Builder Spotlight: John Jessup

John did not come from a “biker” background but found he liked the mechanics of V-twin motorcycles much more than dressing in leather and being a tough guy. John is a straight shooter who is always right to the point in his conversations. Not to the point of being gruff, but he just doesn't mince words to tell you what you want to hear. That dent makes him an asshole or pushy. He’s just concise with his words and way of being. In this day and age, that is a rarity. I’m just going to say this about Mr Jessup: if you bust out a dictionary and look up the word “humble,” there will be a picture of this dude right beside the definition. 

Like many of us, in the early days John liked tinkering with Harleys in his garage on his days off. Then he worked on some friends' bikes, and then their friends', and so on.

Getting tired of the food service industry, where he worked in all facets from server to management, he had the bright idea to open his own independent motorcycle shop in Stockton, California, dubbed John Jessup’s Dream Rides, complete with parts, sales, and service. Well, it was going swimmingly until the bottom dropped out of Wall Street in 2008 and everyone that had a speedboat, a $100K cool guy chopper motorcycle, and a big and bad matching truck lost everything. And so did John. Well, almost. 

Using his sly business sense and love of building FXR motorcycles, John built back better and became somewhat of a cult phenomenon in the custom bike scene at the same time his business was cranking out solid service work to the Central Cali masses. John hit the performance Dyna and FXR show scene with a series of insanely built machines that turned heads. It was at this time John started getting his award-winning bikes featured in the last real wave of American motorcycle magazines, which upped his popularity immensely.

Building FXRs was John’s jam, but one day a Milwaukee Eight Softail found its way into the shop, and Jessup transformed it into one hell of a powerful custom performance bike that also had John’s keen eye for style and substance. Then there were more Softails, and then Trask turbos started making their way onto more of his killer bikes, upping the coolness factor. Then a bunch of stylistic performance Baggers started coming out of the Stockton shop.

After busting his ass and making something of himself in the murder capital of California, he decided to pull up roots with his wife, Janine, and a blended family of kids and relocate to East Tennessee. This is where he purchased an abandoned sex shop on the 411 highway right where it intersects the entry to the famed Tail of the Dragon. And Dream Rides of Tennessee was born. And five years later John has two shops on each side of the country from one another, building badass machines and teaching the masses that you can have both style and performance when it comes to his kinds of bike builds. And we love that.