Are Trek Made In USA

"Paulie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

I think the lower-end bikes are made in China/Taiwan. The
more expensive models are US-built.

hippy

hippy said:

"Paulie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

I think the lower-end bikes are made in China/Taiwan. The
more expensive models are US-built.

hippy

I was told the same thing by my LBS.

Paulie said:

Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

I think some are. I have a Trek 700 multitrack that was made in China.

"Paulie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

Their aluminium frames are made in Taiwan/China, carbon frames in USA.

The mystique is 'Made in USA' for all their bikes 🙂

Steve @ IDEAL

"Tony" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Paulie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Are Trek bikes made in USA ?

Their aluminium frames are made in Taiwan/China, carbon frames in USA.

I've got a Trek 8500 hardtail mountain bike and that was made in the U.S.

but I know people that have 'cheaper' trek 4500 MTB trek and this is NOT made in the U.S.

I think trek have done a pretty good PR job as everybody thinks they are buying a US made bike

bag_head said:

I've got a Trek 8500 hardtail mountain bike and that was made in the U.S.

but I know people that have 'cheaper' trek 4500 MTB trek and this is NOT made in the U.S.

I think trek have done a pretty good PR job as everybody thinks they are buying a US made bike

Hang on, aren't we being just a tiny bit racist here? Surely what we are reacting against is sloppy quality control, not the different racial/national characteristics/locations of the workers who actually lay their hands on the materials, and who the factories get their rubbish collected by? A lot of the workers in American hazardous materials work come from Mexico/Chile/Costa Rica et c. because the health effects of fumes from welding exotic metals, bonding epoxy resins and the like make the more economically able (read white, middle class, networked) US citizen choose more congenial lines of employment. Only the engineering/management staff need to be especially highly skilled to get a fairly consistent outcome of product. They can be of any nationality.

Sure, the US and Europe used to have a monopoly on high tech materials science, due mainly to the big budgets pumped into their military by public and private funding, swords got beaten into ploughshares, and now the same science that used to make a landing gear strut for a supersonic jet fighter makes the seat tube for your bike. Most of the workers at Lightspeed and Moots and Merlin learnt how to TIG weld at various US military contractors, they at the time being the only people who could to afford to process titanium for the USAF and NASA. Skills were transferred via the insatiable search for ever cheaper labour, and now China/Taiwan has upskilled from the point of brass welding heavy guage waterpipe to flawlessly TIGging alloy and titanium, and laying up epoxy/carbon mixtures to the point that Bianchi (gasp!) gets many of their composite forks and rear ends made up there. All you need is a Autocad file and a spec sheet, a colour chart and a delivery date, and you can get what you want from any one of a hundred companies.
How is Trek different from Nike, in this respect? Does the fact that these highly skilled technicians live in Asia justify them being paid 1/10 or less the money that their fellow fitters and turners/welders/fabricators/assemblers get paid in Italy or the USA? And why is an Italian or US component inherently superior to a Taiwanese-sourced one? Could it be that Taiwan is the centre of the world's bike industry now, and we arrogant westies just assume that we've got the drop on it because of our neo-colonial globalisation free-trade World Bank IMF whosimajiggy?

Tom Ritchey's products are a case in point. He designs his products intelligently, gets them made offshore in a well-run manufacturing facility where the workers are paid over the odds and treated well, and best-practice quality control is in place with evolutionary, shop-floor/testing driven product improvement. I know I sound like an ad for Ritchey, but if all manufacturers operated like this, we'd have less black magic [censored] being spun about what we ride, and more honest and informed choice uncluttered by sacred lineages of arrogant cycling dynasties. I used to adore Cinelli, like any other kid growing up riding bikes in the 70s/80s, but two things turn me off them now. Once, I bought an XA stem, and the sharp edge of the clamp slot, gave me a really deep cut on my thumb. I can see the scar as I type. The XA at the time had been demoted as their pro level stem to wannabe level (me), so I suppose it didn't merit as much attention. If they'd bothered to take 5 seconds more trouble at the end of the polishing process to round that off, I'd not be bagging them now. Well, that and the fact their "cork" (read 'polyurethane with cork flecks'😉 tape has torn more often on installation than any other that I've used. They are really stingy with how much they give you as well, so if you are taping 44cm bars, you'd better be really careful, with minimal overlap.

I don't want to pour a can of [censored] over Cinelli in particular, but these examples and more I've heard/seen indicate that unless you want to spend big bucks on many European/US brands, you get whatever they choose to give you, and they assume that you should trust them to know what's best for you. A two-tier system. But because they have been sourcing their cheaper parts from China/Taiwan, does that mean their low-end stuff is now better? Hmm . . . 😕

Go third party with a clear acknowledgement of who they are and what they do, is my position. Why is Giant so successful? Coz they say what they are. Tom Ritchey makes no bones that he gets his stuff made in Taiwan. Unlike GT, cynically using the bones of Syncros to add some marketing gloss to whatever they gan buy cheap for OEM, with no independent attestation of whether it is any good or not. Syncros =good (then) so Syncros (whatever we choose to call Syncros now)=good (now). So effectively, Syncros=nothing

M"no place for marketing [censored] on bikes, it's too heavy"H

p.s. sorry about running on a bit . . . I get all heated up about QC issues . . .

mfhor wrote -

Quoted message said:

Hang on, aren't we being just a tiny bit racist here? Surely what we
are reacting against is sloppy quality control, not the different
racial/national characteristics/locations of the workers who actually
lay their hands on the materials, <snip>

I can well remember in the early 60's that Japanese goods (cars, cameras)
were slandered as being vastly inferior to their English or US
competitors - and we were told they were cheaper than European or US
products because of "cheap (read shoddy) labour".

Can't see too many English car manufacturers left whilst Toyota looks like
displacing GM as the worlds biggest car maker - snobbishness about country
of origin has no place in the evaluation of a product.

The really interesting thing is what mainland China is going to do the
worlds manufacturers. You don't necessarily need the biggest military to
dominate the globe anymore - as Western consumer societies running
consistently negative trade balances have made ourselves incredibly
vulnerable to having our trade deficits financed by Asian countries. Watch
that trend continue.

I do like my Trek - and I'm not fussed where they made it.

best, Andrew

"Andrew Price" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]

[...]

Quoted message said:

I can well remember in the early 60's that Japanese goods (cars,
cameras) were slandered as being vastly inferior to their English or
US competitors - and we were told they were cheaper than European or
US products because of "cheap (read shoddy) labour".

It was no slander. Jap then really was [censored]. They improved their quality
control over time but pretending their manufactured products were not
inferior in the 60s is to rewrite history.

--

A: Top-posters.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

DRS said:

"Andrew Price" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]

[...]

Quoted message said:

I can well remember in the early 60's that Japanese goods (cars,
cameras) were slandered as being vastly inferior to their English or
US competitors - and we were told they were cheaper than European or
US products because of "cheap (read shoddy) labour".

It was no slander. Jap then really was [censored]. They improved their quality
control over time but pretending their manufactured products were not
inferior in the 60s is to rewrite history.

--

A: Top-posters.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

Well, no longer. Western companies demand their cake to eat in and take away as well. "Lift your game or your competitor down the road gets the contract" is the mantra western product directors have on loop-replay when they go into meetings in Asia. Gradually, through a process of "continuous improvement", Hsin Lung (Cane Creek, Truvativ, Dice, Raceface, Profile, FSA, Syntace, Kalloy, Kore et c, et c) can kick Italian/French/US [censored] every way to Sunday.

M "Euro-snob? Moi?" H

mfhor said:

Well, no longer. Western companies demand their cake to eat in and take away as well. "Lift your game or your competitor down the road gets the contract" is the mantra western product directors have on loop-replay when they go into meetings in Asia. Gradually, through a process of "continuous improvement", Hsin Lung (Cane Creek, Truvativ, Dice, Raceface, Profile, FSA, Syntace, Kalloy, Kore et c, et c) can kick Italian/French/US [censored] every way to Sunday.

M "Euro-snob? Moi?" H

Not only can they kick ass, I think you'll find they're making a lot of the 'italian', 'french' and 'US' bits of equipment too.

How to run a bike company: Repaint. Rebadge. Market. Market. Lie. Market.

DRS wrote -

Quoted message said:

It was no slander. Jap then really was [censored]. They improved their quality
control over time but pretending their manufactured products were not
inferior in the 60s is to rewrite history.

Oh yeah - how about -

the Honda 750 / 4 vs any of the British bikes - who survived that contest ?

a Sony transistor radio vs the valve jobs then sold?

affordable 35mm SLR cameras compared to the cost of what came from Europe?

None of these things was ideal by today's standards - but it did knock the
then
competition into a cocked hat.

My point was that we do not perceive early enough how we are being targeted,
and the Chinese are going to repeat the Japanese experience but to much
greater effect and significance.

best, Andrew

g'day,

'sigh'...i thought it was a relatively straight forward question. It appears not. ya gotta love people who take every opportunity to quote there political 'manefestos' at ya!. Now where were we...???

cheers,
Hitchy

Hitchy said:

g'day,

'sigh'...i thought it was a relatively straight forward question. It appears not. ya gotta love people who take every opportunity to quote there political 'manefestos' at ya!. Now where were we...???

cheers,
Hitchy

Well, don't you want to know *why*? Bike manufacturing is just a small part of manufacturing practices in general - and cameras, motorbikes and fishing reels all bear some resemblance to bike parts - which are some industries from which bike part manufacturers recruit their staff. You don't think that everyone who drives a TIG welder or milling machine at China Bicycle Corporation is a hard core gnarly dude downhiller on a sabbatical, do you? 😉

M "bits of metal and plastic that work harmoniously together" H