After 25 years selling Harleys, Gail Worth will soon close KC business. She has plans
A variety of factors contributed to Gail Worth’s recent decision to close Gail’s Motorcycles, her Grandview dealership.
She was approaching a few nice round numbers: her 60th birthday and the 25th anniversary of buying the business from her father, Ray. The used motorcycle market has been fickle since the pandemic, and Worth feels the broader economic outlook in the country is shaky. She wanted to go out “on top,” she said.
But another reason, Worth said this week, was the death of her 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 in my whole life,” Worth said of Adams, who died in April after battling acute myeloid leukemia, a rare blood cancer. “We spent a ton of time together before he passed, and one thing he said to me toward the end was, ‘A year ago, I had no idea I would be dying next week. So if you’re thinking about it (retiring), just do it. You’ve only got one life.’”
Worth’s target date for closing is June 29, but her inventory has been moving fast since she announced the closing a few weeks ago.
“I’m having a big retirement party the weekend of June 7 and 8, so it could end up being closer to then,” she said.
Worth’s parents opened a Harley-Davidson dealership in Belton in 1977. She started 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 bought dealerships from their parents, in the Northland and Blue Springs, respectively.)
In 2020, Worth sold her Harley-Davidson franchise back to the company but continued on as a dealer of pre-owned motorcycles, changing the name from Gail’s Harley-Davidson to Gail’s Motorcycles.
“When you lose your franchise, that’s a big deal for most businesses, because their identity tends to be tied to whatever that franchise is,” she said. “But I was lucky, and I guess blessed, because we had a brand that revolved more around the ‘Gail’s’ part than the ‘Harley-Davidson’ part. So when I moved into selling only used, we still had a good customer base.”
Worth credited that to the sense of community that’s built up around her dealership over the past quarter-century. Every year, hundreds of group rides leave from Gail’s, Worth said, and the store has a living-room setup where motorcycle enthusiasts often come to hang out without feeling pressure to buy anything.
Worth owns another local dealership, Shawnee Cycle Plaza and Powersports, which she is not selling. “I bought it about eight years ago, and the team there clicks so well that I don’t really have to do anything,” she said. “So, I’m keeping that as kind of a way to stay in the motorcycle business a little bit.”
She also owns the Grandview building, which she said is now for sale or for lease.
Worth said she’s excited to become a customer of her former competitors: Rawhide, Worth, Outlaw. Yeager’s in Sedalia. “I’m looking forward to wearing everyone else’s T-shirts and getting my bike serviced at these other places,” she said. “I’ve never been able to do that before.”
She’s headed up north later this summer — to Sturgis, of course, but also to the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. Beyond that?
“I just want to get on my motorcycle and not know exactly where I’m going for once,” Worth said. “I’ve traveled across the country many times, but it was always some kind of business trip. I want to get together with some friends, with my fiance, and just take off. Head west. Or south. Wherever.”
