Latest / Built In The Bayou / Episode 2 | Wooden Lift Blocks & Building It Right

Transcript

Episode 2 | Wooden Lift Blocks & Building It Right · Built In The Bayou

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, guys, welcome back to Built in the Bayou.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We have a very special guest today, someone who's normally behind the scenes.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're really excited that he's here today.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so today uh we'd like to introduce Mr.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Josh Cooper to you.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: He's worked in several different parts of the automotive aftermarket industry, has uh a lot of experience, but today is not just about necessarily lift kits, but you know, lessons, mistakes, everything he's learned, and picked some of that knowledge out of his brain.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: So welcome, Josh.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, how's it going?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's good to be here.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're excited to have you on.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: So before we dive in, we gotta know what's the craziest or funniest thing you've seen done to a build.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um I would have to say someone using a wooden lift block.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's crazy.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's actually crazy.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: He was he said it would be fine because it was treated lumber and it wasn't gonna come out because it was treated so it wouldn't rot.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's crazy.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you don't have to give us any names or anything, but how long ago was this?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: This was probably like 20 years ago.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's been a while.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: And he actually had them in the rear of the it was a super duty.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: Made another set and wanted me to put them in the front.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: Did you?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: But it's okay, they were treated.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they were treated so they wouldn't fall out.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, he's like, they'll last.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's treated.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I couldn't believe it made it from wherever he installed it to my shop.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's actually insane.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how long did it stay on?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: I have no idea.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: I sent him away.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: I told him I would put a proper lift kit on there, and yeah, he didn't want to pay for that, so he left and went and searched for someone else.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you said something about your shop right there, so I guess that's a good transition to dive in to kind of get your backstory.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you've worked in this industry a long time, kind of where you've um it worked, you know you've owned a shop, all this kind of stuff.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: So just give us, you know, your story.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: So growing up, my dad had a body shop and I worked in his body shop growing up.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I guess when I was probably 22, 23, I opened my own off-road shop.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: And we did that for about 11 years.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow, probably.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: And after 2008, you know, the economy crashed big time.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: We struggled through till 2012, 2013.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: Finally, we just weren't making any money.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: We were making a living, but yeah, there was no money being made.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I finally was like, I'm done.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't worth the stress, you know, seven days a week, 10 and 12 hours a day.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a lot.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was a lot.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I called it, shut the shop down, and sold everything off, and actually came to work here from there.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I didn't realize that you had not been here until after that, because a lot of our old-time employees or long-term employees were here before that mark.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, so that's good to know.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, that's a really those are difficult years.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know that our parents, you know, Evan and I weren't in the business during that time frame, but that was a rough time for any anybody who I feel like franchises as well, but especially for small businesses or anybody who own their own type of shop or anything, that was rough.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: When gas spiked from a dollar something a gallon to like four dollars a gallon almost overnight, you couldn't give away a lift kit in a set of big tires.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we were making money taking lift kits off.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, which was stupid because they were never going to make that money back in the fuel mileage savings.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: And they were picking up another two miles to the gallon, maybe by going back to stock, and they were spending fifteen hundred dollars, two thousand dollars to take the kit off.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, that's wild.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: But that's the hard part about our industry, too, is you know, when grocery bills are high, gas prices are high, people don't don't need a lift kit.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, they don't.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: So we went from basically doing lift kits, tires, wheels, which was kind of our bread and butter up until that point, to doing full custom builds for people who had the I say gas prices and inflation didn't affect so much.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: Higher income clientele.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we were doing custom roll cages, full custom truckies, um, and though those sorts of things.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then so when you had to shut that down, you came here.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you were getting to do all of those things, which is like full body.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, to to just coming here and just being suspension.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um was that hard to kind of like it's almost like you had to close down your circle a little bit.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was um I'm not gonna say it was hard.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: It was almost refreshing.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: Because I went from seven days a week, extreme hours, to five days a week, eight hours a day, and I was kind of like And when you clock out, you're out.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm out right, yeah.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: So uh, but I came here in sales, um, worked with Tom and uh Tommy traveled all over the country, or not just the country, US and Canada, and did shows and you know, trade shows and events and stuff like that.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: So helped manage customers.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, were we doing just mail order?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was just wholesale at the time, right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like all the shows.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't want to make myself sound too good, but I was probably like eight years old in that time.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so like direct was nowhere near like even a thaw at that point, right?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: No, it was complete three-step back then.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, yeah.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: So what year did you come over?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like 08, 09?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: No, it was 2013, maybe.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you made it a decent amount of time after the economy busted.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we did.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's yeah, we had to evolve and change what we were doing.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, move into more of that high-end, like custom build stuff, but we're not really in a town that's got a large enough population to support that.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: We're not.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: So if I'd been over in Dallas or Houston, something like that, or Atlanta, I think it would have been easier.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Just uh larger population to pull pool from.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we did get a lot of customers from Shreeport, uh and even East Texas that came over uh in Jackson, Mississippi.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we pulled customers from there, Baton Rouge pulled customers from all the way down there.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um so we stayed busy, we just weren't staying busy enough.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: And what was your shop, was it in West Monroe?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: It was.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it was here in West Monroe.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Was it off Cypress Street down there?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: Used to be uh Monroe Telco Credit Union.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, I know what you're talking about.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: Uh was my original location, and I moved into a bigger building um towards the end.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: We just needed more space.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: And then of course everything crashed and I didn't need space.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: So y'all did everything from bolt-on stuff to full-out custom fabrication.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: And did you have like a lot of fabrication experience before that?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: So during college, I worked for steel fabricators in Monroe.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's a structural steel uh fabrication company.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I started off in the shop working the night shift.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I learned uh fitting uh for like structural steel and welding and all that kind of stuff.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: So that's where my fabrication experience came from.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh did a lot of that.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um the guys that worked there were great.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: If I wanted to stay after work, they told me they said, you know, if you stay after work, we'll teach you how to weld.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's awesome.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they didn't teach you on the job, but they were willing to stay late and uh teach me how to weld.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: So they made me learn to stick weld, and then you know, before they would ever let me touch a MIG welder, yeah.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I learned to MIG weld, and then I took fitting classes on the weekends and you know, um just learn from there.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like so many people in the industry who have a cool story um or who have had any success, it's really awesome when they give back, like that kind of thing, like staying after hours to help teach somebody who wants to do that.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's awesome.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was good.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then um after my dad was the production manager of that company, so he didn't want to show favoritism.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I got every horrible job that existed.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: It was so bad that the guys that worked there felt bad.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: They were like, Oh man, your dad hates you.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: And he doesn't, he's great.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: No, your dad hates you, that's why.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he loves me, but he uh definitely was gonna make sure that there was no favoritism being shown.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I did everything in that shop and I learned they moved me all over the place.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: Uh ended up in the paint bay at one time because I had grown up painting cars.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: So dad was like, oh, he can paint.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, put him in the paint bay.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: So then I'm in back there painting steel beams that are you know 50 feet long, you know, you're walking from one end of the building to the other.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: So it seems like, you know, best off stories you told me of your childhood and everything, you were just raised up around trucks and four by fours, and then you you went to college, you had this experience at Steel Fabricators, and it just led you into opening up your own shop and it did.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I was actually going to college for construction management.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and the owner of Steel Fabricators called me into his office one time and he said, You don't love this industry, do you?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I mean, I like it.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Yeah, but you don't love it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because in my free time, me and another guy at work were using back then was AutoCAD.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: It was you know, it was this was a long time ago.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: It was like AutoCAD 98, all right.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: We were designing lift kits for one of his trucks.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow, and because we didn't have any money, we worked part-time, we were going to college, yeah.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're designing lift kits on our lunch break on AutoCAD at the on the company computer.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: And of course he knew what was going on.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: He he wasn't stupid, he was a very smart man.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and he's like, You love building trucks and like that kind of stuff.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, I do.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, That's your passion.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: I said, It is.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: He said, Wow, then you need to figure out how to make a living at that.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, because if you can make a living at that, he said you'll be very successful, successful and very happy.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: So what a boss though.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean that's I think he just didn't like me and wanted me out of there.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's hard for me, that's hard for me to believe, first of all, though, because it sounds like you have such a great work ethic at such a young age, which I know you're saying college, but still that's young.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he told me, he said, I don't want to lose you.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: He said, I'd love to keep you here.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: He said, but he said his passion was structural steel.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: He said it was actually erecting structural steel, and he's had a company at one time that did that, and he said it just morphed into the fabrication end of it because that's just where life took him.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: He said, but he said that was my passion, it's what I like to do.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: He said, I figured out how to make a living at it.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: So he said, Your passion is trucks and modifying trucks.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: He said, You need to figure out how to make a living at it.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: He said, You'll be happy.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's really cool.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: He was uh it was good advice, I think.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, clearly it helped you set on the path, right?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: Right, yeah.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: It pushed me towards I think the path I was meant to go down, sure.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: And uh pushed me into this industry.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: I still worked there for several years after that, but yeah, you know, that that made me think about it and um decide what I wanted to do.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so okay, so you owned your own shop, then you came to work here.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: How long were you here for in so and you stayed just in sales during that time period, right?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, probably the last six months I was here, I was in new product development.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then I left here, went back out on my own for about a year, probably, a little over a year, year and a half.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: What were you doing on your own for that year?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh building custom Jeeps mostly.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um I had I was I never really quit doing it.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um had a small shop at home.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: People would call me to everybody had my number from when I had the shop, so it was constant phone calls and they would want me to do stuff.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I I would pick and choose what I wanted to do.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, because some jobs you just don't really want.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um but then I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll I'll give it another shot and I'll do it from my shop at home.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I stayed busy, but it was like feast or famine.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't want to spend any money because I didn't know when the next big job was coming.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I was like packing everything back and it was kind of miserable.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um I enjoyed the work, um, but I knew I didn't want to get back into a full-blown shop again and having to manage the employees and all that.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: It was just um not in this small of a community, I guess.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's just not enough business here.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um but and then I got a call from uh uh Superlift and they wanted me to come do engineering for them.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So and for just for people who are listening or watching who don't know, we live in West Monroe, Louisiana.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's where Skyjacker's based out of.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's been here since the beginning.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um and Superlift, which is another mega suspension company for all these years, which I know they're a little faded out at this point.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: They are, yeah.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for the longest time, it was like the two, in our opinion, at least in this part of the country, most successful suspension companies were both from the same teeny, tiny, small town in Westerner, Louisiana, which is wild because the world in in which we probably have our biggest customer base is not in this part or state.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, for both of us to be here and in the same town, um, and that's a different story for later.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: But so, okay, I just wanted everybody to know like when you went to work for Super Lip, that is still actually in our same town at the time, anyway.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's funny.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Trent McGee used to always say it's like little do you know, little old Western Row is like the off-road suspension capital of the country.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's a wild.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: Two huge companies that started in in the 70s, both of them.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because I mean I think there was only one or two before us two.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were one of the original five, I think.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there was like uh what Rancho is out there, Trail Mestre.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: West Coast, yeah.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, most in most of the West Coast, yeah.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, there's that plug.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Trent.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: But yes, uh they called me, wanted me to come do engine engineering for them, and I went over there, they got bought by Real Truck, what was Truck Hero back then?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, I forgot, yeah.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: Then changed the name to Real Truck.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I went from engineering just suspension to everything.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like we did all types of truck accessories at that point.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which is so crazy because okay, I obviously you said like you've done fabrication and different things along your journey, and you've been so hands-on, which I do think teaches you way more than not that I'm putting down college whatsoever.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I just think that having a trade and actually learning and working with your hands is the best way to actually learn a matter, like you said, your degree was not in what you do for a living now, technically.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you learned that from just being hands-on and all the opportunities of getting to do that.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but so how did you go like when you left here?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: You were doing, like you said, new product development or sales, and then you get hired there in engineering, and like it's such a different part for that to not be like I guess your main job function during the previous years.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: I knew the guys at SuperLyft.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, we're small town, everybody knows everybody.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so um they knew that I was able to do that, and that's where they were looking to fill a position.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Cool.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: So um I had uh uh learned SOLIDWORKS on my own.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: I had been given like a few pointers in it a little bit, and then bought the program, um put it on my computer at home, and then just started playing with it.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I taught myself um SOLIDWORKS and Autodesk Inventor and Fusion 360, um, several different programs.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: Just you never know what you're gonna end up using.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um so and all those programs are very similar once you learn the commands and how it works.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: If you know one, you can fumble through the other one until you get the hang of it.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: And YouTube's a great source for tutorials.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes, it is.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: As the actual engineering like job function, when that went from just super lift to all of a sudden now a truck hero with 20, 30-ish brands, and you went from just designing lift kits to everything, was that like an enjoyable process for you to like now you now you can your skill set like gr grew a lot in that process, or what was that like?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: I enjoyed uh branching out and like doing the the other parts of it, uh, as far as like accessories and stuff, because you you kind of after you do one thing for so long, you kind of want to branch out and do a little something different.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: And it gave me the opportunity to do other things, you know, bumpers and rock sliders and step bars or you know, whatever.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: It was little trinkets that went on vehicles.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, I enjoyed it.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um I did learn from everybody that I worked with.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they have like 40 engineers at the corporate office that uh you get to talk to, and you can learn from every you know, everybody learns from everyone.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: So um that that was great.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I did miss the suspension end of it because towards the end of my tenure there, we weren't doing hardly any suspension anymore.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: It was it was almost all accessories or mostly um it was a lot of corporate steps in the process.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which you have in corporate ran businesses.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it is um well, it's just different when you're used to a smaller business and then you go to the street.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's it feels like a huge bottleneck when you come from a small business that where you're like, all right, it's designed, it's prototyped, it's tested, instructions are written, let's go.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then well, and I think it's funny to think about too, because you still, even though uh Truck Hero and then Real Truck, all of those things, you were still in West Monroe, Louisiana.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was still you didn't have to move to go be a part of that.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like it like overtook the small town base.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you're still in the small town feel and building it always was, but now it is corporately ran.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like that had to be so different.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what you were you yeah.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm still working in West Monroe in the small office.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: There's three of us in that office, three engineers in that office, and but we were doing, you know, you do Microsoft Teams meetings with corporate constantly, and um it it was a slower pace, uh, which was uh frustrating.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: I understand why they do it from a corporate standpoint because uh it's such a big company and you have so many people that they have to make sure that everything is done a certain way and things don't fall through the cracks.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: So um but for somebody that's used to just blowing through it and getting it done, it it gets hard.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: I bet.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: But um towards the end of my tenure there, uh probably the last year I was there, I transitioned into basically into the marketing department and um assisted opening a retail store in Detroit for a real truck.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I spent most of 2025 traveling back and forth to Detroit.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: I spent every other week in Detroit.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: So like a brick and mortar retail store.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they opened a big retail store in Detroit because I'd had a shop uh previously, yeah, um I was asked to assist uh on that project to get that store up and going.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it's uh it's a two-bay install two installation bay, but it's a 15,000 square foot uh store.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, and is that store still open?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, it just opened in November.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like that's awesome.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know that.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then you started here what in February?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: February.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: February.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I started talking.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh JR reached out to me in December, I think.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we started the talks back and forth.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh ended up coming on board mid-February, right after King of the Hammers.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and that's a good uh thing to talk about too.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: So you're part of a race team out there, right?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: With Martin Castro and what's that team called?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh SoCal X.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: SoCal X or SoCal Expedition.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh sponsored by Freight Factory.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Josh Sowell is the owner of the team and the driver.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Martin Castro runs the team pretty much.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I work with those guys.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: I've been working with them for about three years now.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is so fun.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: What tell us what you get to do there?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I fly out for King of the Hammers every year, and basically we race prep cars.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they pre run every day and come back and we fix what they tore up.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: We change burn up transmissions.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Three times in a week.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And those cars aren't easy to change transmissions out, are they?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so last year, 2025, King of the Hammers, I think we went through three transmissions in the 4800 car.
• 22:14
  unknown: Okay.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: And we found it when we were changing the last one, the plumbing.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know who did the plumbing on it, but somebody had plumbed it backwards.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it was starving it for fluid.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're only getting like five miles out of it, and it was smoking the transmission.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, but that transmission, if you don't, it's a bomber car.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: You have to take it out through the inside.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: So you have to take all the interior out, seats, the center console area, you pull the atlas out of it, and then the transmission comes up and out the side window.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: Ugh.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: It sounds terrible.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: It does sound terrible.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's a water.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's a huge transmission top.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And for people who haven't been to King of Hammers, it's not like an ideal setup out there.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: No, you're in the middle of nowhere.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: You're in a desert under a big tent with a you know vinyl tarps on the floor.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's it's uh it's a harsh environment.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's dusty, the wind's blowing all the time, it's normally freezing cold.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you you're pulling these transmissions out.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, the team's great because they show up with everything.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they've got plasma cutters and welders and like you know, you name it, full toolboxes with everything.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the whole off-road community, Ultra Four, has been great because I've seen people burn a transmission up and they're like, I'm out, you know, I'm not gonna be able to race.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: They burn it up during qualifying or they burn it up during pre-running or something like that, and they're out.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then another guy's like, You need a transmission?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Yeah.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Well, what are you running?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: He's you know, he names off whichever one.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's another competitor.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Well, I have a spare, you can have mine.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, see, I love that.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, and another one competitor will give his spare transmission to another one just so he can race.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: But that is our industry, yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: You don't see that anywhere else.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, uh, it truly is the best industry to be a part of, and I haven't got to experience the racing side as much, but I mean it it's there's the same guys, right?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're the same guys that are doing the the four by four off-road slow rock crawl who want to go out there and race the hammers, you know.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like you get a crossover a little bit, but for the most part, like that core belief system is the same.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: At least that's been my experience, and I I love that.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this this year at King of the Hammers, um, we pit next to Randy Slaussen every year.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um kind of help each team helps each other.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: We're all all friends, but um we blew a steering ram on our 4400 car.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, one of Randy's guys heard that we'd blown the ram.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Well, we have an extra.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, You sure you don't mind loaning it?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's like, No, I'll have him run it out here, you know.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, once it's in here, it's ours.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you better start it, right?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: So he brings us his spare steering ram, his last spare steering ram.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: We put it on our 4400 car and it leaves the pit.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: Ten minutes later, Randy comes into the pit with a blown steering ram.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: So now we're pulling you know steering rams off of like our 4800 car and loaning it to Randy.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: And it it anyway, we ended up blowing two steering rams on each car.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think we were pulling rams from like all of the spare cars.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: But the course was really hard.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: It was really hard this year.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was really hard.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: I watched some of it and you know, you can't always see everything through video, but even through the video, it looked intense.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and we timed out.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: So when Josh and Martin came into remote pit two, they had to be out of remote pit two by 8 p.m.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: And they came in at like 8 05.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: And they were like, You guys are done, you're timed out.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: Car's still running, everything's still doing good, but we were timed out.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um Randy had come in with a blown ram, and Josh and Martin had picked up a spare ram at main pit because they knew Randy was coming in with a blown one.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they brought it to remote pit two on their last lap through.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: And we helped Randy's guys swap everything out, and Randy got out of remote pit two in time and ended up winning the race.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is crazy.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: And y'all are running solid axle cars, solid axle bomber cars, yeah.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: And uh our car has the live valve shocks on it.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's the only solid axle car running live valve.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty cool.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: There it's uh it's a game changer for sure.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I assume, you know, working in that environment has really, I would say, probably grew your skill set a lot.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: It has.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: I've learned a lot from those guys, you know, working in the race environment.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: And uh Martin is uh the goofiest person you'll ever meet, but the the man's a genius.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, he is.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: He really is.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: He's super smart.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but when you meet him, you think, this guy's an idiot.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I can take him.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: But then we are T Martin.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: When you get to know him, it's like, you know what, he's not an idiot, he's really smart.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and he's he's for people who don't know Martin, he helped really build Milestar Tires, the brand.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he was like the guy, the face of Milestar, um, for all those years of their first, I guess, five years.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, him and Andrew really's wonderful.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Took the brand to a level where I think only him and Andrew could have done that.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think anybody else else would have came up with that strategy now.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because he's just such an enthusiast, but also like a loyal guy.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's a people's guy, and like we say this all the time, and you know this too, like we're a people brand.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're not necessarily a name brand.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like wherever the people go that we want to work with, that's where we go.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how we got involved with Milestar to begin with, because Andrew moved to Milestar and helped create or to Tyreco and helped create Milestar.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, so that was how we got to meet Martin, I think.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're definitely a me.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know did y'all meet him before I personally didn't.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Dad might have because I think uh Andrew and Martin were both at Falcon before Milestar believes.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so then Andrew went over to Milestar and he re obviously recruited Martin to come with him.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I would I agree with you, Mallory.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're definitely a a people over product.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, relationships and people matter.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that that's where we like to align with, not necessarily just a product.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because I do think when you have the right people, you get the right feedback, honest feedback, good or bad.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know for when we released our coolovers, it was like that for the year before.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: We only gave those to people we know would give us the real feedback, but we could trust to test the product and trust to keep the loyalty there.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they respected your dad and trusted your dad that way with the milestar tire, and that that has grown and it's a great tire.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: They have come such a long way because they listened to the people, and so it's like product can always get there, right?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the people aren't always the right people.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so anyway.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: I and I think with my the milestar deal, they're one of the only brands that's like consumer ran.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: And not only that, they would admit, like, hey, we know we did this wrong.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: What what what's your opinion on how we can do it better?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: How can we improve it?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that, I mean, you can't find that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, most companies don't do that.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-uh.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: They want to hide or be like, well, no, shove that under the rug.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't do that, we did it right.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because you're just using it wrong.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're using it wrong.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's the user issue.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: No, if you have a problem, I'm I'm that way.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: If I design something and you have a problem with it, I want to know about it.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for sure.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because I want to redo it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: Well, how else are you gonna fix it?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh not that any of my stuff ever has a problem.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, never.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, never.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Josh, a question.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Looking back at your career and everything you've learned, what's one of the biggest lessons that you've taken away?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh don't be hard-headed.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, um take criticism, constructive or otherwise.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: And uh don't be so hard-headed or bull-headed that you're always right, or you know, there's always another way to look at something, and always another way to do something.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I've learned to listen to everyone around me, everyone I work with, um, co-workers, employers, customers, and take their feedback because sometimes you get blinders on and you're you're going down this path with a project and you can't see any other route.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then you get frustrated, you get hung up, and then somebody can walk in and look at it and go, Well, why don't you do this?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you just look up at them and you're like, I don't know.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_03: Where have you been?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, where are you?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: I've been for three hours trying to figure out how to get this to work, and then you walk in there and it's like, well, it's obvious.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then I've sat there and fought something for half a day and and finally just close it and walk away from it.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I come back in the next morning, I sit down and turn my computer on and open the file, and I'm looking at it, I'm going, You idiot.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, it just you get a fresh take on it the next day.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, sometimes you just have to walk away from it uh and then come back the next day with you know a good night's sleep and and a fresh take on it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um well, and I think that that's advice that genuinely you could only have from experience and and age and wisdom and growing in that, because I know for me it is really hard to take criticism sometimes.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: And from I think it depends too on the person and like how people give it.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, no matter what, you have to take it, right?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how they get it, like you have to still be willing to receive it and take something from it without being offended or hold it against that person and be able to move forward, whether it's in business or outside of business.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that I I love that advice because that's actually something that I feel like you only can grow and learn how to do.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think anybody's good at that at the beginning of their career.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: No, I was not at all.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like uh, I was super hard-headed.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um and uh I would get blinders on, and it was like I had a path, this is where I was going, and and there was no deviation from that.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but life will teach you to pull those blinders off and look around.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, humility takes you a lot longer than uh or a lot farther than pride does.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but that's really hard.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: It is, it's really hard.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's a hard lesson to learn.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and the sooner you can learn that at a young age, the better off you'll be and the further you'll go in your career and in life.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like one of the sayings that I like is if you're the smartest person in the room, you're probably in the wrong room.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's like, you know, just from a humility aspect, yeah, it it keeps me in check.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: But that's a really hard thing.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like y'all talking about pride.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm I'm a younger man, kind of newer in my career, and it's like I can get caught up in like, no, I know what I'm doing is right.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's gonna accomplish the goal.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but then it's gonna be the way that's way better, or the way I'm doing is not gonna work.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's just keeping that in mind.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And a flip side to Evan's point, I think it's important to feel like that to an extent because that means you care, you want to go do a good job, like you want to be proud, or people in your space be proud of what you're doing.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's definitely a hard balance.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think you have to have a little bit of that hard-headedness to survive, honestly, to survive life and business nowadays in the world we live in.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have some sort of like backbone or hard-headedness, I the world will crush you.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes, that's a good point.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so I think you do have to have a little bit of that, just being able to humbly find a balance.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and if if I know I'm to this day, if I know I'm right on the way I'm doing it, it's still very difficult.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Sure to not push and drive to deviate from yeah, but I've learned to manage that a little bit and kind of work my way around it and maybe try other paths and then come back to the same one.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: I might end up coming back to the same one, I might not, you know.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes when I try another, I'm like, okay, well, that works too.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it works just as good, it's just a different way to do it.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: And if that's the way it needs to be done from a cult perspective or whatever, but and I think it goes to one of those uh things of like you have to know who you're communicating to to get your point across and what method of communication you have to work with that person because everybody's different.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's like that's something I'm learning now.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: Is like depending on who I'm talking to about something, I might have to communicate it in a different way to this person versus this person.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, and that is something that I struggle with.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Evan's probably much better at that.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's very much like his dad on that.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're very um not that they can't be McCurry's, but they are very more they're more laid back on their approach.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: They can be softer.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that's Evan being raised around four sisters.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: That ain't no lie.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, for real.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: He can softly approach where it's like, I um I have a hard time with that.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I have a hard time with it, doesn't matter who it is, like this is just what it is.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like a fact is a fact, a number's a number, data's data, here it is.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't always get the response that I think I should get.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's I I'm learning that still, it's the approach of how I'm presenting it and how I'm communicating it to the to the group, you know, which when it's me and Evan, I can say it as blunt as I need to because he knows me enough and knows that like it's not a I'm not being offensive or whatever, just here's the number.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Where other people, it's like I cannot get my way doing it like that.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that has been hard.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's been a hard one.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: I've got four daughters, so I've learned that softer approach to things because just the blunt at that approach does not always work and sometimes ends up in tears.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say, How many tears?
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: How many tears do we want to see today?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, all right, I need to approach this differently and see how to talk to them.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: And my wife is like, they're girls, you can't talk to them like that.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, but she's like, no, but it's a different experience.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: But when you work with women then in the business, which you don't work with many women, but when you do, you already know how to approach that so much better than people who don't have a bunch of daughters or a bunch of sisters.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they have to learn that the hard way might take them longer.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: We all kind of already have that.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's definitely a plus.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's made things a lot easier.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: Learning that softer approach to things because not everybody takes the blunt headstrong approach.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that's a good uh transition into a question of uh after everything you've seen in the industry and all your knowledge and experience that you have, what's one piece of advice you give to someone that's buying or building a vehicle?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess the best advice I can give someone plan your build out ahead of time.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: Don't just run into it blindly and buy the cheapest thing you can find because that's all you can afford at that time.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, uh plan your build and then work towards that goal.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, plan it in stages.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: You do stage one and then you step up to stage two, you don't end up wasting money that way.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: I see so many people that's good advice.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, well, this is all I can do right now, or I can buy this because it's the cheapest thing out there, and it gets me almost to my goal.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then they buy it and they get it on their vehicle and they're like, well, that's garbage.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I I really shouldn't have spent that money because now I have to spend that money again to buy something that is gonna last more than a year or two.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and metal parts as long as the thickness is correct, most of that holds up.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: But you run into like pushing problems and like uh you know, wear items on on a lot of these suspension systems out there, they just don't last.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's stuff that people don't think about, especially when they're building or buying their first one and they get excited.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're not thinking about that for someone who's been through multiple vehicles, been through multiple builds, like you know the wear and tear, and they are not thinking about that.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: No, they are not.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and it's hard in today's world with social media and YouTube and all these things where you have so many paid people that are supporting a brand, you know, where that person is a fan of this content creator's content, so they're just gonna do what they say.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Where that person, that content creator, may just be be paid to say that.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a hard mix, especially for new people getting into it to decipher, you know, what actually is the correct course of action of going about.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: So good.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I I would say be honest with yourself on what you're gonna use that truck for or Jeep or whatever it is.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: If you know you're gonna take it off-road and beat it to death, you need to build accordingly.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if you know you're never getting off the blacktop, sometimes you don't need to spend money in certain areas.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a it's a waste, you know.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: But um you just they need to be honest with themselves about what they're gonna do with it and really think through it.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I've seen people like, oh, I bought this brand new Jeep, it's not going off-road, blah, blah, blah.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I think it will.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, nope, not taking it off-road.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I know you.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think too, it depends like when you first get a build, like, and then you use like say just like for a Jeep for for me, for example, I've ridden in company vehicles for all these years, but until I owned my own Jeep and drove it on trails or in different terrain, I didn't really know what I needed yet.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't know how I liked it to feel yet, or what Joe wanted it to have on it yet.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: So if I would have bought it all at first, by the time I got a few trips in, I again I would have to have taken it off, spent the time to take it off, or have you know, Joe use his time to take it off, then pie what we really wanted.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes patience is key there.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: It is, and anyone building a Jeep for off-road, if they're new to the sport, getting into it, I highly recommend taking that vehicle off-road.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: Bone stock.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, don't go hit the hardest trail, go get on the trail, go riding, no lockers, no big tires, do a couple trails.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: It will teach you how to drive.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then it'll also teach you what you really want out of that Jeep.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: So get a couple trails under your belt and then say, okay, this is what I want.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: This is where I want to get to.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then start building it.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you get out there and you drive 33-inch tires, no lockers, you're gonna learn how to drive.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: You're not gonna have a choice.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe put a winch on it before you go.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's it's like highly recommended because you're gonna need it.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it will teach you how to drive.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and that's gonna teach you really how to pick your line.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: It will.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: It'll teach you how to pick your line, go with experienced people.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they may have a bigger Jeep, yeah, but most wheelers they can be on a in a four-door JL on 40s or 42s.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've got a stock JL, they'll go run a stock level trail with you.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: They don't care.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, definitely.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: They'll teach you how to pick your line and get through that trail.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it it'll teach you a lot about your Jeep and it'll teach you a lot about yourself.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: So love it.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's important too when a customer's either searching for a brand to buy or looking at a garage to do everything for them.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's important to try to educate yourself to figure out if they're doing it the right way.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: And building something the right way.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I know the big craze right now with coilovers is I want 14 14-inch coilovers, I want 16-inch coilovers.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but 60% of these guys, the way they have them mounted, are only using 11 inches, 12 inches of stroke of that 14.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, not that that's necessarily the wrong way to do things, but it's just, you know, finding somebody that's not just doing what's what's the big craze on social media right now, and actually doing something that fits you, your driving style, your your habits of your daily life, and what your goal is.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if if your vehicle can cycle 14, yeah, that's fine.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: But most of them end up running into steering issues and they're having to mount them where they don't actually cycle 14.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um they go to full hydraulic to get a full 14 inches of travel out of their coil over um hydraulic steering, by the way.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: That didn't make sense.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: But uh some of the um stock steering systems, you you can't get 14 inches of travel out of it.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_03: It just doesn't have it.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: So well, and it's like we ran into that with with my LJ that we're building right now.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's like we put 14s on there, okay, cool.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: I have a lot of droop and a lot of articulation, but then we had to limit it because then it would start destroying the front drive shaft.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, is it is it worth it at that point?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we were when on yours, we had the Curry 60 hitting the frame and then at full droop, we were gonna blow out the front drive shaft or at the very limit of the front drive shaft.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we made the call to back up to a 12-inch coilover.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um and also that's a lower ride height, which I'm which I'm great with.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_03: Which got the ride height down a little bit, um which is gonna be even better for that build.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um a lot of the guys they see these Jeeps that have huge coilovers and tons of travel.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people don't realize what they did to get there.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they front half or back half the frames, and you know, at that point you're getting into a pretty extreme build.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a bolt-on or uh which yours isn't fully bolt on, it's 90% bolt-on.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, with that new suspension.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_03: But um the coil over towers welded on, the bump stop brackets welded on.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Outside of that, everything else was bolt on.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: But there again, experience, knowledge, learning, listening to people around you.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the best way.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're glad that we have you back.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad to be back.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're really glad to be back.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it's really fun when you have somebody who goes out and gets experience in different avenues, and then you know, if you get the opportunity to have them back, then you get to benefit from that.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we definitely are come on, Josh.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: Team Josh, yeah.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I heard you you had to sign a lifetime contract.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I was told I had a lifetime contract.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Opportunity for retirement.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: It does come with a 20% raise every year, though.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: Now that we've got all this recorded.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna need y'all to agree to that.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't think so.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks for hanging out with us today, Josh.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think, you know, one of the biggest takeaways I got was just doing stuff the right way, building stuff the right way, doing the work the right way, you know, not just doing what the trend is, but really doing it the right way.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so thank you for today.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoyed it.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: All right, thanks for having me.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: Bye.