I rented my bike for 75 days in 2023, here’s what happened

My name is Watson and I am one of the co-founders at Upcycle. We started Upcycle in Q2 2023 and I rented my bikes for a total of 76 rental days totaling $1211.43.Out of that $1211, $1029.71 went to me and $181.71 to Upcycle.

What Bikes

During this time I had two modern carbon mountain bikes listed:

• 2019 Santa Cruz Blur CC Sram X01 (56 rental days)
• 2020 Specialized Stumpjumper Evo Sram GX (20 rental days)

Maintainance

In the time that I had the bikes on Upcycle, I performed some routine maintenance, some of which I did myself and some I had done at a local bike shop. My total spend on maintenance was $357. It’s worth mentioning that these are also my personal use bikes, they are not bicycles dedicated to renting on Upcycle so some of this incurred expense is also due to my own riding.

1. $216.00 for a Fox suspension service on the Santa Cruz Blur for both the fork and rear shock (Fox Factory 34 Stepcast and the Fox Float)
2. $8 for a replacement DT Swiss spoke on the Blur that broke at the nipple while I was riding. I replaced this myself
3. $40 for new bottom bracket on the Blur that I replaced myself

Conclusion

Now you might be wondering, what about other wear and tear items? I have had the same chain tires and drivetrain components on both bikes the entire year, consisting of a Sram X01 Eagle mechanical drivetrain on the Blur and a Sram GX Eagle mechanical drivetrain on the Stumpjumper. I regularly checked the chains for wear using a Park Tools CC-3 chain checker and both chains stayed below the 0.5 wear indicator. In total, I made enough on Upcycle to offset my entire year’s worth of maintenance on both bikes and then some. After maintenance and repairs, I made $672 as a host with two bikes on the platform. A few takeaways from my experience as a host:

1. All the guests that I met were awesome, most were either traveling from out of town or looking to try a new style of bicycle.
2. Hosting on Upcycle was a good way for me to utilize bikes that were otherwise pretty underutilized in my garage and pay for their ongoing maintenance.
3. I'm optimistic that as Upcycle grows as a platform, we will get more renters.

So if you’ve got extra bikes lying around in your garage and want to rent them to awesome people, consider renting them on Upcycle by starting here