As a Police motorcyclist ... my thoughts ...
It's a lottery! There are some motorcyclists out there, whose job bike is their pride and joy and they look after it meticulously. Many bikes are issued to riders and nobody else will ride them. (This is my case - we all have 'our own' bike and the only reason that a colleague would take mine is if his was in for a service or the like).
But there are plenty of riders who don't particularly look after their bike - I know of one (super guy, bloody nice bloke ..!) who goes through clutches like they're made of butter. He's on his third I think and the bike has about 40K on it.
Other things to think about, are what the bike has done in its life? My bike works feckin' hard! The sort of work I do comprises of a lot of 'go get that anpr hit'. So often my bike is stationary for quite a while then pretty much redlining every gear to hunt down something thats a mile or two ahead of me
Rest .... sprint, rest .. sprint etc etc. Last week I dispatched an urgent socco run on blue lights from deep in the south east to Oxford. That's throttle pinned
all the way. So it's fair to say they don't get an easy life.
On the positive side, nothing on a job bike or car is repaired - if it's worn or fecked it gets replaced with new. (I am on my second motor having blown up the first one at 130mph on the M20!).
So, definitely a lottery. If I look at our fleet then yes, there would be one or two bikes that if they came up for auction, I know they'd be a really good buy. But there are plenty that I'd think, feck me, some poor bugger's going to buy that one ... !
If you knew the bikes history and what it had been used for (driving school? Patrol work? DPG bimble from embassy to Embassy ... ) then that would certainly help ...
We more often get the bog standard or worst !!!!
