Inside Streamline Custom Designs | Donnie Hall & Isaac Gonzales

My nuclear cleanup side is very unique, and we're usually building things from scratch.

You know, I've had to build cities in the middle of the Middle East, in the desert, so...

You haven't had to work with hot rodders before.

Yeah, that is an outlier for sure.

So I didn't know that you worked at Kindeck, and we've known each other for quite some time.

I had no idea that you were there.

Yeah, I started in 03, right out of high school.

I don't know if you guys have been to the shop, but there's a big K on the wall inside.

That was my first job, I built this.

Okay.

Kindeck at K, four years, I think we were on the fourth season.

It was velocity.

He came back and says, hey, we want all your guys in the shop signing a non-compete contract and confidentiality.

I'm not signing that.

And me and Dave had some good long conversations.

I was like, hey, I just want you to sign it.

And I came back and said, well, this is what I'm doing on the side, so it didn't work out.

Yeah.

I'm so interested on both sides of the coin because this...

It's a big leap for both.

And this generally, this has happened before.

This usually goes way bad.

Sure.

Right?

We're going really bad most all of those times.

But 2016 till now, I mean, that's 10 years.

It's a decade in.

It takes a turn.

Yeah.

It's a turn.

You're listening to another episode of Oil and Whiskey.

This week we have Streamline Custom Designs.

Say I got it right.

Yeah.

Streamline Customs.

Streamline Custom Designs.

It's on the Instagram as Streamline underscore customs underscore designs.

Correct.

That's prep.

That's show prep for you right there.

You nailed it.

Yeah.

We have Donnie Hall and Isaac Gonzalez.

Good to have you guys.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah.

Thank you for having us.

All the way from Utah.

And San Francisco is where I'm coming from.

You're coming from San Fran.

Yeah.

Well, since you went into it, you're coming from San Fran.

Explain this dynamic then.

You're coming from San Francisco.

Yep.

Donnie's in Utah.

The shop's in Utah.

Yep.

Y'all are co-owners.

Yep.

Correct.

All right.

Explain that.

Get into it?

Yeah.

I mean, there's no better way to do it.

Let's just start there.

There's a small village in Twilly, Utah.

Okay.

So that's where I was born and raised.

Walt of us, actually.

Young Buck.

I got into the nuclear industry and all that road.

That beautiful.

Yeah.

Like most of us do.

It's normal stuff.

Yeah.

And, you know, it took me all over the world.

20 some years later, I wanted to do something of a build.

I needed the talent because I know where my limitations are.

So, you know, my brother and I hooked us up together.

So that's how Donnie and I came together.

He was working for Kindig at the time.

And so I,

I didn't know you worked for Dave.

Yeah.

As with him over and all, like 13 years.

Really?

Yeah.

So I'm silly enough that I started my own business when I was 24 years old.

So I should start with that.

And so that's kind of what led me down this windy road.

And I wanted to do something that was fun, passion based.

Something that I loved, you know, from my father, of course.

And so this is where we started linking up.

I actually started, he was building me a 50 Chevy pickup,

seeing the talent, the passion and the drive,

the person that he is, the moral and ethics.

And then we just started talking about doing it ourselves.

So streamlined started.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Before we get too carried away into the story stuff,

we got to talk about one, you guys pre-sent an amazing box.

I know that it was supposed to be a surprise for us.

However, due to our intense security measures that we have around the podcast

incoming mail, it had to be searched and checked beforehand.

So we got to see it before you guys got here.

Absolutely amazing box.

Really, really cool.

That's a unique one.

We don't have anything like that.

So that'll find a place to live here in the studio Hall of Fame.

Sweet.

And you also got a very nice bourbon for us to try,

bourbon slash rye, it's the name.

And we need to get into that.

Yeah, let's do it.

A little Utah situation here for us.

Yeah, high west.

I'll actually let you get into that.

Bour rye is one of their seasonal drops too, right?

They do it right around the time the midwinter's night dram as well.

So that fall, that's their kind of allocated releases around the

Thanksgiving bourbon bonanza drops that go everywhere.

So there you go.

Might try a little bit.

Just a teeny bit.

They used to do the Yippee ki-yay and they quit that.

That's a pretty sought after bottle.

Midwinter's night dram is a really, really good one that drops every year.

Supposedly this year is really good.

I haven't had that yet.

But the bour rye is something that we have never,

not one time on this podcast drank.

This is a first.

So even better.

Right?

100%.

And it's hard to get one that's never been tried.

That's good.

So this is exciting.

You guys did really, really good.

Well, this was the hope to do something unique.

You guys did great.

That's rare to be on the fifth year to have a new one.

We've been talking about this one a little bit lately.

It's like one of the Unicorn.

I guess it could be a jackalope to find.

A mammal with horns.

It's the same thing.

Cheers, fellas.

You're going to have to get a little.

Wow, that's really smooth.

Instantly smooth.

That's really good.

I like it.

I'd say worth the wait.

Because you got to pay for that bottle you got down in the office

because I need this for sure.

Yeah, that's great.

I can see drinking.

Damn, it's going to drink too much tonight.

I got a flight in the morning too.

I said I was going to be good today.

You just have to sit in the chair.

You'll be fine.

You're 100% right.

That's exactly the way to do it.

Flying hungover could be one of the worst things.

All facts.

Yeah, it's always been a...

That's the worst flight coming back from Vegas.

It's coming back from SEMA now in my older age.

That's the worst flight always because it is...

We are getting older.

You do have that...

It's more of a SEMA hangover than an alcoholic hangover.

Sometimes they're combined.

Yeah, sometimes they're combined.

But then it's also flying west to east.

That two hours seems like 17 hours.

So that you leave at 7 o'clock in the morning

and you get back at midnight.

It's like holy shit.

In four hours of a flight time.

Yeah, that's really, really good.

You said something we said cheers.

You said senpai?

Cheers in Japanese.

Okay.

Cheers in Japanese.

I like learning stuff first.

We're learning.

We're starting...

And the whole thing that 2026 was going to be

about the year of knowledge.

That was it.

We're going to learn new things.

We're going to try new things.

We're going to get outside of our boundaries.

Can you start with us?

Yeah.

So here we go.

There's a few episodes in the new season.

We're kicking it off right.

This is good.

So I didn't know that you worked at kindic.

We've known each other for quite some time.

I had no idea that you were there.

I started in 03 right out of high school.

Not my first job,

but first job out of high school, I guess.

You just went in there and said,

I need a job.

Yeah, pretty much.

So I was raised by an old hot rodder.

My old man

raised me out in his shop.

He's a stay-at-home

Mr.

Mr. Mom, I guess.

He worked for the government.

Was military

retired.

Got injured

working on the military base.

So he stayed at home built hot rods all day.

My mom,

she actually worked a normal job

and did all that stuff.

So he got military retirement

and all that.

So I was born and raised

building cars, doing restoration,

stuff like that.

Dave was working for HPC

coding

before he opened Kindig.

I guess they were having some issues

spraying

the ceramic coating.

I think him and Kev were huffing it instead of spraying it.

Probably.

My older brother, Rick,

he owned a body shop

and he did a lot of

custom painting and stuff.

So Dave had a bunch of questions for him.

What should we do?

How do we adjust these guns?

My brother went in and taught those guys

a few things on changing guns and stuff.

Long story short, a few years down the road

I just stopped in

every once in a while cruising State Street

at

an older car that I was cruising.

I just stopped in late night.

There was a guy working the shop

late one night and I asked him,

hey, you got a resume?

He went and grabbed one back when you had to fill out the resumes.

Dave called me and

went in and he's like,

we're going to have you do a little trial run.

What can you do?

I don't know if you guys have been to the shop,

but there's big K on the wall inside.

That was my first job.

I built this.

Kindig at K out of

foam, fiberglass,

bodyworked it, got it ready for paint.

And then they

the painter painted it.

That's a great first

trial run. We need this big

sign up there.

Leaving your mark.

Exactly.

So that's kind of how that started.

So at the time I was working for a plastic fabrication shop.

So I was working

four tins for them.

I'd go in every Friday,

work on my K and

did that for probably

a couple weeks and

they offered me a job full time.

Went there,

worked for him from

2003 to

2006.

Young Utah boy decided

to get married and replenish

the earth.

We got pregnant

right off the bat. That sometimes happens.

So I got scared

and I can't.

I need to go find a real job.

But at the time

it's like, well shit, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Went and drove a cement track

of all jobs. But it was a good job.

Did that, took the winter layoff.

So we only worked

basically April to November.

And then I'd go in

and work for Dave during the winter months.

So I kind of stuck

within through that.

And then there's

the

ammunition, big army

depot out in Tula,

had the world's largest

stockpile of chemical warfare.

I got sick of driving

truck, ended up jumping over to this

place.

We got rid of mustard agent, VX,

all this nasty World War II

chemicals. And that's where I worked

with Isaac's brother-in-law, Jody.

But where I was there

I was working, it's called the Dupont

schedule. So it was like 14 days a month,

seven days, seven nights,

weekends,

a lot of night shifts, but I had a lot of days off.

So I'd go in and help Dave

and those guys.

So when I was first there, I'd step back

but small crew, I think

we had maybe seven guys.

It was

I mean the guys that are there now, obviously

Kevin, Will,

Dave, and actually

Charity was out in the shop with us. She's Sandin.

She'd get on firewalls and

interfenders and be wet Sandin with us.

Awesome.

But I was more of a body guy at the time when I worked

for him the first time.

And then, like I said, went, worked

for government, did that for

I bet it was

it was quite a while.

2008

to 13

and we worked ourselves out of a job out there.

Cleaned it all up.

Got rid of it all. So we

and it was just an incinerator. So we just burn

all the stuff anyways.

Got rid of all that and

Dave says, well, when you're done with that

why don't you come back full time.

So went back full time

as a fabricator this time.

Put me in the fab shop

and it was about a month later

is when we signed the contract with itch and ride.

So it was

kind of perfect timing.

So I was in body shop

and then they'd move me around

go over to body

body shop, help do body, final assembly

didn't want to paint

I'm a painter, but I didn't want to

I didn't want that stress. So

I kind of just stuck with everything. So I kind of just moved

around the shop as one of those guys

and then

they would bring new guys in

from wild tech or whatnot and

kind of do like a little trial run with me.

So one of their older

fab shop managers, Jason

he did a trial run under me

and I gave him the go ahead. Yeah, he's good.

So hire him

and kind of worked out.

How would that process work when you're there

with the filming and that

and new guys coming in.

We've had Dave and Kevin on here a couple of times

and talk to stories and

obviously friends.

It's different

the type of people that

it doesn't bother. People that want to be on camera

that's an interesting

addition to an already

I mean everybody that's listening

that has shops or in a shop environment

already knows

the drama that just creates itself

right with artistic individuals

and driven individuals and everybody wanting

to be the best and then adding

that undue stress

of the camera on

can be a lot.

And I mean the shop already had enough

drama as it is. Every shop does.

We all have it

and

but yeah I was that guy that was

standing in the corner. Keep my head down

keep welding.

It wasn't bad

it took a while to get used to. You'd be sitting there

welding something up and all of a sudden you see somebody's feet

walk up and stop, flip your head up

and it's camera and you're like oh just keep going.

I will say

it's funny. I won't name

any names.

It's funny on the amount

of shows

not just bitching rides

but

in the moment and then

right after guys leave

and you know

bitch and complain about the shop

or the TV and this and that

but they don't have a problem putting it on their resume.

That lands on that

resume or that social media

heading or whatever. Former so and so

from this.

Couple guys out there

show from

you know like a host from bitching rides

and that's still on there

even though they don't know how to shop and I'm like

yeah whatever.

Yeah it's

you've done it the right way

because

knowing each other for a while had no idea

right and you stood on your

on your own ground with Streamline and everything that you guys have done.

Again

I mean we don't have to go on a tangent but it is funny

because we've heard those stories of like

I gotta

I gotta get out of this. I hate this

and I'm gonna do my own thing. Well if you're done

you're done right. Don't say

don't use that as a

yeah.

Yeah so when I worked for Dave I worked for 10s

I worked with him where I worked for 10s

I was building Isaac's truck

on Fridays. So

working on that I don't know how long

we were into it maybe

two years. Dave know you were building the truck

on the side? He did

but we weren't

at the time we were just building that really nice

driver. Nothing crazy.

And then

and I get it. I mean

four years I think we were on

fourth season

I think it was Discovery Channel

or whoever it wasn't Motor Trend then

it was Velocity came back

and says hey we want all your guys

in the shop signing on compete

contract and

confidentiality

and I had to be that guy

that

I'm not signing that

and me and Dave had some good long conversations

it was like hey I just want you to sign it

and I came back and said well this is

what I'm doing on the side so

you know this is what I need

we negotiated a few times and it just

didn't

work out. Yeah. And so

Dave told me

well I need you to sign the

contract and he said it nicely

and was like but until you can

sign the contract I need you to go home

and think about it. So

I went home I was on my way home Kevin's calling

me like dude just just sign the contract

come back and I'm like

I don't think I can I just

you know I have side jobs

there's other things that I do

and I do have four kids at the time

now so now I'm at four kids deep

and I'm like you these side jobs

I told you had we were

I mean it is a side job

how many speeding tickets you had

but

well I kind of lucked out

so this small town

that I'm from

the big judge in town was my uncle

so

well so you've never been able to learn a lesson

you just keep on

just keep going

so

anyways

so Dave tells me gotta go home

so on my way home I'm calling him

he's are you in California at the time

either there or Maryland

one coast or the other

I'm all over them at the place

this is like on a Monday

and y'all been floating the idea around a little bit

anyway we kind of poked

at it the thing that kind of stuck

with me is as he was

building my truck

at his dad's

shop yeah

I remember him taking me over to

the archives

when he was a little guy

opens up a book from

kindergarten first grade

second grade of what you want to be

when you grow up and he opened up

that's what he wanted to do he wanted to own a hot rod

shop and I'm like so it just

embedded in me

probably open a hot rod shop

be a professional drag racer

have a shit ton of kids

in the fine print

I forgot y'all are

there's a lot of Mormon

that's me I'm that

tattooed Mormon boy

with a lot of kids

so you're calling him and you're like

I got a shit load of time on my hand

so we're going to get this truck done

where do you want to go with it what do you want to do with it

and that's kind of how

it worked out

Dave called me

I think he let like two three days go by

and I just told him I can't

sorry I can't do it

and took my shop key

into him and gave it back to him

and he wished me the best of luck

is everything ended

amicably yeah

I mean I was pissed off I'll be honest

I don't know

put a lot of time and energy

into that shop and gave it my own

so at the time I was pissed

I'll say that

I left and

kind of had that chip on my shoulder

like well if they can do it I can do it

and I'm going to prove to the world

what we can do

and Isaac was kind of the

little nudge that pushed me

because there's no way I would have

probably done it I would have stuck it out

and anyways

so yeah so the one truck

turned into three builds

and then I started buying tools and equipment

and finding this in a home

and finding them a team and here we go

right so and we have

one of the world's largest racetracks

right in the smack

middle of two little cities

two little towns I don't know

if you'd call them cities

and so they have

tenant garages so that's where the shop

ended up oh that's cool

I don't know how big the

track is it's a road course it's

3.4

miles maybe

get out there and shake down cars

I thought you were going to say Bonneville

and then we're only an hour

hour from there as well

so we had a big

drag strip right in Salt Lake City

it was Bonneville

Raceway my dad used to run the starting

line there as well

but then it became Rocky Mountain

Raceway but all the industrial

stuff moved in and wiped out that

drag strip so

so this was what year did you guys start

so this would have been

2016

came out

we ended up getting

2000 square foot building

where we started

but my dad has a

50 by 60

garage in his backyard

pretty good size shop

has a makeshift paint with

my dad was a custom painter

he was more known for his paint jobs

than anything

and that's where I did most of

Isaac's truck

he had bought some equipment

and when we bought the equipment

we bought some guys equipment

the guy had passed away

and when we went up to look at the equipment

the lady his widow

says if you buy the equipment

the cars got to go

64 Corvette sitting there so

we ended up loading that up

it was pretty tough

already had an LS in it

well I'm so intrigued

by so many things

honestly I really am

and at the beginning

so

the first plan was

we're going to get this truck

this side project done a lot faster

because we're going to go full time on it

and because of that

we're probably going to step up

the level of where we're going to take it

you're like okay great

it's awesome for me

now he's going to be doing this full time

the truck's going to be done that much faster

business side of things

whatever it's like okay well

instantly you have to part pivot

even though the truck's not done yet

you've got to have something to work on when the truck's done

so you're like oh we got this next project we'll do this

I'm so interested

on both sides of this

side of the coin

because

this

it's a big leap for both

and this generally

this has happened before

this usually goes way bad

and I'm sure you're aware of it

this is

like

started to happen

a lot of times

gone really bad

most all of those times

but 2016 till now

it's 10 years it's a decade in

it takes a turn

where's the turn

so

I don't know

Isaac was over in Japan for a while so I'm taking another step back

he was in Japan

working on I don't know if you want to talk about that

Fukushima

so in that tsunami the earthquake

the reactor

we got a call

the military asked us to go support

so off we go

a three month gig turns into a three year situation

so we're running a team

aircraft carriers

destroyers, helos, jets

we're checking everything

and

in between

I'm back and forth and

trying to support this guy

at the same point so

when you say in a sense

it is a leap

but I'll

caveat with I'm too dumb to be scared

because I was 24

when I jumped into my own

and obviously I've always been supported

around with the right individuals

but we are

my nuclear cleanup side

is very unique

and we're usually building things from scratch

and

yeah it's just again

oddballs

when Donnie came and we started having that

it really didn't scare me

the infrastructure that we needed

I'm like okay

I've had to build cities in the middle of the Middle East

in the desert

you haven't had to work with hot rodders before

yeah

that is an outlier for sure

the artistry part of it

but yeah

some shop equipment and some space to build a car

that's a

attainable

I can check that

and he was burned out

he was ready to put his energy into something else

ends up throwing

money down at the shop

I'm working on his truck

out of my dad's garage

we go and get another 2,000 square foot building

move all the equipment

everything down there

and then I

have a buddy that wanted a job

that worked with me at Kendig before

he wasn't employed by Kendig when he came

and worked for us but

we ended up hiring him and

we finished this truck

in seven months

I think

and debuted at the Salt Lake Audorama

did really well

ended up getting

my best paint, best

truck

it was pretty cool

Kendig comes over and congratulates me

that's cool

it was cool

but I still had a weird chip on my shoulder

I don't know

anyway so long story short

we go back to the shop

start building some other stuff

and

don't

really want to say too bad

too much bad about our employee

but at the time

we had this employee that

he had gone through a divorce

had some personal problems

was drinking a little too much

I'm out of town at a baseball tournament

with my boy

too much or the times that he shouldn't have been drinking

times he shouldn't have been drinking

he was awesome for the first six months

and

then I kind of started noticing a little bit

and

started

questioning a few things anyways

I leave town go to a baseball tournament

and I get a phone call from the racetrack

it's like hey

we got your employee out here on film

spinning donuts in this nice

show truck you have out here and giving joy rides

oops

I wait until I get back because I'm down in southern Utah

four hour drive

get back and walk in the shop

Monday morning and

just start inspecting the truck well

I built the chassis

it was a

68 Camaro subframe

on this chassis that I grafted in

and

another story taking the step back

so I built the 68 Camaro

and I actually redid it on bitchin' rides

I don't know if you remember one of their first

maybe second season

they buy a Camaro for me

I had to strip my own car

rebuild my whole car

on the show

anyways I bought all the parts back from that

because it was all brand new stuff

like global west

control arms

it was nice stuff but

nothing crazy

anyways we put it all in that truck

I hadn't built steering bump stops for it

still a show truck

still working out the bugs

so those are some witness marks

yep

both front fenders cracked

so

and our employee actually

he was homeless at the time

living in another shop

across from our shop

can you get more homeless

I guess you could just be homeless and unemployed

he was employed and homeless

and we were helping him out

and so I walk across street

knock on his shop door

and comes over

and I'm like hey come tell me

what happened this weekend

and he's all bruised up too

like has this freaking big ol' bruise on his face

and I'm like

what the hell happened to you

he doesn't say anything so I walk over

and I'm telling him I need you to explain this

and we get down and so finally

I'm like alright I just gotta let you go

so I call him tell him

hey well it didn't last very long

and so now

I'm have the stress

of firing somebody within the first year

it was your first employee

first employee

first and only or do you have others at the time

first and only at the time

and then we have the Corvette

we had a Camaro in the shop

we didn't have the 32 yet

we had your 37 Chevy to do

how's that

how's that phone call

dude I'm saving the world cause it's a nuclear

meltdown right here

okay hire another employee

I got it

the myth and the legend at the campus

is Donny has a killer jab

they accredit him with that

don't mess with Donny

so I fire him

and security out of the racetrack

sees him leaving and has this big ol' black eye

so for years now

it's perfect don't piss Donny off

don't change the narrative

let that roll

so anyways

so I fire him

start freaking out

and Donny gets his wild hair

up his ass again that he needs to find a real job

I decided

I guess I was just stressing

how many kids were we up to at this point

I had four kids at this time

didn't have another one in that mix

don't want to be done

pause for just a second

I want to go through that

you've mentioned a couple of times

I'm doing this on the side

and then you know what

I got to go work for the government job

and then I'm going to do this

I'm not trying to

say what you're thinking

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth

but I'm getting the gist that

from that picture he showed you

I want to own a high-run shop

that's what you wanted to do the whole time

that's your passion

that's absolutely what you wanted to do

but you've got this

responsibility side

of making sure you take care of the wife

and the kids and make sure you just

you know what the safe thing

is to do this

that's the biggest thing

then the thing draws you back

you know what I might be able to do

I feel guilty I can't make it

it's definitely an addiction

it is an addiction

it's 100% an addiction

and if you are a halfway

decent person

if you're a functioning addict

that knows that this addiction

not handled correctly

may

hinder my family

you know then it's the dichotomy

and the push and pull of like

I really want to do this

but the smart thing is to do this

now

I'm just picking up on stuff

I thought there was going to be a good backhanded compliment

no backhanded

he did the smart thing

I just like

double down told the family how to figure it out

I'll see you in a couple years

when I can get back

so I end up going getting

a real job

Chevron oil refinery

I'm going to go be the man

make all this money

you could be the first guest that does more jobs

than Josh is

he's getting close

and we're not finished yet

so

would you tell him

I told him

I got to take care of my family

this is what I got to do

they pay well

but shift work Isaac

so let's keep the shop

and I'm going to be that guy that works

every day off and every hour

I can before I go to work

and I did

that's when the 32 came in

let's give the wife

and kids the money from the job

but I ain't ever going to be there

she's my manager

she manages my whole life

she takes care of the kids

raises me

I'm right there with you

same life

and he's telling you this

you'll be back

I had an idea though

you could see where the passion was

he's like the customer

and the supplier at the same time

just sending that drug

and buying the drug

never get high in your own supply

but you can be the wholesale distributor

to the salesman

own the salesman

so when I was a kid

my dream of holding a heart red shop

was building 32 Ford's

strictly 32 Ford's

that's all I was going to do

we know how that plays out

and 32's are kind of hard to sell

easy to sell

just not for a lot of money

that now anyways

it's coming back

Isaac

he knows everything about what my dream was

so what does he do

he goes and buys a 32 Ford

let's see how responsible you are

right

I got you

Paul's up Henry from Steadfast

so he's already got the stance

one of his rollers

he had actually built it for another guy

as a roller

and Henry was

I don't know if he had posted it

he must have posted it

you found it

I was in Japan I flew home

snagged it

threw it in the shop

man how'd this get here

wow that thing sits good doesn't it

sure would be cool finished

so every day off

every hour

I'd go to night shifts

I'd work from

5 at night till 5 in the morning

get home around 6

wake up at 11

get to the shop by noon

and work till

about 4 o'clock

take off kids were all in school

except for the youngest

and like I said my dad was a

stay at home dad so

he's babysitting for me

so best of both worlds

now

my dad's not really building cars

at this time either he was

I didn't even tell you this but he's 50 years older than me

so he's 50 when I was born

so I was raised by an old hot rodder

oh wow

so it was a pretty cool deal

so now he gets the enjoyment

of grandkids so he's

pretty much raising my kids for me

so between him and my wife

and everything else

so I'm working on this

32 Ford and I'm just putting everything

everything I've ever wanted to do

into a 32 Ford so

I mean I've studied Dave Lane's style

you know everybody that

yeah which one was this

was this on the social media

so I debuted it in Columbus

speaking of 50 year old on the social media

I know I did it on purpose

so it would be kind of like a bluish gray

that's like one of the first things

further down

there's a picture but we can

this is the full fendered

yeah full fendered roadster

sexy car

oh who's that?

that's Alan yep

looking at Alan

so right there that was

I put everything into that

thing that I possibly could

shorten the rear fenders

three inches

brought the front axle forward

just about an inch

stretch the front vendors

stretch the hood

and then I did a Dick Rodwell

windshield

on it laid it back

yeah I don't know

it wasn't one thing on that car

I didn't touch

took Henry's chassis and we slightly modified it

and then

debuted it in Columbus so

when I was with Kindig

we did all the good guys stuff

but never

us as employees were

not really a part of the show so

I didn't know what the hell I was

doing so I told him where I wanted

to debut it Henry was kind of guiding me

like this car's got to go to Columbus

yep

so and that was the thing Henry

me and Henry hit it off

he's a great dude

I mean I had followed him but as soon as we bought that

me and him it was like a daily phone call

and so I'm driving to Chevron

and I'm like Henry this is what I'm doing

and he's like what the hell are you doing

so Henry was actually kind of

like another guy that kind of pushes

me back to the streamline so

he had a

heavy heavy hand on my shoulder

but anyway so

we end up debuting this

in Columbus and I remember I pulled it out of the trailer

and I took my kid so my kid was

he was eighth grade going

in freshman year so it was summer

before so take

him it's a big summer and so it's my

first time at Columbus

and he's never been to a big show like that

we pull out of the trailer and I'm

talking to Harry somehow Isaac had met

Harry at another good guy's show

and so Harry is kind of following

the build and

so he's I call Harry I'm like I don't know

where I park I don't know where I go and so he's

just kind of guiding me I'm on the phone I'm pulling in

and you know right when you pull in

and there's Alan Johnson's

trailer sitting there and Bobby's

trailer and everybody and

Alan comes walking out and he's like

looking at like who the hell's this

and and so I'm kind

of just driving through like

must have done something right because we have a bunch of guys coming out

Jonathan goes be everybody comes

out and everybody kind of just looking as I'm driving

by we end up pulling

in and landed at top five

for

straight right of the year that year so not

not too shabby first

first major event that we had pulled in

as

streamlined so so what's the

what's going on in your head on the drive

home from that

time to go back

so

I know what I know what we're doing

from now on so you needed

you needed validation

so at that show

we end up

so as when

George had the three penny roadster

and Dave Lane had the

the Vicky there

so two cars that

and two builders that we're going up

against you know yeah

just not her being in that

top five with them yeah

um

I don't know it was just

beyond

I don't even know how to explain how I felt

at the time I mean

I mean it's a

it's like hitting a home run at first up to bat

I mean it's the first game

in majors which so then

then it's like oh that's

awesome

I need to be doing

this full time

but then it's the if I am doing this full time

like how do I back up that

right now then it's

it's validation and weight at the same time

yeah go hand in hand so yeah

you bring that trophy into the bank and they give you a loan

they do not

no no

phone does not ring anymore

you cannot

that trophy is

super awesome for you

yeah so

um

end up getting back

well we went to

so we actually sold the car

prior to finishing it

so I'm building it in bare metal

and I've metal finished everything on the car

um there might be some photos of it

on there as well and metal finished but

end up selling the car right before

and Isaac's funding it at the time

um and then I end up

we end up selling it to a guy

that's a Corvette only guy

and he buys a 32 Ford

do you like

the process more than the build

I mean more than the finished product

yes

yeah he's

yeah that's a I mean it's a

it's most of our customers

it's a lot of people right if the

if the experience

is what it should be

and you're gelling and you're having a great time

the experience

and the debut

is the peak

you know

um when you're talking about building something like that

you know

that's where I mean we're going off on a tangent

that's where a lot of the survivor

builds and legends trucks and stuff like that

it's came in because then it's a lot of those

are for the same customer so it's

you can do that peak

but then these vehicles are like

the enjoyment of driving

like so it's like okay I have that

drug high that I'm chasing

but I know that you know

we're going to sell this one and then

go to the next build but in the meantime we can at least

like drive go on road trips

and road tours and fill that

all the fun things yeah

that's like the like the smoking weed version

and then there's like the full blown crack

right of the of the

of the show car stuff

so um

so we end up selling it in bare metal

how'd you sell it was it

I think I had something to do or did somebody see it

somebody yeah I posted on

Instagram and bare metal and somebody

hit us up and you said

okay so Randy

called us with conditions of course

right yeah let us do

what we need to do so we could

go market and

see what we could create with this thing and the coolest

part about it was the the guy that bought it

just says finish it the way you were going to do it

he's like you've already nailed it in the best way

so just do what you're going to do

and he still have it he does

yeah it's in his collection

in uh

inville Missouri Missouri

you want it back

he's happy with it he's a great guy so

he's loaned back to us a couple times so

um

end up finishing it got the top five

driving back

and now it's

it's time to get back to the shop

and get back to business

so we end up taking it

from Columbus to

Pomona not Pomona we went to

Pleasanton got a top

five for America's most beautiful

three penny road trends up wind in there

so we've got a top five

and then we end up turn around going

to well I think we would go into winter

hold on so this is

when we go into winter and the winners are

brutal in Utah you're still working at

Chevron yeah so

I'm out there two o'clock at night

turning a valve

and it's not for me

anymore so I can walk up

to my boss's office you're a famous hot rod builder

yeah that's it I'm famous now so

no I go into my boss's

office and Isaac had actually landed

our first client 64

Corvette

Cube that we were building for a client

from another choke so we built another Corvette

um but anyway

so yeah

I went in just quit

are you doing any pushing along the way

of like we probably need to get in here

of course

between cars he wants to finish

yeah he has few cars

we've got things to do yeah

this Chevron thing's gonna pass

honestly Henry pushed me pretty damn hard

dude you're wasting your time

and talent

would you tell your wife

I just told her what I was doing

and she's been my number one supporter the whole time

so I believe in you

and whatever you do

I get back and just do it good

so she's

she's been awesome

and that's all it took

so we

went in quit and got back to the shop

and started building Corvettes

and everything else

and then we turned around went to

the Barrett cup right was that

no wasn't quite Barrett yet

no I think we went to

Carmel also

oh yeah Carmel

they had a down up

Pebble Beach ended up

we won they had what was that

Mission

Catholic Church

and we ended up winning

the best and blessed

had some

priests come out and he's

blessed in the car really the water

and I'm over there wiping her off as soon as

my wife's like

that DI and I is holy water

water all over this

you see the SDS on that

yeah

yeah we went on a little

little tour and then surprise

here comes covid so

right into it so that was

2019 when we actually debuted

that

so that's uh

covid's a great time

you know for a lot of new businesses

you know not knowing what's

happening and

it's so interesting you know you said

you had the roller coaster stuff I mentioned

it before that like these these things generally don't

end well right they also

I wouldn't even say they generally

don't end well because they'd have to see it

started real good to be ending right they just

it's it's like

a plane that just just barely takes

off and crashes

they don't call that a crash landing they call

it like a failed takeoff right so

you have to be flying first

to crash that

this is awesome like

I'm picking up on it already

now the relationship and your mentality

which I think is the key to a lot

of this stuff and then your honesty

and work ethic is key to it as well

there's the

I believe in you

you've got the talent

I feel good

giving you the spur

to do it I'm also

getting cars built

that I want to have built we've got a great

relationship it's fun

I like the build process I've got

things going on all that's

that's great and it works

that's the that's the gravy part

of it

there's also the time that always comes the time

of like ROI

and

paying bills and this is a business

like so now it's now it's like

the reality yeah and then

I hear again I'm not

speaking directly to your guys' relationship

or situation I'm speaking to a lot

of other situations that happen

and it gets to time to where the

like hey

you say we want to make money

and the shop needs to like pay for itself

well like guess what your cars can't get built anymore

because we need to like take these paying customers

and then it's like well that's not cool

because I want my cars to be built

there's always the that's it happens

am I not I'm 100% right

and anybody that's listening knows

it's so cool the relationship you guys

have gotten it's also great that you enjoy

the build process

it doesn't hurt that you're like

always traveling and overseas

and like worried about

like nuclear disaster

when I'm always you know I'm always engaged

and involved in understanding

you know the model of what we need to do

and you know the project management side of life

is always a big piece

so as he's

and he's a good communicator so as he's

communicating to me from wherever I'm at

I could quickly deduce

where our issues are

or you know where our cliffs are

going to be got you know where our

downfall and then I'm trying to build

a bridge or add a parachute

or whatever it takes

so that we could get over that obstacle

and continue forward

everything's makes so much more sense

it really makes so much now I even under

like emails when we were emailing

prior to scheduling whatever now it

makes sense I'm like because this is not a hot rod guy

like he writes an email like

a business person like I can fully

understand everything that he's saying

and we can communicate back and forth

this is not your normal

hot rod builder for the government as well

so it's a government

speaking to the government

so that's

great because

another thing that we talk about on this podcast

all the time is

that's generally the missing link

of a successful business is the

business portion in the creative

hot rod builder

because at no point in time

when he showed you that picture

you're like I want to be a hot rod builder

you didn't say I want to be a successful business owner

you said I wanted to be a

hot rod builder and that's everybody's dream

that wasn't that's not a dig

that's building the cool car

my dream is not to be successful

at building cars for a living

the dream was to build cool ass cars

and

there's a difference between

making money and earning a living

earning a living

is

where everything just doesn't get taken away

that's earning enough to live

and then there's making money in a successful business

those are two completely opposite

in the spectrum so were you pushing

from the business side or

were you both

did she manage in the business end

were you doing the paperwork

and doing invoicing and everything

everything at the shop doing time sheets

all that stuff and then scan them

I go through and do a summary

like a quick summary

well we end up hiring a couple guys

so we landed a couple clients

first client

actual client was a

Corvette we actually had ordered that chassis

prior to

so it was a roadstrap chassis fast track chassis

that was probably back in actually 17

it was early

it was an early time and then we didn't end up

building the car until a little bit later

but he's our first client

but with that he brought

another client

so now we have two clients

so now I'm feeling pretty confident

let's start hiring guys

first guy I hired

still with us

young buck

he was 18, 19 at the time

19

he's a body and paint guy

did a lot of paint prep

at a collision shop

and so kind of taught him

young this is

this is how it is and then

we end up hiring

Simon another guy that worked

at Kindig the very first time

that I had worked there

so I worked with him for three years

hadn't really seen him in years

and we stayed in touch but it was kind of

not

I don't know I bet there was ten years that had gone by

I hadn't seen him, ended up coming out

working and so now we have

these two guys and building

two Corvettes

the first client

we had ordered that chassis

well then he ended up changing directions

brings this other guy with a 6.6 Corvette

ends up we sell the chassis

out from underneath that car

put the 6.6 on it

and he ended up going with some other chassis

and ended up more of a budget build

ended up doing that

but our very first client was

damn car had to go yellow

and I'm a very stubborn

stubborn guy

when it comes to paint

and I argued this guy

which probably shouldn't be doing

with my very first client but

I argued and argued and argued

I did seventeen different spray outs

but I read

I said yellow

what about gray

but we ended up

cream

well that's why I said butternut yellow

I can handle butternut yellow

and so ended up

doing a spray out and shot

just a gold pearl

over the top of butternut yellow

and that was it and he signed off

on it and so then I was like okay

so first client actually changed me

so I'm good I got that out of

my way and

ended up we did that one

and then the 6.6 had a couple guys

in the shop

so now we're starting to grow

so now we went from two thousand square feet

we're no longer working in my dad's

shop but we're

building the cars

blown them apart taking them up to my dad's

paint booth

super efficient

laying blankets in the enclosed trailer

and driving ten miles

as careful as we can

we're in glass houses we're not throwing any rocks

we do what we gotta do

yeah it just doesn't work

and then we end up

right around the corner there was an old body shop

that had gone out of business

but had a nice paint booth so we ended up

using this paint booth and still doing that

just wasn't working we

ended up buying a booth and

we just kept expanding

so the racetrack

has single

single base so they're

25 by 20

well we end up getting

four bays at a time

so they're wide open so they're

two thousand square feet or whatever so we end up

going for two thousand to four thousand

and then took

another two thousand so now we're at six thousand

so we have a paint shop

kind of an assembly

shop clean shop

and then our fab shop fab and body

and that's kind of how we

we made it work for a few years

for a while yeah

and then we just kept expanding

so and then we got up

to I think we're at seven employees

now so not

not huge but we're

it's yeah

ten thousand square feet

but then that was

this kind of wasted space we had some

space that we weren't

utilizing as more of a showroom and so

we end up downsizing a little bit

over so like eight thousand square feet

and

going back to

something you said earlier about

you hired the

nineteen year old kid right fresh out of

a collision shop

and taught him the ways right he's still there

yeah

this is sometimes we ask hard questions

on this episode on these

podcasts

that kid's working for you for a while

been working for you for a while you've trained

him all the ways I assume that when you

hired him he's like oh my god this is awesome

working in a hot rod shop that's been

my dream to do custom cars so like that

he's learned a lot along the way

things that you and the experience

have taught him

say in three four years from now

he's like you know what I want to do I want to own my own hot rod shop

what do you do in a situation like that

it's gonna be tough

but I just want the best for him so

I don't know

I mean obviously I'm gonna

go to him be like what do we got to

keep you but

if not I mean

it's gonna be a tough road but

you were in a little different situation

do you think

had

how much longer would you have been in days

if it wouldn't have been for the contract

signing thing probably be there today

to be honest I mean

I got to

I mean the cars they build are pretty

phenomenal so

they build you know and

I didn't make a killing working for him at all but I got to

perfect my skill

I was able to work with

the equipment that

I didn't have or the

equipment we couldn't afford to use and it was just like

were you working on cars

more when you're working for Dave than you are now

yeah

a lot more

but I'm pretty

hands-on oh I know

you have everybody you have to be

but the same time

hands-on as a business owner is not

the same thing as working on cars

for a living the problems

now it's really different I have my hands

on 17 different

cars I think we have 17

job right now I'm touching

every single one and not just

focusing on one so yeah

I'm not trying to prove a point or anything

like that we've talked a lot about

this as of late

it's a delicate

subject or tricky situation

to talk about because there is

people out there that

absolutely you know

strive thrive and should be

marching to their own drama

and there's some that

should absolutely not be

and

either need another five years

you know from experience side

or their personality wise you're so

fucking talented and the

type of person you are

and what drives you is that

creativity and working on those cars

and doing those types of things

just keep negotiating

a higher pay rate and

stay where you're at

you see it so many times

and again we're doing this because

it's an industry-wide

topic thing and there's not a

right or wrong but I wanted to

ask that specifically

from your

I can't reward it

in the right way but chasing

this and chasing that

I know what my heart's telling me to do

but I also try to do the

responsible thing

had that contract thing not been in there

your heart and the responsible

was in one place

right one big established

shop that was building the

craziest cars

then you probably wouldn't have

gone and done what you did not saying that

this isn't like you should have

or would have or whatever it is

this is more advice on other people

even from owners

how to deal with employees

and employees that are thinking about doing stuff

it's

yeah

everything you're saying is a very unique skill set

it is

dealing with the client versus a

an employee

they're vastly different

and every employee is different

the communication style

is unique in that sense

and then just going from

stretching a 32 offender

to figuring out insurance

and payroll

skill sets there as well

that most guys don't

have any experience knowledge

or even foresee

that they're going to have to do when you start your own shop

it's a whole different ballgame

or just even doing

quick math

when the centos guy comes by the first time

they're like oh that's fucking great I don't have to do any of this kind of shit anymore

yeah that's fine pay that

instead of doing the quick math

of whether they're like wait hold on

I could hire a full time employee

for what you're going to do no

but it's

the type of examples of when you are

small

one, two employees and you're starting a hot rod shop

like the

easy mistake to make at the beginning

yeah well we were smart

when we rented our shop

because toilets are cleaned

every day we don't have to worry about that

so we don't have to pay for them

well I guess it's included in the rent

security

yeah but you have

a good business minded

you know advisor

and partner

in it

and I've

had to educate Isaac a lot

he's never really

I mean he's been around the builds

and all that, been around cars his whole life

but he's never hands on built a car

to start

you know been around a lot of it

so I've educated him a lot

I bet this was

the

I wouldn't say business side but the

the inter company

trade relationship

in the hot rod side of things

has to be

drastically different than what you're used to

in your profession

because it's

you know from a supply and demand type of thing

I mean it's a

I need this

times this many

buy them

and I receive them and in your line of work

there's not a lot of like you know

what it's gonna run a little late or you know

it doesn't happen a lot

I wouldn't assume maybe I'm

not in that business so I'm just guessing

it has happened

so we did a project

for the Navy

we

us as tax players

purchased

8 helicopters

and 853 helicopters

for cheap

and then

they found out that they were contaminated

so you know I had a

rep come up to me and said hey well I

seen one

at the flight line so it should take you guys

around 3 weeks

to decontaminate and release them

do what you need so we could start

flying them again

so it does happen and there are times

where you have to negotiate and you have to

identify and whatever you commit to

you know it's like a fixed

price contract so it doesn't matter what I

what it takes me to do I have to achieve it

within that time frame so

it is what it is so

you know it just depends on how we structure

that agreement so that's kind of the

you are a little used to the

everything at the same time he's

probably never had to do a

clean up job on a helicopter

this thing was like badass we had some

gold leaf engine turn

put some 20's on it

20's on that thing

I want completely

side barges because I'm so how do 6 helicopters

become contaminated

so they were flying in supplies

direct into Fukushima

and so in that process

everything that's sucking in there

and because of how

spicy it was at that time

it was embedded in the materials as well

so

how long does that

not long

how long does it stay on something

for the

isotope that was from that

thousands of years so

for a while decays and becomes neutral again yeah

and lights I won't get it off

no

so that's where we actually did the dry ice thing

so we build a containment

around that and we shot it with dry ice

and was able to contain

anything from going airborne and

minimize what we had to do so

and if you're exposed to that

for a short period of time

you have some growths

not for that specifically

but in other arenas yes

in a reactor 100%

so there are

jobs that I've done in a reactor where

the exposure is extremely high so we have

to time people to go in

and you know turn a bolt

a couple times ok times up

go send in another guy hit it

a couple more times ok get out

so there are every experiences

a little is very unique so

that's why I say

I'm too dumb to be scared

because I've been in too many variables so

again he'll hit me with something I'm like

I could analyze it ok

you know plus or minus

we'll be we'll be fine how often

you guys getting like scanned or checked or

my team does that all the time so we're

peeing and pooping and

monitoring and just pulling blood

and all that stuff so actually

we're less than everybody else

because we know what we're getting into

and we put in all the plans and precautions

in advance so

training like mad

was that Fukushima

worse than what

everybody

was led to believe

well

I can't say specifically

because I didn't go right to the

event

but the other assets that we were looking

at in the beginning

it was pretty spicy it could

have been worse

bad bad

alright let me do the sidetrack

things I'm interested in you know you got to

ask questions and stuff

Josh has many interests

yeah well that's good

I mean mostly due to

you know the precipice of

worldwide conflict this is always

at the top of my

interest list

let me to the Middle East

clean up some of that so again

so we can't we don't allow anybody

to reverse engineer anything

we won't snag it and we drag it home and

we handle it here

oh so you're doing some of that mitigation as well

on that 100%

and ship it out to you

buried out in the desert

going out to Rich Bonneville

that's one of the first

radioactive disposal sites

that were in the US

and that's where I was

fortunate enough

looking back I was lucky that I got into

it very young

and it just fit

so I say that all the time it is very

weird that I ended up in that

industry but

fortuitous at the same point because everything

just lined up it just made sense

so my personality

my mentality

no offense why subcontractor

why doesn't Air Force Navy Marines

mitigate themselves

go yank it

they will they can

but they're not too

concerned about the health hazards or anything

the repercussions of

what happens so they're the doers

they'll get it done

is it done the right way

that's a separate question

understood

how much nuclear

material is spread on

just a normal

like chopper crash like chopper goes down

a lot of the components have a lot of

so they

it looks like a spark plug so everything

to increase the voltage so

there's a lot of radioactive

isotopes in a

aircraft so yeah there's

quite a bit

night vision

so when you see

the rare instances

one has gone down

especially middle east conflicts that stuff would happen

you'd see overhead they'd have a crowd

descend upon that

everyone's like oh they don't need to get

what you're thinking is like they're not going to be around long

potentially

they might steal

some intel

but they're not going to be around long

to tell us

it's easy to find it too

because of the signature that's coming off of it

so we can track it down fast

understood

probably talking too much

no you're fine

very very intrigued in all that stuff

back to business

so shops rolling

you got employees

paying customers

what's your personal

level of where would you like to see

how many

paying customers

and success of the shop

and ROI

but also like room for a build

for you

you know

that's a tricky question

is the shop in itself fulfillment now?

obviously I still would like to see a build

at some point to go play around in it

but

to see the shop be successful that

that is the fulfillment

so now it's a build every day?

100%

so

a lot of different facets

and then another fulfillment

that I was getting was the interaction with the clients

so again that was a learning process

because it's different from my side

is

the personalities are always unique

so that was a lesson that I learned very fast

is

who we're going to

get into bed with

because they're not always a good fit

so that was a process as well

that's why this has worked

now it makes so much more sense

why this is actually

a recipe for

success versus a recipe for disaster

thinking about

both parties

thinking about things the right way

and very

versed in their own individual skill sets

for the positive

and we're always educating each other

and holding each other accountable

at the same point

and that part sucks

but

you have to stay open minded

it's the ego

I'm guilty as much as any man

in this room so I just have to

put it down more often than not

and then it sucks

so then

everything's rock and rolling

and

you're doing

you're checking things off the boxes

like oh man it'd be great to do this

boom, it'd be great to do this

and

so good guys comes calling and says build a giveaway car

oh yeah

then you've made it

we made it

how does that process go

it was right

I guess post COVID

it was kind of

the tell end of COVID when we started having

the conversation

so

the giveaway car was originally

Goldman's

was supposed to do it

had a Pete and Jake's chassis

and

I think Ed

was still there

so he had kind of put that whole thing together

yeah cause he was generally working on them

like a three

three build ahead

kind of getting stuff staged

so

Goldman

I don't know what happened but they decided

during COVID that they didn't want to do it anymore

or something

so they told good guys hey we're not going to be able to finish it

they came to us

Isaac kind of worked all that stuff out

the contract

and I can't remember the guy's name that was over it

Jason

Jason Schneider I think was his name

so he had taken over

but

something happened

we had signed the contract and then

he ended up leaving

he was not there anymore

and so it got turned over to

Bunker and Sadie so

we had a body

a Pete and Jake's chassis

at the time and

I think that was it

and how hard it was to get parts

at that time

and so we were kind of freaking out

finally I kind of put a plan together

and

me and Bunker

were kind of bouncing some ideas off

and

Alan Johnson got brought up

and so that picture was Alan stopping at the shop

he was out at Bonneville

stopped in kind of check out the shop

see if he wanted to get involved with us

and so it was kind of a collaboration

he did the wheels

full chassis full rolling chassis

and

we ended up doing the build on it

so it was

kind of another

you know topper he's like holy shit

I get a T1 with Alan Johnson

checking off the list and you worked with Alan

that's a great fun thing

to the giveaway deal and touring it around

it's a lot of work

it was a lot of work

so when they came to us

we had

a year to have the car

a year plus

just over a year but I only had the body

so I put the body on the Pete and Jake's

chassis and chopped the top on it

but there wasn't much

else we could do

Alan got us the chassis

he kind of came in till the end

I mean he stopped at the shop in September

had the chassis to us by December

and we had to have the car

done next July

so

it's like seven or eight months

all kinds of time

plenty of time

well by the time we got all the parts

the engine, transmission and everything

there it was April

yep and it was full

shut the shop down

I'm calling all the clients hey

we're not working on any or things anymore

we're shutting the shop down

we committed to these guys and we're gonna

give it our all so

yeah that's um

it was rough but

it wasn't

you know nothing against good guys

because it was Sadie and Bunker got thrown

into this it was kind of just a

it was kind of a mess

on all ends

and they did the best they could

I mean they did, they were awesome

Bunker actually flew out

Kiki him out and worked in the shop with us

for a little bit and helped do a lot of

things after a week but I mean

we were painting the car

I was painting the fenders

the week of

I mean the

the booth I'm baking and we had bought

an infrared bake booth so

we don't have forced

they didn't want us to put a heated

makeup unit on the building where we're at so we did

an infrared so I'm baking shit

and in the booth we're flipping

fenders over I'm undercoat and

doing stuff you know

I don't know

it's so wild

the amount of work that goes into it and

it's all

it's all generally

self-inflicted right

you know good guys does what they can

do to get parts and work and stuff and

that's a huge thing to get that many

that many parts that amount of

companies wrangled the right

things right time you know stuff like that

it's very very tough

on a shop from

from two reasons generally it's

a shop that is like

you guys know what they're doing right it's

that's the

up and comer up and comer

they're gonna they'll

absolutely they'd be chomping at the bit

for this opportunity right and rightfully so

right I get that

but it also comes with that maturity of

knowing I got shit I probably

shouldn't have done that I probably shouldn't do that

right that level is not there

but then there's the

every single shop we've been a part

of I've been part of several of them you've been a part

of several of them

every single time it's

rally the troops talking about absolutely

you know and we're not going

to do just a normal giveaway car

right we're taking to the next level

we're doing our name on it if we're

putting our name on it every single shop

every they're listening right now and they're dying

laughing because they've done the same thing

we've done it twice I know

and it's the oh we'll do this

we'll do this this and everybody

to be like oh my god for a giveaway car

I can't believe you guys did that what somebody

needs to do is just

bolt it all together just rattle and when

somebody comes up and says something I mean

you can do a nice car but somebody's like

oh man I can't believe you did it it's a fucking

giveaway car yeah you know how much I got

paid zero so it's a giveaway car

that's what we did then everybody be like oh

well shit I can do that I'll

sign up to build that but I'm not

signing up to donate the fucking year and a half

of everybody at the shop I tried everything

I could I called them I don't know how many

conversations we had I said get us a road

to your body no fenders

we will that's easy

yep yeah it's like third of the window

cube full fender

no we did we did

I'm not giving any shots at good guys

that's that's not at all the industry

itself it's it's

shit damn Bobby

at triple crown you don't

think he's laughing all the way down at

night be like all these guys building

these trophies and every single one of them is getting

bigger and better and more expensive

trying to outdo each other at the triple crown

he's just as stupid he did a giveaway

truck and because it's Bobby it has to be a

certain color and that color wasn't

available he painted it he bought a

brand new 2025 Silverado

stripped the entire thing down to paint

it black because he couldn't find a black one

yeah I got a white one and then the black

one came later so then he used the black

one I think for the next year whatever it was

but yeah stripped an entire brand

new truck

they were all stupid you gotta do it

I guess yeah that's what it sounds like

hindsight I think your approach might be the

better way to do it because you cram all that

into a short amount of time

so your amount of

potential billable hours went way down

so you can get back on

the money coming in so

yeah but it's only for like two months I thought you built the thing

April does a lot

poor Isaac had bought another 32

Ford so here's the secret

right so

we'd been building I think somewhere on there

there's a bare metal five window

coupe I saw it up there

yeah

that one

if you go up a little higher it has fenders

what's that F40

that was

just a car up in

Park City that we

nobody had a trailer that they could transport

that damn thing so

they called us and we got the honors of

loading it in their trailer

and transporting it for a guy

could be the worst job

he destroyed the worst idea

insurance wise

there's a pattern to all this

we had to wood block, chalk everything

and then we had to load it backwards so

we had a slide trailer, our client had a slide

trailer where everything slides out

loaded on that who drew those for you

that's Eric Black so never heard of him

yeah no

those little cartoon sketches

the thing I don't like about Eric

stuff is they're all out of proportion

nothing's to scale

I'm just giving him shit

so we were building

on our spare time somehow we were building

when we had spare time

building Isaac another 32

that one's actually the giveaway car

but somewhere in there sorry

we were building

him a car there it is

so that one's Isaac's

that was the shops car, streamlined

we have our own car we were building it

to just have to sell

when a client comes

we sold the last one in bare metal

so it was like

had one of Dan's Luma Craft Girls in the winter style

yep

so we have this car

pretty much to this

stage when

we couldn't get parts for a good guy

so what'd we do

in stock started robin

so we robbed everything

the worst part about it was

it was so good

we got it all replaced

just not the labor hour

so I have

new vendors I still need to chop

and do a bunch of stuff too

this thing's still there

we still have it sitting in the corner of the body shop

collecting dust

it gets rotated around

it'd be a nice

fun car

a nice oil and whiskey company car

can you get it done in two months

sure

dude you already know he's never learned from a mistake

we already said that he did it four times

so we robbed everything off that car

to complete the giveaway car

but it still took us

I think we clocked

how many hours and four months

I want to say over 3,000

I mean it was aggressive

myself and Dalton

the young buck

he lives in town

local so everybody else comes from Salt Lake

so everybody else works for us

they commute

Dalton lived close so he's

the poor guy that gets to work

24-7 with me

so we

worked seven days a week just trying to get this thing knocked out

got it knocked out

do you feel like the shop comes together more

and you have a morale boost

by having the short deadline

and everybody being involved in it

this one kind of caused some problems

we ended up losing an employee

over it and that hurt

it hurt for a while

workload

work-life balance

that part's the hard part

was that why you lost the employee

yeah

he said I won't be

doing any of these deadlines ever again

and then just the morale

yeah just pussy then

that's fine

everybody's had pussies at worst for him

he was awesome

it just kind of got to the point where

he's kind of burned out

he's been building cars his whole life

and I think he wanted to do something different

I mean yeah

that shit will happen

but don't let it beat you

it hurt us for a minute

but I think that's the thing that pushed him over

he was with us for

maybe a year after

but

I could slowly see in him

sometimes you break him

when it's broken it's tough

to get back

it was a pretty

just even

thrashing on that car

we set it on the ground at four in the morning

before we loaded it in the trailer

to head to Columbus

just get there

I think there was probably five of us

at the shop

and I think there was tears in every single one

of our eyes as soon as it hit the ground

just like holy shit

first time seeing it on the ground

damn thing wouldn't fire up

so we pushed it

we worried that the car cover was going to

imprint on the paint that hadn't dried yet

didn't even have a car cover for it

so we loaded it and they shipped it

and once we brought it over

to us and those feelings of

that doesn't get talked about enough

we need to start doing that more

first time cars and wheels and tires

but before that

you've got the

roller coasters of emotions

especially on a build

say it's giveaway builds

or tight deadline stuff

even on a customer build

when it comes down to the

wire there's always those

decisions or conversations

whether it be with the customer, the guys in the shop

planning or whatever

it's like you know what

that car it's so close

that car we're taking it to this

and you've basically drawn the line in the

sand with the shop and the customer

and said this is the deadline

we're debuting it at SEMA

we're taking it to Columbus good guys

we're taking it to this blah blah

and it's generally

two to seven months

too short

whatever time that you say you're taking

whatever you're like absolutely

it's going to be a push

you've had those words

it's going to be a push don't get me wrong

it's going to be tight but we should be able to do it

and then you back out

you back schedule that out

as long as it's by two interior

by this date you need to come out of the booth

by this date you need to do this plenty of time

oh man we got this

and then what we're going to do

is we're going to give ourselves a whole week

so we're going to be done a week early

that way we can fine tune all the details

everybody's laughing because they've had these same

fucking discussions

same conversations, same whiteboard

same everybody up meeting, same all this kind of stuff

and you go through that

rah rah, hell yeah we're going to do it

kick ass

you start rolling, rolling, rolling

get a punch, curve ball, no problem

I got this

another curve ball, another punch, no problem

we got this and then those

time and that hours start creeping up

man this is tough

you know what we're going to do this

then there's those nights

then there's those nights that come

and you've all gotten kicked in the dick

all day long

left and right, every single which way

you're like you know what

what are our options

what's the options?

go to Chevron

I'm done with this shit

come back to Chevron

and then there's the push

you know what everybody

we're gone for the night

we'll talk about this in the morning

come back everybody's thought

hey I thought about this we could do this

this and this, we could figure this out, blah blah

there's kind of research, tired, still tired

then there's the put it down on the ground

right and it's like

it's a magic drug

not tired anymore

not upset anymore

everything

it's fucking euphoric

that's what we all saw

that's what we're all pushing for

until suddenly it's like fire it up

that's where I was going

and then we go to fire it and load it

like you gotta be shit

there's myself

poor wife in Columbus pushing the car into the building

when nobody's around

but then

you get that euphoric moment, you see that thing

you deal with those old stuff

boom, baby you know what

she's show ready, we hit it

load her up, let's go

then there's that drive

right and she's always at distance

never are you running up to deadline

and you gotta drive an hour and a half to a show

it's a cross country

and you're

literally loading it

like you're already an hour

and a half to five hours late

now you're like well

we're gonna stop in flags to have any more power through

all the way through

you drive for two hours

I'll drive for two hours, we'll back and forth

then there's that

time in the drive itself

where you're just like

that zombie mode hits

holy shit

where have we been

what day is it, what month is it

and you're like where did that come

I lost an index finger

throughout that build I lost an entire index finger

and didn't even know it

I can't believe we ate that much beef jerky

that's what

the shop floor

flies in and

and kind of bells us out

I've been working all night

I've been sleeping, I'm driving

that's perfect

and driving up through Wyoming

we see some weird shit

chupacabra comes running out across the road

oh you gotta watch out for the chupacabra

we've seen them three times

I don't know

have you ever seen it at a Tascadero

oh yeah those are more rare

in a Tascadero

you'll find those

usually three to four

o'clock in the morning running those desert roads

all kinds of stuff will fly

it's just for a brief second though

once you wake up you don't see it anymore

it's just for a brief second

it's tricky though too

with these deadlines and trying to

fulfill whatever that goal is

it's a necessary evil

again from my outside perspective

because if you just have something that just

it could go endless and we're just

gonna keep tinkering and tinkering

and the artist kicks in again and you know

we're chasing in pursuit of perfection

it's unattainable

if you get the card 99%

of the way there and you

don't make it to SEMA this year and you're gonna bring it next year

you'll still be

in that last hour trying to finish something

because you're gonna say

I've got a whole year you know what we can do

let's pull that front end off I don't like the way this thing fits

ball blind while we're doing it let's do this

and you create a year and a half's worth of work

in one decision

you're right

it's that you have to

as much as we all hate them

if it wasn't for shows and deadlines

these cards would never get done

facts, yeah

never

but the balance again

of trying to just kill everybody

because it is a marathon at the end of the day

right we can't just be sprinting

consistent and these

little bursts like that

well

we won't have any employees

I'll put it that way

obviously we lost one guy

and so

we try not to do it

we have guidelines

this is where we want to be

I'm not gonna kill my guys over a deadline

it's just so

it's so interesting

on the psychological

part of it because like you're saying

it's a balance

we're all to blame though

as peers

and as

friends, competitors, peers

in this industry

because we say this same thing

we say I can't believe we put this on ourselves

but we have to put it on ourselves

because we can get done

and then you're also you want to take the high road

and be like you know what

gets down to a certain point

and if I'm killing my guys too much

whatever we can just push the deadline

we'll go to another show

and then you go to a show and you tell

somebody that

you know what I just wasn't gonna work

oh that's good for you and then you walk away

fucking pussy

we just killed ourselves to get it done

you couldn't

the FOMO of you not having your car

could have been there

you're gonna have to

so it's all completely

group

self-imposed

and I think it's

it's a

it's a bitter pill to swallow

but it is

as hurtful

as that truth is

it is what has made

this specific niche

of the industry what it is

yeah it's

iron sharpening iron

I agree with that as well

everybody trying to

one up themselves one up the next guy

you got to show up because you know

five other guys are gonna show up

I was saying as you were saying that like

coming off of COVID like the amount of guys are like

oh man we just decided to take it easy

this year and no new cars

came out for like two years

there was nothing new

it was a lull because it was like

it was their get out of jail free car

it was that easy pass because

you didn't have to get looked down on

because you could just use the pandemic

as the excuse like oh you know how the pandemic

was get parts

well yeah but like we were all working

you could have got more done

supply chain issues

we were busy

during COVID

when COVID first started I think that was the only time I got nervous

in terms of the industry

I was like oh shit

turns out we were all stupid

I had to face that reality I might have

made a horrible decision here

but it was ended up being the complete opposite

I mean we were just booming

we could not keep up

with what we had coming in so

it was insanity because it just took

it took a little bit of a slow down

in the life

the day to day life of the people that can afford

those things to be like

fuck around you know what

always wanted

I mean on a

so much smaller scale but

during the holiday time when there was a little bit of slow down

of being at home a little bit more

than I'm normally at

then that's when it does get to the

I'm sitting there on the couch in the day time

or something like that you know Christmas Eve

or Christmas Day or whatever

you could see the snow globes of this fucker started making

insane

there's a little bit of the searching around because you have the time you're like

oh I'd like to buy that

things that you think about

buying or making purchases on because you have the time

you know it's the

the idle hand

you know kind of thing out of mind

in that damn algorithm

knows exactly what you want it's like oh this

this new gun just dropped would you like

this you know sneak peek at this

I will say I think the facebook marketplace

algorithm could be nothing better

most

inside of you as possible

there's shit that you don't even know you like

that all of a sudden I want to buy

all of those a cat Von D

pinball machine hell yes

I've been looking for that for years

please

uh

the uh but

you're 100% right that

iron sharpens iron and that

you mentioned earlier the ego

in it right you go get such a

I've talked about it you go get such a bad stigma

right and it's a it's an evil word

um we just need to take it back

and rewrite the way what that means

and it it's it

doesn't mean to be bad right it doesn't

have to be bad if it wasn't

for ego the iron is sharp

and iron um

your your trust

your

need

to belong your

want to be accepted

by these peers and these people that you've looked

up to and

validation of all the hard work

we would

literally not do those giveaway cars to

the level that you're doing right because you're like

I'm fucking you wouldn't build

cars in general to the level that you're doing

a number no you don't you bolt

the thing to get oh so you want a 69 camera

alright we'll buy those parts and we'll bolt it together

and drive it do you want it red black white

blue well that's the color there you

go drive it it drives good

right yeah it's so simple but

it's the push it's the

drive and it's the same thing that everyone's

like oh man I can't believe we got to do this

blah blah it is what it

is it is what it

is what it is as

dumb of a statement as that is is

what it is it's

what it is

takes what it takes

takes what it takes it be what it be

takes what it takes what it do

it do what it do on the dash

it do what it do

on that dash

yeah no I mean and we've been through

some crazy things in

this is way too smooth it's gonna be dangerous

we uh

the cream Corvette I don't know if you

have seen the cream Corvette that was

66 yes

so we were building that for

our second client

and during

covid full full out

this guy kind of I wouldn't say

unlimited budget but he wanted

a nice build yeah wide body

in the rear didn't want to do anything up

front just kind of give it some hips and kind

of just yeah

he wanted to that's fast track chassis

there

um

just doing an LS3 in it um

and

during covid Isaac

Bill and the guy he was awesome

paying his bills on time

everything and then just stopped

like right before Christmas

and I'm like it's not like

weird so Isaac sends him a friendly reminder

hey your bills do

nothing um calling

them I'm freaking out I am

shit I hope we didn't get

the the rona and

is about a month later

um the estate called

and the owner

crashed his airplane killed him

so and that was

I mean we were

full in on that build wow

and so the estate

settled up on what his bill

was they ended up coming

sent some guys and they came and grabbed the car

and that one went away so that

I mean

that sucked we weren't

planning on you know having a client

loses life or anything

during the build and these are

some of the things as a business owner you don't think

about it's like it was finished no

no it wasn't as in uh

second round of poly um

so

we were blocking the car I think at the time

and so we just stopped

but assembled the car they came got it

um we ended up

telling them if you know if

he had no family so if

if he wants it or if the

estate wants to settle and let the car go

we'd like to make an offer and

um

I think I chased it for about a year

somewhere am I right and we were

fortunate enough to have uh one of

our local guys out there

um alex shore I don't know

alex shore he had revision

built him that frigid white truck

oh okay yeah yeah yeah boosted

uh 69 was it boosted

under pressure under pressure yeah white

Camaro so he ended up

actually buying it and had us finish

it that's cool yeah so we

finished that car um

debuted it at Columbus

um I don't remember

what year that was I don't

it's all the blur at this point yeah

and and he didn't want us to change

anything he told us yeah let's don't change

anything just finish it the way you're gonna do

um but he he likes

his cars white so I was

able to talk him into cream not

white and uh

brought it back I think he

I don't know if he had built it for his wife or had

it was supposed to be his wife's car for

scops yeah and so

we got back from Columbus and he

wanted to take it for a little burn

and so we took it into

him let him take the car and there's

a few things on the interior he wanted the

interior guy to change and so

he drove it from his shop to his house

and pulling into his driveway

I think there was 19 miles

on the car some girl rear

ends him going 35 miles an hour

he's at a dead stop

it's not a good situation

for a fiberglass Corvette

wiped it out um so

this picture here is is second go

round so we were able

to go through and

he had it

I want to say it was over insured I don't

know I mean he had his insurance

correctly yeah yeah it was

it was a lot so

ended up coming in at like

$280,000 in damage

my eyes it's

total it's a good looking booth back there

beautiful booth look at that

so we ended up

the second go round

we got to play with

the insurance which sucked

on a full build like that fun times

yeah I think

I still think we're 20 grand

short on that final payment

but how'd like that

right there that conversation so we can get bumpers

yeah for

$300 right I see you

have here on the bumper estimate

this is

it's always interesting because again

I'm I'm the one dealing with the

adjusters and the assessors

and you know every one of them

that I've dealt with thus far is

you know they've had cars at Barrett

so they get it I'm like yeah I don't

think you get it and I don't you know nothing

bad on Barrett but there's there's levels

to everything so yes

the initial thing is yeah it's just bumpers

I'm like yeah they're not just bumpers

so you know it takes what it takes so then

I'm having to you know work through that

process and best thing it's just like

just like vet and a customer with a

insurance adjuster is the best thing when they come in

and like don't worry guys I'm a car guy

I get it right I know you probably

put an extra couple coats of clear on this thing

and you're like oh here we go

this one's gonna be a fun one

yeah but in this in these

cases man like you don't

not to be a dick but you

got all the power at the end of the day you just be like

no yeah why don't

you tell your client to find another place

that can do this yeah

because that's not gonna go over well

we're the only ones that can that's right we built

it this is what it costs

you all argue it out I got things to do

call me back when you're ready to pay the

payment and that's where Alex is

phenomenal in that process because he was fully

supporting and he understands what it takes

so there wasn't any real conversation

or argument behind it so

guess what it sucks to be

you the insurance company right now

however you make all your money

by gambling you generally

win you lost on this one

let's stop arguing about it pay what you got to pay

keep getting all the premiums

on all the other people that don't wreck their shit

sorry this just is what it is let's

fucking end it and everybody can go about their way

accurate sometimes you bet on

black and it fucking hits or doesn't hit

or doesn't

yeah so that was

a quite the experience as well

in the first few years of business

yeah yeah a little bit of everything in there

ended up do you think that experience

was worse or the comment that Josh just

posted could be worse

what was the comment oh I know I posted it

to Bailey I know it was stupid

hey I know it's stupid I just

love being able to

right there's the

where it got rear end oh that's a hit

it doesn't look so bad there

but

yeah if I realize it doesn't have a lot of gift to it

I think it cracked the headlights

everything

yeah it was bad

so that's the before so it wasn't

you didn't build it build it wrecked then I got it

alright now I'm

alright I'm following now

end up redoing that

then we

we actually did it for

we were part of the

castrol path performance

you guys did it here before us

so we did this car for path

performance and ended up

going down Barrett last year and got

top five with it which was pretty cool

it's fucking awesome

great looking car thank you

what's uh

SEMA this year

you had it you had it at SEMA this year right

last year yeah we didn't do SEMA this year

first year and

I think 20 years that I haven't gone to SEMA

good for you

that was weird

that must be nice

that must be nice guys must be nice

I fired one of those off today

did you

it's fun to do it sometimes now

you've gotten it so many times now it's fine

to be on the other guy must be nice yeah

it is super nice

and just wait for their response

just know what's going through their head

so what's the builds that are going on right now

seems like a lot of Camaros

a ton of Camaros there

doing a lot of chassis swaps

spec chassis

some of our clients

they go to Barrett buy some stuff that looks nice

and gets to the shop

and they want to do a little minor upgrades

now why

on earth would somebody want to change

the performance or driving

handling characteristics

of a car that they bought at auction

don't under

stand

Camaros right there

that thing had about

16

washers stacked under the transmission mount

I don't know

and that's the thing

everybody knows the standard is 12 right

you don't go past 12

and the car looked nice

I mean it was

look nice but once you got under it

they cut the subframe

just to clear the front wheels

everything's narrowed

this is more of a safety

you gotta have them tires right

everybody knows you gotta have them tires

especially on the front of the Camaro

the one thing that Camaro is always needed

was if you could figure out a way

to just do a dry sump

and less pistons and do a solid

tire across the front of a Camaro

little steamroller

yeah that'd be fucking awesome

so we've got

67

68 convertible

we're doing the same thing

supposed to be a chassis swap

but they're all snow ballin

seems like we're gonna be doing body and paint on all of them

that's the way it goes

we got a pretty sweet 69

Camaro we're doing a lot of custom

a lot of family posts here on this on this instagram

a lot of family posts

you're a better person than me

oh I haven't even seen that

oh look at that

little baby up there

I haven't even seen that one

this is the gift that keeps giving

back to the good guys

the giveaway

so here I am

me and my wife are in Columbus

debuting this giveaway car

while my 17 year old son

and his girlfriend

are back at home

parents are out of town

well thanks good guys

nine months later

they granted me with a beautiful grand baby

so I'm actually a grandfather as well

so it was actually

I don't want to say it was a bad thing

it was an awesome thing

yeah I don't

I mean it seems as though

your previous decisions

you probably didn't give him the best

the do's and don'ts

it's

I told you

we're Utah boys

it's only one way to do it

I see a little

charm out there

that was my wife stealing somebody

somebody's necklace

so

wait they can't receive a cheers buddy fen

is that cute

so they're having another one

does he understand how it works

there's so many different ways to do it

so

I mean literally so many different

ways to do it

I saw one of the pictures you had

a steel willies

coupe let's deal with that one

so that was

so Eric had done the rendering

we were building a 41

willies

and another car

that was really cool that we were building

we were building

so during the giveaway car

this client

decided

he didn't want us to finish these two cars

another thing part of business

so we didn't just lose the willies

but we also lost the 39

Ford at the same time

should have a picture of the 39 in there as well

somewhere around the willies

no it's part of business

I'm sure they're ups and downs

I would assume every shops

probably lost at least one or two clients

you lose one

that has two builds at the same time

I think it's further

down there

and that was the original

it was out of Southern California

that car was actually really cool

original drag car

there it's the willies

blown apart up just the hair

right there

I can't remember what it might say

what it was

nothing

man that's cool

had a blown himmy in it

super cool car

I've got a love hate relationship

with the willies it's like

wanna build a gasser

wanna do a stone woods cook

style car

and then you see so many of them that are done bad

you're like fuck a willies

and then you see one that's done like right

or like the original pops back up

I wanna do a willies gasser again

it was a cool car

would have been sweet finish but

I don't know the client just has

I think he has too many stuff

his excuse was I don't wanna call it excuse

but he had too many builds going on at once

had five different shops

building too many cars he's being built way too much

he's an older gentleman

and

the smallest shop gets

sorry we gotta

stop funding and

it is what it is

I wanna talk about this car

this is one I wanna talk about

because

that one stopped all of us in our tracks at Triple Crown

it was probably

my most favorite at Triple Crown

it was the one that I looked at the most and I was like

alright fuck what do I gotta

what do I gotta do

it gotta be a way to figure out how I

can have this and drive it home

car's a fun car

so awesome

40,000 inch a mile car

still had the green tag in the

glove box for the radiator when the car showed up

so that's our

client Eric Moore

he's been around

he's had a lot he said builds yeah

yeah so he

said him strange builds some stuff for him too right

didn't he I know Henry did

Henry did 32 for him

Henry built that

50

I'm trying to think of it as 57

55 should have a pickup truck

a patina one or the

painted one

if he

isn't keep things for long right

if this thing comes up

maybe let us know

this is probably by far the funnest car we've ever built

I bet

it's like said most attention

most I don't know

user friendly

so he sent us

67 Chevelle first

it was super patina kind of a green

faded paint

and I think Henry

was originally supposed to build that car

because Henry's who

referred him sent everything over

Henry ordered the chassis so it's

fast track chassis

Henry just couldn't

his workload was too much ends up

referring it to us sends everything out to us

and Eric called and said hey I just

found a 66

don't start

cutting on that green car yet so he ended up

sending us that and when that car showed up it was

I like a

67 better but

that same here but that right there

that car is

damn

open the glove box

like said had 40,000 miles

but it had the original note from

the original owner

to the second owner and the second owners

who sold it to Eric

but it was almost like

this old love letter

this was my first love

and I hope you take care of it

feel it bad for like 30 seconds before you

yard it all apart

look at this LS

so there's

a bunch of little things I don't know if you guys notice had 428 emblems

on the front fender everybody's asking

about 428

well Eric's a big Pontiac guy

he's got a Keith Dorton

NASCAR-ish

built LS

and it's 830 horse

I didn't know how to Dorton motor it

yeah so and it's

it's a 427.96

stroked so I was like

it's a 428

close enough so

I ended up putting some Pontiac

I'm a Pontiac lovers as well so

it was fitting for Eric

so we put that 428 emblem on there

and then we built the

NASCAR cal-inducted

air cleaner I don't know if you

yes I do

this is what I want for Christmas

so just in case

just in case anybody's listening

we did a reverse

circumcision and we put that

the vinyl top

on this car so most guys

pull the vinyl tops off and

we're the ones that

reverse that

that's just going to new term

I like that

we got to have shirts

so we added the vinyl top

to it to kind of give it that granny

we were looking at it we were like

who the fuck ordered this color

with that top and that interior

and then figured

60 years later that it would look this fucking good

it was pretty cool

it was an original bench car

so the cloth inserts

on the seats are the original

cloth

and our upholstery guy

Cody pulled those off

of the bench and put them in the buckets

and those are his custom buckets

so they're a wider

bigger electric bucket so he's

making his own seats

really full power

super cool

another Utah guy

and then we put a roll cage in it

just a Detroit speed

modified roll cage

so yeah that car

the red lines

8200 on that team

screams

let's send an old Erica message right now

I want to buy

oh that's who

that's

I didn't realize that

we were just talking about this

first of all

that's not right

he's not supposed to have that

he's not supposed to be able to buy it

so retribution is

now he's got to pay the tax

he's got to pay the tax and that tax

just happens to be

exactly the same cost

as that Chevelle

so

now that

he has a huge beautiful

garage that's what he's like

I want

he has a realtor shop

chassis under the truck under that

so he's just

I want to put all these different signs of

different shops that have been a part of

all my builds and

decorating his man cave

I bet he doesn't have room for that Chevelle

with that sign in there honestly

it's a safety hazard

if you think about it that way

just get the car out

and send it

to me

oh

he's a big Bobby Knight

he's an Indiana guy

so the others

there's the 32 Henry's building

oh he

did he own that little one up there

did he own these trucks

so he owns the Turquoise on

oh good grief

that truck was actually painted

so Henry built

that is so sexy

that's my man

speaking of playboys

wow

yeah so

and I think Eric actually owns

Henry's green

sedan now as well

I've heard of this Eric

but we've never met

awesome dude

maybe we'll meet when we're exchanging

funds for the

Chevelle

it is I put it out there

to that Chevelle I mean there was so much shit that we

we actually did

what's in the process right now

what's the next car to be

debuted

next one to be debuted

shit I don't know

probably the 69

so close

at Camaro

so that one's

full custom a lot of sheet metal work

it's got a 427

gotta eat stack

but we there's I mean

took the bumpers we did a bunch of

where's it gonna be at

where we debut

yeah

set the deadline

we would like to be in Columbus

but I don't quite know

might be a SEMA build

depends that maturity

that's that maturity speaking

the fifth time

one of those two

are you gonna be at SEMA this year

Camaro

okay

not for sure

but yeah

you missed a hell of a party last year

hell of a party

alright it's standard

question time

standard question

times dose because we got

two that's times two Phil

trying to keep you up

speed

first up we're going advice

we're going old school

what's the best piece of advice

you've ever received to you Donnie

probably

not a fear failure

but to fear

succeeding in something that has no matter

or no meaning

that's really good

my dad was really good at

doing things like that

and then he'd always say

just keep it simple

stupid so

he had those just little sayings

he never has really truly

call me stupid but just like

super simple keep it subtle

and that's kind of how most of our

builds are and what I kind of

try and do with everything

kind of keep them very subtle

not quite OE but yet

you know how this should have came from

the factory if they were to build a show car

Isaac best piece of advice

again it's

tied to failure so learn to

fail quickly take it behind

the woodshed and shoot it in the head

as fast as possible right so

again don't be afraid of it

just don't get stuck in it

fast moving don't get stuck

standing still

where we going next

alright next up

fan favorite

your most memorable

law enforcement interaction

story

so

in my high school car

cruising there's this road out in

Tula where we grew up Isaac

very familiar with the road

but it's called Drew Bay Road

long stretch goes from all the way

from one end of town to the next

and right about

in the middle there's train tracks

and I hit those train tracks doing

about 120

we weren't jumping the car but you just

kind of hit them and fly over that well

on the other side it's cop

bitch I just

I knew I was getting nailed so I pulled over

jumped out popped the hood

grabbed the screwdriver out of the glove box

and I was under there messing with the carburetor

the cop shows up and I'm

stuck on it and I'm working on it

so I got out of that

I've used my foot slipped off the clutch before

but never the time I was out there

adjusting and yeah

just kept doing everything

and yeah the cop was

actually pretty cool just like alright well

let's get it home I'll follow you home

and no problem officer

did you test your luck again to see if it got stuck

no I was

shitting myself

there's a couple of them

I mean do you want another story

absolutely so my grandma

had ordered a

70 Grand Trino

351 Cleveland

and she had passed

and my

uncle's kid ended up with

the car hadn't touched it in 10 years

so it sat there so my dad called

and was like we want to come get that car and get her done

and so we went and got it

and I was probably

I don't even know if I had my driver's license

15, 16 years old maybe

and called my buddy

I just barely got this thing fired up

so I called Charlie

and hey Charlie I got the car running so

we pushed it to the end of my

driveway so my dad didn't hear it fire up

fired it up, took it up

out by that Drew Bay Road

we're out there just doing burnouts

spinning donuts doing all kinds of shit

Charlie's jumping out of the passenger seat

I'm spinning donuts around him doors wide open

he's doing all kinds of stupid shit

he's lifting up the rear bumper I'm smoking tires

doing all this shit for

10, 15 minutes

go to head back

there's about 10 cops just blocking the road

watching y'all the whole time

he sat there and watched us

sat there and filmed us with her dash cams

and was like

you ain't gonna believe this

that throttle

here's where my nice uncle

helped me out

so the car wasn't registered

no insurance

got an acceleration exhibition ticket

endangerment of a passenger

those cops had to be laughing too

oh they were

the one chick

yeah she wasn't she was a bitch

but yeah she

they'd be like that sometimes

brought the tow truck and that was

I had to have been 16 so I had the old Nokia phone

so I'm calling my dad

you better get up here with the trailer

he's like what are you talking about

the car's getting impounded right now so he comes flying up the road

they told him no

sorry we'll take you to jail and get out of our way

and so they loaded it up

so I had to get the car out

impound had to pay all that

pay all my fines and I think I had

130 hours community service

my uncle

I had to go before my own uncle

and all it was is in my chambers

shit so I went in there

had me your driver's license

took my driver's license for three months

put it in his top drawer

and had to go to community service

so

you get to pick up trash on the same road that you were

you know I actually

it was actually it wasn't so bad so

I painted a couple curbs and then

the lady that was

over community service

it's like how about you come into this arts festival

thing with me and she's like I got tight balloons

and do stuff

arts festivals and I was like alright

so I drove around on a golf cart

and just handed her balloons while she blew them up

and tied them up

and then she threw the balloons

it wasn't so bad so I got off really easy

I think she rode off like

learned zero lessons

that's absolutely

all green light

it's still hot

so that happens

wonder what happens if I do it again

again what happens if I do it again

oh again

most memorable law enforcement

interaction story

that you can share

well I'm actually pretty simple because of

the essence of my work

I kept it pretty clean

growing up in Utah

you want to do the things that you can't do

so drinking

right

and

what was it 3%

for the longest time back in the days

it was only 3.2%

in all of Utah

so all the beer

so

I knew a guy

so when I started working out towards

the disposal site

right

you're good

so I knew a guy

when I was working out in the desert

they owned a truck stop

so out towards Bonneville

and so we made it a deal

and he would just

I would show up

and he would just load me full of beer

so I probably

full proof beer

yeah the real deal

I had to cross the state line

so I'm in the window over at this point

so as soon as I crossed that and he would just load me up

and I probably had

12-15 cases

so me and my buddy we're just like

tossing them out the window

it's an hour and a half from

went over to Utah

so we're just getting into it

and we just happen to be

of course still no bad ideas

I might be 19 at the time

just driving around

because why not

and I got pulled over

and the question of course is

how much have you had to drink

well let me see

because the car was just

the acid dragon

dude there's still plenty back there

and I've been tossing cans out

for the last two hours

so let me see what's in the trunk

so here I go

so case

case

and then I'm in front of our church

so again the way I was raised

faith family fun

that's how it went in that order

so here I go I'm right in front of

I got pulled over right in front of the church

and mom's embedded in that

here we go

I'm dead

just get me out of here

whatever you gotta do

I'll own it

don't send me home

so he must have seen that fear

and that's the worst thing that I've ever done

was he actually let me go

because I think he's seen the fear in my eyes

and he's like and plus he took my beer

so that was

he took the beer those damn cops

those bastards so he was happy

Christmas party for the police party

so other than that

pretty clean because again

knowing what I know now I'm fortunate

because I have to have all sorts of

clearances in my life now

so I have to keep it

oh yeah keep it simple

I did not

there were repercussions

there's the

there's a type of people that don't need to learn

no lessons and there's a type of people that ain't

never learned no lessons

alright next up

we have

we'll go back to

OG we're gonna go

then we're gonna end on the new one

we'll go um

favorite car movie

gotta be cars

cars had a lot of kids

yeah it's a desert

environment too

and then honestly

Doc Hudson reminds me of my old man

always full of advice

and that's a good one

turn left to go right

that's it

favorite car movie

okay

I'm gonna say something stupid

but it's relative

so gone in 60 seconds

part of the movie where the

dog eats the key

it's in the shit

that's how I relate to the car business

inside the shit is the key

wow

that's my lesson

really good

probably one of the best

best takes

on that movie ever

that was a massive one

big

huge pile of shit too

big pile of shit

but I get it now

really really good

alright

we're gonna try cars

we're gonna try guessing cars

you graduated

high school in what year

03

so you got your license in 01

2001

okay 2001

was your first vehicle a gift

or did you purchase it yourself

I had two cars

high roller

we had double that

so two vehicles

so one was gifted

and I purchased one

but the one you purchased was not

transportation it was a project

I was a bougie little

kid so I had

two

pretty sweet cars in high school

I didn't know it was rolling

like that in Utah

first car

we gotta pick one

I'm getting information

we're letting it marinate

what year did you get your driver's license

I'm 46

you're younger than me then

yeah

combo

or maybe same age

I'm 47

you turned 48

no I just turned 47

I'm not even really 47

I'm 46

and 12 13

it's getting close

1312 is what I meant to say

your first vehicle

gift or purchase

purchase but it was more

I was overpaid for

so it was really a gift

in hindsight

it was inflated my payments

okay

26,000

you had two

what was the gift

I'm gonna go cheap grand Cherokee

5.9

and

5.9 in 2000

and

5.7

no it was 5.9

that was the limited the fancy one

the Daytona hood scoops

and a WS6

Firebird

WS6 Firebird is a good pull

that is close

I'm going SS Camaro

same

SS Camaro

it's gonna be the same blue that you had

same blue SS Camaro

but I'm

he had a foreign car

and I'm going it's gonna be Lexus

or Acura of some sort

of that nature

cause he hasn't completely

transformed

from

the frosted tips puka beads

in the fucking

the seat laid back

K-Swiss

I can see you rockin'

they had the chrome heels

on the back

I wanna say Acura

legend but it's too

I think it's

it's a little

damn

I wanna say Acura but I think it's a Lexus

Lexus the IS300

the first sports car lookin' one

oh yeah that's a good pull

I

I know this is a vague answer I gave very specific

on the Camaro SS blue

I can give vague on the second car

it's Acura or Lexus

but I think it's a coupe

that's my guess on here

you're going WS6

and

just WS6

and Cherokee

those were spicy too

those were fun

here

is, he said

paid for paying it was a gift

96

was it something that you wanted

or something that you

fell into

I wanted to

it's a

Mustang Cobra

quite possibly

chrome illusion paint

but we're just gonna go with Mustang Cobra

I'm gonna go

Pontiac Grand Prix

the wide track

has it cool

the two door or four door

I did have one of those

I just saw

yesterday somebody put one on

Instagram

that they did a twin turbo LS

in and just nasty

I think

just so we can let me find it real quick

Elia will edit out

this slight delay

but

we talked about the

where is it at

hold on

you're talking about the Pontiac

just search car

no hold on

so in 03

I had a 97 GTP

this is after when I was working for Kindig

my daily driver was probably closer to 05

but I had an underdrive

pulley on it

I think it was like 8 pounds of boost

damn it's not on here

but every day I left in front of Kindig

smokey ass burning

every day

front wheels

every day

I thought it was on here

Levi sent a picture

he had a green hammer fab

he had a Pontiac

mine was the two door

what's that

this is on facebook

you don't have that

I don't have the facebook

what's the answer

what's your two cars

the one I was gifted

was a 1963 Pontiac

Grand Prix

I would never guess that

that was my dad's car

first I started driving

that car

it was a

my dad painted it like a root beer brown

had 14 inch wires on it

super gangsters

pretty cool car

had a 400

with 455 heads on it

car would lay rubber for miles

and then the other car was a

81 Malibu

a boo

yeah we were

81 Malibu

yeah that was

slant back

slant back glass

great street race car

love the wagons

one that would twist up

my buddy Charlie

was jumping out of

my grandma's car

he had an 81 wagon

Malibu classic

put a 400 small block

in that thing

I was dumb ass

had a big block in mine 396

I got to keep that weight down the front

400 small block

get the cubic inch and the small block

and just run

take all the money

we had a painter who was big into the

grudge match street racing stuff

and did a big block

pretty nasty

but then put like 502 valve covers on it

hose the thing in WD-40

when drive around

dirty nasty

you got a 502 in there

just a crate motor

put it on the bumper

in my high school

my Pontiac was on my instagram

still have the car to the same paint job

everything

Isaac you go

what was your car

79 Chevy pickup

the greatest your ever

squaw

what color

red

retail red

that burn orange

that was my high school car

are you serious

it ain't easy

you still have it

got the tweed interior and everything

you saw the cane

that's so cool

so yeah

my dad did a lot of custom

stuff

that's awesome

first long block

on that one

yeah

that's a big flat car

my dad had a bunch of different cars

so I think we had

15 cars

at the house when I was growing up

we had two Chrysler Imperials

81,82

Chrysler Imperials

Frank Sinatra editions

one was black

had Kelsey Hayes wires on it

and then the other one had

set of 20s on it

he was 50

when you were born

he was 60

when you were talking about doing all this

he's a badass

and then he had a couple

packards

just a variety of stuff

and then the car he was most known for

he had a

51 Henry J with 409 and a 4 speed

wow

Henry J

alright last but not least

this is a new one

we've just started rolling this one out

at the end of last year

if you were to pay

your hard earned money

to anybody

to build you

your dream car

what would it be

and who would it be

and that goes for both of you

send it one person

or can I build a dream team

unlimited money

you can navigate that however you want

you can do your own

do your own thing

I'd probably have to have Dave Lane

Allen Johnson and Henry

doing a 32 Ford

as if it was a

32 Lincoln

a 5 window coupe

I guess as effort

but I need to have

probably Eric on the line

Eric Black doing

some renderings and stuff with getting some dimensions

but we would stretch the body a little bit

yeah

and it'd have to be black so

yeah

that's sweet Bill

those guys are not working together

that car

that car would be so cool

however it would never be built

so

that would be awesome

he's already put his money where his mouth is

I know it 100% he has

you took my answer

you're doing it

minus the car

you just haven't gotten that car

but I get all of them at some point as well

so it's really not a big thing

I get the adventure of it

and then again I'm going to crack it

in a different way

I like the process

the people in the process and the product

so that's really what

lights my fire

that's awesome

there's nothing else that would

I mean we talked about it all the time

this industry

the conversations

the creativity

the friendships, the fun, the places

the things

the doors that are opened

and the experiences you get to experience

I don't know

any other thing that you could possibly do

that would allow

you to live a life such as this

yeah

the good and the bad

they work their asses off and we could build their dream

so

quite a dream for us

100%

I always think that's interesting because

with my foot in both worlds

it's always fascinating because

I feel like

a portion of my life I've done what I had to do

and make it be what it needed

what it required

you just had to get it done

and this side

there's so much more

flexibility in it

and then

I can't say that I've

pre-streamed mine, I can't say that I've met

maybe one

I've met one person in my life that actually

pursued what they wanted to do in their life

so that's how rare it was for me

and then now I'm in this spectrum

and it's like oh shit, there's a bunch of people

they're doing what they want to do

so that you know that's trying to

navigate those two things

of my personality as well

so it's interesting

again a little perspective

and then sometimes I have to bring in the reality

because I'm like hey

you guys

we have to do this

this is the reality of if we want to keep generating

and keep the lights on and all that

not fun business stuff

you don't get to play for a living

that's why it's worked out

absolutely

absolutely loved

and enjoyed this podcast so much

I really love to talk to you guys

getting to know you, understanding the stuff there so

yeah

it was a great, it was a feel good time and it was fun

and so much stuff makes sense

again like

I didn't even know

the situation

you know the email stuff like that

and it's like

you see how this shit goes

this is gonna be

and

100% understand

why you're building what you're building

and why this is fucking working

hats off to you guys

and fucking

building killer ass cars

killer ass cars

cool style

hell of restraint

I think on everything that you build

which is the key

it's extremely hard to do

but it makes

the thing

it's so

you just boil it down to the basics

and then

it makes every decision so much easier

even though the simple part

we're still going overboard

I swear

on everything it takes so much more to make it

settle sometimes

I hate to go throw backs

or talk about things that happened earlier in the episode

but it's so funny

again back to the mental thing

the thing that

almost kept you from

even doing this

there was strength

making sure you

do the right thing

that thing almost kept this from happening

is the thing that has made

your cars look the way they are

it's so wild

it's so fucking awesome

you know the thing that

it's the team

I think I started that with

you know

the gift of

my success in life

it was never me

it was my ability to find the right people

the right talent

the right diamonds in sense

and empower them to do what

they know is best

within some restraints

but

none of this would have happened without Donny

and the team

we would not be here today

the clients

everybody that's trusted us

the smartest guy is never the smartest guy

the smartest guy is the one that can convince

all the better guys to do the things

that's the smartest guy

not the smartest guy

we couldn't do without

the guys

we got pretty talented dudes

and they're

you guys are destined for greatness

you already have hit it

absolutely bangers of cars

bangers of guys

great gift

amazing fucking whiskey

there's a box

there's something else

it's the keys to the

66 Chevelle

you guys shouldn't have

from our guys

I'll let you guys open that

pretty cool

oh

wow

custom made flasks

look at that

holy shit

the guys did this

so they ticked them up

that's badass

I can just get it too

look at that

thank you team

thank you guys that is absolutely awesome

holy shit guys

that is

really awesome

so they had whispered about this

to see it

what are we doing

why are we building cars

I don't know

so who

you gotta call the guys out

who are the guys at the shop

Dave

we got a fabricator named Dave

fabricator Dave

all of them

Dave Clemens

he came up with the idea

to have laser all those stuff in it

so we got Dave and Dave

and then

all the guys

ran on it

so cool

the amount of time

we talk about all these

deadlines and trying to make it to an event

we're listening

all of us are listening to you guys

on those drives

you're who help us get to these events

so that's part of

you guys listen to this

so it's

with too

that's the most important part

do the guys in the shop

the ones that made these

do they listen to this podcast

this shit is awesome

really fucking cool

thank you

yeah they did a good job

do we get to keep chairs and see them show up to this

dude there's a fucking pile of them in there

so he doesn't get any

you could edit that part out

here's what we're gonna do

we're gonna put our parts on all of them

except one

and he's not gonna know which one

is what

you know what I'm saying

yeah I know it

that's your inscription

chances are

and it really was a challenge

cause what do we

bring you guys

cause I needed to be different

that's definitely a banger

yeah this is really really cool

this is gonna look awesome

I think I'm of

I'm starting it now

although after hearing his

first employees story

I don't know if I should be drinking more in public

we can't get drunk anymore

I should have even went a little further on that

because he actually came back

cleaned himself up

after I came back from Chevron

got back into business

he came back

he was clean total different man

so yeah he killed it

he worked for us for a while

and then decided to move on with his life

and him and his

new lady or

travel in the world and doing a bunch of stuff

well that worked out

I guess punching the shit out of his face

kind of turned him

took him around

knocked some sense into it

now I was off

did you flash the right and then come with left hook

or was it a little left jab

I was blindsided

that's just absolutely amazing guys

seriously this is

this is probably

the first

fabricated

gift we've had

you guys have brought all the first

first box

first Buurai

and

first fabricated gift

of any sort we've had some

machine stuff we've had some leather

tooled stuff we've had some built stuff but

welded fabricated

this is first so the guys at

the shop kick ass

really really fucking cool

shame Jer missed out on this one

I can't believe Jer doesn't get anything

he got a lot out of this though

I think with where he was at this weekend

yeah

so he went up to Lake Geneva

which is kind of like a little

town up by us on the lake

he was having some issues with his cat

at home that only likes his wife and not him

so they signed up

for a felines and friends program

this is a real thing

was it felines and friends or my feline friend

I think it was my feline friend

so it's just him and Kevin

the cat spend a

long weekend together

to reconnect

it's this

stupidest fucking thing ever

literally

they're paying money

to bond you

and a fucking cat

like it's

he's done some dumb shit

it's something with feline

friends and feelings or something like that

I don't know what it is

but it's like

these fucking cats have

like

minds

and be done with it

so Jer will be back next week

hopefully

without any scratches on his face

and he'll be sans

flasks

you're not a candidate for the program

no

I like animals

just not cats

as subordinates of ours

right

there ain't no animals running my life

you're never gonna have an animal

best piece of advice

for everybody that's listening

don't ever have an animal that can take you

ever

don't own anything that can take you

stupid

that's the fuckers that get eaten

by tigers, snakes and all this other dumb shit

you deserve to get eaten

and

they are pets

you own them

they're for your pleasure, they're great

they love you unconditionally

at no point in time

should you change your way of life

around these

pretty pretty princesses are different

she's

she gets a pass

there's cavios

she's in the league of her own

that other little fucker though

kick him right out of bed in a heartbeat

I've got two

french bulldogs

my wife has two french bulldogs

that allow me to live in the same

home as them

that's the truth of the story

guys

it's been an absolute fun time

you gonna be at Bear Jackson

we're gonna see you again

in a few weeks then

it's part of the route

we'll have something sitting in your booth

actually

perfect, that'll make it better

we'll have some

many of drinks together

that's really the whole point of going to Bear Jackson anyway

and the weather

we're gonna

did you have a former problem

or you just don't drink

I'm not giving you a shit

well so

I guess I'll tell the story

here it was two years ago

SEMA

roadster shop party

yeah, we've lost a lot of good men to that

following you guys around in the bathroom

trying to shake your hands

and get selfies with you guys

in the bathroom?

no, I'm kidding

Josh, I don't drink much

attendance line in the bathroom

no, Jere did, that was your brother

and it was for something else

it wasn't for shaking hands

shaking some

guys it's been absolute fucking phenomenal

thank you all the guys in the shop

if you're listening right now

kick ass fucking welds

we're gonna leak test these

tomorrow probably

I'm taking this with me on the plane

yeah, you need to

fun time

we'll see you again next week

Inside Streamline Custom Designs | Donnie Hall & Isaac Gonzales

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horsepower

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