On July 20, 1986, Rick Steele was 26, about to have a second child, and was now the owner of a business on which he owed $90,000. What business? He now owned a junkyard. A motorcycle junkyard.

Almost 40 years later this former junkyard is a multi-million dollar business servicing bikes, selling used motorcycles, and breaking bikes down to sell for parts. The internet has helped transform this local business into a global operation, and customers needing that one hard-to-get part for their 40-, 50-, 60-year-old bikes are thrilled to find it at Steele’s Cycle. As are the owners of much newer bikes.

Today the main showroom is packed with a large variety of bikes for sale and the walls are covered with gear and memorabilia. The place is clean, well-lighted, well-heated, and a staff of 10, including Rick and his partner Matthew Morrison, keep the place humming. According to Matthew, storage rooms hold more than 100,000 parts from every model bike imaginable, all neatly stocked and quickly accessible, based around computerized inventory.

The conditions on that July day in 1986 could hardly have been more different. Bikes for parts were lined up outside for customers to find and remove their own parts and then bring them in to make payment. Grime coated everything. Lighting was poor. There was no running water. And Rick was scared to death.

He knew motorcycles. He had worked at several shops around town: BK Motorsports, Western Honda, Senti Yamaha. But he had never owned a business. He had seen the possibilities. No stranger to Denver Used Motorcycle Parts (the D.U.M.P.) just east of downtown Denver along Park Avenue, Rick had seen the profit to be had from used parts. Pick up a crashed bike for pennies and sell the undamaged parts for dollars. There was money to be made here. But first he had to survive as a business. The $10,000 he had put down, half loaned to him by his then-mother-in-law, was, to him, all the money in the world. What had he gotten himself into?

“The scary part was just starting that late in the season because I opened July 20th. Back then, winters were, you know, it snowed on Halloween and it stayed. You didn’t get any customers. So, I was here all by myself, just a new dad. It was what I think anybody starting a business goes through. It was like, why did I do this kind of thing? And then it was challenging. It’s always challenging in the beginning. But, there was a demand, it’s supply and demand. And there was a demand for the stuff. And people kind of knew about stuff that was here. So that first fall, I think there were a few bikes in here that I sold right away. And that kind of carried me through. But, it was touch and go that first one, for sure.”

A Utility Heart Attack
Occupying at that time only a small portion of the space that now comprises Steele’s Cycle, the space had only one electric heater. Rick ran that until he got the first electric bill. For $1,500.

“I about had a heart attack. I didn’t know. So I quit heating this. Right inside the door, there was an office. Where that window is, that was a closed-off office. And I had a space heater outside of that office. I was working in that little room in there. And then I had a kerosene heater. And that was my heat.”

The building itself was sheet metal and cinder block. And the lot was rocks. There was no pavement. It was rocks everywhere with tree shoots growing through the rocks.

While initially the site was in pretty poor physical condition, because he was only renting the space Rick did not do a lot of clean-up and fix-up.

“When I rented it, I never really asked to fix things because I didn’t want to get my rent raised. So, I would just fix them. I fixed all the plumbing. The winter before I bought it, all pipes froze. They shut the water off. So, when I came, there was no water or anything. I didn’t fix it the first winter. I think I ended up fixing it the next summer.”

In addition to being cold, that first winter was lonely. “It was me for about the first, I think, eight months to a year. And then, my first employee was a guy named Bobby Berkler. And he worked for me for probably 20 years. It was just him and me for the first four or five years.”

Then, four or five years in, Rick got his dealer’s license so he could sell motorcycles. They had already been doing service on bikes and this opened up additional opportunities. In this manner the company existed for about two decades.

Next: From Renting To Owning

Biker Quote for Today

I may be lost, but on my bike, I’m always found.