The Complete Handbook of Bicycles
For Professionals, Businesses, and Serious Enthusiasts Who Need to Understand, Select, Maintain, and Profit from Bicycles
by Alumigogo Books
non-fiction
The practical, no-nonsense guide to understanding bicycles, choosing the right one, maintaining it, and building a business around them.
About this book
Whether you're a bike shop owner, a fleet manager, a serious competitor, or someone considering bicycles as a business opportunity, you need to understand the actual mechanics, specifications, and trade-offs that define this category—not marketing claims.
This handbook covers the complete lifecycle: what a bicycle actually is and how its systems interact; which types and specifications matter for different uses; how to choose correctly for your specific situation; installation and daily operation; routine maintenance and real troubleshooting; the brands and business models that work; where the category is headed; and answers to the questions professionals actually ask.
Written for people who want concrete knowledge over hype, this is the reference you'll return to when you need to make a decision, diagnose a problem, or understand the landscape.
Reader Reviews
Angela Robinson
★★★★★I appreciate the no-nonsense approach and the way Chapter 1 actually explains how a bicycle works mechanically rather than just listing parts. But I'm a casual rider, not a shop owner, and a lot of the later chapters assume you're running a business or doing serious competitive cycling. Still useful, but it's definitely written for a specific audience—read the intro carefully to see if that's you.
Kimberly Lee
★★★★★This is exactly what I needed before opening my own repair shop. The early chapters lay out the actual mechanics clearly, and by Chapter 6 it's giving you real business models and where to find suppliers. My only quibble is that some of the regulations and certification stuff in Chapter 7 could've gone deeper, but as a practical reference it's solid.
Steven Moore
★★★★★I run a small bike rental company and I've been piecing together knowledge from a dozen different sources for years. This handbook pulls it all together—specification trade-offs, maintenance intervals, diagnostics, even the business-side stuff about fleet management. The Chapter 1 explanation of how frames and components interact finally made sense of conversations I've been having with suppliers.
Kimberly Nelson
★★★★★Impressive depth and genuinely no marketing fluff. The Chapter 1 mechanics section was clear enough that I understood why certain trade-offs matter, and the troubleshooting sections are practical—I've already used the drivetrain diagnostics to fix an issue I would've paid a shop to handle. Highly recommend if you're serious about this category.