American IronHorse halts motorcycle production

[TexasRed]

No surprise given the economy :???:

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In a proactive move to counter the uncertain American motorcycle market American IronHorse has temporarily halted production and laid off employees to stave off overproduction and overloading it's dealer network.

According to an interview given by the company's President and CEO Buck Hendrickson (pictured right) to trade periodical Dealernews, American IronHorse is still in business and is moving out on-hand inventory.

"Things are little slow right now so I'm not going to add to my dealers' problems by having them take more bikes. I'm not going to spend money I don't need to spend to build bikes that are gonna sit in inventory for a while," Hendrickson says. "We just took a couple of weeks down."

He also acknowledged that the company has made temporary lay-offs in the face of the production stoppage.


A letter sent by Hendrickson to dealers shortly after a story regarding the closure was posted on custom builder Cyril Huze's popular industry insider blog states that the company is not in bankruptcy, nor has it abandoned its dealers.

Citing problems of overproduction and excess dealer inventory industry-wide, the letter says "As a manufacturer, if we do not take action to prevent a repeat of a problem, we are committing a huge injustice to each of you, and to ourselves."

Rumors are circulating that a Dallas-based group seriously considering buying American IronHorse, with a source claiming the group is vetting the OE's operations and could announce a sale as early as March.

For now, the company is working to reduce its building and material costs and at the same time, looking to various financial institutions to help with financing. It's widely thought that expensive motorcycles were bought by buyers using equity loans on their homes. With the subprime lending collapse and falling home values many feel the dip in motorcycle sales has been accelerated.

Although Buck Hendrickson admits the motorcycle market may take a while to rebound, he's still optimistic. "We're looking at trying to be open back up some time in the middle or the third week of February."

[curley725]

They are also experiancing a lot of warranty problems at this time and are not honoring them... Because of this the lending instatutions are not lending on those bikes at all... Other cookie cutter choppers are having the same lending problems at Texas chopper such as Saxon, Bigdog... The lenders will not write a lone on them unless the customer comes up with a minimum of 10 Grand up front and then it's iffie depending on their credit rating... There are also some models of Biggog that are not even inspectable in the state of Texas due to lighting....

Curley

[d.n.f.]

supply and demand. Methinks a lot of these companies will go bust.

[GzrGldGeo]

I have found that when people don't have jobs, they have credit problems. They also can't buy Iron Horses, Cars, Houses, etc ect.

People keep thinking this economy is going to bounce like it always has.

I hope like hell I am wrong, but the lack of jobs has gotten to the point of causing a lack of jobs and I really don't see anything that we do here that can't be done somewhere else. We have to make too much money compared to people who shit in the backyard.

I ask any of you to point out the silver lining. We don't make shit, can't export shit, have to import all the shit, and if you have a job working for somebody else it doesn't pay shit and I am afraid it will get a lot worst before it gets better.

The jobs and good paying jobs are the root of this recession. Recessions in the past, other than the great depression, were mostly inflation and/or interest rates. This one is the loss of good jobs.

Please again, anyone give me that silver lining. How is this going to play out well and 75K - 100K jobs are plentiful again?

I assume that these companies going bankrupt have to layoff employees and those employees will have a hard time making house payments ect and then it will be reported as a credit crisis.

BULLSHIT!! I am calling BULLSHIT!!

:ass:

[Blackpearlultra]

Our plant builds the frames for all light duty and heavy duty GM trucks. We have drooped our production quite drastically due to so many trucks sitting on GM's lots. With GM reporting huge losses it kinda leaves me with an un-easy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know I will be cutting back on personal spending until this turns around again.