The Blaster Story

What Does a “Vacuum CleanerCompany” Know About Motorcycle Dryers?

The Answer May Surprise You!

David Stern, father of the world’s best-selling Blaster® motorcycle dryer line, started riding minibikes when he was ten years old. Over the years this early fascination with two wheels grew into a passion for fine motorcycles and wind-in-the-face adventure. Today David rides a beautiful, chromed-out Road King and spends every free moment gobbling up as much coast-to-coast interstate highway as time and weather will allow. Like most of us who ride, however, there’s one thing about the sport David never particularly liked…washing and, especially, towel drying his bike. It was this aversion to tedious, time consuming hand drying that led him to develop the world’s first, truly high-performance forced-air motorcycle dryer.

So where does the vacuum cleaner part come in? To make money to feed his family and his two-wheel riding habit, David is Vice President of Marketing and part owner of the Metropolitan Vacuum Cleaner Company, America’s leading developer of high-performance airflow technologies for industrial quality cleaning and drying systems. 

In 1939 David’s Grandfather started the company, with nothing more than $50 in his pocket and the American Dream in his heart. Metro quickly grew and earned a reputation for producing one of the world’s highest quality vacuum cleaner lines. Then, in the mid-eighties, things really started to get interesting!

Birth Of The Blaster®

Metro began to explore totally new markets that could benefit from products developed around the high-performance technologies the company had perfected for its vacuum cleaners. Among them were professional car-and-truck detailing systems, inflation systems for the boating/sporting goods market and high-powered, professional pet drying/grooming systems.

Then, near the end of 2001 David started to wonder if one of Metro’s more powerful pet drying systems could be modified and “souped-up” to create a magnum-power, yet safe way to dry a motorcycle.

Back in those days there were only three ways to do the job. You could hand dry the bike with towels which took forever and also left those tiny, circular micro-scratches in the finish. You could use compressed air, but that was way too powerful and could easily rip off a loose piece of paint or chrome, or even blow through a rubber seal or gasket. Compressor tanks were also notorious for building up moisture and oils that could blow out onto the finish and ruin an expensive paint job. Then you had leafblowers. Besides blowing cool air that took forever to dry a big motorcycle, they were heavy and cumbersome making it virtually impossible to completely dry the bike without blowing all kinds of driveway dirt and grit back up onto your clean bike.

David got the Metro R&D guys on the case and in 2002 the original Blaster® Classic motorcycle dryer was introduced. It took the industry by storm and quickly earned a reputation as the most powerful and efficient dryer money could buy. Today, bikers prefer Blaster® brand motorcycle dryers ten-to-one over all other brands combined!

With a body of steel and powerful 4.0 Peak HP, twin-fan motor, the Blaster® Classic produces 29,250 ft./min. of clean, dry, warm, filtered air that blasts water off bikes in seconds cutting drying time by as much as 80%! It leaves no spots or oily residue and completely eliminates “Afterstreaking”™. The Blaster® is also safer (great for older bikes and expensive customs) and more efficient than compressed air or leafblowers.

®models to accommodate any application or budget. In addition to the Blaster® Classic, there’s the awesome Master Blaster® with its two, twin-fan, 4.0 Peak HP motors (total of 8 Peak HP) capable of delivering up to 58,000 ft./min. of warm dry air; and the new Blaster® SideKick® portable that pumps out 18,000 ft./min.—as much as some other brands’ most powerful, full-size models! 
So, the next time you hear someone ask: “What does a vacuum cleaner company know about motorcycle dryers?” just say: “You’d be surprised!”    

Here's a brief company history.