Lehman Trikes of Spearfish, maker of three-wheeled motorcycles, is rolling out of town and will close its local operation and take a dozen jobs with it, the company's CEO said.
Expansion into Asian markets and logistics associated with that move has prompted Champion Trikes to close its Lehman Trikes location in Spearfish, the company’s CEO Craig L. Arrojo, of Champion Investments Inc. and Champion Trikes said.
Arrojo said his company would transition out of the Spearfish location in the next couple months and relocate operations to its 43,000-square-foot facility in Garden Grove, Calif.
Because the Spearfish operation is landlocked in the middle of the country, it made it difficult to service overseas markets, Arrojo said.
“We had to make some changes because of economics and logistics,” Arrojo said. “We’re sad that we couldn’t get the motorcycle side to work.”
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In addition to the Lehman Trike facility in Spearfish, Champion also operates a firearms manufacturing division. Champion Arms will remain operational in Spearfish in a smaller machine shop building on Industrial Drive which the company also owns, Arrojo said.
Champion’s transition of the trike operation to California has been ongoing, Arrojo said. The final push to closure of the facility will mean 12 local people will lose their jobs.
Bryan Walker, executive director of Spearfish Economic Development, said his office has worked to connect the local South Dakota Job Service office with officials at Lehman Trikes.
“We are disappointed to hear that circumstances outside of our control ultimately led to the company’s decision to close their Spearfish facility,” Walker said. “Our goal now is to help those displaced workers find employment opportunities in the area.”
Lehman Trikes began in 1984, in John Lehman's garage in Alberta, Canada, with a project to build a three-wheel motorcycle for his wife.
In 1985, Lehman Industries was birthed as a fiberglass fabricator of canoes and truck sleepers. Limited production of three-wheeled conversions of various Honda and Harley-Davidson motorcycles followed.
Orders for the trikes began to pour in, and in 1993, a new partnership between John Lehman and Larry Strilchuk resulted in the formation of Lehman Trikes, Inc. of Canada. Production began in earnest in a factory in Alberta making conversion kits for Hondas, Harleys and later Suzukis.
In 2004, Lehman Trikes moved its manufacturing operations to Spearfish. In 2008, the company entered into a three-year supplier agreement with Harley-Davidson to manufacturer the Tri-Glide Trike, the first three-wheeled motorcycle introduced by Harley-Davidson.
In a major blow to Lehman Trikes, in January of 2010, Harley-Davidson officials announced that Harley would no longer use the Spearfish-based manufacturer to assemble its trikes. Harley-Davidson officials said the move was due to the motorcycle company's restructuring its York, Penn., operations.
Lehman founder John K. Lehman, who had been inducted into the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2009 for his visionary work on creating trikes, died in January of 2012 at the age of 60. The business closed operations in Spearfish in March of that year.
In June of 2012, Champion Investments, Inc., purchased Lehman Trikes USA. They continued to operate under the Lehman moniker.
Champion officials said, at the time, they would rehire as many former Lehman employees as possible, with an initial goal of 50 employees and eventual expansion of up to 100. They manufactured full trikes for Kawasaki and trike conversion kits for Kawasaki, Victory, Harley-Davidson, Honda and Suzuki.
They even sponsored a “Trike Tuesday” at the Sturgis motorcycle rally in 2014. Arrojo said they still would have a presence at this year’s motorcycle rally.
Arrojo lauded the work done by Walker and officials with the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development in an attempt to keep Lehman operational.
“People out there are great,” he said. “They did everything they could to keep that facility open.”