Steve Poole’s father filled his kids’ lives with motorcycles, cars and go-karts and was always willing to repair their bikes for them. But he’d make them watch so they knew how to do it the next time.
“He’d go into excruciating detail about how he did it,” Poole says.
It may have bored Poole to tears when he and his two brothers were kids, but now all the knowledge his father forced upon him is paying off for him and the many kids in his Windsor neighborhood. Poole, 67, works as a bus driver for Thompson School District, but in the summer, he’s a full-time fixer-upper.
He buys bikes in bad shape from thrift stores, bike recycling stores and Facebook Marketplace, then he works on them and sells them to kids at a discount. He can be found as Steve Poole, aka “The Bike Guy,” on Facebook Marketplace.
Poole came up with the idea to supplement his income during the pandemic when he wasn’t working, but he’s not getting rich. He typically charges half of what the same model would cost if it were new, and that’s only if it’s in excellent shape. He’ll charge much less otherwise.
“Making money is the end result, but it’s not what drives me,” he says. “There’s nothing cooler than seeing a kid speed off with a new bike and a grin out to both ears.”
Steve Poole. Photos by Jordan Secher.
It took Poole about a year and a half to turn his garage into a bike shop. He scrounges for parts at the same places he gets the old bikes. Many of the parts—including tires and seats—are good as new.
Much of what his father taught him still applies more than 50 years later, but he had to learn how to fix the bikes’ shifting cables and a few other things. He credits the used bike stores for helping him polish his skills as well as YouTube. Recycled Cycles and the Fort Collins Bike Co-op were especially helpful, he says. He still visits both places every Sunday.
“They were nice enough to answer my questions,” he says.
Poole doesn’t want to compete with those stores and the fact that he serves a different market soothes his concerns. He generally avoids publicity because he doesn’t want too much business as a result. He does work on adult bikes, but most of his inventory is for kids, and most of his business comes from parents, especially those who live nearby.
“The parents don’t have time to wait a whole afternoon for a bike for their kid,” he says. “They need something their kid can ride that day.”
He doesn’t want to spend more than a few hours a day fixing bikes, and he’s not looking to scale up. Summer is his busiest time, when he isn’t driving. He rarely works on bikes in the winter, though he’s considering putting a heater in his garage so he can.
“It got pretty busy here for a bit,” he says, “but I put other things on the back burner because I enjoy this so much.”
He’s referring to one of his two sales a year, when he builds up his inventory of about 50 bikes, including some for adults, and the neighbors spread the word over Facebook and the Nextdoor app. This is when he relies on his apprentice the most.
Dane Hortt, 13, is part of a neighborhood family Poole befriended. The family helped Poole get around and walked his dog after he tore his quad muscle a couple of years ago, and Hortt’s mother inquired about her son working for him. She wanted him to learn some real-life skills.
Hortt now knows how to fix everything on a bike except for the gears: He can change seats, pedals and tires, and put on a chain guard. Hortt has been so good, Poole says, that he sometimes catches things Poole misses.
“I’ve got some friends who want to steal my job,” Hortt says. “They think it’s pretty cool.”
Poole never had kids of his own. He didn’t want the responsibility that comes with raising kids: He was too busy scratching the racing itch he got from his father as the owner of a go-kart business.
But when Poole sold the business and stopped selling real estate, a career he had for 20 years, he needed something to do. After a brief stint at Lowe’s, he decided to drive school buses. His friends warned him the kids would drive him crazy. But Poole decided he liked kids.
“I connect with them pretty well,” he says.
He drove a regular route, but the rowdy kids took advantage of his good nature, so his boss suggested he take on the special education kids. It clicked.
“They’re great kids,” Poole says. “It’s the greatest job in the world.”
He plans on retiring in two years, but one of the high school kids begged him to drive for an additional year until he graduated, so he’ll wait and see. It’s a busy job: On most days, he spends 12 hours at it, with a long break in the middle of the day. He admits there are days he’d rather spend that time fixing up something broken and bringing a little joy into a child’s life.
