Episode 2: Behind the Dyno (The Backstory of Fuel Moto)

In this episode of Fuel Throttle, we go Behind the Dyno and tell the real story of how Fuel Moto came to be.

Whitney Meza sits down with Jamie Long, founder of Fuel Moto, to trace the journey from road racing in the 1990s to building one of the most trusted performance shops in the motorcycle industry. Jamie shares how early experiences in racing, tuning, and dealership management helped shape Fuel Moto’s approach to performance, e-commerce, and customer support — long before most of the industry caught up.

We talk about:

• The early days of tuning, dynos, and motorcycle e-commerce
• Taking the leap to start Fuel Moto in 2004
• Growing from a small rented shop into a 20,000 sq. ft. performance facility
• Why Fuel Moto prioritizes stocking what they sell
• The shift from metric bikes to Harley-Davidson performance
• Serving riders from across the country with fast, focused turnaround
• The role family, integrity, and real data play in Fuel Moto’s success

This episode pulls back the curtain on what makes Fuel Moto different — honesty, experience, and letting the dyno and results speak for themselves.

If you want to understand the philosophy behind the builds, the numbers, and the people, this one’s for you.

Be sure to check out Episode 1 to hear why Fuel Throttle Podcast exists, and follow along as we continue cutting through the noise in motorcycle performance.

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Fuel Throttle podcast. My name is Whitney and I work here at Fuel Moto. If you caught our first episode, you already know that this show is all about cutting through the noise and getting straight into the heart of motorcycle performance. The why, the how, and the people behind it all. 

Today we're doing something a little different. We're pulling back the curtain on how Fuel Moto actually came to be, where it started, how it evolved, and the crazy road that led to where it is today. And who better to walk us through it than the man himself, Jamie Long, here, the founder at Fuel Moto.

So let's start from the top, Jamie. Before Fuel Moto was even a thing, your background was in racing, right?

Yeah, that's really where it all started. I was road racing through the 90s and tuning was just a natural part of that life, at the racetrack, living in out of motor homes and traveling. And you're always trying to squeeze that last bit of performance out of the bike. And after I got out of college, when I was doing there, I worked a few dealerships and eventually came up, manager at a small Honda dealer. And that's really where things started to click.

What kind of dealership are we talking, like a small town?

I actually worked at a few different shops. The first, while I was in college, was a motorcycle service center, salvage and parts place. Then I moved on to a Kawasaki Yamaha Polaris dealership, a very large dealership. I was there a short time. Then I went to a small Honda mom and pop shop. This was in the early 2000s. And back then it was kind of, know, dial up internet, not a lot of technology there. So my first job was to update and upgrade the facility with modern at the time services and computers. And I learned a lot about servers and actually built my first website while I was there. And the bigger thing is I was still new in tuning and such. So I was running the service from it. So I was in a dyno and that was a big part of that, overseeing everything.

I took the parts department with e-commerce from like $5,000 to $50,000 a month, like overnight, and it was pretty crazy.

That's crazy. So I'm guessing that kind of growth came with some growing pains then?

Yeah, the shop wasn't really set up to scale like that. The technology was well outpacing the business and the faculty that was there. And I was also at the same time getting really deep in the tuning, dyno work. And this was kind of like the infancy of e-commerce, especially for motorcycle parts in our industry, wasn't a lot of people doing it that. So I could see something forming and something was happening.

And there was like an intersection between online parts sales, performance tuning and support, which really wasn't happening at all back then.

So you're sitting there juggling racing, dealing with management and new tech. What made you finally take the leap into creating Fuel Moto?

Honestly, it was family: my wife, two kids, and one of the way. Katie was just going to be born and a little later that season after she was born, we took a vacation. I kind of cleared my head out and in between traveling and across the country and work, stressing and what I had going on there, I just decided it's time to put in my notice and do my own thing. So that's where Fuel Moto started.

How did they take that?

Well, the family took it really great because they were like, let's go. And the shop I was working at, they were fully expecting and ready for it. And they were happy for me. And my last day, they bought in pizza and we had a party and everything there. It was pretty cool.

So they knew it was happening. What do the early days of Fuel Moto look like for you?

They were awesome. So our first shop was really cool and I probably should share some pictures one day on social media, but our first building we actually rented it was a Pizza Hut Express. It was like 1500 square feet and had a really good set up though. Had a parts counter in the front and the back was set up like a little shop with all our stuff there. That was really neat. Then we moved from there to a little bigger facility. One more time we actually bought the next building where we are now.

Crazy, so it didn't stay small for long then.

No, it kind of evolved in...

Leaps and bounds and and that's kind of what really happened. Once we really got rolling, we'd come across something else. We found it really early that we wanted to stock what we sold. So it wasn't just drop shipping. We went from 2500 square feet to five thousand and seventy five hundred and then then then in 2019 we built this 20,000 square foot place.

The nice thing when we built the new building, it was great because we had the entirety of everything we do under one roof. We had warehousing, we have tech support, we have offices, we have shipping, receiving, we have a full service department. And of course, we got the dyno. So that was a big part. But always has been the fact that we want to we want to stock what we sell. So it's always been a really special in this day and age where nobody stocks what they sell. They go to a website, and most of the time it's drop shipping. The great majority of the stuff we sell, we actually have the parts on site and that's been a really big part of our success over the years.

Crazy growth. You didn't always start with Harleys then, correct?

It was 100 % metric early on. Japanese and European bikes, sport bikes, because of my racing background, that's kind of was the natural course. Then in 2008, the recession hit. That market took a huge nosedive. And ironically, about a year later, we really started looking at Harley, thinking that was, there was a lot of opportunities, a lot of openings for.

Voids that we could fill that, especially in the tuning and support areas that really, really worked out.

That's awesome.

So most of the bikes that you work on now aren't even local to here in Appleton, Wisconsin, right?

Yeah, I would say probably...

Eight out of 10 bikes that we service and that's everything from say a dyno tune to maintenance to full engine builds, is what we really specialize in. 80% of that stuff for sure comes from hundreds of miles away. Here's an example, we had bikes in this week from New Jersey, Kentucky, and also New York. So that was, that's just in one week. So we see bikes from all over the place and that's really, really what, what separates us is we have a full staff. When you get your bike here, we don't have a lot of bikes on site. Like we're not gonna have 30 bikes taken apart and parts coming from this place. When your bike's here, we got the full staff is that day we are ready and going on your machine. You have everybody's attention to that vehicle and we have a couple of builds going every day and then maybe something on standby.

It's different than having a bunch of bikes apart, people come and go and most people it's a one or two day turnaround. So that doesn't matter if we're just doing a tune or if we're doing a full engine build from the bottom up. Sometimes I mean right even the transmission, transmission crankshaft, full engine. That's usually two and half days or so. So yeah, it's kind of a neat.

The full treatment, they're treated like family almost.

Exactly, a lot of these guys are people that we've worked with for, you know, over 15 years, bringing bikes back. Some people we did over a dozen bikes for, so really it is, it becomes part of our family.

Long-standing for sure. And speaking of family, that's a huge part of the Fuel Moto story. Do you want to kind of elaborate on that?

Yeah, absolutely. This place is absolutely built on family and friends and even the others that aren't family. Right. So Cindy was here from the beginning. When I started in the late summer fall of 2004, she worked a few more months at her job at the school. And then we said, okay, that's enough, hired her on. She was like our first employee. So she was here in the beginning.

Lucas, we actually took him in. He was a toddler. He was two. So we took him and we were took him out of daycare and I was taking work with me every day. So he's literally grew up in the business. Mikayla, she was already in grade school. So work really good because Katie was a newborn. So then after school, Cindy run him home. 

Mikayla was old enough to watch the other two. So she was our caretaker, a lot of times came back to work with us. We literally brought them every day to work. All three of them were here all along. Every move, every shelf that got put together, all that, they helped with all that. 

So a lot of kids on the weekends doing this, that, or the other. After school nights, kids were by us. Were all together working and doing that. So yeah, you could say they grew up in the business, and now they all work here. It's really great. And we've also had other members. Tony is my nephew. He's a little younger than me, and other cousins and people have worked here along the way. Most of our employees have been here a long time. So it's a big part of it and we all get together a few times a year outside of work. I think with the exception of one or two people, the whole company, everybody rides. So that's really, really important.

Absolutely. So from a small town shop to the full blown performance powerhouse that we have here at Fuel Moto now, what's the biggest lesson that you've learned along the way?

Basically, to really evolve and adapt. But along with that, you got to have honesty and integrity. That's really, really been a huge part. You can't fake it. You either know it or you don't. And you got to let the definitive information and data lead the way. And that's something, you know, like with the dynos and the graphs. The stuff we post and all of the work that we put out day in, day out for two decades really helped us stay at the front to where we like to be.

Absolutely. Well said. Thanks, Jamie. Thank you for sharing your story and behind the dyno and giving us the inside look on how Fuel Moto became what it is today.

Yeah, thanks for everybody listening and following. I know a lot of you have been with us for a long time and we really appreciate all that. Whether it's Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, or even just phone calls and face-to-face, we've seen that shows over the years and that. It's really great to have everybody along for this. We really want to keep everybody engaged in what's real in the industry, not some of the chatter and background noise we keep talking about. 

We see on internet and Facebook groups and that kind of stuff, it really helps. I appreciate everybody following. If you want to go back and catch episode one for why the podcast exists, there's a little more to it there. It sets the stage for what we're doing here. Next time, I'm going to sit down with Lucas in our next episode and we're going to dig into a few of the more common myths, what's true, what's hype, and what you really need to do to bolt your next combination together.

Make sure you follow the Fuel Throttle Podcast wherever you listen. And as always, we'll catch you next time.