As a resident of sunny Los Angeles, I occasionally ride by a giant building next to the 405 with “EagleRider.com’ plastered on the side. I had heard about EagleRider before, but as I’ve never been much of a cruiser guy, I had always disregarded the company because I was under the impression that they only rented Harleys. Turns out I was wrong.
I recently met Anthony, an EagleRider employee (pictured below in a cool office setup) who opened my eyes to the variety of bikes that the firm actually offers. I was intrigued enough that I decided to visit their Los Angeles office for a closer look, and I decided to bring my buddy Aaron Schasse along for some photos.
Right off the bat, it’s clear that EagleRider is a big operation in many ways – they have 70 offices in 8 countries: Mexico, Canada, Brazil, the Netherlands, Dubai, Singapore, Australia and of course, the US. The Los Angeles store is their flagship, and it’s big, too. 3 large buildings plus an offsite warehouse contain 50 employees, 2,000 bikes, and multiple departments. This leads me to my first takeaway – EagleRider is more than just rentals. At least at the LAX store, it’s also got what you’d expect from any full service dealership – service, sales, parts/accessories, and surprisingly to me, even merchandise.
As you’d expect, my first stop was to check out the motorcycles.
Many of the rental bikes were outside enjoying the sun – if you’re looking for a full list of what’s available, check out this link (you’ll have to put in your city for exact inventories). Aaron and I decided to check out the Sales Department…
…as well as the Service Department:
Obviously they maintain their own rental bikes, like this BMW R1200GSW, but they’ve also started offering service for bikes owned by the public as well.
That BMW brings me to my second takeaway: though I thought EagleRider was all about Harley-Davidsons, they rent a veritable assortment of bikes. Just in my brief tour, I saw a BMW GS and RT, Honda Goldwing and F6B, even a Triumph Bonneville. Of course, the majority of available bikes are HDs, including an interesting option where you can replicate the path taken in the Easy Rider movie with replicas of the Captain America and Billy Bike:
As noted before, I’m not much of a cruiser guy. But when I was checking out the available bikes, I was almost immediately seduced by the again-back-from-the-dead Indian brand, and decided I had to get myself a Chieftain to goof around with for a few days for a trip I was planning to San Francisco:
A review of that bike will come later (UPDATE: here it is), but for now, I just want to sum up EagleRider. The rental process was easy – once I decided on the Chieftain I had the paperwork done and keys in my hand in just 15 minutes. Anthony was thoughtful and arranged a Chieftain with a backrest (not a standard feature) because he heard I was going 2-up to San Francisco. Really the only issue was that they accidentally gave me two cable locks instead of one!
So if you’re looking to try out a bike before buying it or just to rent one for a trip, I’d recommend EagleRider. You get unlimited mileage, the prices are reasonable (compare the Chieftain at $99/day versus the same bike at MotoQuest Long Beach for $159/day), and the staff was friendly and excited to help me get riding. Give ’em a shot, and drop me a line if you rent from the LA office so we can go conquer Edwards Corner together – just try not to do what this guy did with his Harley Street Glide:
Photos from Aaron Schasse.