A ball joint is a small moving connection in your suspension that helps the wheels move up and down and turn. If it gets loose or worn out, the ride can feel shaky and you may hear knocking—especially on rough trails.
Rubicon refers to a well-known off-road trail that’s famous for tough rocks and steep obstacles. People go there to test how capable their 4x4 really is.
Topic
Barrett Lake
Barrett Lake is a place off-roaders go wheeling. It’s the kind of trail area where you find real obstacles that show whether your suspension and tires are up to the job.
The Wrangler is an off-road SUV made for driving on trails and rough terrain. It’s popular for trips where you might need to do repairs or modifications to keep going. People often take Wranglers to challenging off-road areas because they’re built for that kind of driving.
The axle housing is the sturdy metal “shell” that holds the gears and axle parts together. On off-road trucks, it’s a big deal because it has to survive hard hits and heavy loads on the trail.
The Ford Expedition is a big SUV meant for carrying people and gear, and it can be set up to tow and drive on rougher roads. Some versions have four-wheel drive, which helps when trails get muddy or uneven. It’s often discussed for trips where you need space and capability at the same time.
A group buy is when a bunch of people buy the same thing together to get a lower price. The show is using it to help listeners get a deal on the Wolfbox cameras.
Aftermarket applications just means “installed after you buy the vehicle,” not from the factory. In this case, it’s about camera setups that can be added to different off-road or specialty vehicles.
A dash cam is a small camera that records what’s happening on the road from your windshield area. It can provide video proof if there’s an accident or a dispute about what happened.
A three-link suspension is a way to connect the axle to the truck using three arms. It helps the axle move smoothly while keeping it positioned correctly on rough trails.
Triangulated suspension means the suspension arms are arranged like triangles. That helps keep the axle from shifting around too much when you hit bumps or change direction.
Term
parallel suspension kits
“Parallel” here means the suspension arms are set up in a way that keeps the axle’s movement more controlled. That changes how the truck rides and handles on uneven ground.
Coilover mounts are the places where the shock absorbers bolt to the truck. The mounting location matters because it affects how much the suspension can move and how strong it is.
Coilovers are shocks with a spring built in. “Custom tuned” means they’re adjusted for that specific truck so the ride and handling feel right on the trail.
Cantilevers are lever-style suspension parts that help control how the shock’s force gets turned into wheel movement. They’re used to tune the suspension and fit it into the truck’s layout.
Skid plates are protective panels mounted under the vehicle to shield vulnerable components from rocks, logs, and impacts. They’re a key off-road accessory because they reduce the chance of punctures and expensive damage.
Frame stiffeners are reinforcement parts that make the truck’s frame less flexible. That can help the suspension work more consistently when you’re driving hard off-road.
Shock towers are reinforced areas where the top of the shocks attach. They matter because they keep the suspension mounted securely during hard off-road use.
A solid front axle is a heavy-duty off-road suspension setup where both front wheels are connected by one sturdy axle. It helps the truck stay stable and keep traction on bumpy ground.
A “trailer queen” is a vehicle that you mostly haul on a trailer instead of driving around. People use the term when it’s more of a show/occasion vehicle than a normal road car.
An external roll cage is a reinforced metal safety frame mounted outside the vehicle’s body to protect occupants during rollovers. On off-road builds like a Suzuki Samurai, it’s especially relevant because the vehicle may tip over during climbs and side-hill situations.
The Suzuki Samurai is a small 4x4 that’s popular for off-roading. It’s built in a way that can get tipped over on tough trails, so people often add safety gear like a roll cage to keep it manageable and safer.
Lockers are devices that stop the wheels from spinning at different speeds. “Twin lockers” means both the front and rear axles can lock, which helps the truck keep moving when traction is uneven.
This means the differential locks are controlled using compressed air. When you activate them, the front and rear axles lock up to help the vehicle get traction.
A carbon winch is a winch made with carbon-fiber parts to make it lighter than a typical winch. That can be helpful on small 4x4s where weight matters.
An ATV winch is a smaller winch meant for quads/ATVs. In this story, they’re saying a smaller winch can be enough for the job if it’s the right size for the vehicle and terrain.
A carburetor is the part that mixes fuel and air before it goes into the engine. “1.3 carburetor” here means it’s matched to a 1.3-liter engine, and the host is saying it’s still the original style setup.
A “carburetor wizard” is just a person who really knows how to adjust a carburetor so the engine runs right. The host is saying this kind of know-how is getting harder to find.
It means the vehicle was modified so it can use propane as fuel instead of regular gas. That requires changes so the engine can properly mix and burn propane.
Wheelbase is the length of the car from the front wheels to the back wheels. A shorter wheelbase can make the vehicle turn more easily, but it can also feel a bit more “tippy” or unpredictable on rough hills.
“Endo” means the bike tips forward and the front end hits first, like going over the handlebars. It’s a common term in dirt-bike riding for that kind of crash.
A two-stroke engine is a type of engine that makes power with a faster cycle than a four-stroke. That can make the bike feel more responsive when you’re riding hard off-road.
“Carbon Off-Road” is the name of the off-road company they’re talking about. They’re explaining how they sell and support their products in the United States.
Term
sales and project manager
That title means the person helps sell products and also manages the work needed to get projects done. Here, it’s about organizing off-road-related sales and projects.
Grassroots events are local, community events run by regular people in the hobby. They’re talking about going to those meetups to connect with off-road fans.
Overlanding is traveling long distances in a vehicle, often off-road, with gear and supplies so you can go remote. They’re saying they meet the people who do that.
A winch is a recovery tool—typically mounted on an off-road vehicle—that uses a motor and cable to pull the vehicle out of mud, sand, or other stuck situations. The speaker mentions winches as a key product category, implying that competitors and buyers often treat winches as a straightforward “in and out” purchase.
GVM is the maximum total weight your vehicle is allowed to be when it’s loaded. If you add too many heavy accessories, you can exceed that limit and it can also make the vehicle feel less stable.
Axle load is the amount of weight each set of wheels (each axle) is carrying. If too much weight goes on an axle, it can affect how the vehicle handles and can also create problems with tires and regulations.
The Toyota 4Runner is a midsize SUV that’s designed to handle off-road driving better than many regular SUVs. People like it for trips because it has room for gear and can be set up for trails. It comes up in off-road discussions when crews talk about how loaded their vehicles are for an event.
In off-roading, a “maintenance nightmare” describes how quickly a vehicle can accumulate problems after harsh conditions. Mud, rocks, and water crossings can force more frequent cleaning, inspections, and repairs than normal driving.
Rock bouncing is when you drive over rough rocks that make the suspension jump up and down. It’s rough on the truck, so people build their rigs to handle that kind of pounding.
Term
P&W wheeling
“P&W wheeling” is a local off-roading style/community the hosts are talking about. They’re saying the trails change with the seasons, so people build their trucks differently for summer versus winter.
Snow wheeling means driving off-road in snowy conditions. Because it’s slippery, people set up their trucks to get better traction and handle the terrain safely.
Fort Ice is an off-road spot the hosts mention alongside other tough rock areas. They’re using it to show how different trails call for different truck setups.
Off-camber means the ground is tilted sideways. That can make it harder for your tires to grip evenly, so off-road setups try to handle that kind of sideways slope.
The Tesla Semi is a large electric truck used to move cargo. Instead of using diesel fuel, it runs on electricity. It may be mentioned because people are curious how an electric truck performs and fits into real driving schedules.
Ultra 4 is a type of off-road race car. It’s built to do two very different things well: go fast over rough terrain and also crawl over rocks slowly and carefully.
“Stalling out” here means the winch stops working while it’s under strain. That’s a problem because it can leave the vehicle stuck when you need it most.
A winch’s pull capacity is how strong it is—how hard it can pull. People compare that strength to how fast the cable moves so you know what you’ll get when you’re stuck.
Line speed is how quickly the winch cable (line) spools in or out, usually measured in feet per minute or inches per second. Higher line speed generally comes with tradeoffs in torque/effort, so it’s evaluated alongside pull capacity.
A 12,000-pound winch is sized for how much pulling force it can provide. It’s a common off-road rating because it’s strong enough for many trucks, without needing to be maxed out all the time.
The winch case (housing) is made from aluminum instead of steel. Aluminum is lighter, so the winch weighs less without necessarily changing how strong it pulls.
A lifetime mechanical warranty means the manufacturer will cover mechanical parts for a long time—often for the life of the winch. It’s basically their promise that the moving/physical parts shouldn’t fail without support.
A five-year electrical warranty means the electronics (like the motor and control box) are covered for five years if something fails. It’s a way to reduce risk for buyers.
Gear ratio is how the winch turns motor power into pulling force. A higher ratio usually means more torque (stronger pulling) but can reduce how fast the cable moves.
The motor’s horsepower is a measure of how much power it can make. More power generally helps the winch pull harder, especially when paired with the gearbox.
A free spool handle lets you release the winch so the cable can move more freely. That makes it easier to pull out line by hand when setting up a recovery.
This is an air-powered part that lets your winch switch into a “free-spool” mode. Free-spool means the rope/drum can move more easily when you’re pulling the line out by hand or guiding it.
A solenoid is an electrically controlled “switch” that moves something inside a device. It’s often used to trigger a change in state—like engaging or disengaging a mechanism.
Some off-road setups use compressed air to run accessories. If your vehicle doesn’t already have an onboard air compressor, you can use an external one to supply the air.
An airline is just the air hose that delivers compressed air to the winch control. If that hose or the air supply fails, the winch is designed to fall back to a safe default mode.
A clutch is what lets the winch either connect to the motor or disconnect from it. Disengaging the clutch makes it easier to move the rope/drum by hand; engaging it lets the motor pull.
This means the company promises to cover problems with the winch’s gearbox for a long time—often for the life of the winch. It’s meant to reduce the risk of expensive repairs later.
A warranty claim is when you ask the company to fix or replace something because it broke under the warranty. Sometimes coverage is denied if the damage came from misuse or modifications.
The motor cavity is the space inside the winch where the motor sits. Putting the wrong stuff in there—like too much grease—can interfere with how the motor works.
In a winch, the gear ratio is how the winch’s gears trade speed for strength. If you set it up to pull faster, it usually pulls with less force; if you set it up to pull harder, it usually pulls slower.
A short drum configuration means the winch drum is shorter, which affects how much cable fits on the drum and how the cable is spooled during operation. Short drums are often used when you want a more compact winch package, but you may sacrifice total available cable length compared to a long drum.
Rope length is simply how much cable you have to pull with. More length can help you reach farther during a recovery and keep the cable from running out too quickly.
A long drum is a longer winch spool that can hold more cable. That helps when you need extra reach during off-road recoveries, especially on smaller vehicles.
UTVs are off-road side-by-side vehicles. Many UTVs use winches for getting stuck vehicles out, so having the right cable length and mounting setup matters.
Winch control boxes are the part you use to operate the winch. Moving them to a different spot in the vehicle can make the winch easier to use and fit better with bumper or mounting choices.
Remote mounting means putting the winch controls somewhere else in the vehicle instead of right on the winch. It helps you install the winch neatly and still reach the controls easily.
A slimline bumper is a smaller, lighter front bumper. It can make room for off-road clearance and often looks cleaner, especially when paired with a winch that’s tucked away.
Hidden winch cradles are brackets that hold the winch in a way that keeps it tucked behind the bumper. That can look cleaner and protect the winch, but it may change where you place the controls and how you route the cable.
A fully electric winch runs on electricity from the vehicle. It’s different from a hydraulic winch, which uses fluid pressure instead of an electric motor.
Mounting bolts are what hold the winch to the vehicle. Using more (and properly sized) bolts helps spread the load so the winch doesn’t rip loose during a hard recovery.
Safety factors are extra strength margins engineers build in. In winching, that means your mounting and setup should be strong enough that you’re less likely to have parts fail during a hard pull.
High-vis just means the gear is made in bright, easy-to-see colors. Here, they’re also saying it’s built for heavier-duty use than the lighter options.
A winch ring is a simpler piece of recovery gear that helps you route a winch cable in the right direction. It’s meant to be lighter and easier to use when you need to pull a vehicle out.
LIVE
Welcome one. Welcome all to the snail trail four by four podcast. If you like going off
roading in Toyotas, wrenching on Toyotas, camping in Toyotas, maybe even poking a little
bit fun at Toyotas. And of course, hearing about how fantastic winching in Toyotas is
that this is the podcast for you. That's right, ladies and germs. My name is Tyler. Joining
me for another episode of the snail trail four by four podcast is the one and only Jimmy
Jet over here. How you do, buddy? Good. Thank you. How are you doing? Pretty good. Awesome.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was a I'm getting a little worried about the state of Fiona at
the moment and how much wheeling I'm doing. Oh, okay. And somebody posted the other day, I
saw it on social media of I was a, it was a kid trying to like climb stairs and it was like
the first step was going to work. And the second step was like going and buying groceries. Next
step was like working on the vehicle to make sure it's not broken. And then the last step was
forgetting it all and going wheeling. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, that's totally me right now.
Like it's a, I have a ball joint that will not stay tight. I have to, I literally have to get
out and tighten it on the trail like once every couple hours. Wow. It's kind of getting bad.
And I have a rear ring opinion that has three patterns worn into it and probably should not
be wheeling on it, but I'm going out to Rubicon and Barrett Lake this weekend anyways.
Just weld it. Whatever. It'll be fine. It's not broken yet. Just weld the ball joint, right?
Um, yeah. And so anyways, uh, that's how my life is going right now,
great, which is a good problem to have. I'm getting out and enjoying the outdoors,
getting out, doing a bunch of wheeling. Um, so it's a good time.
And it's good for the podcast cause like the last year, maybe two years,
it's been baby and house projects. And now we're finally getting around back into the swing of
things with the wheeling and working on vehicles again. Yep. So, um, except for this last weekend
for me, well, you got some stuff done on your axle housing. I did. And I talked about that on
Thursday. Oh, that's right. So yeah, new week. Um, anyways, uh, this is Monday. Yes, it is.
So we have a fun interview for you guys lined up for today. Um, this is one that, um, we have been
planning since trail hero expeditions, our time on trail hero X, um, really cool guy that we got
to hang out with all week long, um, from, uh, our friends loaned him over to the States,
from the land down under. So, uh, you guys will get to learn more about, uh, him and what he does
and why he's on the show. Once we start the campfire discussion until then we have a couple
housekeeping things we need to go over as per normal, um, such as a lot of stuff going on with
wolf box this month. Um, it is the, the, the month of the wolf box. Yes. So, uh, we did the
interview with Austin, uh, last week where you guys got to learn a lot about how wolf boxes work,
how they've impacted his life and his off-roading career. Um, and how it's impacted
my off-roading career and soon to be Jimmy's off-roading life. Um, you guys heard last Thursday
how much of a awesome thing it was and how I've turned a new reliance onto the wolf box. Um,
and so it's just, it's one of those things that I totally never thought I would like and have been
enjoying it and appreciating it so much more almost every time I go out. Um, so we have the
giveaway this month for a wolf box G 900 T P the tri pro, uh, which is the three camera system. Um,
and so in order to get signed up for that, you got to go over to either irate 4x4.com and go down
to the snail trail 4x4 forum and then all your sign up options are there. Um, you, I think the
only, we have two sign up options to get in for the giveaway. One is the monthly and one is the
annual. So, uh, look at that over on irate 4x4 or that option is also available on the discord.
Um, the discord information, how to access it, pull it up and get the invite link to the server
is all down in the show notes as well as accessing, um, the signups through irate 4x4. So
if you want to get in for a chance to win a wolf box G 900 tri pro, which is about $350 value,
um, you need to make sure that you're signed up in one of those places, uh, by the end of the month,
which is July 31st of this month. So, uh, make sure you guys doing that. Um, the other thing we
have going on with the wolf box this month is a group buy. Yes. For the G 900 tri pros, uh,
which is their, their top of the line, uh, review camera system right now,
which you heard a lot about over the past couple of weeks. Um, and, uh, they're doing
Hellman was it 20 bucks off? If we get 10 units, uh, 30 bucks off and we get 20 units and 40
bucks off. If we get 30 units are more committed and I think we're between the 10 and 20 mark
right now. No, we're between the 20. Well, we have, I believe we have like 22 people signed up.
Nice. Yeah. So there you go. 22 units because we have a few people that are actually requesting
two items. Yep. So we, I believe that will carry us over into the, uh, we're between the 30 and
$40 mark right now. So just roughly eight to 10 more units and, uh, we can max out the group buy.
The cool. Yeah. For $40 off. $40 off loss on top of any sales they have going on. And, uh,
from what it sounds like, the 20% off sale that they're running right now
will continue through the end of the month. So as long as, um, we get, we have to report all
everybody, how many units we have committed for, um, at the end of July. So on July 31st,
we're going to report that to Wolf box. They'll give us a discount code and then we can get
everybody in the group by that discount code to go on and buy from their website. Um, and you can
stack that discount code with whatever sales are going on the website and there's a 20% off sale
going on right now. Yes. So 20% off 350 bucks. That's $70. So you're going to get $110 off if we
max out the group by if, if all the stars align. Yes. That's true. So, um, it's a pretty cool
opportunity to win a, to get a really cool review camera set up, um, for aftermarket
applications, um, tow vehicles, cab over campers, your off road vehicle. There's a lot of really
neat applications for these, uh, and just not to mention the safety factor of in case of an
accident or you witness an accident or anything, you can have it on camera. I don't know how,
like even my old man has sent me videos of like people pulling out in front of cars and then
purposely hitting their slamming on their brakes for like no apparent reason and just, you know,
and then the people in the car is coming out like they hurt their neck or they have all these
problems and then they realize that they have a dash cam and they're like, oh, we're fucked.
Yep. Yep. So dash cams are very, very nice to have. It's, it's a nice insurance policy
to help with shit like that. Um, and, uh, there's so many different situations that can happen
out on the road where if there's an accident or police and law enforcement are involved
and you've got the video footage, it makes it a pretty shut case open and shut case as to
where fault is, what actually happened with everything. So, um, possibly $110 off of the
system. It's kind of a no brainer, in my opinion. Um, so anyways, really cool stuff from Wolfbox.
Huge shout out to them for supporting the podcast and doing some cool stuff this month with us.
On top of that, we have, uh, giveaways for reviews. And I think last time we checked,
we had three spots left. Yeah. So three or four, something like that.
Maybe, uh, or future casting a little last Thursday, maybe we filled them all up. We'll see.
Yeah. Um, but we do giveaways for reviews. So go to Apple podcast, leave us a review,
and you'll get automatically entered every time we do a review for every time we do, uh,
giveaway for reviews. Um, and so every 50 reviews is kind of when we do a giveaway. Um,
and so we have, uh, on ex elite membership at 800 reviews. If we've already surpassed that
congratulations, but sat on you guys for not getting in for that. Um, if you want to get
in for the 850, which is an on ex elite membership and a swag pack, um, uh, of cool stuff that we've
kind of accumulated from working with different vendors throughout the years. Um, we'll get that,
uh, going at 850 and then at 900 reviews, we're doing a big ass giveaway with more flight. Um,
$900 value for 900 reviews, uh, minimum. And, uh, we have some pretty cool stuff in the works
that's getting ready to launch here. And we're in the final stages of getting everything ready.
I think one of them will be able to launch. Uh, I'm guessing I'm hoping within the next 30 days.
Oh, wow. Maybe 45 days. And then the other one I'm hoping within 60 days. Nice. From now. So, um,
and then the monster one is going to be black friday, black friday, christmas time. Okay.
All right. Sounds fun. Pre orders. I'm hoping we'll be able to open up pre orders and maybe do
a big Kickstarter campaign. Um, for the big one, uh, that I'm hoping that might open like
October beginning of October time. Okay. So sounds fun. Yeah. We'll get you guys more information
for on all of that as it keeps coming, but, um, all of that will be included in a big ass prize
package from more flight. Um, once we get to 900 reviews, perfect. Sounds good. Yeah. There's a
lot of moving parts on this end. Um, you know, we're always working on the gift boxes and working
on everything else for the monthly giveaways and reviews and all that. So there's a lot of moving
parts here and I hope you guys are enjoying it all as we continue down this. So lovely podcasting
road of ours. Um, let's see. I don't think there's really anything else. I think I barely spoke here
so, but I think you did a great job at covering everything. Thank you. I have my copies kicked
in for the morning. So I got all this ready to go, man. Sounds good. Well, shall we, uh,
invite our Aussie friend in tip, um, into the casting couch? Yeah, he does speak with a funny
accent. Um, we will ask him what a fanny pack is and, uh, you guys will, I think have a good time
and get to learn a little bit about some winches today. So we'll take a quick break. Uh, I need
to refill my coffee so that I can get some better, even more jitters going and we'll be right on back
with James from carbon winches at four wheel underground. We have something for everyone's
79 through 04 Toyota vehicle, whether you've got a Chevy Dana 60, 0 five and up super duty,
fabricated FJ 80 or many truck axles. We got you covered three link, four link, parallel and
triangulated suspension kits. We've got you covered under bed coilover mounts, through bed coilover
mounts, trailing arms, cantilevers, custom tuned coilovers and air bumps. We've got you covered
frame stiffeners, subframes, skid plates, shock towers and more to come. Make sure to use coupon
code snail trail at four wheel underground.com cause we've got you covered. What is up everybody?
Welcome back to the show. Hopefully you guys all enjoyed the break out there. Um, if you're
watching on camera, you'll notice that Jimmy and I'm in the same spot. I guess Jimmy move spots,
but there's somebody else in Jimmy's spot right now. Yeah. Uh, who Jimmy, who we got another
Jimmy, we're taking over. I feel like I'm a, I need to put on the defense or something right now.
You should always be on the defense. No, we have James in the studio here live.
He's traveling through the U S at the moment. We were able to talk him into stopping in at
Sacramento to do a podcast. Um, but we got to spend a week with James out at trail hero X.
Um, and James, you're from carbon winches. Yeah. Carbon off road, carbon off road. Okay.
Winches and recovery winches. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, uh, pretty cool stuff. We'll definitely
are going to be diving into carbon, what carbon does, where you guys came from,
all that good stuff. Um, but first thing, we need to get the obvious elephant out of the room.
You have a funny accent. I talk weird. You do talk weird. I talk funny. Um, my accent is actually
a hybrid. So I was, um, born and raised in New Zealand and about 22 years ago moved to Australia.
So in the, in the Australia versus New Zealand war, um, where do you stand on all that?
I'm, uh, I'm a Kiwi. I love Australia as well. It's opened up a lot of doors. Um,
I've seen my daughter and a lot of my family is there now as well. Um, so Australia is amazing.
Um, it's a lot warmer than New Zealand. New Zealand is probably in some ways more scenic
and it always has that place in my heart. That's always home.
Both Tyler and I have been to New Zealand and we absolutely loved it there.
I spent a month in New Zealand in 2009 and fell in love with the place. Yeah.
It's a really, really cool spot as much as everybody knows Australia to be like
the off-roading, one of the off-roading mechas. New Zealand is like an outdoor Mecca. It's like
any adventure, any adventure you want to do, you can do in New Zealand from like hang gliding or
paragliding, like that super fast jet boat open the rivers, uh, you know,
when New Zealander invented the jet boat. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Okay.
Perfect. And the bungee jump. The bungee was invented in New Zealand. Yeah. Well,
adapted from the tribes that used to do it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Nice. I did the, um, the Nevis Canyon bungee. That was fun to do. Did you get your head wet?
I did not. I didn't go that far down. So close. Yeah. I also did the swing,
the giant, the Nevis swing. Yeah. And that was fun because the, the guy was,
that was loading me onto the swing. He goes, all right, question for you.
You're all set, ready to go. Do you want to count down or do you want to be surprised?
And I didn't answer right away. I was like, which one do I want? And he goes,
all right, see ya. Just clicks it.
But I absolutely love New Zealand. It's a really cool spot. Yeah.
Like Jimmy said, it's the adventure capital of the world really. Yeah.
Such a really wide variety of terrain that you can do, like getting to hike on the
Franz Joseph glacier and come down from a glacier terrain into a tropical forest.
There's only like three places in the world that happens.
And I think two of them are in New Zealand. Probably. Yeah. So really,
really cool. Just a variety of terrain and things to see and do. Yeah. Blackwater rafting.
I got to do the blackwater rafting. That's cool. I think Waitomo.
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Waitomo. Yeah. That was really, that was a highlight of the trip too. So.
Yeah. So the part I'm from called Taranaki. It's about halfway up the west coast of the
North Island. Okay. And we were super lucky. So we're right in the shadow of Mount Taranaki.
So in the summer, you have your, you call it tramping. You guys call it hiking.
So you have the mountain there and then 45 minutes away, you have some of the best surf
on the planet. Yeah. Quoting Kelly Slater there.
Because the point of the island, no matter which way the swell is going,
you're 45 minutes away from a good break. Okay. That's cool. And then in the winter,
you had to obviously skiing, snowboarding on the mountain as well. So.
Yeah. I've been down to, I only toured the Southern island, but I went down to Milford Sound.
Right? Yeah. And now I see it all the time in photos and people like,
it's shared all over the place. And unless you've been there and have seen it with your eyes,
then you wouldn't recognize it as, but it is amazing how often I find it
on photos everywhere around the place. Yeah. From like a windows background to,
you know, just people's photos in a gallery or something.
It's just epic. It's stunning the whole country, top to bottom.
Yeah. It's, it's absolutely great. I mean, we could do a whole podcast.
A book and a return date and then we could do a New Zealand one.
Yeah. Hey, calm down. Let's do it. Do you have you, so you've been here a few weeks now?
Yeah. Have you converted over to right hand drive and driving on the quote wrong side of
road for you? Yeah. It's never the right side of the road.
It's actually, I've gotten used to it. I think I've only had a couple of whoopsies.
Yeah. Where it's like, oh, oh, and then sort of correct pretty quickly.
Yeah. Do you still look the wrong direction as you're coming out of a parking lot or something?
Yeah. Yeah. And just walking across the road, I'm always looking one little lapse away from
from being a pancake. The worst part is the, we call them roundabouts.
Sure. Traffic circles. So for us, we enter it from the other direction and we drive around
it the other direction as well. So I'm still getting my head around those.
Yeah. I did 10 days of driving in Ireland and they drive on your side of the road, right?
Right. So yeah.
And I was with my wife and so he made the rule of like, you just look the direction of the seat
that you're in. So like, you know, I was driving most of the time. So I was always looking left
and she was looking right. And we just both said if it's clear or not.
But when I came back here, the day that I left and I came down here, like to record it when I
got home, I turned off on the wrong side of the road. Like went the whole wrong way, started
like, oh, there's oncoming traffic. Like even coming back home, I started messing myself up
because I was used to it. Yeah. It was funny. I did that the first time I went back home
to Australia and pulled out of my driveway, drove down the street, little country road,
one lane, like one lane that you share, and then turned into the main road, the wrong lane.
His truck's coming right at me. I was like, oh, no, that's right. I'm home again.
Yeah. And they're calling you tourists then.
I know. That was brutal.
That's funny. We have had a kind of a couple of ongoing topics that relate to Australia.
So it's nice to have you on the show to give some input on them real quick before we kind of dive
into a couple other more fun topics, but we've got to get these out of the way. A, what's your
thought on Vegemite? Terrible. You don't like it?
No. New Zealand has Marmite.
What is Marmite? Is it a marmit? It's a yeast spread like Vegemite, like Promite,
which I think they have in England. Marmite is the best of them. Vegemite is very easy to overload.
You only need a tiny bit, and that's enough. Marmite is a bit more forgiving. You can have a
little bit more, but we grew up with it. My grandparents would put it into savory mints,
like a stew kind of thing. You'd have it on your toast, and that's the thing. So if you're going
to have a mite, have a marmite. Got it. I've heard a lot of people, like as an American tourist going
over to the Southern Isle or whatever you want to call it, Americans who want to spread it on
like peanut butter. Oh, no. Or try it with a teaspoon. Yeah, no. And it's like you put less
than you would spread butter onto toast. It's so minimal. So yeah, I think Americans just
overdo it once they realize that they shouldn't do that much. I think it's actually, it's pretty
decent. I think question B is camping versus glamping. How do you determine the difference?
Okay. Glamping, I think anything in a sprung. So if you're in a mattress that's in a sprung,
as opposed to a self-inflating or a foam or anything like that,
glamping would be in a sprung. And I don't know if you could put it down to a square feet
or a square meter. The more square meters or the more square feet you have, the less camping it is.
Okay. So space that you're taking up in a campsite or your camp wherever you're camping at?
Yeah. For me, when I go camping, I love my, it's called a stretcher tent. It's like a
cot with a mosquito net over it and then a rain fly over the top of that. So it's almost like a
camping coffin. Like a swag? Like a swag, but it's up off the ground. And it's not. I used to have a
swag and that was my favorite. But as time takes its toll, getting down to the ground and then
getting up off the ground becomes more and more challenging. So this stretcher tent is,
you know, a foot and a half. It's a cot. It's off the ground. So and it helps when it's raining.
You're not in the mud. You're not doing that. So got it. Yeah. Okay. So, but that's a single
person and maybe a little bit wide. But so what about like a ground tent at that point?
Like, would you consider that glamping? No, no. Okay. Maybe the other way to capture the camping
glamping would be your watt hours of power that you consume while you're on the side.
So you can camp in a big tent and I've done big tents and sometimes if you're on a long trip,
then you'd want some room to spread out and have a bit of room. And if it rains,
you need some undercover. But yeah, if you're plugging in a fan, that's one thing. If you're
plugging in a fan and portable TV, that's another thing. Yeah. Electric blankets. If you have
electric blankets. We're always glamping. We went camping and one guy brought a coffee machine.
That's crossing the line. That's not camping. Yeah. I was out at
Skills Day and I guess Blue Eddy just released a power station, a battery pack power station
that can do like 3000 watts on the AC. And so he brings a little coffee maker, sets it in his tent,
sets the time on it so that it's pouring and he has a little single serve
pot of coffee ready when he wakes up and I'm like, dude, that's not, you can't do that.
But at the same time, I want to do that. There's an element of jealousy.
I think the same way, if you're camping on a hot weekend or something like that and
someone pulls up and they've got air conditioning, it's like, that's not good.
Yeah. Can I come in and hang out for a bit? Yeah. I'll just come and judge you when you're comforted.
Yeah, exactly. All right. So that's the second question. Camping was glamping.
Third question is how do you define a fanny pack? Fanny pack. Yeah.
You guys call them a bum bag or a belt bag or something.
I think they've had a resurgence as well, haven't they? They've gone right up to a
macho, like a man's satchel. Man's satchel. That's like the chest ones. Yeah. Fanny pack's like,
I don't know, you have it in the 80s where it's like this little thing in the front with a
clip on the back of it kind of thing. Some people wear those across their chest now as well. There's
elements of youth culture, I think, in Australia and they are called Eches.
Eches? E-S-H-A-Y-S-H-A-S-H-A-S. Kind of like the young people who might be a little bit
mischievous in some of their activities and they'll quite often wear the
fanny pack, strung across the shell over there and run around and get up to mischief.
All right. Yeah. We just learned recently that we learned what fanny meant.
What fanny means. Yeah. We had a couple of Australian listeners had to call in
and define fanny for Jimmy. That would have been a fun conversation.
I was asking them if they were wearing their fanny pack and they didn't get it.
They're like, that does not sound like a good thing to wear.
They're called a bum bag or a belt fanny pack, I think, is an invaded
culture a little bit as well. Okay. Yeah. So it does start to make its way over to
Australia as a fanny pack now. Yeah. Okay. Oh, really? I think bum bag sounds better.
Yeah. It depends whether you wear it at the front or if you wear it at the back.
Oh, so it could be a fanny pack or a bum bag. Got it. But what if the guy is wearing it though
in the front? Yeah. That's not even going to go there. Leave that one alone.
All right. Well, good. We got the important questions out of the way.
All right. We've sold the greatest concerns of the population.
There you go. Yeah. If you guys haven't noticed, James is a really funny guy and we had a great
time with him over there. With Adam and with him. He was always in front of us.
I know. We were always at the back of the pack. It wasn't always me. Sometimes that was Danny
putting a hammer down and I believe it. Oh, that was fun. Yeah. She's a great driver. Yeah.
For sure. But we had a great time with James out there and obviously we connected rather well,
but yeah. So how do we go from here? How did you get into off-roading? Because obviously
you're here to talk about carbon winches. We're going to get into that. But we want to know,
the listeners want to know your background. How did you get into off-roading? What was your story
to end you in carbon and what you're doing with carbon right now? Right. So I'm very,
very lucky. I've kind of forest-gumped my way through this. Okay. Amazing things just seem to
happen around me and I'm just present and enjoy it and I'm very, very thankful for it. So growing up,
then Taranaki, New Zealand, farming is huge. So we're always out riding quad bikes and motor bikes
and then when you're old enough and no one was looking, you're allowed to drive the little farm
ute kind of thing, which is usually a little Toyota 4x4. And then moving over to Australia,
where there's a lot more sunshine, you get more opportunity to do that without being stuck in
the mud all the time. So I actually was working really hard as you do
and thought I need to make some friends and grown-ups really struggled to make friends.
So I was just thought, well, I'm going to buy a four-wheel drive and then I'm going to
join a group that goes for wheel driving. So I brought my Suzuki, found a Suzuki club.
Okay. And then, yeah, that's kind of led into everything else. I met a couple of the other
guys that work at Carbon as well. Through the club. And also met the owner
of Carbon Dan. Well, he was working for another company before Carbon even started.
So there's been a relationship there that's gone for several years. And then they ended up
saying there's an opportunity here. And I just thought, well, I'd be stupid to pass that up.
Yeah. So I just kind of fell into it really.
Very cool. I think that goes a lot to talk about just relationships with people in general, right?
Everything that we do in life is going to be involving other people in some way, shape or form.
And so being able to have and build relationships with people throughout life,
you never know when opportunities are going to come knocking from those relationships,
or you're going to be able to offer opportunities to those relationships as well.
So it's just a testament to, I think, of how good of a guy you are and your ability to build
and relationships and have fun with people and just kind of chill and have a good time with people.
So yeah, I think it's a testament to the off-road community as well. And it translates New Zealand,
Australia, America. Everyone that's in the off-road scene is on the whole is very welcoming,
very genuine people. You develop friendships through sometimes stressful situations.
And they tend to be really strong relationships.
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your Suzuki that you have.
So the Suzuki I have is an 88 Sierra or Samurai that you guys would know it as.
So it's a Sierra in Australia, they're called. Samurai's here in the States.
When did they go to Jimneys?
Suzuki went to, they were different names in different countries.
In Australia, I think it was around the 90s, they went to a Jimney, which they sort of retired
this year from 96. And then I think 90, maybe 96, 98, they came out with a Jimney,
which was a different body. Got it. Yeah, we don't need to go into specifics.
So in the mid 90s, they still making them changed names. Yeah.
So they stopped making them for a while and they brought them back. Yeah.
And it's now gone back to a retro kind of look, square shape.
And yeah, still alive axle, still a solid front axle. Nice. Cool. Yeah.
All right. So you got an 88. 88. It's on big tires for Australia.
235, 85, 16, which I think the match the 31s, 32 and a half. I think tall and skinny.
I think I 32 by nine and a half or something like that.
Well, that's also just a big tire for Suzuki's in general. So yeah.
So it's a trailer queen now that can't drive on the road.
I was going to ask if you got it engineered.
No. Has a external roll cage, which is handy because it quite often falls
over sideways as Suzuki's do. Yeah. It's part of their character, personality.
Yeah. And that's so light. You just get a few mates and they push it right back over and keep going.
It's got 65 gears in it, twin lockers, airlocked front and rear.
Okay. Of course it's got the carbon winch on the front, which is probably overkill,
but it was a fun challenge to try and squeeze a big winch into a little car.
Yeah. So that was... Do you know Amber Slosson?
Yes. Well, not personally, but... You know, I've heard through the Suzuki and everything.
Yeah. For the longest time when she was racing King of the Hammers in her samurai,
she used an ATV winch. Yeah.
For it. So it was like, I think a 4,000 pound ATV winch. That's all it was needed.
Mine started off at four and a half thousand pounds and used that for many years without any major
drubber. Yeah. And now it's got, I think it's the equivalent of a 7,000 pound winch.
Okay. With a stupidly fast gearbox on it.
Nice. Let's say with a lower weight rating, you can go higher speeds.
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You don't need that torque for the weight.
So yeah. Nice. Interesting.
Yeah. Okay. So, cool. You got all that going on.
You still have the stock engine in it or?
Yeah. It's still got the 1.3 carburetor.
Okay. One of the guys in that club tuned it and he's a bit of a carburetor wizard.
There's not too many of those left, at least in the States.
It's a dying art. Yeah.
And it's a black art, I swear.
I don't understand it. It's a bit magical. Yeah.
But it runs on angles that it shouldn't.
Okay.
Which is really, really impressive. It's a challenge to start sometimes.
And it has no top end.
Okay. Yeah.
But low down has plenty of torque and runs on those angles.
Did you say you had a propane converted to or?
No. You haven't done propane.
Still runs on petrol.
Wow. And it still runs at these weird angles on it.
That's impressive.
Yeah. And it spends a lot of time on those weird angles.
Okay. Well, cool. How often are you getting out?
Like what's your favorite type of wheeling to do?
We call it gully wheeling, which is like a dry creek down a hill.
Okay.
Kind of where it carves out the terrain and then you end up with little bits of the gully
will jut out here and there and you kind of got a wheel and twist and turn.
And is it big enough to fit a vehicle in?
Or are you really like two wheels in it and the lid is on the earth on the other side?
Sometimes that too.
Yeah. Okay.
But generally they are the smaller tight spots.
So gully wheeling and rock crawling.
Okay.
And that's what it was sort of built for.
Nice.
Yeah.
Interesting. That's, we don't have that over here.
Yeah. We don't get to make gullies.
A lot of land managers are very much frown on any type of wheeling in waterways or potential
waterways.
So yeah, we don't get a lot of that over here.
Yeah. These ones are not permanent waterways.
It's just when there's a whole lot of rain at once because Australia's,
a lot of Australia's subtropical.
Yeah.
So you get those rainstorms come through and then you get,
it'll just carve out these channels on a hill.
Right.
So most of the time they're dry.
Yeah.
So we just go up and have fun.
Do you drive up a road and then go down them or do you try to drive up them too?
I prefer driving up.
For some strange reason.
Down is easier because gravity assists you every time.
But the Suzuki has obviously a very short wheelbase.
Going up can be a wild ride sometimes.
It gets to the hair, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. More weird angles.
Yeah. Exactly.
But it's weird when you're looking at the sky.
That's not the angle you want.
No.
Have you ever gone to end over and backwards or anything?
I haven't.
One of our other guys at Carbon, he has.
He did an Endo and his LJ50, which is the two-stroke Suzuki.
It's a three-cylinder, 600 cc.
Two-stroke.
Two-stroke.
600 cc.
Yeah.
Not even a leader.
But ridiculously geared and pretty much running atmospheric pressure in the tires.
Yeah.
And he unfortunately went end over end, like head first, end of the tail kind of thing.
Wow.
Dang.
Is he okay?
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's full roll cage and competes and everything.
So he's actually an ultra four racer in Australia as well.
So he's going to.
Oh, so he's used to that.
Yeah.
He hasn't done a big role in that yet.
But yeah.
Nice.
All right.
So you kind of got into off-roading because of the farm life and then moving over to Australia.
You got away from mud.
Mudwheeling and more into rock crawling.
What took you from New Zealand to Australia?
Like, why did you do that move?
It's a pretty common move for people who want to do something different
because there's an open agreement between them.
So you get your automatic permanent residency.
So people will just jump across one way or the other.
So it was just a, yeah, okay, I'll try Australia for a while and never left.
That was just a change.
You wanted to change.
Okay.
Sorry to interrupt.
How long has carbon winches, carbon recovery winches been around?
So Dan had a company for about 16 years ago.
He started that, but it was more of an overall off-road company.
So he's doing suspension and he's doing these little chip modules and that sort of thing.
And then he wanted to specialize in the winches and recovery gear.
So 10 years is the carbon brand as such.
We celebrated our 10th birthday in May, which was a milestone achievement for a privately-owned
little company taking on some big names in the industry.
Winches are kind of a pretty, I don't want to say traditional thing, but there's
big names that have been doing that for a while and have a very big grasp on the market.
So if you're able to come in and do some cool stuff and start taking market share from those
guys, you're doing something right.
And his philosophy was he's a passionate off-roader as well.
So everything that the company does is driven by the passion for off-roading.
How can we make it better?
How can we make it safer?
So yeah, 10 years, we celebrated by going camping for the weekend.
It was pretty wet.
The two weeks beforehand, they had a whole lot of rain as a private
four-wheel drive park.
Shout out to the guys down there.
Thank you very much for having us.
What's the name of the park?
Now I'm doing a complete mental blank.
Sorry, we'll edit it out.
We'll throw it in later.
I've really got to try and remember what it was.
It'll come back at some point.
Yeah, it'll come back at two o'clock in the morning.
Yeah, a whole bunch of cool stuff.
We invited a lot of our dealers that retail the products.
We invited affiliates and brand ambassadors and just the general public.
We said, hey, come out, come camping, come wheeling with us.
Come and just have a good time.
And everyone did.
It was a fantastic weekend.
How many people roughly you showed up?
How many vehicles?
How many people?
I think we had it was 120 vehicles.
Nice.
Wow, that's cool.
Which was pretty good considering it had been pouring down with rain for the last two weeks.
So yeah, Black Duck Valley.
Thank you very much, guys.
There you go.
There you go.
There you go.
They're a great crew.
There's a few really good four-wheel drive parks around,
especially Queensland where we live,
because we have limited access to public land.
So it's a lot of four-wheel drive park wheeling.
Okay.
Similar to the east coast of that in the United States.
Okay.
There's a few areas where we can get to, state forest and that sort of thing.
But on the whole, not really how to drive many places.
So the four-wheel drive parks are really popular.
Yeah, nice.
Yeah, that sounds very east coast for America where they have their private parks where
we have a lot of open land here on the west coast so we can just go and do.
My first experience of that was my first trip here for Trail Hero last year, so 25.
And driving up to the water tank car park and the guys that were with us are just like,
so this is it.
And we're looking for, okay, where are the tracks?
Where are we allowed to drive?
And they said, no, no, you can drive anywhere in this open land.
And we were just blown away.
Like, oh my goodness.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.
It's pretty cool.
It's definitely a fight to keep it that way.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of really cool stuff happening right now currently.
That's going to reopen a bunch of places for not just not just be able to drive anywhere.
There's definitely going to be designated routes and everything, but so much of the routes that
you can drive on have been just shut down over the past 20, 30 years.
So there's a big fight right now to reopen a bunch of routes
for people to go and access some really cool areas in this country that
really you're the only time you would get to see it is like if you're on horseback
because you're not going to go hiking 200 miles out into this national park or national monument
to get and see these really cool locations.
So there's some really cool things happening right now.
Yeah.
I think the great thing that you guys have over here is organizations like Blue Ribbon,
Uplur, Trade Lightly, these sorts of organizations that really help advocate for
the access to the public lands.
And that's something that we really like getting involved in as well.
Nice. Good.
Cool. So Carbon does a lot of getting involved with land access issues.
Is that kind of a high priority for the company then?
It's not really something that Australia does very well, to be honest.
There are a few four-wheel drive associations in Australia and they do try and campaign for
public land access, but on the whole it's a tough fight.
Yeah. We've heard a little bit about it through more flay.
I told you we used to work with four-wheel drive 24-7 and we've gotten to learn quite a bit about
public land access issues in Australia versus the United States and how the two items compare.
And it's daunting hearing about what happens in Australia with trails and tracks in public lands.
Yeah. Well, I was just going to say maybe there's a way that we could work with Australia or maybe
it seems like we have, maybe not us personally, but just like America in general,
or maybe Australia can take something from what is actually working here and carry it over there.
Because it sounds like there are a few organizations that have started or are working
and I don't know what it is about America that is making it actually work for us
besides the lawyers going out and not attacking things. But I don't know how
we can talk after hours or whatever, but we can compare and contrast what's happening here
and what's happening there and try to maybe help and solve this so that more land could get open
on Australia and more you can guys can have more trails and go more places and explore new things.
There's definitely things that Australia could pick up from America of how to do that and avoid
losing that and hopefully gain some of it back. Yeah, stop the bleeding first. For sure.
Alright, so carbon started roughly 10 years ago. What is it exactly you do for carbon?
What is your position? It's a good question. I signed on as sales and project manager
looking, overseeing the Australian sales and some of the projects that we were doing
and now my focus has been shifted almost solely to the American market.
So we're still trying to come up with a title for me. So I'm open to suggestions of what I could
be called. American Gypsy. American Gypsy. Yeah, you're just kind of traveling around
homeless in the United States to see people hanging out of properties. American Kiwi.
Kiwi Australian. We'll title together something. World distributor. Oh, here we go. International
distributor. Yeah. Yeah, so my primary focus at the moment is meeting people in the US and
helping to establish carbon off-road in the US market and the way that we're trying to do that
is just basically get involved with grassroots events. That's a great way to do it.
Grassroots organisations meet the wheelers, meet the people that go off-roading, overlanding
and just having a bit of fun, letting people know that there's options out there and we don't
want to do a hard sell. We're not a hard sell kind of mentality about it and there's enough of a
market that we don't need to do that as well. So it's just about building some relationships and
getting the carbon name out there. For sure. Well, would you, if we were at your table at an event,
what would one of your sales pitches be or how do you just differentiate yourselves from some
of the competition? That's a very good question because winches, they go in, they go out. That's
kind of all you need them to do. Okay. Reliably. If you can get them to do that every time you need
them to, then you're onto a good thing. So the carbon focus is on the way that we try and innovate
it as we try and produce a winch that is, the three key words that we have are lighter, faster,
stronger. Okay. So we try and do away with bells and whistles and unnecessary things,
strip the winch down. You need it to go in and out reliably. You need it to do that
at a reasonable pace and you need it to do that and not break. So that's our focus.
Okay. So that's how we've sort of designed all of our products to be that
lighter, faster, stronger unit that people can use. And each of those has its own advantages,
obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Lighter is less weight on the front of the vehicle. I'm not sure about over
here, but in Australia, there's been a huge push lately of axle loads and GVM vehicles.
Okay. They should do that here. Yeah, it should be more. We always joke about how Overland is
actually overloaded. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you saw us pack the forerunners for Trail Hero X and how
loaded we were. Yeah. Yeah. So if we can save 30, sometimes 40 pounds on the front of a vehicle,
that makes a big difference. Fuel economy, handling, safety, all that sort of thing.
If we can have a winch that's on there, that's a little bit faster when you need it to be.
Sometimes fast is not always a good thing when you're winching because you'd like to
take things nice and slow. But a reasonable line speed is not a bad thing. And if we can
make it reliable so that it's always going to do that for you, then those three keywords are what
helps set us aside. And the fact that virtually everyone working for the company, all 13 of us,
I think we are now, love off-roading. So it's our passion. We just happen to do this as a job.
Yeah. That's cool. That's great. He purposely tries to hire, he, Tyler, I'm pointing,
purposely hires, tries to hire off-roaders. Yeah. Because the mindset that we all have,
like we need to get our job done. If there's a problem, I need to figure it out and solve it
because that's the problem. And he gives them days off to go wheeling or discounts in the
industry and stuff. It's really cool thing. And I think there's an advantage to having
all the like-minded people doing the same sort of thing. I think it's a really good thing that
you guys have that going too. Yeah. I think a big benefit to doing it that way is just that when
everybody working in a company is the target market for that company, everything just jives way
better from marketing to R&D to problem-solving for consumers and being very consumer focused,
because everybody is the consumer that you're working for and working with, right?
Exactly. Yeah. And it just, it really helps to hyper-focus every facet of the company into
what the company is trying to do, which is make some cool stuff and do some cool things in an
industry that everybody loves. Yeah. So that's a great way to do it. And it's cool to hear that
you guys are doing that. Yeah. And it makes it, when we have to go and do a trade show,
we do the National 4x4 shows in Australia, it's a horrible weekend. You're doing 12,
14 hours a day standing up, talking to thousands and thousands of people. It's not a whole lot of
fun. Yeah. You get burned out pretty quick doing a lot of those. You get to the end of the day and
you're just like, my feet hurt, my knees hurt, my voice hurts. I'm losing my voice. It's not
much fun, but we do it because we love it. And it's the same when we go to an off-road event,
like that's almost a perk of the job, because we get to go four-wheel driving,
and we get to hang out with other people that like four-wheel driving. And usually,
they're pretty cool people. Yeah, right. And hopefully, they think the same of us.
So, yeah. I mean, you essentially got paid to go on Trail Hero X for a week. So,
it's so tough.
I mean, it definitely comes with its challenges as well. When you're traveling,
you still have a workload you have to try and get through. And you add those travel days and
even Trail Hero, it was, you guys know, it was some long days. And then in the evenings, I'd be
in the tent working on the laptop trying to keep things moving along in terms of the
office workload as well. So, it's a heck of a lot of fun. And you meet some really amazing people,
but it can be some really hard work. Yeah. I went into Trail Hero X thinking,
you know, I'll check in on my emails once a night kind of thing in the evening time. And
I never, never ended up doing it. I got back and I was like, I was gone for a week, but it's going
to take me a month to catch up now on everything. And yeah, there's something to be said about,
you know, having your work be something you're passionate about, but then also still being
able to manage the work-life balance of blending and blurring those lines so that you can still
have time off to enjoy the passion and not always have it just be strict work kind of thing.
Yeah. I'd put up a post the other day about how I miss my Suzuki because I've been traveling so
much. I haven't had much of a chance to drive it. So, even though some of the traveling involves
driving and involves off-roading, it's not my little Suzuki man. That's my baby. That's my
playground. So, when are you going to bring that over here? Yeah. That's a very good question.
I'm looking into that right now. Yeah. Yeah. It is an 88, so I think I can bring it over.
And have it played in. Oh, and fully register and play in everything over here?
Yeah. Okay. I wouldn't drive it on the road because it's not comfortable and it's not built for
that. It's street legal here though. Well, yeah, that's true. I can't see myself doing a Walmart
run in a soft-top Suzuki roll cage. Oh, it's fun. You'd be surprised. Yeah.
I am looking into how I can bring it over because I think it'd be a lot of fun and some of the
you're kind of centralizing where you're working in the U.S. to a specific region right now,
like you're spending a lot of time in St. George or Salt Lake or California,
North Cal or anything like that. I think just organically, as we're coming in, we fly in most
of the time through LAX. And so, we've concentrated our efforts as far out as St. George, Hurricane,
San Jolo kind of area because they're all four-wheel-drive Mecca areas. And so, that's been
the easiest for us to branch out into. We haven't yet ventured much further than that. I think
the Pacific Northwest Trail Jamboree that I just did, we did that last year as well. One of our
guys came over for that. That's the furthest north that we've gone. And then, yeah, that Southern
Utah's about as far east as we've gone so far physically. We do obviously have online presence,
which is anywhere. We've got the distribution warehouse in Salt Lake. So, we send stuff all
over the country. But that's physically where we've been able to get to so far. But we are looking
at how we can get further out is so much to explore. And so many different kinds of areas as well.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. When you hear of people, what they're doing, some of the mudwheeling and that
sort of thing, I personally hate mud because it's a maintenance nightmare.
If you work on your own stuff, you hate mud.
Yeah. But to watch someone else do something stupid in mud, heck yeah. So, yeah, I'm down for
that. Yeah. The Southern mud pits. Yeah. The east coast rock bouncing. The rock
bouncers and the east coast and kind of northeast rock bouncing. You've got just the basic rock
trails that are just wet and slippery and not really a ton of mud. But that's just a different
type and different build. You have your vehicle to withstand all that. You've got the P&W wheeling,
which is kind of forest road trails for the most part in the summer. But during the winter,
they have the best snow wheeling in the country. So, a lot of the guys in P&W will build their
vehicles for the snow wheeling in the winter. And then NorCal, obviously, we've got granite
boulders and rocks for Rubicon, Fort Ice, all that good. It's a fun little wide variety we get
in the states here of things you can do and different ways to build the vehicles to achieve
success in those different terrains. Yeah. And every build is like, is that specific for the
kind of wheeling that you want to do? Yeah. And I want to do it all. Yeah. We go out to
cruise Moab, a Land Cruiser event out in Moab a lot. And our rigs are built for the Sierras and
the Rubicon and Fort Ice up here. And we show up up there and we are out of place. Our vehicles
are tall, they have bigger tires, they're all designed to be low so that off camber works
really well and wider than we are. Well, maybe not wider than his second gen forerunner,
surf for you. It's a surf. But it's funny because we'll take our truck that's semi average in this
general area and we'll take it somewhere else and we're completely out of place because it's
not built for that stuff anymore. But it's fun to try to figure out what would be a rig that would
work for them all or how do you do that? Yeah. That would be a tough build. Yeah. That's kind
of the point of an Ultra 4 car though. Ultra 4 race buggies is to be the Swiss Army knife,
to be able to go and do high speed stuff, but also do rock crawling stuff. And it's kind of this
interesting blend of everything. Yeah. And the Swiss Army build a car. Yeah. And those are some
tough rigs too. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys do stuff down at King of the Hammers? So this year we had,
I think we had five teams running our gear that we were involved in. Okay. And looking at all the
Australian teams? No. Oh, cool. Yeah, good. That's awesome. Which was really cool. Yeah.
Seeing a lot of them in action, seeing the winches go and watching them perform because it's a great
test environment for us. Yes, it is. You throw a winch on the front of a car at King of the Hammers.
It's going to get tested, especially this year. I think the most common
piece of feedback I heard from drivers and teams this year was they need better winches.
And the winch companies need to do better at making something even more robust,
like which technologies already come so far. And for the drivers to be like, yeah,
we burned up our winches this year as the most common piece of feedback was very impressive.
Yeah, we saw a lot of races, their winches were stalling out.
Have to caveat that with none of ours.
So that was a really great moment for us to see our products standing on its own two feet and
literally cars passing each other on a winch. That's cool. That was a lot of that this year.
And there's a couple of our products we designed specifically for race buggies.
RS9 winch that we've built, it's a race spec, ridiculous speed, however you want to frame it.
But that was running on a bunch of cars as well as one of our little 6,000 pound winches was running
on young Hunter Valadez and the Youth 1000. And she did really well. They're racing again
this weekend. I'm not sure when this goes out, but they're racing this weekend.
Last weekend. Yeah, last weekend. So I'm sure they did really great.
So let's talk a little bit about the different specs you guys have on winches.
The ratings for pull capacities versus line speeds and how that stacks up in the industry.
Yeah. So our most popular winch is our 12,000 pound. It suits, especially in Australia,
it suits the patrols, the land cruisers, the hard luxers, that sort of thing.
Sometimes it's a bit too much like pulling power, but it's not a bad thing to have a winch that's
ever going to operate at 75% capacity. Yeah. Makes it last a lot longer.
Exactly. So that's the 12,000 is our most popular one. It's the lightest one in the world.
So the lightest 12,000 pound winch in the world fully installed is just under 58 pounds.
Really? I want to say most 12,000 pound winches around 80, 90 pounds?
Yeah. And you can go up from there. Wow. So, and again, that's just from designing it to
not have bells and whistles using aluminium housing instead of steel housing.
Aluminium? What is that? I don't know. It's like aluminum, but you say it correctly.
Maybe I'll actually be able to spell that if I use aluminium. I can't even say it.
And it's, it really is a great winch. It has a lower current draw than most 12,000 pound winches.
What's the current drier? It's 480 amp maximum. Maximum, yeah.
I think give or take, which is a lot lower than most as well. It has a lifetime
mechanical warranty on the gearbox and it has a five year electrical warranty on the
motor and control box. Okay. Line speed stacks up pretty well. It's a two 16 to one
ratio. So I'm not quite sure how that translates into feet per minute.
Yeah. Feet per minute or inches per second. I think is where a lot of them are related to.
But two 16 to one is essentially the gear ratio in the gearbox.
Correct. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Nice.
Has a six horsepower motor. So that's almost like a dual case Toyota.
Almost. And it's, that's because it's our most popular winch.
You see a lot of cars traveling around with those on them and not just a bullet proof winch.
It's, it's really, really cool. I even like the free spool handle on them as a lift and twist.
Okay. Yep. So you know, when it's engaged, disengaged, there's no sort of grinding teeth
or anything. If the lever doesn't quite make it right through that sort of thing.
And we do an optional upgrade, which is an air free spool actuator.
So you can just hit a button. It's like a solenoid. Exactly.
If you haven't air compressor on board, you can just run that back and plug it in and
after you go, that's good. You know anything about air compressors?
Couple. Couple. Yeah. I know a guy that might be able to hook you up.
And the smart thing is that the air disengages the clutch. So if there's any issues with the
airline or the compressor, it'll defaults to engage. So you can still manually winch out and
then it's a smart little design tweak there. Yeah. That's clever. Yeah.
Okay. What is your price point? So the 12,000 pound winch retails at $8.99 US.
So it stacks up pretty well. It's kind of high middle. It's high middle tier price points.
But it sounds like with the longevity that you guys are getting out of it,
then it's, and the lifetime warranty on the gearbox, that's pretty nice.
Yeah. And we don't mess around with it. If there are any issues, then we'll just,
yeah, make sure we just replace it straight away. There's not a, you know, you ring the
castle and there's all these legalese. All right. Did you drop your winch? Did you
install it correctly on your bumper and all these things?
Sometimes check them because if you wire a winch wrong, it doesn't like it very much.
So we do have to check a couple of things.
We had one guy that brought his winch in for a warranty claim saying that the motor stopped
working and because he'd filled the motor cavity with grease. The motor cavity. Yeah.
Interesting. So you get the odd one where you have to check and you might say, look,
sorry, but we can't actually cover that. Yeah. That's like top marks for effort.
You made it darker, though. It spins everything easier.
Oh yeah. That's great. And there's no water getting in there.
Screw that. That's funny. So that's the 12,000 pound and then we go down from there?
Yeah. So from there, most of our recreational winches, we go the 10,
which is the same size, same footprint, same weight, just a little bit faster. So you trade that.
Like gear ratio? Oh, gotcha. Yeah. So you trade the power for speed. That's always a balance.
So you've more or less, you just changed the gear? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So you get...
What is the gear ratio in your 10,000 pound? It is. Now you're putting me on the spot.
I think it's around 179 or 170 something. So it's about 15, 20% faster.
That would make sense going from 10,000 to 12,000, about a 20% increase,
20% reduction or increase in gear, whatever it is. Yeah. It's like a balance beam. So
you trade everything off. From there, we're looking at bringing a new one online to fill a gap,
because currently we dropped from our 10,000 down to a 6,000, which is the start of our
ATV range or Suzuki range, depending on where you're at. So we do a 6,000 pound,
which is a short drum configuration. And then Darren, who's our product development manager,
he's a Suzuki guy as well. He developed the 6,000 pound long drum, which is perfect for
Suzuki's. That's great. And even for UTVs and that sort of thing, you get a full
27 meters, 70 something feet, 78 feet on the long drum drum. So you get a full
rope length on an ATV winch, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. Does your control boxes,
can you relocate them from on top of the winch to somewhere else in the vehicle?
Yeah, they come with about 15 inches of cable. Okay. So you can mount them
even further if you want to run some heavier gauge cable over a longer distance as well.
But they can be remotely mounted. So a lot of people we noticed here in America have,
they like their slimline bumper or the hidden winch cradles and that sort of thing. So it's
worked out really well that all of our control boxes can be remotely mounted.
Yeah. That wasn't always the case in the industry. I want to say,
even as soon as like maybe five to six years ago, there was still a lot of winches out there that
you could not relocate the control box. Yeah. And it's like, ah, space is a premium up front
there on vehicles. A lot of times you should, that's a feature that should be standard.
And it's always been amazing to me how many winch companies took a very long time to
make that a standard thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's always been a standard thing for us. So from
the UTVs up to the biggest winches currently is the 20,000 pound winch. Oh wow. So
still fully electric. You're not doing hydraulic winches yet?
No. Hydraulic is a different beast entirely. We did look at it for a little while,
but yeah, it's a completely different machine essentially. Is your 20,000 pound winch
similar footprint in just a bigger gear set or a deeper gear set or are you doing a whole
different housing everything now? It's a bigger end plates. So the end plates on the side of the
drum is bigger because you need a bigger drum for heavier cable, which takes up more space on the
drum. And a bigger gearbox as well. It's 300 and something. So it's a bit slower, but it has a
slightly bigger motor as well. We recommend mounting them with eight bolts instead of just
the four. So you get the four standard mounting bolts and then you get four more, which are a
20,000 pounds. You get four bolts, like 5,000 pounds of bolt. Yeah. Are you really trusting
that? Yeah. And it's not just the bolt itself. It's what it's mounted to as well. So yeah,
the more strength you can have in that mounting, the better I'll sleep at night.
Yeah. Yeah, your bigger safety factors, building stuff. So we've all seen the videos of people
pulling bumpers off of rigs. There's always the weak link and generally it's not going to be the
winch. It'll be something else that gives way before the winch stalls out or stops. So yeah.
Okay. So you guys have done, I assume winches forever, but Dan kind of created everything from
an overall off-roading company then segmented down to recovery gear specific and winches.
What came first, the winch or the recovery gear? Because you guys have a pretty decent
lineup of recovery gear too. Yeah. So we just launched our new range of recovery gear. The
winches were probably the first thing that came online. That was his passion. That's what he
was doing beforehand and he was trying to suggest improvements to the winch company he was working
for. And as bigger companies do, they poo-poo the idea. Yeah, yeah. Well, one thing about that, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you can. Or roll up the chain. Yeah. Look at Ferrari, Lamborghini. All of these
companies had innovators working for them that were shut down and similar to Dan. He's suggested
some ideas and they've said, no, we don't really want to do that. We're happy with doing this.
So he said, well, okay, I'm going to go do it. Yeah. So yeah, the winches came first. Okay.
The recovery gear, we're into our second version, I guess you could say, of recovery gear.
We started off with a bright orange, which seemed like a great idea. Now we've come out with a range
that's, we still have the bright orange. We call it the high-vis, which is your heavy,
heavy trucks, industrial, commercial, sort of much, much heavier rating.
And then we have the blue and the tactical range, which people are going nuts for the tactical range.
Nice. We thought it would be popular, but it's proved to be more popular than we
which is cool. And that's all really great fun seeing all the stuff being developed from scratch.
Okay. How do we do this? What are we going to do? What sort of kits are we going to assemble
to offer to people? So are you guys doing, you said you're developing them from scratch. So what
are kind of the development theses that you guys are following on your recovery gear? Yeah.
The same principles of lighter, faster, stronger. Okay. So a lot of, and a lot of recovery companies
are doing it. They're moving away from the heavy snatch blocks to a winch ring or some sort of
much simpler, much lighter solution that's safer and easier to deploy when you need it.
The material is improving constantly. So instead of, you know, the old bow shackles, which are
steel projectiles, if anything goes wrong, everyone's, you know, most people are now
moving towards the soft shackles, which are a lot safer, a lot easier to use for guys like me
that have a roll cage and spend a lot of time on their side. Anywhere on that roll cage and pull
the car back. That's great. Whereas a bow shackle, you'd struggle to do that. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. Where's your recovery point? That's on my front bumper. I need to pull you
sideways though. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And it's not just that. It's lighter as well. And
believe it or not, stronger. Most of the bow shackles you get in recovery kits are rated to,
I think they're 4.75 metric ton. So 4,700 kilos. So it's at 10,000 pounds.
It's usually 10 to 12, 8 to 12 with a four to five times safety factor rating on them.
And you're, yeah, that's your working load limits is 8 to 12, right? And whereas the working load
limits on soft shackles can be 25, 35, 40. Yeah. So the two options that we have
in our full size kits are a 15,000 and an 18,000 kilograms. So we're the 33,000 pound
working limit. So it's a significant amount of strength. They do suffer a little bit more
if you'd mistreat them. They will get nicks and abrasions and you need to keep on top of that
and replace them when you see them. They're more consumable items, but they're a far safer and
less risky consumable item and much lighter as well, which again is a, you know, one of our core
three things, which is one of the reasons that they're safer. And so I'm assuming and you guys
have done all the testing and figuring out the workload limits and destructive testing is a
lot of fun. If you ever get the chance to do it, it's quite nerve wracking because you'll see the
synthetic, whether it's a soft shackle or a winch rope or kinetic rope or anything,
you'll see the stretch and you'll see it and you're waiting for it and you're waiting for the
snap and you just don't know when it's going to come. Do you guys get to do all that in-house?
We do a third party. A third party. Yeah. Okay. And it's a whole lot of fun. Yeah.
Yeah. You just see it and you're waiting and you're just on edge and it's when it's always that
that moment where you... You relax a little bit? Yeah. You just take a breath and then it's like,
bang. Oh, shoot. There it goes. Yeah. That sounds like an industry I should get into.
Right. Like how do I just get a break shift for fun and give people reports?
It is the best fun. And it's also when we see that in person, when we're doing that, it gives us,
as a company, the confidence to take that to the market and say, hey, look, you can trust this.
This is fine. We're putting your life in our hands, literally. So we're not going to give you
something that's going to fail when you need it to work. Yeah. We've done quite a few episodes on
recovery gear and like just the physics behind recovery situations and how quickly things can
get lethal. Yeah. And how you just need to be paying very close attention to all the working
load limits of your gear, what you think is going through the system. And one of the things that
we harp on is do not buy recovery gear unless you know the company is doing at least random batch
testing QC and destructive testing of all their own gear. Yeah. And so it's awesome to hear that
it's such a vital part. I mean, aside from the fun of breaking stuff, it's a key element to
making sure that whatever product you're offering is worth someone putting their life literally
in your hands. Yeah. Like everything Tyler said, but the number one thing that I like to stress is
if they don't tell you the working load limit, don't buy that product. The minimum breaking
strength. Yeah. Not the max breaking strength. Exactly. There's some companies that have started
advertising just maximum breaking strengths. Yeah. And you're just like,
do you even know what you're doing? Like, why would you? That's like saying the battery lasts up to.
Yeah. Exactly. No, it never reaches that. No. And you don't want it to.
So cool. What kind of stuff do you guys have? Soft shackles, obviously. Yeah.
So the most popular things that we have, we sell everything individually,
but the most popular is the kits. Yeah. So we can offer someone a bag that has everything in it.
Nice. We do a basic one, which is called the essential recovery kit. Has a bit of everything
for winching and kinetic recoveries. You guys call them kinetic recoveries. So you have your
kinetic rope, you have your soft shackles, you have your tree saver, you have a
the donut. I call it a donut. I call it a donut. I think they're recovery rings in the States.
Yeah. Yeah. So it used to be the snatch block. Now it's the recovery ring.
Some cool gloves and a bag and that bag doubles as a winch blanket or a recovery blanket has a
Velcro strip and an extra flap. Nice. So you just unzip that flap, fold it over the rope or the
the winch rope or recovery rope and a matching Velcro strap on the back of it.
So that if anything does happen, it drops it to the ground.
Yeah. It helps to absorb that kinetic energy and just makes it non-lethal anymore.
Yeah. Exactly. And then we have an upgraded version, which is the TAC kit,
which is the one that everyone seems to be. We say in Australia, there's a word called frothing.
You guys have that? A frothing over it? It's not a comment, but yeah.
Yeah. I've never heard it that put that way, but I fully understand it. Yeah,
everybody wants it. Everybody's frothing. They're frothing at the mouth already.
Yeah. So a frothing for it. And that one has the four soft shackles and they're at the spectrophiber,
which is even stronger. So they're rated at 18,000 kilograms, whereas the other ones are mere 15,000
kilograms, 33,000 pounds. And so the 18,000, that's the 42,000 working limit area with 40 to 42?
18 times 2.2. 3840. That's it. Getting up there. 3840. Yeah.
Yeah. If you're going to be here in the state span, you're going to have to do that stupid
imperial thing. I thought I was doing really good, but anything below an inch unscrewed.
The fractions, like it might as well be cheeseburgers.
That's it pretty much what it is. Yeah. I want a third pound of patty. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. What? I need a 7.16. No, no, no. It's a 4.13. No, it's a 16.32. It's like, it's a what?
Yeah. Nine millimeter. 6789 10 millimeter.
America needs to get, figure this out. Yeah. It's a lot of fun though. That's
how awesome the imperial system is. So I can't wait to listen to those and see what he has to say,
how he can back them up. He can't. I mean, growing up with it, you know what you're familiar with
and you're comfortable working with it. So, you know, you grow up with the imperial system,
it's not a challenge. Just wait until you start getting into doing sales and marketing and stuff
in Canada because they just swap back and forth between both systems depending on the scenario
and situation. It's a clusterfuck. You're like, what? Yeah. So part of my background is coming
out through construction and project management through that sort of thing. So I'm pretty good
at feet and meters, but once I drop below that, no chance. Yeah, that works. So sorry to interrupt
though. So you were talking about the tactical 14 shackles. Yeah. So it has the four shackles,
has the kinetic rope as well, has the cool gloves, has a super cool bag,
has the wintering and instead of the tree saver, it has a utility rope or an all-purpose rope,
which you can use to go around a boulder. You can use it to, as a bridle, you can use the bridle
You can even use it as a winch extension. Okay. That's cool. So yeah. Is it still a
flat strap or is it a rope? It's a rope. Okay. It's basically a slightly fatter
winch rope. Okay. So it's a bit stronger than a winch rope. Yeah. Does it have a cover over it?
Like if you can use it for a rock, has a full sleeve on it. Okay. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. That's
really neat. Okay. What's the price point on those two kits? So the ERK sits at 349. Okay.
TAC 4x4 kit sits at 599. Australian dollars? US. Okay.
Just have to check there. No, I do have to check myself. So
just give me a hard time, James. I'm used to it.
That's pretty good. 600 bucks for four soft shackles, recovery ring, kinetic rope,
bridle, all-purpose rope. That's a nice bag and glove system for holding. That's a pretty decent
price, man. Yeah. And it just looks cool. Yeah. Honestly, it just looks really cool. And it's
even more compact than the essential recovery kit. Oh, okay. You have more stuff in it and it's more
compact? It's about the same stuff. It's just because it's slightly better quality, so it
doesn't take up as much room. The tree saver takes up a bunch of room in the ERK. So by having that
utility rope instead of the tree saver, there's still room in the bag to add a tree saver if
people want to as well. And it's a molly style bag, so it has little sewn-in pockets and sleeves and
hook things and all kinds of cool stuff that you can attach things to. Nice. Made out of like
emu skin or something. Crocodile skin. Yeah. Not possum fur. It's not possum fur.
Yeah. If you ever get a chance to buy anything possum fur, especially from New Zealand,
it's so good. And they're a pest. They're an invasive introduced species, so there's no...
Doesn't the government pay for people to turn in dead possums?
That was my pocket money growing up. What do you do? Bring them a tail?
No, the whole skin. You take it to the tannery and you get $1 or a green skin or $2 if you scraped it.
So that was pocket money. That's funny.
That's a little while ago now. It might be frowned upon. It might not be the pop...
That maybe. I was in New Zealand in 2009 and one of... I was doing a
adventure tourism kind of stuff, a volunteer tourism, where we spent the first two weeks
doing volunteer projects in the North Island. And then the second two weeks, we did a bunch
of adventure tour stuff from Auckland all the way down to... Not Queenstown.
Was it Queenstown? Queenstown is the one in the middle, right? The bottom of the North Island?
Bottom of the North Island is Wellington. Wellington. So it was down to Queenstown.
Yeah. And so one of the projects that we did the first two weeks was setting a ton of possum traps
out in the forest area. Yeah. I think that the trapping, for me personally, I think
I'm more in favour of that as opposed to the poisoning because it just has so many question
marks about just dropping a bunch of poison into the native bush. Yeah, right. What else
are we actually going to be eating those? Oh, what eats those or what eats the possum that just
ate those? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, that was a lot of how we grew up was that was what you would do,
you go out because the possums will ring back a tree and kill the tree. I didn't know that.
And then they'll eat the native bird eggs and that sort of thing. So yeah. Yeah, the actual
Kiwis. Yeah. The literal Kiwis. Yeah. And not the bravest or almost awe-inspiring national
animal by any means. Yeah, it's a bird. Okay, there's a flight. No. Is it strong and aggressive? No.
Can it run fast? No, not really. What can it do? Is it cute? Yeah, it's cute as hell.
Yeah. All right, so back to off-roading stuff.
Once again, we need to get you back just to do a New Zealand episode.
So cool. You guys have recovery gear. You've got winches. Are you going to be diving into any
other stuff? Do you have any things in the works that you want to tease people about?
A couple of little things that we're working on at the moment. Just little four by four accessories
to try and make life easier. So people can stay tuned for those.
That's not a tease. Surely that's a tease. That's a pretty good tease. No, we did,
as a company, like we branched out a little bit and tried to dabble in other things.
But I think over time, Dan sort of realized, hey, look, if we're going to do something,
let's just do a couple of things, do them really well. And if something else pops up, great.
He's a very much a visionary inventor, kind of that kind of personality. So I've got no
doubt that at some point, there'll be something else will pop up and something else will come
out with a carbon off-road name on it. But for the moment, we're just enjoying having this winch
and recovery gear dialed in and being able to offer it to the market at really good quality,
really good price point and having fun doing it.
There's something to be said about being the expert in your market segment and being
considered experts and really hyper-focusing on the things that you're good at.
So I think that's a smart move. It's what I try and do with more flight. We try and be the experts
of hot air in tires. The more you can do that and position yourself, position yourself as
those experts in those areas. That's a good spot to be. Yeah, because it's very easy to
go out and white label something, just grab something from a factory somewhere,
slap your sticker on it and throw it out to the market with a markup. And a lot of companies
do that and a lot of companies do that with a pretty good degree of success. But for us,
being able to design things from scratch like the winches, it's all designed in-house
and being able to present that to the market like this is ours.
This isn't a white label. You're not going to buy this from another store down the street
with a different sticker on it. This is ours. There's a certain amount of pride that comes in
that. And I think that helps when we're talking to people about the brand and when we're doing
these adventures and meeting people and getting the name out there, people can pick up on that.
This isn't just a rebranded whatever. It's a carbon off-road product and the same for you.
You can say this is ours. And there's that pride I think people really pick up on.
Yeah, for sure. Well, cool. Anything else? I have another question. I just want,
where did the name carbon come from? We get that quite a lot. So it's a carbon fiber winch?
No, that's going to come with a different price ticket.
So carbon, Daniel's carbon off-road as carbon as in the building blocks of life.
So the carbon molecule is basically what all life is made of.
That we know of, yeah. Well, yeah. I know they're watching.
Yes. Yeah, I wear my tinfoil hat sometimes. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely.
There's no way we can be the smartest creatures in the universe. Oh my goodness.
Yeah, the universe is in a very dire position. They feel we're the smartest things out there.
Yeah. So that's where the name came from was just carbon as in the building blocks of life.
Nice. And obviously pretty strong and durable as well.
Yeah, absolutely. And it speaks for the company like you guys are continuing to build and grow
and move forward. Cool. Anything else you want to make sure that we cover and talk about while
you're here before you take off to your next location? Next one, yeah. The exciting things that
we've got from our point of view, the RS9 winch that we've got out in terms of the race space.
It's really strange. We tell people about it and we say, hey, look, this is really cool.
It's a low-mount winch that does 80 feet per minute unloaded. It's at 9,000 pounds.
It does eight feet a minute still. Wow. And a low-mount winch is pretty remarkable.
Yeah. And it's really cool for the race guys. But as soon as you say that to weekend wheelers,
they're like, oh, this is the best one. This is the fastest one. It's like, yeah,
but you don't understand. This is a fast winch. You could get in trouble.
If you're winching out and you don't have tension on that line, it will.
Oh, it'll wrap itself around. Wrap itself around really quick.
Because that uses the same spectrophiber that the upgraded soft shackles have.
So it's a thinner diameter rope. So on a short drum, we still get 78 feet of rope.
Wow. Dang. So that means it'll unspool itself in a minute.
So if you don't have the tension on the line, it could get messy.
The only ones I've seen work that fast are the, what is it? The Warn 1874?
1874, those ones. And then there's a new dual-motor winch out. I want to say it's an
Australian company, but those are the only two winches I've ever seen go that fast other than
a PTO winch. Yeah. A high-mount winch is always going to be faster than a low-mount,
just because you have that extra gearing to keep your speed and your torque up.
So the RS9 is an absolute beast. And we're looking at making it more of a beast.
More? Okay. All right.
And is that commercially available? Can somebody...
Yeah, RS9 is up on the website.
Wheeler, go grab that.
It should come with like a parental advisory sticker or something on the front of it.
But yeah, we're just stoked to be able to give people an option.
And we know there's some serious weight behind legacy brands in the US and worldwide.
And we know that that's fine. We're the underdogs. We can never be that.
We can just be an alternative for a few people here and there.
And if we can have some fun doing it, that's just great.
Good. I love that mentality.
Yeah. Yeah. There's no big...
He said it with a smile.
I know, right?
Yeah. There's no major goal to be the number one in the space, per se. But if it happens,
it happens. Awesome. You're there to make some cool stuff and make a big splash in the space.
Yeah. Which it sounds like you guys are doing.
Yeah. We're there to innovate as much as we can,
make sure that whoever buys our product can get home safely and can trust our product.
And make enough money to have some fun along the way.
Nice.
That's kind of it, really.
That's pretty cool. That's a cool way to run a company, man.
Yeah. Well, awesome. If people wanted to reach out and learn more about carbon,
see more of what you guys are doing, where can they do that at?
So US website, carbonoffroadusa.com, carbonoffroad on underscore USA on social media, on Instagram and
Facebook. And if you want to see more of what the actual company culture and everything,
check out the Australian version of everything. There's a more sort of Aussie stuff comes out.
Okay. Sure.
There's more mullets. There's more that kind of thing coming out.
And is that just carbonoffroad.com or .au?
.com.au.
Yeah. Okay.
Because we do have Aussie listeners, so I'm sure they have some of you.
Yeah, carbonoffroad.com.au is the website and socials as well, carbonoffroad underscore Australia.
Cool. Awesome. Yeah, guys. Check them out. There's some fun stuff going on.
Sounds like there's some fun things coming out soon.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good. Cool. So keep your holes and I holes open. Thanks so much for
taking some time out on your stop and layover here in Sacramento.
Really appreciate you guys' time. Yeah, you guys are killing it as well.
Like seeing you guys in the marketplace and at events and that sort of thing.
It's like, they go again. That's so cool.
I wonder how many times our paths have crossed in the past and we haven't noticed it until
here. Yeah. And that's what's great about these events is building that network.
And it's almost like a subculture of off-road and you get to develop real friendships through it
as well, which is really cool. Jimmy and I talk about it all the time. It's the biggest little
industry. 100%. It's a big market cap in terms of a quote unquote GDP in the industry. But
everybody knows each other. Yeah. And everybody, it's just like you said,
it's a very wholesome and very genuine industry to be a part of. So it's fun.
And just being able to engage with your end customer and at the same event, you can engage with
the owner of any number of companies involved in the off-road industry and the spectrum of people
that you've just bumped into and have a cool conversation with. It's really, really cool.
Yeah, it is. Cool. Jimmy, if people want to get a hold of us, how can they do that?
Yeah, you can find us on Instagram. I'm over at Snail Trail 4x4. Tyler watches 4x4 Toyota Tyler.
You can email us, Jimmy or Tyler at snailtrail4x4.com, or you can phone in and be a part of our
voicemail segment at 916-345-4744, where you can pretty much leave us any voicemail that you want
and we'll respond to it live on the podcast. You're getting drunk emails from Australia now.
Drunk voicemails from Australia. Yeah, cool. Just a heads up. It's coming.
Perfect. Bring it. Yeah, we like it. If we can understand you, that's great. If we can, it's
even better. Sounds like a plan. Yeah, bring the Scotsmans out now.
Nice. Well, again, James, thanks so much for coming on, getting to talk some winches with us,
talk a little bit about carbon, what you guys are doing, hearing about your story, your background.
It's been a lot of fun, man. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Final words to wrap up the show. What do you want to leave little tips of wisdom,
or it could be like, yeah, I'm ready for lunch. What do you got for everyone out there?
If you're in a recovery situation, don't rush it. If there's immediate safety concerns,
address those by all means. Don't panic. Don't rush. Take a couple of seconds. Take a breather.
Assess the situation. Figure out how to do it safely so that you can have some fun again the
next time. Mistakes generally will happen when people get the adrenaline pumping. Oh my God,
the car's on its side. Take a minute. If everyone's safe, and if there's no immediate hazards of fire
or anything like that, just take a minute. Okay, how do we do this? It's like the car's on its side.
Yes, it is. It's not going anywhere. Let's just chill for a bit. Yeah, exactly. And just have fun,
and just be responsible while you're doing it. Don't leave rubbish around there. Don't be a dick.
I could say another word that Australia's famous for, but I don't know what your rating is.
Don't be a cunt. That's the one. That's it. We put an E on every single one of our episodes,
whether we cuss or not. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right. I probably should have checked that first.
It could have been a very good episode, don't we? Yeah, maybe that's something we
needed to divulge at the beginning when we're talking about it. Yeah, anyways.
Awesome. Jimmy, any final words for everybody out there? Spites.
Spites. The brewery. Spites, isn't that one? Oh, Spites. Spates. Sorry. Kiwi brewery. Yeah.
But hands down, one of the coolest breweries I've ever been to. Yeah. Nice.
Tui's. Tui is the Kiwi beer. As I said, I remember Tui. Yeah, it's known as a student beer,
and their marketing was just on point. That's so good.
Well, cool. We'll have you back for a Kiwi episode in the future. Talk all about New Zealand and some
of the fun stuff that happens down there. And I guess without further ado, guys,
don't forget everybody out there. Keep crawling.
I got one for you. Ready? Are you sure?
Yeah. Okay. So do you want to hear a joke about construction?
Sure. Well, I'm still working on it.
Okay. My life, ladies and gentlemen, is great, is fantastic.
About this episode
Carbon Off-Road’s “lighter, faster, stronger” winch philosophy takes center stage, with talk of controlled winching, line speed, and why recovery gear should be chosen by working load limits. The hosts also share real-world wheeling maintenance headaches, dash-cam giveaway/group-buy details, and how video evidence can clarify fault. Between stories about New Zealand/Australia driving and travel, they cover off-road access realities, safer recovery hardware (soft shackles, kinetic rope), and what it takes to keep rigs and people safe on the trail.
Jimmy and Tyler sit down with James, the International Distributor for Carbon Off-Road — a 10-year-old Australian winch and recovery gear company quietly making a lot of noise in a space dominated by legacy brands.
James is a Kiwi who grew up on farms in New Zealand’s Taranaki region before moving to Australia 22 years ago. He found off-roading the same way a lot of adults do: by needing friends and buying a Suzuki. He joined a Suzuki club, met Carbon founder Dan through those connections before Carbon even existed, and eventually joined the company. Now he’s traveling the US in what Tyler accurately describes as a “homeless American gypsy” role — meeting wheelers, attending grassroots events, and slowly building the Carbon Off-Road name in the US market. He stopped in Sacramento on a layover to come on the show, having spent a week with Jimmy and Tyler at Trail Hero Expeditions.
Carbon’s pitch is three words: lighter, faster, stronger. Their 12,000 lb flagship is the lightest 12K winch in the world — just under 58 lbs fully installed, aluminum housing, 480 amp max current draw, lifetime mechanical warranty on the gearbox, 5-year electrical on the motor and control box. It retails at $899 USD. The RS9 is their race-spec winch — 9,000 lb capacity, 80 feet per minute unloaded, and James jokes it should come with a parental advisory sticker because it will unspool 78 feet of spectra fiber rope in about a minute if you don’t have tension on the line.
On the recovery gear side: Carbon just launched a full lineup available in three colorways — High Viz (orange, commercial/heavy equipment), Blue, and Tactical (so popular it exceeded all expectations). Their Essential Recovery Kit ($349 USD) includes soft shackles, kinetic rope, tree saver, recovery ring, gloves, and a bag that doubles as a winch blanket. The Tac 4×4 Kit ($599 USD) upgrades to spectra-fiber soft shackles rated at 18,000 kg working load limit, adds a utility rope (replaces the tree saver — works as a bridle, rock anchor, winch extension, or general purpose rope), and comes in a MOLLE-style bag. Everything is designed in-house in Australia, third-party tested to minimum breaking strength, and not white-labeled — James is emphatic about this.
The show also covers: Carbon’s 10th anniversary camping weekend at Black Duck Valley (120 vehicles showed up despite two weeks of rain), what it’s like trying to sell winches at a trade show for 14 hours in a row, why James hasn’t been able to drive his own trailer-queen Suzuki Sierra much lately, King of the Hammers 2026 (“we saw a lot of winches stalling out — caveat: none of ours”), the Australia/New Zealand land access crisis vs. US land access fights, and why the name Carbon has nothing to do with carbon fiber.
Bonus content includes the full Australia ongoing-topics segment: Vegemite vs. Marmite (James sides with Marmite, the New Zealand version), camping vs. glamping (coffee machine in the tent = crossed the line), and the fanny pack question that previously required Australian listeners to call in and educate Jimmy about what the word “fanny” actually means.
James’s closing advice: In a recovery situation, don’t rush it. Take a breath, assess, and figure out how to do it safely.
GROUP BUY: There is a new group buy happening, and this time it is with Wolfbox for their G900Tripro. If we get ten people signed up then we will get $20 off. If we can get 20 people signed up, we will get $30 off, and if we can get 30 people signed up, then it will be $40 off. If you’re interested in joining the group buy, then please email Jimmy or Tyler, or jump on to the Discord.
SnailTrail4x4 Discord: https://discord.gg/yFyFFkQbuy Come hang out with us on the SnailTrail4x4 Discord — it’s the easiest way to connect with Tyler and Jimmy directly, chat with fellow offroad enthusiasts, and get first access to Group Buys and Treasure Hunt token drops.
MORRFlate Giveaway at 900 Reviews on Apple Podcast. But our next giveaway is when we reach 800 reviews; we are giving away an OnX Elite Membership. We will also give away an OnX Elite membership when we get to 850. However, when we reach 900 Reviews, we are teaming up with MORRFlate for a $1000 MF Product Giveaway. Go over to Apple Podcasts to leave your review now and become eligible to win. Congratulations to A13XMONT, who won a set of tires from Yokohama Tire!
Call us and leave us a VOICEMAIL!!!
We want to hear from you even more!!! You can call and say whatever you like! Ask a question, leave feedback, correct some information about welding, say how much you hate your Jeep, and wish you had a Toyota! We will air them all, live, on the podcast! +01-916-345-4744. If you have any negative feedback, you can call our negative feedback hotline, 408-800-5169.
4Wheel Underground has all the suspension parts you need to take your off-road rig from leaf springs to a performance suspension system. We just ordered our kits for Kermit and Samantha and are looking forward to getting them. The ordering process was quite simple, and after answering the questionnaire, we ensured we got the correct and best-fitting kits for our vehicles. If you want to level up your suspension game, check out 4Wheel Underground.
SnailTrail4x4 Podcast is brought to you by all of our peeps over at irate4x4! Make sure to stop by and see all of the great perks you get for supporting SnailTrail4x4! Discount Codes, Monthly Give-Always, Gift Boxes, the SnailTrail4x4 Community, and the ST4x4 Treasure Hunt! Thank you to all of those who support us! We couldn’t do it without you guys (and gals!)!
SnailSquad Monthly Giveaway
July’s Giveaway is with a company that Jimmy and Tyler have very good experience with, especially after TrailHeroX. This month’s giveaway is with Wolfbox. They are giving away one G900Tripro to a lucky winner. This is the same three-camera rearview mirror setup that they received during TrailHeroX. If you want a chance to win this system from Wolfbox make sure you sign up for the giveaway tier on either Irate4x4 or the SnailTrail4x4 Discord.
Massive Congratulations to Liz Sandstorm for winning the Iceco Freezers. We are excited to work with and share their exciting new releases. One lucky winner has a chance to an ALP20Fridge. Big thanks to Icecofor sponsoring this month’s giveaway. If you want a chance to win, sign up for the Giveaway Tier on Irate4x4
Listener Discount Codes:
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