Rent to ride enters the triathlon race-day market

Posted by Tom Held of the Journal Sentinel on May 26, 2011

A start-up company in New Jersey has an idea to eliminate the bike transportation hassles for triathletes.

Tri-Cycle Rentals offers a race-day ready fleet of Orbea bikes for rent that athletes pick up at the race venue. Riders reserve the bike online, show up at the event to check out the bike, get fitted on it, then return the bike afterward at the race expo or transition area.

The story in the Bicycle Retailer & Industry news puts the price at $399, or $475 with Zipp 404 wheels.

5 Comments for "Rent to ride enters the triathlon race-day market"

It's an interesting idea, but $399 to rent a bike for a few hours? Geesh. It doesn't seem too difficult to throw a bike rack on your car and transport your own bike--you have one becausey ou have to train with one anyway, right?
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Nikki624 May 26, 2011 10:04 AM
nikki624 - the price certainly does give one pause. I think the target market would be people flying to races. Whether the cost + hassle of boxing a bike for air travel = $399 is the question.
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T. Held May 26, 2011 10:30 AM
Yeah, it's for people that would otherwise fly with a bike, and presumably
some of that cost is for the fitting services. And since the average income
of an Ironman participant is $160k/yr...

...Thanks for the reminder of why I love the comparatively inexpensive
running and bike touring so much!
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madcoca May 26, 2011 11:01 AM
Ah, OK. That makes more sense. I, too, wonder how the costs compare.
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Nikki624 May 26, 2011 3:02 PM
As one of the co-founders of Tri-Cycle Rentals, I know first-hand about the cost of traveling to triathlons - both in terms of hard cash costs as well as the mental cost of traveling. We developed this company to take the hassle out of traveling to races. In terms of a comparison, traveling via commercial airlines will cost you between $300 and $450 round-trip, depending on the carrier. Shipping your bike via a triathlon-specific service or FedEx/UPS will cost between $300 - $400. With all of the above options, racers have to take their bike apart and put it back together (or pay a bike shop to do it). They also have to own or rent a bike travel case ($50 to rent - $300-$400 to buy). They will also be without their bikes for 7-10 days prior to the race - critical training days leading up to the race.

With Tri-Cycle Rentals, while the cost on the surface may appear expensive, I would beg to differ for the reasons I mentioned above.

Finally, the bikes that we offer are better than 90+% of the bikes most people own - so for most people it's a great upgrade and experience!!!
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TriCycle Rentals May 27, 2011 8:48 AM

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[quote=TriCycle_Rentals]As one of the co-founders of Tri-Cycle Rentals, I know first-hand about the cost of traveling to triathlons - both in terms of hard cash costs as well as the mental cost of traveling.  We developed this company to take the hassle out of traveling to races.  In terms of a comparison, traveling via commercial airlines will cost you between $300 and $450 round-trip, depending on the carrier.  Shipping your bike via a triathlon-specific service or FedEx/UPS will cost between $300 - $400.  With all of the above options, racers have to take their bike apart and put it back together (or pay a bike shop to do it).  They also have to own or rent a bike travel case ($50 to rent - $300-$400 to buy).  They will also be without their bikes for 7-10 days prior to the race - critical training days leading up to the race.

With Tri-Cycle Rentals, while the cost on the surface may appear expensive, I would beg to differ for the reasons I mentioned above.

Finally, the bikes that we offer are better than 90+% of the bikes most people own - so for most people it's a great upgrade and experience!!![/quote]

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