Sometimes it’s the little things that make big differences. Stahlbus began after Martin Maszull had done dozens of brake fluid changes and, according to the company website, “was simply fed up with constantly ruining the freshly painted caliper and being always at loggerheads with his girlfriend when bleeding the system.”

Maszull went on to invent the Stahlbus one-way brake caliper bleeder valve, which has reduced the amount of profanity in garages and shops around the world by an inestimable amount.

Similarly, Thomas Modlmeier had a simple idea: a family-run, online business to keep him busy in his later years and something to hand down to his children or grandchildren. He hooked up with Maszull, who he refers to as “a brother,” and became the U.S. distributor for Stahlbus, creating a company whose products have quietly established a presence on bikes across the country.

Modlmeier, age 62, of Munich, started riding mopeds at 16 in Germany and got his first motorcycle when he was 18. Somewhere along the way, he purchased his forever motorcycle—a BMW 75/6—which has been with him for years and travels when he relocates. Which he has, many times.

Modlmeier connecting to BMW was not unusual for someone mechanically minded working in Munich. “If you lived in Munich, you worked for BMW,” he says. He trained as a collision damage repair specialist through Germany’s rigorous apprenticeship system and earned both journeyman and master certifications. His skills and experience led BMW to relocate him to New York, where he spent four years of his life with the company in Manhattan. When his contract was up, Modlmeier’s patience with the weather was up as well.

“New York has pretty much the same weather in Munich. So it rains, it snows, and all this kind of stuff. And I literally said, you know what? I’m done with this crap. I want something different. So I had a Jeep and a trailer and a boat, and I just packed everything to the gills and drove in three weeks from New York, from Queens to San Diego.”

Modlmeier worked for the Penske automotive operation in San Diego, enjoying the sunshine and putting miles on his motorcycles—his favorite being a Triumph 675. Modlmeier put in time upgrading the suspension and running gear to match his needs and his aesthetic. Tinkering, repairing, building, all are rewarding to Modlmeier, and it’s a philosophy he has lived by. “I don’t like to buy things I can build,” he says.

On one of his trips back to Germany, he met Maszull and the two struck up a friendship. Maszull eventually started looking for people to market his devices, and Modlmeier was looking for something beyond his collision repair career.

“Sometimes you meet people in your life and you think like, oh, I can associate. He has the same ideas, the same, you know, hobbies and all this kind of stuff,” Modlmeier says. “You just e-mail, make a call, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ And then during one of these calls, he just says, ‘When are you coming next time?’ And when I come back, he just literally says, ‘Hey, this is what I’m doing. What do you think? Can we do this over there?’ And I said, ‘Let me try it. And that’s how we started out.”

From the beginning, the bleeder valves have been the main seller for the company. At any given moment, Modlmeier has between $80,000 and $150,000 worth of inventory on hand, and the bleeder valves make up most of it. (For those who are not familiar with the valves, they replace the usual brake bleeder valve on the caliper and can be set for one-way operation. You attach the bleeder hose as normal and pump the brake lever, and brake fluid comes out but does not get sucked back into the system. The valves simplify and speed up
a process that is, under the best of circumstances, slow and fraught with the possibility of getting highly corrosive brake fluid onto painted parts.)

And it’s not just motorheads who have found the magic of the valves. Modlmeier says his customer base includes people who are using them for all kinds of non-motorcycle applications.

“I would go to shows and all of a sudden, people are coming up, saying things like, ‘I have a helicopter. Can I use it for the helicopter?’ And I’m like, ‘It was not designed for the helicopter. But if it works for the helicopter, why not?’ See, that’s it. And people started using it for different applications, applications we never thought about it,” Modlmeier says. “We have private pilots, we have so many different diverse people buying our stuff now. There is a guy in Washington state who builds mini submarines who is using them. Every time, when it comes up from a dive, he has air from the depth in the lines. So he uses a drain valve to get the air out. They get used for all kinds of weird stuff.”

The company is also known for its quick-disconnect hydraulic fittings that allow for caliper and master-cylinder changes without re-bleeding the brake system, and also offers quick oil change valves.

Modlmeier spends a fair amount of his time on the road at shows, and still enjoys working with his hands. Which led, in part, to the decision to purchase property in and move to Rising Fawn, Georgia. Modlmeier wanted to own a building for his operation, and land costs in Southern California made that impossible for an operation the size of Stahlbus.

And Modlmeier is not only going to own his own building, he’s going to build it himself. His
new facility will be roughly 30 or 40 feet by 50 feet, designed to with stand regional weather—including tornadoes—and will serve as both workspace and showroom.

But the operation is more than just a business to Modlmeier. He wanted to stay busy after his retirement, and the U.S. Stahlbus operation allows him to stay exactly as busy as he wants as he transitions into his later years. And he wanted to leave something behind for his family when he steps away from business entirely.

“It was designed so we always have something to do,” Modlmeier says. “And later, maybe we give it to our kids or grandchildren—so they don’t have to start from zero.”