WHEELS UP: An unlikely founder has Huck Cycles on the move as demand for electric bikes accelerates.

• Author: Mitchell, Tucker
• Position: NC TREND: Entrepreneurship

Brett McCoy has nice memories of growing up in western New York state, especially Saturday mornings. He'd ride into town with his grandfather Harold McCoy, a farmer who grew grapes for local wineries. Grandpa would pick out the auto parts he needed at the local NAPA store while little Brett danced along the aisles.

"They (the store owners) knew (Grandpa) was coming, and had the coffee waiting for him," says McCoy. "They'd let me roam around, feed me candy.... Sometimes Grandpa forgot his wallet and they let him pay the next time. It was just a neat experience--real small-town America."

A few years later and a few miles south, the desire to reproduce that feeling is the driving force behind Huck Cycles, McCoy's 3-year-old electric motorbike company that's based in Cornelius, just north of Charlotte.

Huck is designed to be a small business, selling a limited number of hand-built, battery-powered vehicles for a slice of the growing "micro-mobility" market that includes bikes and scooters.

Huck machines start at about $5,200. Most of them--the company has sold nearly 1,000 in 40 states and six countries so far--have been ridden by McCoy, Huck's CEO and founder. He's also spoken with the vast majority of his customers.

While a total newcomer to the biking industry, McCoy picked a red-hot sector to invest his time and money in. Sales of micro-mobility products are expected to soar to more than $200 billion annually by 2030, up from $44 billion in 2020, according to Allied Market Research, a Portland, Oregon-based data service.

Huck's 15-person staff consists primarily of U.S. veterans (like McCoy), and the company is working to find North American suppliers for each of the 200 or so components for each bike. North Carolina suppliers are preferred. Currently, frames are made in Statesville, seats in High Point, and plastic "fuel" tanks in Salisbury.

Heck, the company is even named after Huck Finn.

"I don't know, I just wanted to keep that piece of America, that vintage feel" from his childhood, says McCoy. "That's really important to me."

McCoy knows a lot about two-wheel vehicles. His parents owned only motorcycles--no cars--so he rode from age 6 until many years later when life changes put a damper on his biker life.

He talked his wife into letting him buy an electric bike several years ago--a "loophole," he calls it--but was disappointed with the options available on the market.

McCoy, who is 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, says he felt "like I was...