This isn’t your dad’s motorcycle – but it could be.

What started out as a personal inquiry by Marc Hyland, owner of Majestic Truck Collision and Frame Repair in Altoona, turned into a side business for the motorcycle enthusiast.

Hyland wanted a safer way to continue riding his motorcycle, and discovered that kits are available to convert two-wheelers to three-wheelers. As he looked into more statistics, such as an older average age of bikers, he decided that others might see the same benefits. Trike Your Bike LLC was born.

“My peers, the ones that I ride with, some of them have given up because they’ve lost confidence in their ability to hold up a 900-pound machine when they are at a stop sign,” Hyland said. “The three wheels on the vehicle make it more sturdy and stable, and make it larger, so the visibility for cars is much better.”

Hyland sent three employees to a training session in Texas. They went with two-wheelers and came back with three-wheelers. The key to the transformation is replacing the vehicle’s back wheel with a kit that includes a sturdy two-wheel base with cover.

Two of the transformed trikes, now on display at Majestic’s repair shop, have custom paint jobs, and the third has a paint job on the new kit to match the existing paint.

Base transformation costs range anywhere from $8,900 to $10,900, depending on the size of the vehicle.

Hyland said he thinks there is a market for his business to convert the bikes; already, he has a customer from an impromptu conversation at a small business owners meeting.

“I’ve talked to a number of other riders that say, ‘Well, I may not be ready for a trike yet, but I could see that I will be shortly,’” he said. “We don’t think it’s out of the question to do 60 to 80 of them a year.”

One negative is the gas mileage, which drops 30 to 40 percent after a conversion, Hyland said. But he’s excited about helping riders who would otherwise give up on the hobby to stay on the road.

“It’s really more of a safety thing to me,” Hyland said.