Steel Pony Express
Why the Pony Express
In 1860 the Pony Express moved a letter across the country in ten days: one rider, one leg, a fresh horse at every station, and the mail guarded the whole way. That mail pouch is your motorcycle.
Young riders, often barely more than boys, crossed thousands of miles of open frontier through mountains, deserts, and untamed wilderness. They rode in every kind of weather. They faced isolation, uncertainty, and real danger. What drove them wasn't luxury or applause. It was spirit. It was fearlessness. It was the love of the ride into the unknown.
That same spirit lives in the American motorcycle rider today, and it is our inspiration at Steel Pony Express.
When you roll onto a long stretch of open road, throttle steady, horizon wide, you're tapping into something older than chrome and gasoline. You're connecting to the same restless drive that pushed riders across the frontier, trusting their instincts, navigating raw terrain, and chasing distance not because it was easy, but because it was there.
Motorcyclists crave something most people don't in the same way: a sense of freedom. They've learned it isn't found in comfort. It's found in motion and adventure.
We took the name because we took the idea. Your bike rides in our enclosed trailer, strapped down and covered, across every state between Des Moines and the good roads. When you land it's already there: off the trailer, checked over, fueled, warmed up, and parked outside a hotel that was taking guests before the highways existed. You skip the two days of interstate. You pick up the leg worth riding. Every detail is handled, and the wild part is left in. That's what a luxury adventure means to us.
The horse became an engine. The trail became a road. The station became a historic hotel with a good bar. The idea never changed: the package gets there safe, and the rider gets the ride.
Des Moines, IA
My Story
Des Moines, IA
My Story
I'm Ross Naylor. I've spent most of my adult life chasing days I've never lived before, and the surest way I've found to reach one is a motorcycle and a road I don't know yet. That search has taken me through 28 states and 23 countries, most of it alone, and more than 100,000 miles on the road: the Alps, the jungles of Cambodia and Vietnam, Central America from Guatemala to Panama, the Pantanal in Brazil, and the Bolivian altiplano at 12,000 feet, where the salt flats go white to the horizon.
I build things for a living. My brother and I started Renomads, a construction company, in 2015, and building is how I think about a route: the bones have to be right before anything else goes on. I started riding in 2014, began drawing up Steel Pony Express in 2024, and have been out riding the routes since, one road at a time, so nothing on an itinerary is there because a map said so.
Motorcycle travel is something different. You're a visceral, transient part of the country you're crossing. You feel the air cool as you drop into a valley. You smell ripe apples riding across Washington. You lean into a 45-degree crosswind and hold it for miles. You ride through a storm on a hot day and the rain feels good. And at every stop, someone wants to know where you've come from and where you're going. I feel alive when I travel by moto.
I love history, too: standing where past generations stood and understanding what they endured to build the country I'm enjoying on my bike. Those places are on every route I plan, and so are the ones you only find by talking to the person behind the counter.
On the road I'm the guide out front, the one who knows which pass is still closed and which cafe is worth the detour, and the one who can fix a bike on the shoulder if it comes to that. In South America I'm the translator as well, because I speak Spanish, and half the best moments down there happen in it. I'm easy company. I pay attention to who rides with whom, and I've watched strangers who met at the first night's dinner leave as friends already planning the next trip.
Riders who've come along tend to say the same things afterward: that the week changed something, that they see the country differently now, that it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips. That's what I'm after. I'd be glad to be your guide on your next one.
Ross Naylor, Cambridge, Iowa
Contact
Let's Ride
Questions about a tour, a date, or your bike? Send us a note and we'll get back to you.
Or call (515) 805-7225 or email nayloross@gmail.com. We reply within 36 hours.