If you are someone that at all plans on taking your bicycle places other than around your home, you likely have had to consider if you need to buy yourself a bicycle rack or not. You likely then started shopping online to find that they are actually quite expensive!
So why are bicycle racks so expensive? Bicycle racks are so expensive for four big reasons. The necessity factor that you have to have one to transport your car, the materials that are needed to make the bike rack, the design time, and the fact that it is just bicycle stuff.
Let’s dig in a little bit more into these reasons!
1. Necessity factor
A products value is firstly determined by how badly someone needs it! This necessity factor makes bike racks worth more, as people that don’t have a pickup, will need a bike rack to transport their bicycles from one place to another.
If your plan is to make bicycling a hobby, then a bike rack is something that you have to have.
Manufacturers of bike racks are able to charge more, because they know people need and want a good bike rack for their car, as it will be hanging onto one of their most expensive possessions.
2. Materials needed
Bike racks have to be sturdy! No one wants a bike rack that will randomly dump their bikes onto the freeway when going 70, or drop them off the back of the car on the backroad bumps.
Because of this, these racks have to be built with high quality materials, with thick metal to make sure that this doesn’t happen and damage their reputation.
These materials all stack up to make an expensive product.
3. Design time
You aren’t just paying for material costs, but also the costs that come along with designing the bike rack itself. Just like the bikes themselves, there are important things that bike rack manufacturers have to take into account.
They have to make a bike rack that doesn’t sit too low and hit the ground, while not having it too high that you can’t go under things. They also have to make it crazy easy to install your bike, while making it difficult for it to fall off when you don’t want it.
They also have to make a bike rack that looks good, as most people keep them on their car at all times!
4. It’s just bike stuff
Bike stuff is just expensive! This by no means is a cheap hobby, so an expensive bike rack is not really out of the question when it means keeping your even more expensive bicycle safe from the road passing beneath it.
These bike racks can range from the $800+ bike rack from Thule to this sub $100 trunk mounted bike rack. While neither is cheap, there thankfully is a range in products you can buy!
Conclusion
So there you have it! Bike racks do have their reasons for being so expensive, whether they are good reasons or not really is up to you, the consumer.
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