Yelling over a blaring radio and a pounding hammer, Thomas Taylor said, “I’ve gotta get this done. I’ve got $15,000 riding on this.”
The Starkville Choppers owner was running low on time and could not get a gear back on the clutch hub of a Harley Davidson motorcycle he was working on.
“There’s got to be a better way to do this,” Thomas said. Sparks flew up as he ground away on the gear to loosen it up enough to fit over the hub.
About that time, three more people entered the small garage and took in the sights of hand-painted motorcycles, gleaming chrome parts and oil-covered tools.
Business has taken off for Thomas, who is also a Mississippi State University industrial technology major. He joked that when he graduates he will become a “maintenance man with a degree.”
“I’m almost finished with my degree,” he said. “I knew if I ever took a break I wouldn’t go back.”
Even though he doesn’t have his degree yet, Thomas started his custom motorcycle business nearly a year ago.
“I started out just fixing up bikes in my garage,” he said.
The concept of Starkville Choppers actually started out as an inside joke.
“One night I went to Taco Bell with my roommate,” he said. “When we got the receipt he drew the maltese cross on the back along with the words ‘Starkville Choppers.'”
That summer, Thomas had stickers made with the logo. He and his friends put them on their cars and handed them out.
“A while after that, I was painting my bike in my garage at home and I got my first paying customer,” he said.
A construction worker saw Thomas painting his own Harley. The man’s bike was rusted, so Thomas offered to paint it for him.
Now the idea that started out as a joke has become a full-time job for the college senior.
“I am Starkville Choppers,” Thomas said. “It is kind of like cutting hair. If you enjoy cutting hair, then you’re gonna cut hair. That’s how my motorcycle business is. I’ll be building bikes for the rest of my life.”
Thomas said he has enjoyed motorcycles since he was 13 years old. He bought his first bike from a friend for $40 when he was in the eighth grade.
“It was a piece of junk,” he said. “It was a Honda 70 dirt bike.”
It ran for about a month before it died.
He bought another bike shortly after that, but his father, Richard, made him take it back.
“When I was in college at MSU my roommate had a motorcycle, and one night I wrecked it,” Richard said. “I always told Tom that if he wanted to know what a motorcycle wreck felt like then I would throw him out the back of my truck while driving 40 miles an hour.”
It wasn’t until just before starting college that Thomas bought his next bike, and now he has two. His father said he still isn’t fond of the bikes, but Thomas finds support from other members of his family.
“Tom’s mother has always thought that motorcycles were fun. She’s always been a lot more supportive of them than I have,” Richard said. “Also, my father- Tom’s grandfather-rode motorcycles in the 1940s when he was in the military. So, he and Tom enjoy talking about them a lot.”
Thomas honed his mechanical skills while growing up on a farm in Tunica.
“Whenever I tore something up, my old man was usually too busy to help me fix it, and I couldn’t afford to have it fixed by anyone else,” Thomas said. “I kind of just taught myself by doing.”
Thomas also taught himself to paint. He said he watched someone else paint a bike from start to finish, then started practicing on his own.
To help out with the business aspect of opening his own shop, Thomas took business law, communication and accounting classes at MSU.
“All of the stuff I learned in those classes wasn’t practical education. It was just textbook material,” he said. “My advice on starting a business is to get a lawyer and have him explain everything.”
Thomas takes pride in the fact that he has not had to take out a loan for his business.
“Starting a business is not the hard part,” he said. “The hard part is keeping that business open.”
“I don’t really have employees, just people who help me out,” he added.
Adam Folmer, a Pennsylvania native, is one of those people. He and Thomas met when they were both members of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.
“Thomas is just easy-going and easy to get along with,” Folmer said. “He’s always open to other people’s ideas.”
In the short time that Starkville Choppers has been in business, Thomas said he has already customized seven bikes.
“It all depends on what you want,” he said. “You can spend from $500 to $5,000, or anything over that, just on one bike.”
“I’ve got about $20,000 invested in that one,” he added, pointing to a black Harley Davidson with green flames. The body of the bike was sitting on a table in the shop, but the engine had been taken out. Thomas said he was still working on it.
“The reason I have this shop is for a place to work on my own bikes,” he said. “I just happen to work on other people’s things to pay the rent. By helping them out, I’m helping myself out.”
“The bad part about working on other people’s bikes is that I get busy and then it’s hard to find time to work on my own stuff,” he added.
On average it takes him about two weeks to complete a job, but a job that requires work from the ground up could take from three months to a year.
“I build a certain kind of bike,” Thomas said. “I build them like I would like them. I wouldn’t build something that didn’t look good to me.”