Several factors contributed to Gail Worth’s recent decision to close Gail’s Motorcyclesyour Grandview dealership.
She was approaching some round numbers: her 60th birthday and the 25th anniversary of purchasing the company from her father, Ray. The used motorcycle market has been fickle since the pandemic, and Worth feels that the broader economic outlook for the country are unstable. She wanted to come out “on top,” she said.
But another reason, Worth said this week, was the death of his friend Brian Adams — known to local radio listeners as Slacker, the longtime morning show host on classic rock station 101 The Fox.
“He was my best friend my entire life,” Worth said of Adams, who died in April after battling acute myeloid leukemia, a rare blood cancer. “We spent a lot of time together before he passed, and one thing he said to me at the end was, ‘A year ago, I had no idea I was going to die next week. So if you are thinking about it (retiring), just do it. You only got one life.'”
Worth’s target closing date is June 29, but its inventory has been moving quickly since it announced the closure a few weeks ago.
“I’m having a big retirement party the weekend of June 7th and 8th, so it might end up being closer to that,” she said.
Worth’s parents opened a Harley-Davidson dealership in Belton in 1977. She began working there as a teenager. After taking it over in 1999, she closed the Belton location and reopened it as Gail’s Harley-Davidson in 2004 in a 55,000-square-foot space she had built in Grandview, near the intersection of Missouri Highway 150 and Interstate 49. .
(Worth’s brothers, Rick and David, also purchased dealerships from their parents, in Northland and Blue Springs, respectively.)
In 2020, Worth sold his Harley-Davidson franchise back to the company, but continued as a used motorcycle dealer, changing the name from Gail’s Harley-Davidson to Gail’s Motorcycles.
“When you lose your franchise, that’s a big problem for most companies because your identity tends to be tied to whatever the franchise is,” she said. “But I was lucky, and I guess blessed, because we had a brand that was more about the ‘Gail’ part than the ‘Harley-Davidson’ part. So when I started selling used only, we still had a good customer base.”
Worth credited this to the sense of community that has developed around his dealership over the past quarter century. Every year, hundreds of group rides leave Gail’s, Worth said, and the store has a lounge area where motorcycle enthusiasts often spend time without feeling pressured to buy anything.
Worth owns another local dealership, Shawnee Cycle Plaza and Motorsports, which she is not selling. “I bought it about eight years ago and the team there gets along so well that I don’t have to do anything,” she said. “So I’m going to keep this as a way to stay in the motorcycle business for a bit.”
She also owns the Grandview building, which she said is now for sale or lease.
Worth said she is excited to become a customer of her former competitors: Rawhide, Worth, Outlaw. Yeager is in Sedalia. “I’m looking forward to wearing everyone’s t-shirts and getting my bike serviced at these other places,” she said. “I’ve never been able to do that before.”
She’ll head north later this summer — to Sturgis, of course, but also to the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. Furthermore?
“I just want to get on my bike and not know exactly where I’m going for the first time,” Worth said. “I have traveled around the country many times, but it was always a kind of business trip. I want to get together with some friends, with my fiancé, and just leave. Go west. Or south. Wherever.”
