Fluckes' supportive partnership drives We Bike's success

When I was biking about a year and a half ago, a motorist failed to yield and struck me causing serious injuries. That experience alone makes me a fan of Peter and Tracy Flucke’s business, We Bike, Etc., LLC.

The Green Bay area residents have a business that started in 1993 and continues to grow in awareness and success. It is nationally and internationally recognized as the foremost authority in law enforcement training. Having started his career as a police officer, Peter had worked in traffic and understood the need for education.

“Our niche that makes us unique worldwide is the law enforcement training,” Peter said.  “A lot of times a community will make a plan, but law enforcement hasn’t been trained.  We speak that language with 25 years of experience, and we have a methodology that is proven.”

It is a methodology that developed seamlessly; driven by the couple’s passion for bicycling. The pieces fit together. Peter had degrees in recreation and integrated resource management, and Tracy had a background in government, working in parks and recreation and administration.

“What I bring is the government connections and how that functions and works,” she said.

Tracy also had the full-time job that allowed Peter to start the business.

“The original business plan was to not cost us any money,” he said. “I reached out to SCORE and a few others, but what I knew was that basically every police officer in the country had the potential to improve bicycle safety and I knew they were getting training on other things all of the time. The only problem they had is they weren’t getting training on bicycle safety so that was my passion and focus.”

They were living in Minnesota at the time, and he had done work for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Minnesota officials told people at the Wisconsin DOT, and he got a call asking for a training program.

“That was the start of 25 years of We Bike,” Peter said.

Since that start, the business has evolved and includes the three “E’s” — education, enforcement and engineering.  Although financial advisers have suggested that the business would be more financially successful if the focus was only on education, the Fluckes reject that.

“They say the first mistake we are making is being in too many things, but we are OK with that," Peter said. "The three 'E’s' come from the highway safety triangle, and I have good knowledge on enforcement and education, but found that if you have crummy facilities, it will all break down.”

As much as it depends on them, they prefer to think of the business as enhancing a community’s quality of life by making it safe to bike and walk and use the municipal roadways. 

“This is a multipronged approach,” Peter added. “People want to be able to walk and bike in their communities. What we have to help achieve that is a lot of institutional knowledge and technical expertise.”

They also have more experience biking than almost anyone. Tracy now not only works full-time in the business, she is also Peter’s tandem biking partner and co-author of their new book, “Coast to Coast on a Tandem.”

The avid bikers have completed three unsupported cross-country bicycle trips on their tandem with the trips ranging from 2,603 miles to 4,362 miles. The book covers their Northern Tier journey, the longest route, in 2014. Additional information is available at www.webike.org.

The parents of two adult daughters have no intention of slowing down, and are planning a fourth cross-country bike trip in 2019 to ride through the 16 states they missed. Their ideal is having a quality of life that allows them to have a successful business and an adventurous life. Peter says the tandem bike is symbolic of that.

“Biking is something that keeps us engaged,” he said. “If one of us gets off the tandem, it doesn’t work anymore. We have to keep working at it and hammer it out, but ultimately, we get strength from each other. We’ve always been really good partners and that translates well to the business.”

Tina Dettman-Bielefeldt is co-owner of DB Commercial Real Estate in Green Bay and past district director for SCORE, Wisconsin.