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Employee / Shop Photos |
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Employee / Shop Photos |
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The WHEELDOCK Company was founded by Mike Lyons and Rod Brakhage a couple of friends who have ridden motorcycles since they were teenagers. Rod is now 50, and Mike is 62. Anyway, I started this project out of necessity when I needed a wheel stand to hold my new "pride and joy" a 2002 Gold Wing GL 1800 in my enclosed trailer. This was when a couple of problems arose. The bent tubing-type chocks would not work, because tie-down points are not available on a Gold Wing. This type of stand is also a two-man proposition. So, we set out to build a copy of one common teeter-totter design. It worked well enough with my Yamaha FZ1 we used to test it. However, with the 800-plus pound "mothership," we almost needed a winch to load it. Loading it under power was okay, but pulling it out was more than either one could do. That's when it became obvious that we needed a new approach, and the open-rail design was born. The details followed, and many transitional versions were built and tested over several months. This is about the time we picked up Andrew Davison. Andrew is an old friend of mine from way back in the day. Andrew has a Design engineering background and occasionally can be fairly handy. Andrew provided some of the computer skills we were lacking and helped get the project a little further down the road to manufacturing. You know, we started out by trying to save a buck by building a knockoff copy of an old design, and we ended up designing something entirely new. Isn't that the way these things often happen? I believe that WHEELDOCK offers the finest stand available, especially for the heavy touring-type motorcycle. We not only have built a superior stand for holding a motorcycle, but it is also a very safe and secure means of transporting your motorcycle. There is no longer a ramp, teeter-totter, or elevated pivot point to overcome when loading or unloading. It is also the easiest stand for one person to use when parking and/or transporting. |
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