To Sag Or Not To Sag
Thursday, July 6th, 2023
How lucky Tom was to have a sag wagon along on this trip.
It was only a terrific stroke of luck for Tom that when his motorcycle died in Arizona on one of the loneliest, most out-of-the-way roads around that Dave was right behind with his Ford F-250 pick-up and a trailer. Dave had planned on doing the ride but then had surgery the week before and couldn’t ride. On the morning of our departure, on the spur of the moment, he decided to heck with it, he was going even if that meant he had to drive. And as long as he was driving the F-250 he figured he might as well bring along his trailer, just in case someone needed it. And Tom did.
How much would a tow truck have cost to get him anywhere the bike could be worked on, and then how long might he have to stay in that town until parts arrived? We’re talking a significant chunk of cash here. As it turned out, the problem was just in the switch that keeps you from riding off with your side-stand down, so not expensive to fix at all. But Tom had the leisure of handling the problem back at home and the only cost, besides not getting to do the rest of the trip on his bike, was paying Dave for gas.
Not surprisingly, this whole situation has ignited a discussion within the RMMRC. Perhaps it would be nice to have a sag wagon along on all our long trips. After all, it was just last year that Dave was the one with a problem–bad stator on his Beemer–that resulted in him staying in Minnesota while the rest of us rode on home. Then he had to deal with this away-from-home dealer rather than the local shop he knows and where they know him.
Of course the real issue here could simply be, who among us wants to make the trip but not ride? Somebody would have to drive the truck. Well, the RMMRC has another long trip coming up soon, out to the Columbia River and the Cascades. And Tom has volunteered to be the driver. If, he adds, everyone else pays for his gas.
It would be like insurance. Everyone pays a little, hoping truthfully to get nothing in return, but really happy to have the coverage if you do need it.
This pay-for-the-gas provision has generated some discussion. Initially some people were immediately willing to pay it; some others were hesitant. On its own the cost would not be negligible–except compared to a huge towing bill. An F-250 gets about 15 miles per gallon. Let’s figure $3.50 per gallon, and a 3,200-mile trip, like this Columbia River thing. That would be about 213 gallons, with a total cost of about $745. Let’s say there are 10 guys going; that would be about $75 each for insurance. You see where this is heading?
Suppose eight guys are willing to pay but two are not. If one of them does break down then what? We’re not going to abandon them. Maybe at that point they have to make the choice to pay the entire gas cost or else figure out some other way out of their predicament. I mean, at that point if one of the guys who paid for the insurance broke down he would not have his sag wagon available that he was paying for. That totally doesn’t work.
If you just decided, as a group, that anyone going had to join in on the insurance are you going to drive people away? Nobody wants to do that.
And even if everyone is paying, what are you going to do if more than one person breaks down?
To get some perspective, let’s look at what would happen without a sag wagon. Just last year, coincidentally not 50 miles from where Tom had his problem, Bill had a problem. He hit a big rock in the road and bent his wheel, causing the tire to lose air with no possibility of reinflating. Amazingly, the tire did not go flat until we reached our day’s destination.
After exploring several options what he finally ended up doing was getting a tow to the next town, where a shop put in a tube that we figured had solved the problem. That tow cost about $150 and delayed our next day’s start till 3 p.m. on our longest day of the trip. But we handled it and we rode on. (Although by the time we got to Farmington the tube had lost air and the next morning Bill paid $2,000 for a new tire and wheel at the local Harley shop. At home he figures he would have gotten the wheel and tire for half that.)
As a different example, in 2018 on an OFMC trip we had a major disruption when Dennis unknowingly put diesel fuel in his Indian. Obviously we didn’t have a sag wagon so we replicated one. That is, Dennis made phone calls and then we rode him over to the nearest town where there was a U-Haul shop, he rented a truck and we went back to his bike, we loaded his bike on, and we altered our course to go to the nearest Indian dealer. It wasn’t cheap, especially since it was a one-way rental on the U-Haul. But we made it work. And it cost Dennis a pile of money.
In short, there is no obvious best answer. Perhaps the thing that will keep this from becoming too much of a dilemma is what I mentioned before: Who wants to get stuck driving the truck? Tom is willing on this next trip but then what? Who? Certainly not me–I came to ride!
Biker Quote for Today
A dirt bike is like your buddy. A road bike is your lover.
