Supply and demand. Used Harleys were valuble when you couldn't get a new one. Now the market is flooded. It has nothing at all to do with the economy.

 

Two words....

Market saturation

And with the fact that so many pre-07 owners wanted the "new hotness" there are a ton of late model, low mileage used bikes and quite a few leftovers as well. My local dealer still has a Cobalt Blue 06 Street Glide sitting in a sea of 07 Street Glides. Been there since July.

 

Tell her to get into Real Estate Appraisals. I am making about 100K per year and work about 40 or less hours per week (FROM HOME). Not a bad gig to make your own hours, be your own boss and make decent money.

 

The problem is that Harleys are a boomer toy and hate to say it, but us boomers are getting older which means we are either too late for a Hog or already have one. (Note the company is going to start selling trikes this year).

See yesterdays New York Times:

October 29, 2006
The Way We Live Now
Geezery Rider
By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL

George W. Bush was sending an economic message when he visited the Harley-Davidson motorcycle factory in York, Penn., in August. With its big foreign markets, Harley-Davidson is a rare American manufacturer that thrives on, rather than fears, free trade. But when the president donned a slightly ridiculous pair of wraparound sunglasses, mounted a Harley Softail Deluxe and revved it loudly, he was conveying something more personal. Motorcycles are a symbol of independence, youth and nonconformity — to those who like them, that is. To those who don’t, they are a symbol of aggression, immaturity and fecklessness. What made the president so sure that viewers would make the former link and not the latter?

Perhaps he realizes that the symbolism of motorcycles, as we have known it roughly since “Easy Rider” in 1969, is changing. Supermarket magazines have long celebrated tough old codgers like Malcolm Forbes, or even middle-aged stars like George Clooney, who persist in this strenuous and virile habit well after their wild years are supposed to have passed. Older riders are presented as eccentrics in a lifestyle that is otherwise dominated by younger rebels and solitary bad boys. But statistics paint a different picture. In the last two decades, men (and a few women) in middle age have become the motorcycle market. Few of the Harley riders from the veterans group Rolling Thunder who clog the highways every Memorial Day can be much younger than 50, and yet, as bikers go, they aren’t atypically old.

Motorcycles are a symbol of youth that young people no longer particularly care for. In 1980, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council, half of riders were 24 or younger, and half of those were of high-school age. Nowadays not even 4 percent of bikers are under 18. Roughly half are over 40, and more than a quarter are over 50. For some brands of bike, the median age is particularly high: the typical Harley-Davidson buyer is 47. Civic-minded motorcycle associations, which two decades ago would have sounded as oxymoronic as nonsmoking barrooms, abound. There are biker churches, biker A.A. groups and various white-collar equivalents of gangs — lawyers’ groups and the like. At the Motorcycle Color Show in Japan in April, the body-paint division of the BASF corporation unveiled 100 new soft colors to appeal to what news releases called a “sophisticated adult culture arising from the aging baby-boomer generation.” The theme that organizers selected for the show? “Maturecycle.”

So who are these aging bikers, who symbolize not rebellion but sound trade policy? One view is that they’re the same people who, as 20-somethings, tore up the road around 1978, and that natural selection has favored the more cautious among them. The real wild ones in their cohort have gone to prison or been incapacitated or killed in fiery wrecks, leaving a rump of bourgeois milquetoasts. Statistics on traffic fatalities make that hypothesis look questionable, however, because if there is one area in which older bikers stand out, it is recklessness. Back in 1981, when the Traffic Safety Center at the University of Southern California published its comprehensive report on the causes of motorcycle accidents, its conclusion that people in their teens and early 20’s were vastly overrepresented in traffic accidents was so unsurprising as to merit little comment. But things have changed. Since bottoming out at just more than 2,000 deaths nationwide in 1997, motorcycle deaths have roughly doubled in the last decade, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and older bikers

 

Thanks for posting the article Sporty. Well written by C Caldwell:

"So who are these aging bikers, who symbolize not rebellion but sound trade policy?

One view is that they’re the same people who, as 20-somethings, tore up the road around 1978,

and that natural selection has favored the more cautious among them.

The real wild ones in their cohort have gone to prison or been incapacitated or killed in fiery wrecks,

leaving a rump of bourgeois milquetoasts. "

mud

 

Not even close to "jumping the shark." They have experienced 20 and soon to be 21 straight years of growth. They will sell about 350,000 bikes this year, more than they ever had. They will make 5 billion dollars in revenue this year.

 

Ya, sometimes it feels like I was responsible for at least one of those five billion!

 

Dude, I work at a Ford Credit facility here in DFW (Irving, TX) and we are EXPANDING. What up with that?!?!

Mind you, I'm a contractor (IT Dept/Tech Support), so I don't have all the insider dirt on Ford's 'Way Forward' plan...

Jobs here in Dallas aren't what they used to be either, that's how I ended up in IT as a technician...My job title was always Engineer, until a few years ago when the bottom fell out of the Telecom biz...

 

Thanks...AND SWEET BIKE!

 

Just noticed your post.

That's not happening in Michigan. What's to appraise? Values are dropping monthly and foreclosures are at a record high and lead the nation. Houses stay in the market 12-18 months often now.

Real Estate ANYTHING is not what to be get into in Michigan right now. Trust me, I have many coworkers whose families are getting into the same situation as us, and their wives are in Real Estate. One guys wife opened a pizza place after 15 years of selling houses and making $100k a year. I sold my 2 unit rental JUST IN TIME. I bet it is worth $20k less than I sold it for 3 years ago.

hd-sob, the people at FMC in Dearborn will probably be offered a job at your office as a transfer. Otherwise they will be SOL.

I think my wife will be fine though, and so will we. She had a really nice guy to call about a potential job this week. Her brother-in-laws father passed away, so she has been visiting with her sister. But in the next couple days she will make that call. And even if it doesn't work out, she will find something she likes. I feel it now...

Thanks to everyone for offers and suggestions. It's really nice.

Didn't mean for it to hyjack the thread topic.