that tours the canyons of the West. It includes Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, the Death Valley, San Francisco and many other locations.
How long does it take?
About three weeks and 2,500 miles.
What about the price for a regular rental?
The average price of our rental on a two-week basis is $100 a day plus insurance and taxes.
Have you taken your business and routes to other countries?
We’ve just added five locations in Portugal; we have a location in Madrid, which is an official Eagle Rider affiliate, plus one in Marbella which is a franchise.
What about other nations?
Turkey, Israel, New Zealand and Australia.
