The Truck Show Podcast Feb 28, 2026

S3, E79 - Joe Ghattas

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Concept

Truck Dynasty

Truck Dynasty is a TV show where people build and customize cool trucks and show how they make them.

Car

The Land Rover Discovery is a fancy SUV that can drive well on rough and difficult roads. People like it because it looks cool and can go places many cars can’t. But it can sometimes need expensive repairs.

Car

Jeep Gladiator

The Jeep Gladiator is a truck that can go off-road like a Jeep and also carry stuff in the back like a pickup truck.

Brand

Mopar

Mopar is the company that makes parts and accessories for Jeep and other similar cars to help them work better or look cooler.

Part

two-inch lift

A two-inch lift means the truck is raised higher off the ground by two inches so it can go over rough roads easier.

Part

Bilstein shocks

Bilstein shocks are special parts that help the truck ride smoothly over bumps.

Part

35s

35s means the tires are 35 inches tall, which helps the truck drive better on rough ground.

Part

37s

37s means the tires are 37 inches tall, which is very big and good for rough roads but might be hard to drive every day.

Concept

daily driver

A daily driver is a car or truck you use every day to get around, like going to work or running errands.

Term

regear

Regearing means changing some parts inside the truck's wheels so it drives well even with bigger tires.

Part

inflatable topper

An inflatable topper is like an air-filled cover you put on the back of a pickup truck to keep things dry and safe. It's light and easy to put on or take off.

Part

exhaust

The exhaust is the part of the car that lets out the gases from the engine and can change how the car sounds.

Car

Jeep Wrangler

The Jeep Wrangler 392 is a special Jeep that has a big powerful engine and is good for driving off-road.

Company

Borla

Borla makes special exhaust parts that can make a car sound better and sometimes perform better.

Term

sound deadening

Sound deadening means putting special materials in the car to make it quieter inside.

Term

butyl

Butyl is a sticky rubber material used in cars to keep water and noise out. It helps make sure things like the roof or windows don't leak or make too much noise.

Car

Renault Wind

The Renault Wind is a small car that can open up like a convertible so you can feel the wind. It’s designed to keep outside noises low so you can enjoy driving quietly. It’s a fun little car for nice weather.

Concept

suspension

Suspension is the part of a car that helps it ride smoothly over bumps and keeps the wheels on the ground.

Term

synthetic oil

Synthetic oil is a special kind of oil made in a lab that helps a car's engine run better and last longer than regular oil.

Company

Amsoil

Amsoil makes special oil and grease that helps keep a car's engine and parts working well and lasting longer.

Car

Mercedes-Benz Sclass

The Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a fancy, comfortable car with lots of high-tech parts. Sometimes, parts like the air suspension, which helps the car ride smoothly, can break and cost a lot to fix. People talk about it because it’s a great car but can be expensive to keep running.

Concept

project car

A project car is a car that needs fixing or changing. People buy it to work on it and make it better or different.

Term

horsepower

Horsepower tells you how strong a car's engine is and how fast it can go. More horsepower usually means the car can go faster or accelerate quicker.

Concept

Jay Leno

Jay Leno is a TV host who loves cars a lot and has many of them. People who like cars often know him because he talks about and shows cool cars.

Term

V8

A V8 engine has eight cylinders shaped like a V. This makes the engine very powerful and good for trucks and sports cars.

Car

Lotus Excel

The Lotus Excel is a sporty car that’s light and fun to drive. It’s not made to carry a lot of stuff or be super fast, but people like it because it handles really well on the road. It’s a special car for people who enjoy driving.

Car

Ford Bronco

The Ford Bronco is a tough SUV made for driving on rough roads and trails. The new models have strong engines that help it go fast and handle hard driving. People like it because it’s both modern and good for adventures.

Term

lifted

Lifted means a car or truck has been made taller so it can drive over bigger rocks or bumps without getting stuck.

Car

Maserati Ghibli

The Maserati Ghibli is a fancy and fast car made in Italy. It looks nice and drives well, combining comfort with speed.

Car

Wrangler Rubicon

The Jeep Wrangler is a tough SUV that can drive on rough roads and trails. You can take off the doors and roof to enjoy the outdoors. It’s easy to drive and good for adventures.

Term

all-wheel drive

All-wheel drive means the car can send power to all four wheels at the same time, which helps it drive better on slippery roads like snow or ice.

Term

four-wheel drive

Four-wheel drive means the car can send power to all four wheels, and sometimes you can lock the wheels so they all turn together, which helps when driving off-road.

Term

lockers

Lockers make sure both wheels on the same axle turn together, which helps the car not get stuck when driving on rough or slippery ground.

Term

EcoBoost

EcoBoost is a type of engine from Ford that uses a turbo to make the car go faster while using less gas.

Car

Ford F150

The Ford F-150 is a very popular big truck used for work and everyday driving. It’s known for being tough and useful for many jobs. People talk about it a lot because it’s one of the most common trucks you’ll see.

Car

Ford F-150 Lightning

The Ford F-150 Lightning is a big truck that runs on electricity instead of gas. It’s powerful and helps the environment by not making pollution. People are excited about it because it’s a new kind of truck.

Car

Dodge Power Wagon

The Dodge Power Wagon is a strong truck made to drive in very rough places like deserts and mountains. People who go on tough trips like it because it can handle hard driving without breaking. It’s built to be very tough.

LIVE

Glad you're back for another great episode of the truck show podcast

I've been keeping busy capturing a lot of great content and today's interview is awesome

entertaining and with Joe gattis from so flow customs out of South Florida I

Interviewed him at the end of last year and it's just been so busy. It's sort of been in the bank

So I'm glad to finally be able to get to this these guys are known for the distinctive line of apocalypse trucks and the discovery TV show truck dynasty

And we'll get to Joe in a minute, but I just want to give you some vehicle updates and share some we'll get to Joe in a minute

But I just wanted to give you an update on some of the vehicle stuff

I've been playing with lately and over the past couple of weeks. I've been busy with both the jeeps in my driveway

So I've got the gladiator that I have on loan from jeep and Mopar and that thing just continues to impress me

gladiators always looked a little bit

Undertired on 33s because they're kind of long and in a little bit low

But this one on a Mopar two-inch lift

35s and Bilstein's is just perfect now. I'll be honest. I love a gladiator on 37s

I think they look perfect on 37s

But for daily driver for some it might be a little bit much and once you get past 37s anything bigger

You know, it's a it's a bigger lift. It's axles

It's regear you can get away with 35s and not regearing and it totally drives fine

And I'm you know getting respectable fuel economy on it, but I feel like the two-inch lift 35

It's just the perfect daily driver package and of course the Bilstein's just rides great

So it's not too big for getting in and out of in fact my eight-year-old daughter loves climbing it

It's like a jungle gym. Oh dad. Don't don't help me get in the gladiator, right?

And it's not too unwieldy for a round town and it still gives you just enough extra capability and clearance to tackle

Most of the trails that you might want to take your daily driver on so it's fantastic. I'm really enjoying it

And the gladiators definitely at the top of my list for what I might hit next and I think it kind of checks all the boxes for me personally

So I've been doing some mods on it including the flated topper which we talked about and if you want to get some flated product

Head over to truckshowpodcast.com under the featured products tab. We've got discount code. I just love the topper

It gives the truck a distinct and unique look people are always asking me about it

And when they come up and they like pound on it and realize it's inflatable. They're like, well, tell me more

This is so cool

We just had a recent huge rainstorm here in SoCal and there wasn't a drop of water in the bed

So totally lived up to the promise of keeping your bed dry

I also love that there's tinted windows on it so I can put stuff in the back and people can't really see what's in there

so it just adds a little bit of a layer of security and

It's so far just been working out great and the thing I love about the flated product is if I need to full use of the bed

It's four straps to remove it weighs like 40 pounds

I deflate it and it folds up into the size of a large backpack, right?

No worries about where to store it like on the side of the house leaned up or in the garage space

So your wife can't park there. It just works great

I just did a story on it in OVR

It'll be in the next issue if you want to know more and then also gonna be putting a mopar exhaust on it to give

The exhaust note some more characters

I'll be sharing with you guys the results of that in an upcoming episode and we have some other mopar products and affiliate

Products that are coming my way

So we'll get those installed and talk about those down the line

But I also want to talk about my 392 Wrangler because I've had a couple of wins on that one

And so after getting the Borla exhaust installed

It motivated me to get the sound deadening done and I had done that on my 23

392 but as I said before the 24 plus Wranglers has additional sound deadening over what my 23 had and I recently found

My old notes from when I did the full sound skins on the doors floors and the hothead headliners on the roof

And where the old 392 was stock at least some of my numbers and I got out my decibel meter and engaged in a little science

So I was so interested in the results. I put everything in a color-coded spreadsheet

So I had stock and I think I did 60 65

70 75 were my speeds right so I did that so I eventually got from stock to

Sound deadening with the Borla and I'm super interested to share that with you now. I will say I didn't use as much sound

Deadening I didn't do the full floor under the front two rows of seats did that on the old Jeep this one already seemed pretty quiet

And so I'm not doing that for now. Plus. I didn't want to take everything out

but I did do the entire back area above the muffler and

I also did the hotheads headliner and I also did the doors and the doors make a pretty big difference, too

So one of the things that I haven't done yet is the rear section the roof above the cargo area

And the reason for that is I want to have my Starlink mini back there

And if I put in the butyl and aluminum strips it blocks the signal through the fiberglass top

So I've been looking at different ways to mount the Starlink mini so that it still has a clear view of the sky

And I actually figured out wait a second. There's an ability to build a ram mount

Mount it on the little bung where the soft top pin goes in and the back roll bar

Using a ball and arm and then the the ram mount for the Starlink mini

You can lift it above the rear sport bar and tuck it up

So it's like an inch from the top of the roof and that way it has full clear sky

So I was thinking well since now it's not going to be as low as I thought it was it's right up against the roof

I can still do the sound deadening on the right hand side and

Then just not do it where the Starlink mini is and maybe get a little bit quieter

So I'm going to experiment with that and see what the difference is and how that goes with the sound deadening and

The Starlink mini in the position that I want so that's kind of fun. I think you know trying to figure out these things

So here's the numbers because I figured you would probably be interested because I know a lot of people like does that stuff really work and

It does I mean it makes a pretty big difference

I mean a the 23 over the 25 is about a decibel in the

half to three decibel difference depending on the speeds and that's

Incredibly noticeable. So here's what I got

My notes said that on my 23 392 my old one stock

it was 75 decibels at 75 miles per hour with the stock exhaust closed and

76 decibels at 75 miles an hour with the stock exhaust open compare that to stock closed on the new one

73 compare that to 75 and then 75 and a half compare that to 76 and so

Around town with the exhaust closed are on the freeway. It's not bad at all. So I went put the borough in it and

I had registered

From 60 65 70 75

69 and a half 71 71.8 73

Stock open was 70 and a half 73.3 73.9 and a 75

0.7 at 75 so stock open was just a little like half a decibel quieter

I'm sure the margin for error on decibels on a you know non professional decibel meters probably, you know

One decibel anyway, maybe a little bit more

So with the Borla exhaust closed and no sound deadening I went from at

65 miles an hour 71 to 72.5 and at 75 73 to 76.2

So the Borla at lower speeds was close to stock

But it was quite a bit louder at highway speeds and then when you open it up. It was insane

So 65 on the Borla open no sound deadening was 76.2 and at 75 cruising was 81.6

It was like woohoo. So anyway, I did the the sound deadening on the doors and all four doors across the board drop

About a decibel or so and so I thought that was pretty good. All right, so let's look at the final numbers

This well final for today may add sound deadening in a few other

strategic places

But this is the new 392 Borla exhaust exhaust closed

with full sound deadening or sound deadening to today

So at 60 miles an hour it was 69.4 and I got it down to 69.9 at 65. It was 71

That's 71

71.8 at 70 to 73.1. So once you get up there, it gets a little bit louder

So that's a hundred and two percent change and then at 75

It's 73 decibels to 73.9. That's a hundred and one percent change

But when you consider where it was with the Borla across the board with sound deadening if you go Borla stock versus

Borla with sound deadening. I dropped it

2% in every category 90 so it's 98% of what the Borla sound was except for it's

97% when you're at 75 miles per hour

So anyway, I know it's a lot of numbers

It's probably doesn't make for great podcasting, but I love the data and I love sharing that with you

And it's fun to see it on my color-coded chart

So if you want to have something that sounds great, but you wanted a little bit more serene in the cabin

There's definitely some options out there and sound deadening on your truck order Jeep

It's a great way to to make it a little nicer and less fatiguing on those long trips and to enjoy your vehicle

And the other part is a lot of the outside noise is like wind noise is almost gone and some of the other stuff

so I just hear like clean exhaust and

Looking forward to driving to Easter Jeep Safari this year and enjoying my nice quiet Jeep on on a road trip

All right next up from the Jeep

I've got some suspension bits going on from Bilstein and apex

We'll talk about those down the line and I've got a super rad American Adventure Lab build that Britain

I have been working on and so hopefully that's coming in the next month or two and so much going on

So all right before we get into the show and welcome Joe

We need to of course thank the companies that make the truck show podcast possible

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The truck show we have the lift it we have the lord and everything in between

It's the truck show with your host Holman

I love doing the truck show

Talking to you guys weekly and talking trucks sitting in my backyard

Although I do miss having my friends

I need to get Mike Rice back in here and maybe get Jay back in here because it's always more fun with somebody else

But this episode with Joe Gaddis was great

It was one of those ones where I didn't know Joe and we felt like we were fast friends or old friends for a long time

We just hit it off and it was fun talking to him about the crazy stuff

They're doing there in south florida and and hopefully you'll find it as entertaining as I did

So please welcome to the show the exuberant Joe Gaddis and his story right out of south florida

All right on the truck show podcast today

Please welcome Joe Gaddis from so flow customs out of south florida a company known for crazy over the top four by four

and six by six builds for high-end customers then you guys are also the subject of a new discovery channel show truck dynasty so six episodes and

I definitely want to figure out how you got involved in that deal because that's produced by scott brothers entertainment and yes

Those scott brothers drew and jonathan for property brothers. So we got a lot to talk about welcome to the show

Thanks for having me men

Yeah, I uh before we get started

Everybody gets a jingle. So we got a player jingle. Hang on one sec

We talk to top dogs in the industry. How'd you blow up? How'd you come to be?

How you like that jingle for you joe? I love it. I love it. Can you tell me exactly what I gotta do now?

Now you gotta live up to it, right?

All right, all right, we'll get to the tv show second, but walk us through so flow. I know

People probably know

You by one of your you know your creations the apocalypse four by four and six by six builds

You've seen them out that are either at sima or on social

crazy

Trucks jeeps all sorts of stuff and uh, you guys have a few dealers down in florida

And then you have one manufacturing facility out there. So maybe walk us through how'd you get started?

What's what's the the the business model and how did you get hooked up with your in-laws who are a big part of your business as well?

The business part of my life

I've been building trucks with my dad since we were kids. Um always been obsessed with with vehicles and trucks

I got in the car dealership world

Early on I worked my way through car dealership every position there was to have there

The finance manager general manager service drive you name it and um, then I would open up my own little

Store to sell cars

In the back of the store was the first time I had like a space where I could work on cars and you know

It was like my space. I could do stuff to it. So I was you know my first car second car

My brother's you know all cars have been wranglers

So finally had a space start working on wranglers and I just built a floor project wrangler in the back all the time

And people would come in you know because we're running you know ads of auto trader

We're not to sell the stuff I was selling

I it was a small small dealership with like four or five exotic cars, right?

It's cars that I was driving around the country to find and you know in a distress situation you want to unload your Ferrari

Okay, great. I'd buy it

All those guys who realized that the first maintenance was due and they went whoa, right?

Because how many or or it was like probably a Mercedes s-class where the air suspension

Accumulator went out and you got to do it, right? It's all those kind of like edge cases where the car has value

If you can fix it at a good price to turn it because otherwise they're worthless

I feel like you were there

The air one sitting on airbags. You're like perfect. I know

I know exactly how the top won't come up and you give it up on her bring her in or the clutch

I saw the car. God you bring her in

Yeah, right on

So um

I'd add those and people come in and look at them and then let's see my g-project the back and say you know like every

Every guy on my street's got one of these

What what's that back there?

And uh, and it wasn't really you know for sale until it was for sale

I you know make you an offer and buys my project car

So I start another one with new fresh money to go buy cooler and better goodies on it this time

and then another one and another one another one to finally um

I stopped buying the the exotic cars completely

And it was weird because I didn't necessarily design all the jeeps, right?

It was people would come in and see one or two

It would already be sold as it was and they would say yeah, love that but do this this this this this

I'm like perfect because this was already so happy to build you the next one and build the next one the next one next one

Do like my car wash guy became a mechanic

You know who's like put down the rag help me put on bumpers

You help me do the lift kits and my sales guy mechanic anybody I hired at that point

Was basically I hired you if you were a mechanic and then like if you talked good you're a sales guy

I'm sure it's funny when you probably got into you thought okay. I'm gonna get these distressed supercars

I'm gonna flip them and that's gonna allow me to buy more inventory

And you probably we're just gonna try and ride that wave of kind of getting deeper into that getting more expensive nicer cars

To build yourself up and then all of a sudden you find yourself building custom jeeps and you probably

I'm sure it happened organically, but I'm sure there's a point where you're looking

Well, this isn't exactly what I thought I'd be doing but here we are

I was so happy about it. I was I mean I left the dealership world to open up my own thing

Not because I wanted to make a million dollars. It was because I didn't want to work on sundays anymore

Yeah, you know if I can figure I can do something i'm into plus the jeep customer

Totally different. I like them. I was like we could actually be friends. We could we could hang out outside of you

You know just doing a car deal together and and you knew you did events together

You know that was a small following right as building

One to two jeeps a week maybe at best right

But you know at the end of three four months

You've got a handful of guys that are driving your jeep and we get together go out to the everleague and see what we can

Break see what you know the next one ought to have in it and and that's how it grew and it just you know

Got a little bigger from there. I brought a buddy of mine down from high school to help me do it

He was always a truck guy

I mean he used to tinker on trucks on the driveway back in the day and then I met ashley my wife

And she was you know her life has been around the car business her whole life. So

Hanging out with her was like being at work

Like we would just be at my shop hanging out and now so all of a sudden

You didn't really mind working 60 70 hours a week because you're there with your chick, right? Yeah, right?

And then her family started trickling. I didn't know he was in a car dealership his whole life

This guy's his whole life

Um jerry i'm gonna tell you oddly enough is the only one of them. I like went out of my way like jerry

I know you have a full-time gig. I would love for you to quit that gig and come do car show with me

He was just like a very creative funny guy and I was like, well, if you can make those jokes

You could probably do social media or something

Um, but yeah, that's that's how it grew. That's how it grew it

father-in-law came down father-in-law, you know dealership general managers whole life and you know

Organically you're on a shop floor most of the the guys that I would say they're my jesse james guys

They're just figuring it out art artistry when it comes to welding

We're guys that

We're just you know basic mechanics when they first started here and we learned so much together, you know over

Um, you know a couple of thousand vehicles we put on the road

My product today doesn't look at anything like it did, you know five six years ago

Our testing cycles and things that we do, you know

To prove it out and you know harmonic vibrations and temperatures of bearings and whatnot

Has really just come a long ways our product today is very different than back in the day

But the crew that's with me are the original guys and you know

My brother also works on cars. My cousin also works on cars and that's how the team

Grew and we've got a group of really really talented guys like probably some of the most talented dudes

I've ever met in a shop as far as here's the problem solve it. Yes. I know it doesn't belong there

But you're gonna make it work anyways. Those are the guys I've gotten

That's awesome. What year did you guys start 2010 2011 ish? Yeah, 10 2011. Yeah

Do you know where some of your first builds are like are they still customers or have they come back to you and said

Hey, uh, I want you to redo this one. It's you know, it's 10 or 15 years old or whatever

I mean, do you have any connection to some of your original projects?

Yes, as a matter of fact the guy who bought like maybe my third wrangler, right?

He shipped it out to derango, colorado

And christmas last christmas around colorado and I called him up and he was like, joe

I have that truck. I it's right here. And I was like, I'm driving to you. I'm gonna come see you

You go mess around with this thing

Because you know up there in a rental car and I was like, could I borrow it for a day?

But yeah, we we've stayed in touch with all the um, all the you know, the first customers

Who's just me talking to them them talking to me you describe what you want

I filled it and then when you're done with it in a couple years

I take it traded in and do do something bigger and batter and crazier

You know, typically it was always an upgrade and horsepower. That's kind of how the apocalypse thing started

It was like the original group of customers

Trove for a couple of years. That's awesome. Okay. You sold a bunch like mine. I want mine to be more

my different and

Bigger and more more monsters than than what you gave me, right?

Right. Can you make it a six wheeler?

And I was when we got to the guy who requested the six wheeler

He was like one of the original customers and built him a few cars

I built him even like one of those old military h ones

Six wheeler thing. I was like, dude, I I want to do it for you

I do

But it makes no sense to me and add another set of wheels to the car that are just rolling along for the ride

It is now less capable than it once was right

So that's what started this long slow engineering project of how to make a true tandem drive

How to make this thing, you know, hold up at 95 miles an hour and not run too hot and not vibrating all that

And you know, we when we got it right, you know took years the first

Edition of it went down the road wasn't perfect, right? But when we got it, right

We patented and it's something we still use to this day

And that's important to to note is you guys aren't building tag axles. These aren't just following along

You guys are making true six by six is where you've got a differential and a prop shaft coming out of the first diff

And so it's legitimately a six by six and and that's you know, it's not just for looks it actually works

Yeah, yeah

And we we got an education on middle rg and he treating and all the rest of that to make those chapters, right?

But yes, they are they are true when you hit the gas all four tires in the back go at the same time

And then whatever clutch back you want me to put in there, you know

If you want to put lockers or run the truth back in the middle locker in the back

But yeah, all four are engaged all the time

That's awesome. So

What was the kind of progression of the company? So

You started out in this little shop. You've got kind of these jeep projects now

You're starting to build a customer base now. You've got customers coming back for their second round saying, okay, what's next?

Where did you really feel like you guys had made it or turned the corner?

and when did it become like

known as

The the like the six by six guys out of florida, right like these big monster

Apocalypse trucks

Yeah, I built a handful these apocalypse and they're really like I built them for friends

You know your friend of mine slash customer and you wanted something ridiculous

I'd build you a six by six with your flavor to it. And then I got a call from

Somebody at Jay Leno's

Operation then said, hey, how would you guys like to come out to california and do the Jay Leno show?

I was like Jay Leno to me is you know, yeah, he's all things car. So yeah, of course

I would absolutely love to that and there's actually for a segment between him and bob saggett out in the desert

He had old willies and he wanted my next one to be like this ridiculous contrast, right?

You put bob saggett in mine and he's driving the old willies and remember that by the way

I remember that one. Yeah, he drove over everybody's equipment by the way

So when we're done recording the segment, I'm not in it at all. Just I'm there to provide the vehicle and that's it

Um, he goes, hey, what are you doing monday?

And I figure he's like about to give me an awesome restaurant recommendation

He's like you should stick around. I do this show at my garage. Let's do it

Jay Leno tells you stick around you stick around

I did and and we did that after that

It slowly just had this steady burn steady increase steady burn, you know, there's a lot of

Custom shops out there, right

We decided what was going to distinguish us. We're not the first person to make a six

Whether we're not the first person to put crazy fenders 40 inch tires all the rest of it

What we're going to distinguish us is that we marry the car we marry the car marry the car meaning

Whatever happens, you're with us. You just call me and we you know, we go we go back and forth

Like like it should be, you know, because at the end of the day, I don't look at this like a

Transactional automobile purchase look more of it. It's like, you know, you bought a cool toy from us and I can build five more trucks

I probably can't find you again. So let's let's keep you happy and you'll we'll keep doing toys together

No, I think that's a great way to look at it. I think there's so many people

I feel like the the gentleman's agreement or the handshake isn't the same as it used to be

And people don't honor that way and everything's like, oh, no, here's here's your warranty form

Oh, here's the fine print. No, we're not going to cover that but to your point

You're dealing with a client that you want to have a lifetime relationship with you

Rather make a little bit of money lots of times that make a lot of money up front and then lose them and never see them again

Right exactly and if the guy's like me and you we know this is not our last toy. Yeah

Yeah, we we we've got problems

For sure

Now I'm I'm curious

When it comes to the six by six, I know you do them ridiculously big bold in your face, right?

Like that's that's part of the this this show

You you want to roll into the show and you want everybody to look at you

But i'm kind of curious have you had like any like fleet or military or anybody that has some extra like need for capability

Say, hey, can you just make my regular truck a six by six or are you always sort of in that like custom truck space?

I've done a bunch for hunting guys

Okay, and we use the long bed to do a like a a deer blind that

Pops up. That's cool. Okay. That's deer deer blind. That's in there, right?

And and it's not as you know wild and and let me just say it's not as miami looking as the rest of the stuff, right?

Um, and you know, it's a tighter wheel. It's under the fender and it's a 37 instead of a 40 and all that

But it's a very capable capable vehicle gets these guys to remote spots

They want to get to and then boom the deer blind pops up and you're up there, you know

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, i'm done. I mean stuff for the for the police department. They're

They're never into the six-wheeler stuff. We've done, you know, like

Bullet proofing for like 60 vehicles things like

But not really uh, I mean we build them jeeps right regular regular jeeps

Do they go cruise in the beach with them and stuff like that never done a six wheeler like for military just yet?

Wait, i'm sorry. I have done

There was a guy who's like the leader of a country

I feel like a really good story is coming on here

And you know, he was like, I need it bulletproof. I need you to build me three of these bulletproof

They're for my you know personal escort slash militia and you got to hear his story

And he's like the leader of this country now because they just killed the last guy and so he's the guy now

And so he was very serious about how how this bulletproofing was done

We didn't do any of like the mesh style bulletproofing. We did

Half-inch steel. Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't like the Kevlar you're using

So much metal in this car this thing weighed so much the glass that we put in this thing was, you know, two and a half inches

Oh, like multiple multiple layers of lamination and the doors

Wait 400 pounds each

I had to change the axles when I was done, you know to all

Fab nines with you know, three quarter three no quarter inch and the springs had to be, you know

Springs that didn't belong to that vehicle at all. It was so incredibly heavy, but it was awesome

We took it out to the uh, Fort Lauderdale police department shooting range and I let him shoot at it because you know before I ship it to the guy

I really wanted to convey to him like hey, I I promise you

The conversation was like if it doesn't work, you won't be alive to write me the google review

So like let me just show you that it works and they unloaded on the car and she held up was pretty cool

Oh the man that that all right. That's a good one. That's a good story

I noticed that uh on some of your builds

you've done like, um

Got it into the pickup trucks

So like ram looked like you had maybe a trx or something like that that you had uh in one of the video promos for the show

Yeah, and also you're doing a lot of big engine swap type stuff too, right? Yeah

Why do I love the trx because she comes right out of the box of Dana 60 in the pack and it's

Hellcat under the hood, right? So just just what you got to do is inject awesome from here and go right and it's coming back

Yes

Yeah, no that that is uh, that's a huge thing when uh when I saw the uh the news released it was like

You know it's already for it. We got one of those rho's the one that they made in they're cool

All right, so it's cool

But I always tell people when they say well, how's it compared to the trx?

I would basically say rho's a regular raptor

And the trx is a raptor are both are great trucks in their own, right?

But they're they're not the same truck, right?

You know the v8 is a monster

I had a trx when I was at four-wheeler magazine for a year

It was my uh one hour four-wheeler of the year

And uh, I used that thing I put almost 30 000 miles on it

Uh, and I used it for I towed with it. I used as a daily driver

I I went out into the desert jumped it a gazillion times pre ran some of our events with it

And I still to this day think that was probably the best all-around truck I've ever had it it didn't you know other than going fast

It didn't really excel like it didn't have the most payload

It didn't have the most towing it didn't have

But it was docile as a kitten around town until you stomped on it and became alive and you could take it anywhere

And it was you know fully skid plated and I love that truck

It's it's to me like sort of one of the best trucks ever made especially in the off-road space. It really is

I couldn't agree with you more when we got behind the wheel that thing the first time I was like

There's something here. There's something like exhilarating about this truck. You start to harry joe

Not so much. I was like, yeah, the sound isn't quite the same. Is it I'm not connecting this thing

I mean, it's it's nice in and the turbos the way they hit it comes on like a freight train and it's it's so quiet

You kind of don't um know how fast you're going right where the trx you I could listen to it tell you how fast I'm going

In the orange you're kind of isolated. So you're like, oh, I'm doing 90 right and the tear act was like

You know

The orange like the stats then the hell can't just have the feeling all the time. Yeah all the time

Yeah, and you get that realm even idling at a stoplight or whatever and I remember

So I had I used to back into my driveway right and you know, I fired up cold start in the morning

Because I you know never wanted it to to get to be driving it cold because it's got a performance engine in it

And we had our garage doors replaced on our house and my neighbor this old guy down the street walks over

He goes new garage doors. I'm like, yes sir. He goes. Would you do denim with that exhaust?

I'm like, oh, you can hear that. Sorry

Yeah, so uh, apparently uh, we uh, we we hung out at the same time in the morning just not together

So what what are some of the the common engine builds you do I'm guessing hell cats in a jeep is probably a pretty common one

Yep

Do a ton of hell cats in jeeps 392 swap into a gladiator regular platform. Yeah, we perfected it

We perfect. I'm really happy with the kit that we've got

The wiring harness all plug-and-play the softwares oem you go through emissions with a really nice setup

I like that one. I'm working on right now

I've got a 5.0 sitting in the engine bay of a 2024 bronco. Oh, yeah

And does she start? Yes. I'm working on all the rest of it. Yeah

Well, there's some guys I think down in uh, I didn't

I can't remember where but they

Yeah, they should have a 73 in a wrapped man that thing was

That 73 engine is pretty pretty bad at it's pretty badass and considering it's overhead valve, right?

It's a little narrower at the shoulders in the five liter which has this big old dual overhead cam heads on it

And I'm like, could you imagine a 73 in a bronco?

I mean

I was a part of this panel with forward years and years ago

For about five years for bronco development and we got this close to getting the five liter in the in the bronco

and that I that would have been the one that I would have wanted and uh, I

The bronco is cool. I got a wrangler 392. So, you know, I'm okay, but uh

But yeah, you got that setup basically. Yeah

And uh, and I love I love ford. I love the bronco

But man, there's something about getting behind

You know a lifted jeep wrangler with 470 horsepower

And I had a friend of mine who picked me as a a maserati ghibli and he was like, oh look

I'm like wait till you go for riding my 392 where it feels like this, but you're three feet higher off the ground, you know

And your whole wheel drive you're not slipping at all. You're just down the road

That's the best part, you know, and it's funny because on the 392 because it obviously doesn't have a independent suspension

If you cut a corner under acceleration, it'll lift the inside front up off the ground, you know, you're like, no

I probably land this thing

You know what I love that they did on that car is they put the cv

In that front axon. I know some people just live and die by the the u joint

But like that cv makes all difference because you can be in four wheel drive and be driving, you know at speed and do anything

Well, I remember when I went to see the jails before they came out

And there's an engineering a bunch of mules and like kind of the the chassis and I noticed that it had the cv said

Oh, we're doing this in all the full-time cases

So they designed that cv axle to be about 90 percent as strong as a u joint

But it has, you know, the ability of not to have crow hop and things like that

So it makes it a better driver and you know, if you're on a mountain road and you're in the full-time

You know four-wheel drive setting in that or on a rubicon or a four by e

It just drives really nice like an all-wheel drive car

Like it's great in the snow and and twisty roads and things like that

And I love having that capability because I still have regular four-wheel drive and lockers if I need it

But just driving on the road on ice or snow. It's so nice to have all-wheel drive. Yeah

So what's uh, I like your garage by the way

I I've got a I've got a 1941

Flat fender that I'm working on right now that has a buick odd fire v6 in it. Oh cool

Yeah, I mean, it's it's silly. It's it and that thing it sounds like a ups truck when when it's running and so I'm working on that

But and I've got a a stillborn f 167 to 72 with the eco boost in it that I got to finish one of these days too

But you know projects go

Did you say stillborn at the beginning? Yeah, yeah

Basically, uh, it's basically been sitting for about five years

Maybe maybe even be six or seven now and we got to a point and then it just everything ceased to move forward

And I gotta figure that out, but

I'm sure you probably have a few in the back lot that you walk. I know I gotta get back to you

Walk past it a little bit of shame really good

You have to cover your face when you walk by

No, nobody bought you yet. You're fine. You'll be all right. So those are those are the sad soldiers

Let's not talk about them. Do you have any of your kids?

Probably your vehicle kids not your real kids

But do you have any of them that you're super proud of that are your favorite build?

We went, you know what we nailed that and or

I wish I would get that one back because that one was so good that that should be here

Yes, yes, I mean that that that position changes for me every, you know

Eight nine months, but right now I'm absolutely in love with this

That what you called it the speedster, but the speedster cheetah, right?

So it's a hellcat packed into, you know, a wrangler chassis, right?

But extended, you know, push the front axle out six inches and bring the back one out eight inches

Rear tires are just under the rear bumper, right? You have to shape the rear bumpers of their fit

And 700 something horsepower took it down to the boys of american muscle tuning the smaller pulley bigger injector the killer chiller on there

Just more than this 5,000 pound package could ever need, right?

And then 488 gears just so it's obnoxious and 38 15 and a half inch wide. I love that car

I love that car and what we did is um because I wanted it to be

A low slung like low center gravity kind of thing

But still be capable right because you sit on 38 inch tires

So we took the spring hats raised them up and we put everything instead of

You know using shorter springs. We just used the full size, you know, four and a half inch

Live kit, but made the spring hats higher ready shock shocks higher at the motor sit a little bit higher

I think it's clever with the uh, I know you did as you move that front axle forward because a the wheelbase for stability

But you wanted to clear the oil pan so you had still an up travel with losy, uh, losy g, huh?

That's it

That oil filter

I think

So so going longer helped me both ways. Yeah, right on

Right. I love that car because I get in it and it's to me

I feel like I'm every bit of sports car, right? Like I've got more horsepower than I need

I can walk the most anything down the road, but then I can hop the curb and do some do some off-roading

Uh, you know, go hit a trail with it. It's it's it's light with a big footprint

So the chance of that little girl getting stuck is slim to none, you know

And I know you're in florida the land of the free people, but um, how friendly are you with your local police officer association?

The best the best

These guys get a new jeep built every year

And and you know, they it's reciprocating the forlorn police department has been nothing but good to us

Many years ago. I don't know if you can get time for a short story. Yeah, totally always. We love stories here

I come into the the the shop in the morning and through three cars are missing right off the front line

And so I start like, you know

Doors busted open. Okay, so got some jeeps stolen

Call for a little police department. The guy came in through uh event in the top. He cut himself on the way in

That's like freaking spy movie stuff. Yeah. Yeah, they're like steal some jeeps, right and

Cuts himself bleeds a little bit, right? And you know, first police officer was there

I was like, can you do something like what the DNA is like, dude? We don't do that unless somebody got murdered, right?

You got a shirt and you can be fine here. What about me while my insurance company was like, um, no, there's no gate

You're you're not covered

So the four water dope police department actually did a dna thing on him

Looked the guy up found him on social media on social media

He was posting pictures of the cars that he had just stolen and they got all my cars back

So, you know, it goes both ways less than the police department. They've definitely hooked us up pretty sweet

That's awesome. What uh, if I'm a new customer and I'm coming to you and I'm like

Joe I got this idea for a rig and um

Let's just say it's uh for the sake of the truck show podcast. It's uh a ram tear x

and

We start talking through what a what I want it to be and

What is the the the price range that it that they could be?

You know from from mild all the way up to the end and then like

How do you choose components and tires and what goes on it?

And is it different at a lower end package because that customer's going to use it differently versus a high-end guy that

Is all about the show like what's that process like that process starts out with your use case, right?

I'll start with the pricing the TRX out of the box is about 110 and 120 thousand dollars, right?

Um, I'll go to the top of the scale, right my juggernaut. It's a six wheel drive

monstrosity based off of a TRX, right?

And that thing is 240 thousand dollars and it's got everything that the kids would say you call there

So price, you know, I would say that's one

I do a TRX that I think is pretty badass right around the 149 150 mark

And then we go all the way to 250 the use case determines the parts

I'm going to put on this thing, right? You're a guy who's in Colorado and you're running, you know

10 miles will gravel road regularly or you go wheeling and you need lockers and you need all all the you know

The heavy-duty stuff. That's what we're going to put on the truck, right?

If you are like listen, man, I go to the beach

And I'd like to take the doors and the top off

Occasionally I might dip my toe in the sand or do a little trail in there

But ultimately like 20 miles a gallon is what's important to me the tire selection

What we what we spend on that suspension is all going to match to that

Um, there's there's a suspension I developed. Um, that's just a series of parts we've assembled

That drives really well, right? You can run 38 or 40 inch tires and do 95 miles an hour down the highway

That's a certain use case, right? I want the look with the 40 inch tires

And I want to be able to you know daily drive this thing

There's a suspension and a setup that we do for that. That's not, you know, the the use the guy says no

I'm going to use this thing. I'm I'm going to put my tent on top and go

We're never going to put 40s on that thing, right tires are going to stick out past offenders

We are going to be running, you know different shocks with reservoirs. We are going to be running a

Old different selection, but the world is your oyster when it comes to parts, right? I'm I'm not married to

Any there's certain parts that I'd say I'll steer you away from you know

You usually end up having to replace those I wouldn't do that

But um, and then there's certainly tires, you know, come up with a tire brand that's

They're like, yeah, but these are 200 bucks a time. Like there's a reason they're 200

Yeah, and when you're doing a high end build, let's put the right tires on this thing

I can get them for you, but you're not gonna love them. Don't be don't be cheap about the wrong stuff, right?

right, right

Like it's my my wife will buy herself a nice set of uh, you know, uh

Lubitons or something like that or or nice purses a gift to her stuff every year good for her

I love it. But then I'm like, hey, I need some dr. Pepper. She goes

It was like eight bucks in the store. Hey, you're being cheap about the wrong stuff. I need my dr. Pepper fix. All right

I got mr. Pepper instead

Exactly. I don't need mr. Pepper

Oh, man, so

Well, I know you guys have done some Broncos. I know you guys have done pickups and you guys have done Wranglers

What are your top donor vehicles? Like what people are coming to you?

And what are the most popular things to start with for one of your builds?

Wrangler gladiator Bronco

TRX and as a very recently f-150. Oh, interesting. That is the the meat potatoes right there for us

Wrangler gladiator Bronco TRX f-150. I had a very short and I would say very short sore with Rivian

Um, the rivian vehicle itself is very well engineered. Yeah, it really is

It really when I got underneath that vehicle and like there's components that match the lamborghini

I should be as far as I spent you go with that that torque actoring that they figured out like it's a pretty impressive car

I did a couple lifted ravians and we made our own spindles and do all that

Uh, but it fell flat on its face. So, you know, that didn't that didn't go anywhere

Um, the hummers the electric hummers. I I love that car. My wife drives that vehicle. That's sitting in my garage at home

I love it

Again, that's the electrics are different to lift because you've got this whole subframe that goes with the motor

Yep, you can get that down, you know, she's she's gonna drive like the way she was born

You know the airman expansion everything is gonna gonna work properly. You just got to get the geometry back right, you know

spindles control arms

But yeah, the wranglers gladiators Broncos

TRX is and as of recently I've started, you know doing a couple of those raptor rs regular

Yeah

Have you done like if somebody came with you they're like, hey, this is my you know

My grandpa's old k-tan or something like that like has there been something weird that somebody just brought and said

Hey, I know you don't do these normally, but do this one up for me. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, there's this uh, this wagon here

Um, I love wagon ears. Yeah, like the wood side. Yeah

and

360 and turbine wheels and oh, yeah, the biscuit leather seats sign me up

At first the guy it was all over the place. He was like, look

I've got this tesla at home and I want you to take all the tesla

Stuff and stick it in this car

And I know this customer

I was like, dude, we just did this to a gladiator for you and pretty soon. They're gonna just make this car electric

So why are we doing this? Right? Yeah, let's make this thing badass. So we ended up actually started with a wrangler chassis

I'm sorry gladiator chassis on this one because the wheel base the way it worked out

So the gladiator chassis I did a deglove

reglove

Um, so where all that came with the gladiator was your chassis and your firewall and dash

Yeah, the thing else was wagon ears. So when you got in the car, you're wagging your seats, wagging your doors, wagging your everything

But your dash is, you know, push button start and has all the water

Yeah, exactly. And then we threw a 392 in it put an 8 hp 75 in it, you know, with a data 60 rear axle

Um, and I thought it was an awesome truck, right?

It took me a lot longer to build. It's not something that gets done in a reasonable amount of time here

But when it was finished, you know, it's a showstopper and you fire this thing up. It's

It's amazingly fast. I don't know why that car is faster than the regular, you know

When I throw 392 in a gladiator that particular car was very very fast and maybe because we were only running like, you know

A 32 inch tire at the end of it. Yeah, I probably didn't hurt

That's awesome. So let's talk about the show. How did that happen?

How did you get hooked up with discovery and did the scott brothers find you or you've got this shop down in south florida turning out

Wild head turning stuff and I'm guessing a tv producer probably knocked on your door one day went. Hey, that's about right

That's doing covid. So jerry jr. My uh, my brother-in-law

Uh, likes to take a ridiculous amount of vacation time. So anytime he wants to go on vacation kind of give him like an impossible task

You know, like then you can take your three four weeks off consecutively if that's what we're trying to get done here

and the last time I was like, well

Get get get us on tv get a get a get a get a car show or something

I don't know, you know, let's features our car with with jesse james monster garage or something

I don't know figure how to get us on tv

And then in his inbox is like three emails from the scott brothers like, hey, would you guys be interested in this?

Man, I didn't give him a hard enough assignment

All right, he goes back. He's like, hey, they want to like do a couple of zoomers

first time I've introduced a you know zoom meetings and we

Recorded some version of a sizzler by just interviewing all of us through these zooms. He was during covid and

They put something together and came back said hey

Discovery channel wants to do a tv show. You're into it. We're like, yeah, why not?

I didn't know what I was signing up for yeah

How much of the shop's time effort and energy it would take over so

So pilot yeah, it was was like quite time consuming to do but then after that

The episodes were just wrapped around whatever we were doing at that time

And it weren't like especially made for tv was kind of like

This we'll let the shop drive the storyline which is really cool because I was at

Motor trend for 20 years and Discovery bought us and a lot of our shows

We interfaced with a lot of the tv shows and it was always interesting to see there was a kind of a difference between how motor trend approach

shows like roadkill and things like that where

Failure was always an option right like it was okay to not make the build whereas the Discovery shows

felt like they were more

Curated and they were more like no we can never fail you have to have a payoff at the end right and so it was always interesting

to see that dynamic between

The two different types of shows of this one showed like the everyday guy kind of failure is okay

And this one showed these builds have to happen and we got a tv deadline

So I think a lot of enthusiasts are always curious like what does that look like from how's the sausage made and

And to hear that they kind of followed you on whatever was in the shop is pretty cool

Well, we were we were nobodies right? We're not you know, we can't say hey

Are you guys gonna pay for this? You know $80,000 build I know like okay?

Well, I'm gonna show you some stuff that people have called me about and would like to buy

And if I can land a customer on it, I'll build it and we'll film how it happens and that's how it happened

You know it every truck that we built for that show was was sold to a real-life customer who you know

As a matter of fact had to wait to take delivery to finish recording a few bits

But then finally got to take their vehicle home. The only one that was not was the boat truck

That was just a bad idea from the beginning to the end because

It does some truck stuff and it does some books

Yeah, I saw that uh, you had built a uh, was it a Jeep or a Guy Fieri?

As well that that was a pretty pretty wild build

Yeah, yeah, and he like you see him when they do interviews with him back in his house

He's like he likes to say this is his favorite car, which you know, I love that. Um

You know those guys like Guy Fieri and and Shaq in particular

You weren't dealing with like their agent or their buddy or their guy. It was that they were called like hey

You think you can do this you think you can add that you're like, yeah, it's you venture

You know how it is I've dealt with celebrities on the magazine side where we've done some builds for them in collaboration

And it's a pr person calls you and then you're dealing with like their manager a person

You hardly ever get on the call with the actual client and you're like, well, I'm building this to represent you

Oh, yeah, my people handle it and you're that that was you know, the only time you ever talked to the dude and it just kind of

It kind of makes the build feel inauthentic because it's not really for them. It's just for the publicity, which is fine

That's business. I get it. But I always like to know that these projects are going to something

Bigger than just the the noise it makes, you know, I like to know that somebody has some personal connection to it

Or somebody who bought it is like is passionate about it. Right?

Yeah, I'm just surprising how connected they were to like Shaq would FaceTime me at one o'clock in the morning

Yes

I love one of my favorite quotes from Shaq ever was talking about his kids

And they were talking about being rich and he goes you ain't rich. I'm rich

Because he wants to teach his kids like how to how to make a way for yourself

You know, it's not just going to be handed to you and I from a parent standpoint. I think that's awesome

Yeah, very much so so you guys have six episodes that are out the the show launched on Discovery Channel on august 12th and

They're doing I believe they're still doing the the the show reruns right now through that right or the end of the show

It's yeah, they're running it on on HBO right now

Okay, so originally you only watch on Discovery Channel now you can get on HBO and yeah, yeah

They're basically a one hour each. There's the cool promo teaser

So if you go to youtube and you just type in show series, which is truck dynasty and teaser

It'll come up

You know, obviously the family is involved, right?

Because they kind of make characters out of each of you and you all kind of have your place on the show

How realistic is that to the interaction of everybody in the shop?

And do you have guys in the shop who kind of played up for the cameras or that's just how it is

If anything it was watered down when we watched it

Oh, thank god

They took out all the cursing and the screaming and the throwing of tools, you know, like it was it was

That stuff is is pretty realistic like what the none of us are actors

I think they caught onto that really well right at the beginning like we asked these guys to read a line

It's going to be horrible. So

They just spent so much time here that I think they were able to capture

something organically like the time frame

How much time they spend here versus, you know the time frame that's actually on tv is

You know this much time actually here with cameras to make this much tv

And they just you know, they were just there like they knew we nobody here

It's all mechanics and stuff right nobody's gonna put it on for them

But if you if you hear all day long, you're gonna catch some craziness

I spent a lot of time in in shops over the years and uh, I remember when the the shop tv shows first started getting

Big a buddy of mine owned a shop

I used to hang out behind his counter a bunch and we were talking we would always ideate like

Funny shop ideas for like a tv show and one is like be the grumpy counter guy

And don't sell anybody anything like have them come in and because at that time he's getting all these people walking through the front door

And they would complain about or they would ask questions and then complain that you wouldn't give them all the answers

I'm like, well, do you have money or not?

Like you're paying for the knowledge here

You're just gonna go down the dude down the street

He's gonna do it cheaper, you know, and I thought man, what a funny show that would be right

Anybody owns a shop knows that deal, right? Like we swipe your credit card person. I'll tell you

One teeth fit with one down here

Yeah, or the person's like, what do you mean your shop laborates at 150 now or it took you five minutes to do it?

I go, yeah, but you didn't pay me an hour. You paid me for my expertise so I could do it quickly

That's how I make my money, right?

You know, there's there's a lot of that kind of stuff

So on the builds, obviously you guys are doing these, you know, big six by six, isn't that?

But like there's some special tweaks on there. For example on

Guy Fieri's truck, you guys did like a mobile kitchen that pulled out and you did some

You know branding stuff with super heroes on shacks because you know, that's kind of his thing

What, you know, how do you get there? How do you get those ideas?

And then obviously it's one thing to be like, oh we're putting shocks wheels and tires on this

Another thing to build a mobile kitchen

How much input do they have and how did you know like what parts to get and and how to customize it for those guys?

My sales guys are very liberal with this stuff

Like they just they know that the shop is going to come through for them

And like, you know, it frustrates me at times that, you know, like you promised them what and then, you know, we've never done that before

But that's kind of how innovation happens here at our shop is that

Sales guy and the customer get chatting and they're like, yeah, that'll be cool. No, that'll be cool

And then all of a sudden it's written up on a repair order lines that are like

Make kitchen in back. See, Joe figured out

Okay, then you put seven labor hours on that. Perfect. Thanks. All right

You got a zero and a decimal point

So how's it affected you guys in the shop with the, you know, show running

Did that blow up your phones? Have you had people just wandering by to see if you're real like tourists and stuff or

Is business gotten better? Like what?

Has the is the wait time now two years instead of one year? What's that been like?

Oh, no, it hasn't gotten that gotten crazy. Certainly things have picked up a bit, right?

We're

We're um, we have two sides to the shop, right? We've got the skunk work spot, which is like four or five bays

We're just doing ridiculousness, right things that not supposed to happen

I'm gonna call it and then we've got the other 27 bays where we're doing, you know lift wheels tires

Stuff we've done a hundred times stuff. We're really really good at

And we don't want to grow any faster than what we can

Put out quality, right? So that's really our governor there is that yeah, we can you know build the entire truck and maybe

You know seven to ten days, but still takes I wonder how fast you build it seven to ten days of inspecting and quality control

for that thing leaves here, so that's

That's our

Our governor if you will yeah

But yeah, things are definitely picking up definitely the phones are ringing

I was driving around the other day and somebody was like you're joe from apocos. I was like my

Never hear when this happens. She's never gonna believe that somebody recognized me

I've had a couple times

One was uh, I used to tell my guys who worked for me at motor trend

At four wheeler magazine and on the off-road group

I used to say because I get young guys come in and they're like, oh, I'm a magazine guy

Blah blah blah truck in magazine back in the day

I worked at truck in all those places

They just tell the new guys like if they don't know who you are in the airport

You're not famous so don't be like big timing anybody because like like you'll be like

Oh, I'm so and so I have camera equipment and the dude, you know doing security. He doesn't he didn't care, right?

If he doesn't care nobody cares

But my two funny ones were

At the sema show I was walking through somebody and I was wearing my truck show podcast

shirt and somebody's like, oh dude, listen, I love the podcast and my former

Business partner lightning who co-hosted this with me. You know, we were joking. We're like you've never heard the show

And then he said something like one of our jingles from the show. We're like, oh, you know the show

So that was pretty cool. And then one time I'm in a shirt church

Or I'm passing around the collection basket and the guy hands me the collection basket goes. Do you have a podcast?

I was like, yeah, I guess it's really good

So that's like too weird. I mean I'm audio so nobody knows what I look like but it's it's it's funny when that happens

I like the airport litmus task. You're like, if you can stand an airport

Going to which I walk through an airport. No one knows who I am

Yeah, that's the deal

If nobody cares who are in an airport nobody cares who you are pretty much anywhere because the airport will always be some rando

That will find you when you're you know, half burger in your mouth, you know with like sauce on your beard or something like that, right?

I can tell you I'm not there yet

Yeah, well me either so I'm kind of curious like

You're building trucks

What is the international response been and what countries have you sold trucks to because I know for sure

That there's people overseas who see this american craziness and they're all over it because there's

Pockets in europe the middle east australia

Where people see this stuff and they're like, we can't get this stuff here

I need I need to be the only guy in my country with one of these. What's that been like?

Definitely that the middle east of dubai. Yeah, we've had a bunch of that

Jerry jerry jr. Is good at you know

Doing them because like the hours don't really match up with working hours here

So that phone call doesn't line up, but he'll do the whatsapp thing and whatnot

But certainly we've sold a bunch of them to the middle east

The juggernauts i've got a picture of two of our fully built juggernaut sitting in a like a c-130 cargo plane

Because the guy didn't want to wait till ocean freighted there and that was to me

That was probably one of the wildest sales we've ever had

That's crazy. I was looking on the the website so flow customs.com and

You guys have like what is it like a 50,000 square foot facility?

I mean that's that's huge and it was packed. It wasn't like

Yeah, hey, we've got four or five trucks in here that we're working on. No, dude

You guys they were like stacked like cordwood inside the inside the business. You guys are

50,000 square feet and you are doing that much business life must be pretty good

Well, you know, we're staying busy. We are staying busy. These guys they are hard working

People ask you what do you think the

Difference to your company and other folks doing opera. I'm like everybody in my company works a lot harder than the folks at your company

They're using every inch of that shop floor and we've gotten a point where you know

If we could put a tent outside and do some more we would

Well next time I get to florida it's been a couple years

But I would love to come by and and see you guys in person. I think it'd be pretty cool

Please do man

I'd love to show you around some of the ridiculous stuff we're building and never rent a car when you come to florida come down

drive one of mine

done

Last time I flew into Orlando, man. It was it was such a like ordeal even it's uh, probably like

I don't know. It's been a while since I've been to miami. Normally when if I go to miami

I'm you know out scouting for like cigar shops and stuff down there to get the good stuff

Nice. Nice. Yeah, we were we were down there. I had a years ago

for a magazine deal and so

Were we oh, we're we're doing some stuff with american force before american force

Got bought and they had that little facility and so we went fishing with those guys

And uh, we were out in the town. I remember we found this little cigar shop in in downtown miami

And we pulled in and it was just like out of a movie. There's some dude wearing like uh, panamid hat with like a uh,

A linen shirt like half unbuttoned with this gold chain. He's like, you know, what do you boys want?

We're like, yeah, this is the place. So we got we got some good stuff out the back there

I don't know if you're a cigar guy, but uh

But I think my experience

Yeah, we were we were we just pulled off the street. You know, we were looking for cigar shops that were open at 11 o'clock

I didn't even know what neighborhood we were in or anything. We're just a bunch of you know

Four dumbasses who pulled up in a rental car. We're like, hey, we want to smoke cigar. You know, this guy's going

I'm gonna charge you guys

But yeah, I'd love to get down there and see you guys in person. That would be uh, that'd be super rad

Yeah, man

Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. I know you're busy and I just want to let everybody know if uh, you're looking for

Some wild

outrageous

Pretty rad looking customs

Apocalypse six by six calm or so flow customs.com you can find them on social at so flow customs four by four or at

Apocalypse six by six and of course the tv show truck dynasty on discovery channel and apparently now streaming on uh,

HBO max if you if you got that as well, right?

Thank you so much for having me really man. I appreciate it. This was cool. Yeah, this is a lot of fun

I I could tell that if I went down there, we'd hang out and probably get into some trouble

Agreed looking forward to it

All right. Well, uh, don't be a stranger and uh, let's stay in touch because if you got anything else coming up

That's uh, cool. We want to talk about we'd love to have you back on the show

10 for it. We'll do awesome. Thanks, Joe. See you man

Man, here's a great interview and I love when we can feel the passion from someone we have on the show

It's so great. Just makes makes it so much better when you just you feel like you could go on for a couple more hours

But I know that you guys don't have time for two hour shows anymore

So uh, doing my best to not do those

I know you guys don't have time for two hour shows anymore

But in the last episode I promised to read the email our buddy ray had written and said

Hey, you didn't read the email with the update from my buddy who bought the truck that you gave him the advice on the show

And so I went oh, jeez. That's that's buried in the inbox. Let's go find it. So, uh, let's read an email

Literally

All right, so just to catch you up

ray had written us a while back and he had a

basically some questions for his friend Dave and

He said hey, uh, he's trying to figure out the best vehicle. He's looking at r.h.o

He was looking at a power wagon

8 to 10 trips a year going up to death valley going off road

Rarely toes, you know all that so we had talked about on the show and kind of pointed him in the right direction

So in july he had written that Dave is leaning toward the r.h.o

And ray said hey, you should buy a power wagon even even if you're leaning toward the r.h.o

So he said he would follow up and he did so

He didn't update in july

And he had ordered an r.h.o

from a dealership

And he says they weren't able to drive it

But they did drive the rebel with a standard output hurricane. They both really liked it in uh, november

Here's the update

Hello again. Sean has promised this is the follow-up now that Dave has had his 26 r.h.o

On a few trips to the desert as mentioned in the last email the order was placed on 7 24 and Dave took delivery on 10 7

75 days total not too bad considering model year switch over in a nutshell

He loves the r.h.o

And is amazed at how it swallows up rough and washboard roads compared to any other truck

He's ever owned or driven and how comfortable it is and easy to drive on the highway

It took a bit for Dave to adapt to the throttle control in the r.h.o

When off-roading versus an outgoing 2020 rebel eco diesel

But he's got it now and thoroughly enjoys every minute of driving it

And then he asked a couple questions about relocating the chimzel to a camper shell and and all that

But I think he kind of figured it out and it's been a while

So hopefully he has by now and he also had a question about the

Mopar rock sliders and them not being connected to the frame

I can't remember if those are connected to the pinch weld or what the mounting is on those

But I'd have to see which versions because there's like a traditional rock rail one

And then there's kind of like a more of a plate

So it would depend on which ones they have the the beefier Mopar rock rails

I've used before and they work great

Anyway said love the recent Amazon sponsored racing episode

Which which was a while ago

And uh, congratulations on the redemption run road trip with the new 392

In the 8th for Colorado highway patrol bagging the a-hole driver that was harassing you thanks and best regards, right?

Yeah, if you remember when I was driving the 392 back i-70 in Colorado

I had a guy that was just

Bearing his nose on my butt while I was going through the construction zone and he got yanked by

Colorado state troopers or highway patrol. So I greatly appreciated that. So anyway, Ray

Thank you so much for sending in the email and giving us the update

I know I owed that to I apologize for forgetting that one and missing it and not getting it on the show

So I feel like uh, we're square now and we've got I think one voicemail in the five star hotline

I'm gonna play it even though it's older because I want you guys to remember

We have the five star hotline 657 205 60105 and we like hearing voicemail. So here we go

Oh, come on and be part of the show call the five star hotline 657 205 60105

It's the five star hotline

Sean hey, it's rick and holster and uh, everybody listening. I hope you all had a

had a really nice christmas and a wonderful new year and um

Just want to let you know Sean just how great playing for you and your family

I'm so grateful that you survived what you did

We all are lucky to have you were were what my by god's grace alone man these things happen. So

what a miracle let's hope that uh, none of us have any of these

tragedies in 2026 and that 2026 is just a year of joy and a year of ordering more parts for our trucks and

Trying to explain it off to the wife. So

Love you dude your whole family

I've got a guitar for your daughter. So at some point I just need to either

Bring it down to see you guys or whatever. But um, I got a guitar signed by all of the

all of the employees

Something that we got for her through everything you guys went through

And just miss you dude. Thanks for

everything you do with the podcast and for everything else and

And uh filled kind of spoiled

These last few days is all the extra episodes. So keep it up. All right, dude. Talk to you later. Bye

Uh, man appreciate it rich, uh, love you guys too and rich is one of our earliest listeners

He also came down and helped me build the pod shed and he's got a great family

And that's awesome about the guitar. We'll have to figure something out for that

But dude, uh, sorry I got to this one late and I know we did a string of

Episodes and then we kind of slowed down a little bit. I'm I'm I swear I'm working my way back up

So, uh, we've got some more coming but hopefully, uh, this one was a good one for you guys

And please don't forget send me some voicemail 657 205 60105

I love hearing from you guys and honestly it keeps me going. It's voicemails like that that make me go

Okay, I'm gonna get up and do a podcast today and so thank you so much and I appreciate you rich

And I appreciate all of our podcast listeners. So on that note time to end the show

Well, this one anyway, and I already mentioned the five star hotline, but uh, I'm not beyond repeating myself 657 205 60105 be on the show

And send me your thoughts or what's going on or questions concerns anything

Should be an email truck show podcast at gmail.com

Of course, if you need some extra truck show podcast content

You can follow us on social at truck show podcast or at shonpy holman

And you should definitely consider joining the facebook group if you're on facebook

And you're looking for a good wholesome group full of truck fellowship

Then none other than the pod shed insiders you guys are popping off in there right now

It's uh stuff about snow and project vehicles all sorts of stuff

I think we'll check in in the next episode and do a recap on some of the conversations happening in there

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What looks like they're having fun

About this episode

Dive into a lively conversation with Joe Ghattas of So Flow Customs, known for their bold apocalypse trucks and the Discovery Channel's Truck Dynasty series. Alongside Joe's story, the host shares detailed insights on Jeep Gladiator and Wrangler 392 upgrades, including suspension tweaks, sound deadening experiments, and the innovative Flated inflatable truck topper. The episode blends technical data with personal anecdotes, exploring how these modifications enhance daily driving and trail performance. Plus, get a sneak peek at upcoming projects and gear recommendations that keep the adventure rolling.

35s 37s all wheel drive Amsoil Bilstein shocks Borla butyl daily driver EcoBoost exhaust

Dodge Power Wagon Ford Bronco Ford F-150 Ford F-150 Lightning Jeep Gladiator Jeep Wrangler Land Rover Discovery Lotus Excel Maserati Ghibli Mercedes-Benz S-Class Renault Wind

Original notes

Joe Ghattas from South Florida-based SoFlo Customs joins the podcast to talk about his entrepreneurial journey, building outrageous 4x4 and 6x6 rigs, and his shop's climb to notoriety on the Discovery TV show Truck Dynasty. The Truck Show Podcast is produced in partnership with AMSOIL, Kershaw Knives, and OVR Mag. Don't forget to check out truckshowpodcast.com for special offers from our friends and sponsors.

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