Worksman is America’s oldest bicycle manufacturer. When the company started, William McKinley was president.
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One hundred nineteen years later, the crew is still building beauties like the old-school beach cruiser we photographed for our. (We recommend it to anyone who will listen.
The Sportsman Flyer is a favorite of ours, too.) It’s the no-bullshit design that moves us, but the man who founded the company, a Russian immigrant named Morris Worksman, originally built them for function, not summer beach. One of Worksman's street vendor carts in NYC. That’s right, Worksman has always made bikes for workmen. If you've ever seen a street-vending cart in New York City, you've probably seen a Worksman towing it. And what's really special about each and every single bike, trike, hot dog cart, or specialty cycle they've ever made is that it's 100 percent made in America at a factory in South Carolina. When we reached the man who owns Worksman these days, Wayne Sosin, he treated us to a brief history of the bicycle. Unsurprisingly, staking claim to the title “oldest bicycle manufacturer in America” is no small feat.
For years, even though their most consistent clientele came from factories and food vendors, Worksman was also in competition with brands like Schwinn and Huffy for the hearts and dollars of the general public. In the ’80s and ’90s, those brands began producing millions of low-priced bikes for big-box stores like Sears and JC Penney. “The pressure to lower prices was so great that virtually every single bike manufacturer with any substance or history left,” said Sosin. Now, he says, Schwinn is just a name, and Huffys are made in China. “Even though we’re old and very specialized, we're the only ones left.” Bloomberg Bloomberg These welders are actually “brazing,” a low-temperature weld where rods of brass are melted into the lugs and joints. When the brass hardens, the frame becomes one massive one-piece frame. The Good Humor ice cream company put Worksman on the map in the early 1900s by commissioning tricycles that could tote around iceboxes during the summer.
After that, Worksman went from being locally known to being a national force. In fact, Worksman survived because they’re old and very specialized. They’ve moved their main factory from New York to South Carolina, but haven't forfeited any of their Brooklyn swagger. Customers know that when they buy a Worksman, they might not be getting a teched-out two-wheeler made from a NASA-grade carbon fiber of the future, but they're getting a bike that will last. (Some of the brand's most loyal clients are people with special needs or disabilities, who need something they can truly depend on, Sosin says.) Visit the Worksman website—which, like the company itself is long on functionality and short on whiz-bang—to build yourself a bike, customizing everything from the color to the saddle to the pedals and the front drum brake. Onone perfect resize 75 crack keymaker x force 1.