Choosing a Used Motorcycle

Fang Bai had been studying English for a month, and he hadn't expected such a big improvement.

His plan was to memorize thirty to forty words a day. After a month, combined with what he already knew, he could say he'd mastered most of the vocabulary for high school students.

It wasn't that he was a great learner—it was that the English exams of this era were much simpler compared to later years. The reading comprehension rarely had tricky questions.

That was why Fang Bai scored so high. He was really just coasting on basic knowledge, taking advantage of the times.

In an instant, his classmates saw him as a top student, not the trash they'd thought he was.

He hadn't expected one exam to completely change how his classmates saw him.

The morning after turning in the test papers, he had the part-time college student dismantle the remaining TV casings so he could analyze the faults and mark them.

The unusable broken casings, wires, and other TV parts were piled up in stacks. Fang Bai told his father to take them to the scrap recycling station—even a little money was still money.

Save wherever you can, even if it's just one yuan.

But when it came to things worth spending on, Fang Bai wasn't stingy.

That kind of spending mindset was pure Wen City businessman thinking, though Fang Bai was a bit more generous.

After lunch, he planned to take a bus back to T City for his second round of purchasing TV e-waste.

For this trip, he brought forty thousand yuan in his backpack. He also stuffed conspicuous valuables like his pager into the bag, and dressed fairly plainly.

From the outside, he looked like an ordinary young man. On the bus, he even read a math book, acting like a student—nothing like someone with money.

Traveling alone in this era, looking like a rich man was asking for trouble.

He wore sneakers, ready to bolt at any moment.

If things looked bad, he'd run. Making money in this era was easy, but it wasn't easy either.

A little after one in the afternoon, Fang Bai boarded a bus from Oubei Bus Station and arrived in T City around three.

Picking out TVs took a long time, and time was tight. He had no chance to select TVs that afternoon—he'd have to stay overnight in T City.

He planned to pick out motorcycles that afternoon. Two or three hours would be enough for that, and he'd choose the TVs tomorrow.

This time, Fang Bai wanted a larger quantity of TVs—around five hundred units—with the majority being 21-inch color TVs.

For transport, he'd still use a 9.6-meter box truck, which could hold exactly five hundred TVs. Any more and it wouldn't fit.

After several rounds of sales, Fang Bai had a good sense of the spending power of Wen City locals.

29-inch color TVs priced at two to three thousand yuan sold well too, but if there were too many, the market would saturate quickly.

Plus, 29-inch TVs were relatively scarce.

14-inch and 17-inch black-and-white TVs were cheap and easy to sell, but they didn't make much profit.

14-inch and 21-inch color TVs were also very popular and were the main market.

But he couldn't just pick color TVs. Many customers couldn't afford a 14-inch color TV at over three hundred yuan and had to settle for cheap black-and-white ones.

So, while he'd pick mostly color TVs, he'd also need some black-and-white ones.

After leaving T City bus station, Fang Bai took a rickshaw to Dagangyou Solid Waste Recycling Company. The rickshaw driver said this metal recycling company was very powerful locally and had a lot of used motorcycles.

Fang Bai had never stopped thinking about motorcycles. If his family had one, it would make it easier for his parents to travel between home and the city, and for slightly longer trips too.

He planned to go to university out of town—otherwise, two motorcycles at home would be ideal.

Two motorcycles for one family—that was seriously rich.

Of course, Fang Bai had also considered a used car.

But he dropped the idea when he realized he couldn't get license plates. Motorcycles required plates too, but even without them, cops wouldn't pull you over—the rules weren't strict back then.

Besides, getting plates for a motorcycle wasn't hard.

When he arrived, Fang Bai got off and stood at the company gate, observing.

The company covered over a hundred mu of land. Many iron sheds were set up in the open yard, filled with all kinds of used metal equipment, including cars and motorcycles.

There were quite a few customers on the lot. Fang Bai wandered in casually, told a worker he was there to pick goods, and started looking around.

After walking a full circle and observing, he realized these used items were really old, with very long service lives.

Fang Bai figured that made sense. The equipment was valuable, and the problems were usually with parts that were easy to fix—unlike electronics, which were hard to repair and required high technical skill for testing, so people just threw them away.

The metal equipment in the yard was sorted and dismantled by material type. Most useless parts were sent to steel mills to be melted down, priced at the mill's scrap metal rate. The solid waste company didn't make much from that.

Buying this scrap metal from foreigners cost money—the cost was higher than for other e-waste. It wasn't like cardboard or electronic junk that was free; the foreigners still paid dismantling and environmental fees, sold it cheap to the solid waste company, and the company then sold it to Huaxia.

Parts that could still be used were removed and sold as second-hand components—that was where the real profit was.

The used motorcycles on the lot that couldn't be salvaged had already been stripped and sold as scrap iron. The ones left were in better condition and priced much higher than scrap.

But fixing them up was extremely difficult.

People who came here to pick through the leftovers were usually from auto repair shops, specializing in refurbishing.

The motorcycle e-waste imported from the Island Nation was usually brands like Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki.

Take the imported new Honda 125—a very common model in the country. It sold for over fifteen thousand yuan domestically, way out of reach for most people. Fang Bai wasn't willing to spend that kind of money.

Even a used motorcycle would cost over five thousand yuan, and finding one with a good engine was tough. He'd be better off piecing one together from this pile of bikes—it wouldn't cost much.

The second-hand motorcycles on the lot were still sold by weight, not disassembled—3,000 yuan per ton, while steel prices were only 1,400 yuan a ton.

For a Honda 125 model, the total weight was about 130 kilograms, costing roughly 390 yuan.

There were also individual parts sold retail, all refurbished, with varying prices.

Fang Bai focused first on the engines. He wouldn't consider anything over 125cc—there weren't many, parts were hard to piece together, and the horsepower was too high, guzzling fuel while the bike itself was heavy. If he bought it, his father probably wouldn't ride it much, so what was the point?

There were plenty of Honda motorcycles on site, so he mainly picked from that brand for easier parts assembly.

After about ten minutes, Fang Bai found a Honda with an engine that had few years of use, but the gasket was damaged and leaking oil. All it needed was a gasket replacement.

He checked some other engines—the oil analysis showed yellowing, and some had even turned red, completely beyond repair.

The bike Fang Bai had his eye on needed over twenty other parts replaced. From the outside, it looked pretty old. He guessed the original owner didn't ride it much and wasn't short on cash—after it broke down, they didn't bother fixing it properly and just left it poorly stored.

Whether that was true or not was hard to say, but Fang Bai had his sights set on this bike.

Then he'd spend another two hundred-plus yuan on some parts, haul it back, and have Master Chen fix it up.

No need to buy another bike just for spare parts. The tires were best bought new anyway—wouldn't cost much.

He'd just tinker with one second-hand motorcycle himself. Later, when he had money, he'd buy a new one.

Money was going out everywhere, and earning it wasn't easy—that's why he was doing it himself.

Once he had enough funds, he'd go straight to a car.

Of course, realizing that car dream would probably have to wait until after the subscription certificate.

Fang Bai had also thought about refurbishing cars and motorcycles to sell, but now he realized it was hard to find good vehicles, too time-consuming, and the refurbishing was extremely difficult—the profit rate wasn't as good as fixing up TVs.

After picking the bike, Fang Bai told the on-site staff which one he'd chosen, said he'd come to haul it away tomorrow morning, but had to put down a deposit.

No problem there. Fang Bai paid a fifty-yuan deposit, got the receipt, and left.