Jeff has been building motorcycles for the past three decades. Despite that he will tell you that he has only been making a living with them for the last 20 years, his “Modern Bobber” style has swept the industry and changed the definition of what a bobber is for Gen X and beyond forever.
Growing up around motorcycles, Jeff’s whole family rode. His ability to modify bikes began at a young age. Jeff is the kind of person who never settles for anything less than perfection. When it comes to his own abilities it has been a lifelong challenge to constantly learn and grow as a builder. As many of us in the rust belt region, Cochran developed a style out of necessity. Low dollar builds with great lines and classic style that eventually coined the phrase Bobber. It was a new and unique twist on the traditional idea of a bobber and from Jeff’s first cover of a bike called “the January Chopper” on the Horse Mag, his name and style lit a path through the darkness for a whole generation.
This style came out of a collaboration called Sucker Punch Sally’s that started back in the late nineties and grew into a worldwide force early in the new century. The basic, yet refined design based on the working man’s custom idea was a big hit with Gen Xer’s coming out of the million-dollar chopper phase of custom motorcycling and Jeff has been refining it to this day.
Today, Jeff builds about 13 hand-crafted motorcycles per year for clients around the world. He is a one-man show located in Indiana, out in the woods as he says, where he and his wife Beverly make their home as well. Off the beaten path but he is far from being out of sight or out of mind. To his credit, Jeff has been on numerous national magazine covers, featured in the movie “Choppertown”, has also worked behind the camera for many of the world’s largest motorcycle magazines and has had his photography work get him gigs for CMT and Rolling Stone.
With all this, he is still one of the humblest and well-respected builders to the young and old of our industry alike. To them he offers one constant piece of advice: “Be careful what you wish for. This is a hard way to make a living.”