In the sharing economy, you can rent other people’s cars, homes and clothes, and now a Chicago startup wants to make renting motorcycles easier, too.
Twisted Road, a Chicago startup founded in 2017, has built an online platform to find and rent personally owned motorbikes. The platform has more than 2,500 bikes available for rent across every state except New York (because of prohibitive vehicle-sharing laws).
In Chicago, there’s about 50 bikes available, and in Los Angeles, there’s more than 150, said Twisted Road founder and CEO Austin Rothbard, a former Kohler executive.
“Whenever I was traveling, I could never rent a bike, and seeing the world on two wheels is much different than seeing it in a car,” says Rothbard, who has been riding motorcycles for the last four years. “There were no good places to rent, so ultimately I started the company.”
To list a motorcycle for rent on Twisted Road, owners have to go through an approval process that includes a background check. Renters go through a similar process and must have a motorcycle license.
Owners set their own daily rental rates, mainly ranging from $40 a day to $500 per day, and Twisted Road keeps 30 percent of each transaction.
Bikes for rent include 1943 Indian models up to some of the newest bikes on the market, including Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire electric motorcycle, which is available for about $200 per day in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The average bike rental lasts for a few days, Rothbard said, adding that the longest has been five-weeks.
Bikes don’t automatically come equipped with any safety gear or riding accessories, like helmets. Rothbard said riders typically bring their own items. As for insurance, Twisted Road says it covers motorcycle damage during a ride. Additionally, riders have the option to purchase daily damage and liability insurance.
Riders Share, a Los Angeles-based startup also operating a marketplace for renting motorcycles, has raised nearly $1 million, according to Crunchbase. Similarly, Los Angeles-based EagleRider also rents motorcycles out to riders, but unlike Twisted Road and Riders Share, EagleRider is not a peer-to-peer sharing company. Instead, it owns most of its motorcycle inventory.
Twisted Road raised a small angel round earlier this year, but Rothbard declined to disclose for how much. The startup currently employs four people and sees about 50 new bikes added to the platform every week.
Rothbard says he rents out his personal 2010 Moto Guzzi V7 classic motorcycle on Twisted Road, and when he travels, uses the platform to find a bike.
“I physically own one motorcycle, but I’ve got 2,500 in my garage,” Rothbard says with a laugh. “That’s how I like to look at it.”
