AVOID TRAILERS AT ALL COST KEMMER!!! They are unsafe and bad for the industry. There are a few good trailers out there (Pedaltek), but even then you’re relying on the rider to have a properly maintained and safe bike, and skills necessary to handle pulling a loaded trailer. Every year there is talk locally of outlawing trailers, and this year it may actually happen.
Main Street Classics or Broadways are your best bet. As far as maintenance goes, clean and lube both chains, checking daily for wear. Same goes for the rear disk and front v-brake. Wheels can and do go out of true more often than you’d like, so check them weekly, like on a Sunday when no one will be out. Check the rear differential for play weeky (we had a few that had lots of issues and needed several rebuilds, but most of our cabs never had any issues).
Check the body and frame for stress cracks weekly. If you have a cab with a unicrown fork, look in replacing it with the current triple-tree fork. There have been several old forks that snapped off at the crown after lots of use. My buddy Paul (you may have met him, not sure) had his snap in the middle of 5th and Congress (BUSY!!!) with 3 passengers. Bad news. The lights on the Broadways are really good, in that they all flash. I rode a Classic, and we installed a relay to make the front and rear lights flash, since older models were simply on or off. For a headlamp, get a bright-ass battery (as in the cabs main battery) powered mofo.
For storage, our company had two places. One was at the owners house (few blocks away from Downtown, and he had a HUGE warehouse in back), one was a huge storage unit on the other side of downtown. Cabs are stored on a dolly on their back. We would check in/out our own cabs with a dedicated log sheet in each cab, with a dedicated cubby to charge our batteries and store shit while out riding. Maintenance was done by riders who also had mechanic experience and given a discount on lease in exchange. Most mainenance work was done on Sundays or Mondays. If you had an issue with your cab, you would write it down on a dry erase board next to the work bench and it was always fixed come Thursday. The owner was there since he lived there and would smoke weed and drink with us after shift, but aside from emergencies or something, the guys who worked out of the west side storage were completely autonomous. The east side shop was too for the most part, since we didn’t NEED the owner there to function, but it was nice having him around.
I know nothing about the advertising, but it varied from small panels to full wraps depending on what the client wanted.
Feel free to call me or email me or whatever if you have any more questions!
