Building Our Motorcycle Tour Company in South America: Mistakes We’ve Made – And Learned From

Ecuador Freedom started more than a decade ago as a small scooter and bicycle rental shop in Cuenca, Ecuador. Since then, we’ve grown into an award-winning motorcycle tour and rental company in Quito with a fleet of more than fifty adventure motorcycles and thousands of tour departures behind us.

But the road to get here has been every bit as twisty as the Andean roads we ride and, at times, just as rough as the trails.

We made mistakes while figuring out how to build and operate a motorcycle tour company in Ecuador. Some were expensive. Some were painful. A few were embarrassing. But every one of them taught us something that helped make Ecuador Freedom better.

So rather than hide the bloopers, we figured we’d share them. If you’re building a motorcycle business, organizing tours, or simply curious about what goes on behind the scenes, here are some of the lessons we learned the hard way.

Using KTMs in Our Motorcycle Rental Fleet

Ecuador offers virtually unlimited off-road riding, so in the beginning we figured KTM motorcycles would be a natural fit for our fleet.

Ready to race, right?

Maybe. But we learned that what works brilliantly as a high-performance off-road motorcycle does not necessarily make the best rental and touring motorcycle.

Our bikes need to take a beating and keep going. They have to handle pavement, dirt, altitude, bad weather, long tours, and riders with very different weights, riding styles, and skill levels.

For our operation, motorcycles such as the Suzuki DR650, Triumph Tigers, Husqvarnas, and Hondas proved better suited to that job than the KTMs we had in our fleet.

Our experience with those KTMs included broken chassis associated with poor welding, fuel-tank problems that created dangerous situations, and other mechanical issues. Unfortunately, the support we received from our local KTM representative also fell short of what we needed.

When customers are hundreds of kilometers from Quito, reliability matters more to us than a specification sheet or race pedigree. We’re committed to providing the most dependable motorcycles we can, and removing KTM from our fleet was one of the decisions we made to achieve that.

Hard Motorcycle Luggage Systems

In the beginning, we equipped our motorcycles with hard luggage systems. We thought aluminum panniers and top boxes would give riders more convenience, protection, and easy packing.

Then the bikes started falling over.

We quickly learned that hard luggage could create more problems than it solved. Aluminum panniers add weight and width to a motorcycle, can affect handling, and can become an injury hazard when a rider’s leg gets caught underneath one during a fall.

They were also expensive to repair and replace. A relatively minor tip-over could leave a customer facing a $700–$800 replacement bill.

We eventually switched to Mosko Moto soft luggage systems, and we never looked back.

The bags are durable, waterproof, relatively lightweight, easy to remove from the motorcycle, and much easier for us to clean, repair, and prepare for the next rider. When a bike goes down, the tough fabric construction can often be repaired without sticking the customer with the cost of replacing an entire hard pannier.

For the kind of riding we do in Ecuador, soft luggage simply works better.

Not Having Our Motorcycle Maintenance Center 100% Under Our Control

Some of the most important work in a motorcycle tour and rental company happens where customers never see it.

Fleet maintenance is one of those jobs.

Early on, we learned that relying too heavily on outside shops made it harder to control quality, turnaround time, costs, and the maintenance history of every motorcycle.

Bringing that work in-house changed everything.

Today, we have a fully equipped Maintenance Center at Ecuador Freedom headquarters where our own staff inspect motorcycles, perform routine service, troubleshoot problems, and make repairs.

We also track the fleet closely so maintenance can be proactive rather than reactive. After thousands of tour departures and millions of kilometers of riding, we have a pretty good idea which components need attention before they turn into a problem somewhere in the Andes or Amazon.

We still use local dealerships when warranty work or specialized dealer service is appropriate, but responsibility for the condition of the fleet stays with us.

If our name is on the motorcycle, we need to know exactly what is happening to it.

Hiring Motorcycle Racing Champions as Guides

This lesson didn’t take long.

Great motorcycle riders do not necessarily make great motorcycle tour guides.

When we started, we hired motocross champions because we assumed riding ability was the most important qualification. We quickly learned otherwise. Customers came back injured, motorcycles came back smashed up, and riders were spending more time trying to keep up than actually experiencing Ecuador.

Our tour guides certainly need to be capable riders, but that’s only the beginning.

They also need leadership skills, extensive local knowledge, patience, empathy, good judgment, and the ability to manage a group containing different personalities and riding abilities.

Once we started working with guides who cared as much about the riders’ experience as their own riding, everything changed.

The best guide isn’t necessarily the person doing the biggest wheelie.

It’s the person making sure everybody else is having a great day.

IT Glitches

There are few things more annoying than filling out a “Contact Us” form and never hearing back.

For about two years, our website was sometimes doing exactly that.

Our contact form was quietly throwing away some submissions, which meant people were trying to reach us and we never knew about it.

That one hurt because from the customer’s perspective, it looked like we simply couldn’t be bothered to respond.

If you tried contacting us during that period and never received a reply, we’re sorry. We eventually discovered the problem and fixed it.

The lesson was painfully obvious in hindsight: never assume an automated system is working simply because nobody has complained that it isn’t.

Choosing Our Name and Trusting Competition Would Be Fair

We named the company “Ecuador Freedom Bike Rental” because, frankly, when we started we didn’t know whether we were going to rent more bicycles or motorcycles.

But the name also reflected why we started the company in the first place.

We loved riding through South America and wanted other riders to experience that same sense of freedom.

We were among the first motorcycle rental companies to offer unlimited mileage. That may seem normal today, but at the time even large rental companies such as EagleRider charged for mileage.

We wanted riders to have the freedom to explore.

Over the following years, we worked hard to build the Ecuador Freedom name. We invited journalists to Ecuador, attended and sponsored rallies and motorcycle shows abroad, and spent years promoting Ecuador as a motorcycle destination.

We watched other motorcycle tour and rental companies appear along the way, and that never bothered us. Competition is healthy. We have always been willing to cooperate with local mechanics, guides, hotels, tour operators, and other partners because a stronger motorcycle travel industry benefits everyone.

What we weren’t prepared for was another company copying three-fourths of our name, adopting a similar color scheme and communications and video style, and even using names similar to some of our tours.

That went beyond ordinary competition. It created real confusion.

We saw repeat customers get fooled into thinking they were dealing with Ecuador Freedom. We saw the reputation and goodwill we had spent years building being used in ways that made it harder for customers to tell one business from another.

That was especially frustrating because building the Ecuador Freedom brand had taken years of relentless work: bringing journalists here, traveling internationally to promote Ecuador, supporting motorcycle events, developing routes, producing videos and articles, and convincing riders that this small country deserved a place on the adventure-motorcycling map.

You can’t assume competitors will always operate the way you would.

Our lesson was to choose a distinctive name, register and protect it wherever possible, monitor how it is being used, and pay attention when another business starts getting a little too close for comfort.

Competition can make everybody better. Confusing customers by imitating somebody else’s identity is something entirely different.

Choosing Our HQ

When we decided to build the company in Ecuador, we originally chose Cuenca.

It seemed like a great idea. Cuenca is a beautiful colonial city in the Andes, surrounded by excellent riding, and we still bring riders there on tours for a rest day.

But there was a problem.

Cuenca doesn’t have the kind of international air connections our customers needed. Most riders first had to arrive in Quito or Guayaquil and then make another connection or ground transfer before they could even get to us.

That added friction to every trip.

So we packed up and moved Ecuador Freedom to Quito, where we had access to better infrastructure and a major international airport nearby.

Cuenca was a great place to ride.

Quito was a better place to run an international motorcycle business.

Buying Used Motorcycles

When we were starting out, buying used motorcycles seemed like a smart way to build the fleet without spending a fortune.

We figured that if we maintained them properly, they would serve us well.

That assumption didn’t survive long.

With a used motorcycle, you don’t always know how it was ridden, how it was maintained, what happened to it before you bought it, or which problem is waiting to appear three thousand kilometers later.

That might be acceptable for your own motorcycle.

It’s a different story when you’re handing the keys to a customer and sending them across Ecuador.

Today, we buy our motorcycles new and maintain them through our in-house Maintenance Center with full-time professional motorcycle mechanics.

That means we know each motorcycle’s history from day one. After millions of kilometers of fleet experience, we’ve also learned when components such as bearings, rings, filters, and other wear items need attention before they turn into roadside problems.

For us, knowing a motorcycle’s entire history is worth far more than whatever money we might save buying it used.

Eight Mistakes, Eight Better Decisions

Some of these mistakes cost us money. Some cost us motorcycles. Others cost us time, sleep, and a fair amount of patience.

But every one of them changed the way we run Ecuador Freedom today.

We buy new motorcycles because we learned what used-bike surprises can cost. We maintain the fleet ourselves because we learned how important control is. We choose guides for judgment and people skills, not trophies. We use soft luggage because we’ve seen what happens when hard panniers hit the ground.

None of those lessons came from a business book. We learned them by running motorcycles through Ecuador year after year, through thousands of tour departures and millions of kilometers, and fixing the things that didn’t work.

That experience is now built into every motorcycle we prepare and every tour we send out.