Thomas Dickerson | 2025 Oil & Whiskey On The Gas Award

You have had quite the past few months, my friend.

The SEMA sensation.

I told Jeremy and Phil specific, I was like,

hey, we got to go see this truck in person.

I'd seen some pictures now that it was done.

I'll be honest, I was bitching a little bit

because Josh made us walk all the way back.

They parked the ban on the builders thing.

They got to move that, dude.

They did move it.

They moved it far away.

Far away.

And Josh insisted.

He said it was going to be worth our while.

He did not disappoint.

You know, just trying to get started

where to go, how to learn those stuff.

It was very secretive and kept to yourself kind of thing.

And after seeing that last night, it's like,

this is the group of people I need to be hanging out with.

Like this is, this was about everyone in that room

was talking to each other, having a good time with each other.

It wasn't, you know, having egos and everything.

There wasn't there.

That truck right there, there's no,

if Sands or Butts about it, it's better than a lot of things

that are out there.

So you, there's two approaches with debut in that.

It's either you could walk in like Connor fucking McGregor

and be like, fuck you, you old fuckers.

There's a new sheriff in town, right?

What Josh, whatever.

Or there's the like, dude, you walk in

and you let the truck speak for itself.

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

This week we have Thomas Dickerson.

Thomas speed engineering design.

There's a lot in that name.

Technically it's Thomas design, performance engineering, right?

Where'd the speed come in?

Said it.

I added it.

You added it.

Yeah, I added it.

It wasn't, it wasn't in there.

You're a freestyle.

I was freestyle.

I sound a little bit better.

Thomas design.

On the Instagram, that would be

thomas.performance.engineering.

Correct?

Yep.

Look at that right there.

Pull it right up that everybody can see.

You have had quite the past few months, my friend.

The SEMA sensation, 2025 SEMA since.

First of all, thanks for coming up.

You came down from God's country, my neck of the woods.

He's coming up.

From Georgia.

Up.

Huh?

He said you came down.

Yeah, he came on up.

He came up.

It's a pleasure to have you.

You've burst onto the scene.

I wouldn't say burst on the scene.

You did.

However, you, this is all a compliment that I'm about to say.

Cherished.

You have, you have quite possibly a larger marketing PR propaganda arm for your company

than just about anybody else in this industry.

Large corporations.

Hell roaster shop doesn't have the marketing that you have.

The amount of people.

People campaigning for them.

Campaigning for you and this truck.

I mean, the last year before it was even finished, like you guys need to check this out.

I'm, I'm honestly, so many people have talked about more people have talked to us about this

truck being built than just about any other build out there.

And it to a point where it was kind of like, all right, you know, we're going to see it.

Right.

And at SEMA, you know, we're doing our judging site that I told Jeremy and Phil specifically

was like, Hey, we got to go see this truck in person.

I'd seen some pictures.

Now that it was done, everybody had been talking about it.

And then at SEMA, I'm still getting texts.

Hey, go check.

I promise we're going to go check it out.

Right.

We're going to check it out.

So we made a special trip that morning to go look it up.

I'll be honest.

I was, I might, I was bitching a little bit because Josh made us walk all the way back.

They parked the battle.

The builders thing.

They got to move that.

Dude, it's, they did move it.

They moved it far away.

And it's first thing in the morning.

You're hurting a little bit at that point from a late night of, you know,

behaving yourself and Josh insisted.

And he, he said it was going to be worth our while.

He did not disappoint.

You were not lying, dude.

It was definitely, I said, it should be as much people have talked about this.

And then you always get that too.

And people are talking about a vehicle beforehand.

And then when it's at SEMA, you can kind of tell sometimes by the amount of people that

it said something after they've seen it, right?

It's one thing to pump, to pump and hype something before the debut.

And then after it's debuted, if it's, you know, if it's Wednesday or Thursday,

and like 10 people coming by, oh my God, did you go see so-and-so's vehicle, right?

That thing's amazing.

And like four people, you're like, this thing's probably pretty cool.

If no one's talking about it and it's one of those ones that's on your list,

you're like, Hey, I want to go see this.

And you asked me, Hey, did you go see that?

Oh, no, I haven't seen that.

Oh, Hey, did you go see that?

Oh yeah, I think so.

I don't remember.

And you're like, Oh, if nobody remembers it, it might not be that good.

But everybody kept hyping is like, man, as many people are talking about this thing,

it's got to be good, right?

But you're also psyching yourself up.

You're like, man, we're, we're kind of on the hook now.

For as many people have said, have you go seen that?

I'm going to have to one point say, yes, we did.

And then if it's not good, what do you say?

Right?

So then you're kind of like, this thing better be good.

I would assume you were more worried about it not being good for what I was going to say.

Oh yeah, 100%.

I was way worried about that because I don't usually do that.

If it sucked, I'd usually hear about it.

I would have generally, if time would have allowed full transparency,

I would have gone and seen it by myself first and then acted like I hadn't seen it.

And then tell him we're going to need to go look at this because I was,

if that truck would have had some problems, I would have been shredded because of it.

Are you telling me you came over here with this?

We wasted our time to come over here and look at this.

You're stupid.

How have you made it in this industry this long with such a poor eye?

I cannot believe you told me.

Yeah, but all kidding aside, great, great fucking job.

Honestly.

Yeah, great job.

And I honestly, it speaks to your character that you got that many people out there

that were sort of going to bat for you.

Because if you were an asshole, nobody would have said it.

Obviously, I've met you a handful of times here and there.

We've talked at some shows and definitely a hell of a nice guy.

But that's important, man.

That goes a long way in this industry.

Your attitude and the way you carry yourself?

Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

Josh got by on skill because attitude and the way he carries himself.

This is the way this one's going to go today.

You came on one of those days.

Front row seat.

We've been awful.

We didn't do a podcast last week.

No, we didn't.

Yeah, so it's building up.

Yeah, a lot of tension building up.

Got to get it out.

Yeah, a really killer job.

You did a great job on Instagram, kind of, you know, following along the build and

in campaigning that truck.

And like Jeremy said, it's a testament more to you and your attitude that many people were

going out of their way and sticking their neck out on the line to commend you and the

truck and say, you got to check this thing out.

You got to check this thing out.

So it did what it needed to do.

And then some, and yeah, I mean, we literally were, we walked up.

Usually it was one of those like quick things like, oh, we saw it.

You know, see a few things.

But we spent some time there and just every little detail you uncovered, it was like,

man, he did that right too.

Damn, he did that.

Didn't miss there either.

What I thought was interesting is going up and seeing the truck.

You wouldn't have known if that, that could have been a classic car studio build.

It could have been a kindig build.

It just, you checked all the boxes, man.

I mean, it's got all the makings of a very high end professional build.

It's just got it going on.

Hats off to you.

Very nicely done, well executed front to back.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

I mean, coming off of the Shelby build, I mean, that was the first one I did.

Y'all might have saw that in 21.

And kind of my goal coming back from, from SEMA that year was I just wanted to do something

that was completely just different.

Like, you know, sometimes I think the young guns that show up, you know,

it might be like a one shot wonders.

Like, is he going to stay in this or is he, is he going to just vanish kind of thing?

And so I fortunately have two really good parents who, who are my, obviously my parents,

but mentors help me kind of grow.

And, you know, I really wanted to push myself out of the boundary and make it to where the

truck would kind of help, help solidify my, my place in the, in the career for this industry

and stuff.

So that was the whole goal kind of for this truck.

And obviously, I mean, it's phenomenal hearing y'all's compliments from it.

So I'm glad there weren't too many negative ones, but there's no negative.

Take me through.

It's interesting.

It just, as you're saying that popped in my head, I'd be interested with this on your

take and a couple of other guys that, you know, we'll talk to again and have their take.

So you, you come out, you're kind of your, your first

debut to the scene is, is via the young guns, right?

Battle builders, young guns, I think they do a great job of, of showcasing you guys

and giving you a platform that would be just about unobtainable any other way, unless that

was there.

And it's taken some years to get that to where it's at.

And the quality of the, of the young guns, younger guys, the young guns is that thing.

But younger people, man and woman building the qualities come up.

So it makes it a little easier, probably some, some stuff that needs to be done on

a competition against other stuff or whatever.

But regardless of that, after you do that the first time, right?

And people know you by name and you do it coming back again.

Like you said, you need to make sure that, you know, you're not a one hit wonder.

You've got to back it up, right?

You can do it.

But at what point are you no longer a young gun anymore?

Is it just an age thing?

Or is it now you're kind of like, what's that?

What's your headspace on it?

And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, but is there a time where you're like,

okay, I'm, I'm a pro.

I'm a pro.

So I'm not, and there's pro young guns, but that's like an age thing.

But it's also kind of a platform that you get.

I think, I think, I mean, just flat out with young guns on how their stuff works.

So now that I've won it, I'm not allowed to compete in again.

So, but I think for kind of my, I mean, just with my age being 26 years old right now,

I think I'd still consider myself a young gun, but I wouldn't put myself in that situation

just out of the respect for other young guys that want to compete in other awards,

whether that's at Good Guys or Triple Crown or stuff like that.

And so, like, I still want to consider myself a young gun just for the mentoring aspect.

I got a couple of students at Athens Tech where I went to school for and trying to encourage them,

but also other students who might be at other technical colleges and they hear a young gun,

they might be like, hey, look, Thomas is doing this truck, that kind of thing.

So I think just for that aspect, that would be my only thing I would like to hold on to

young gun at least until probably like, you know, 29.

I think that's like, that's it, you know, you're, you're moving on.

And I think at this point with the truck, you know, I have a solid build coming in next.

And so I think, I think realistically after this truck, I'm kind of moved out of the young gun

officially, if you want to call it so.

Yeah, it's just, it's just interesting to think about something we haven't talked about a lot.

I mean, you look at sports wise, you got, you know, you've got college football,

you know, you got a college career, you know, to make your name, then you come into the NFL

and you're a pro, but you get, you get one rookie year, right?

Yeah.

So you're a rookie, you're a rookie year.

Like after that, it's kind of like, it's real.

You know, you always said I was just as good as the big guys and now I'm in the NFL.

Well, yeah, now you are.

So you better be just as good.

It's one of those things of like, there's not a, there's not a like a ramp up.

It's a, you come in, you get a young guns, whether it's SEMA or, you know, good guys,

platform, it's like, all right, these are the younger guys, you know,

the quality needs to be what the quality is.

But at the same time, it's like, all right, we're segregating these guys to take a look at them,

look at them in the vein of this is their first build or their second build, they're younger

coming in.

Then it's like, all right, boom, you win that.

Now it's not, now it's after that, it's like, all right, now you're a pro.

Yeah.

Like, so compete.

It's, that's a different.

You've sort of been drafted.

You're in the big leagues.

Yeah.

So you're part of it.

This is your rookie year next year.

You're a pro.

I gotta hang with them now.

It's a, what was your, what was your headspace?

What was your thoughts?

You know, past the thrash of getting the thing done and making sure it was there.

But when on your way out there, you know, the, the, the flight or the drive or

you're going through the stuff, like what, what, what's your thoughts?

What are you thinking about?

Is it stuff you got to finish when you get there?

Is it like, I did the best I could or man, there's like 15 things.

I wish I would have done this.

Everybody's different.

For me, I mean, I was putting the truck together basically up to the last minute

of us putting it in the trailer.

I had the, yeah, I'm part of the club now, but yeah.

I put the core support on the cover, not the whole core support cover,

the coolant and all that stuff, topping that off, making sure everything's good

because we drove it around stuff and then like literally within an hour

it's going in the trailer, strapping it down and getting the cover on it

and we're hitting the road.

But I think for me going out there, it was, it was a little bit mixed

because I couldn't find a spot with a, with a booth.

And so that was my biggest issue was just not find a spot.

And so I applied for HRA and three months later I got accepted.

And so, and I think it was August or September early.

I basically found out that I'd gotten that spot.

And so I'd be outside with all those guys and these, you know,

HRA mainly picks pro builders.

This was the first year that they told me that they had a young gun,

quote unquote, in their corral outside for HRA.

And so I mainly wanted to do HRA just for the aspect of being part of it

because that's a big deal.

And then also I get my truck out there if the truck got picked for

young guns or top 40 because I had to pick 10 young guns to make up the top 40,

then the truck would be moved inside.

I'd be inside for the rest of the week competing.

So that was my whole, that was kind of a whole mindset going out there was that.

But I don't think I would have wished I got more drive time on the truck

before we left out there.

That was my main thing.

We'll touch on that ride height thing in the back later.

But people listen to this shit.

You gotta, you gotta forget.

There's a reason why.

He's got a grudge.

A little bigger than I am too.

You're in trouble.

But I think, I think mainly I wish I would have gotten a little bit more time

just driving the truck.

I mean, out at SEMA when we unloaded it for HRA to do the interview and the photo shoot,

I got a little bit of time driving it.

And I don't think I have any regrets really about it.

I mean, there's a few things obviously that need to get taken care of.

We had subs that go under the seats.

Those didn't get put in because it was like, that's not a critical thing right now.

They need to get on the show.

And that trash, those trash hours, you sort of got to make the decision of,

if you got to cut something off.

Hey guys, why aren't you putting the windshield in?

We got to get these subs in.

Well, kind of need a windshield.

The windshield's got to go.

We've been there before.

You're like, dude, what are you doing?

Like it can go without the, I don't know, like dynamite behind the seat.

Let's go, let's put the door on.

It needs to run inside.

Other than a few things like that, my main like critical things,

just going out the show was like, I wanted the paint and body stuff.

The body lines need to line up perfectly the way I had it in body work.

And that was like my main thing because I bodywork the hell out of the truck.

I want everything sharp.

I want everything crisp.

And that was mainly just to impress the people coming to look at it.

Cause I mean, I haven't seen our young gun take a truck to this level

as far as the body work.

And so that was like, I really want to make sure that stands out.

And so for me, that was the main thing.

And other, like I said, other than just driving it some more,

I think that would have been my main, main regret prior to SEMA.

But you know how it goes.

I mean, it, you know, I built that whole truck by myself.

And so it was just a thrash after, after I heard about HRA and getting accepted,

it was literally, I think mid September until we loaded it.

I was burning a hundred, 110 hour weeks, just straight Saturday, Sunday included.

And we were, we'll get into it later, but we're, we bought a shop

and I've been renovating that.

And so it's, I put that stuff on hold and it was like,

we got to get this truck done.

This is going to do more for me where I'm at in my career right now.

And we need to get that done and get it out the show and see what happens.

So it's a work life balance.

You don't have that.

Throw that in trash.

There we go.

Come on, I thought it was what it was all about.

You mentioned, you know, the bodywork and paint being on point after you bodyworked it,

that if you bodyworked it and painted it, like that's,

it just goes back together exactly the way it was in bodywork.

Oh, if it doesn't, you're doing something wrong.

Right.

He's not, he's not a professional yet.

When you get to the professional level, dude, they do.

It's like the panels, you'll see as you get to the panels,

they just fall right on like the fenders.

Never have to do any alignment.

You've never, we've never had a door grow by an inch after paint.

No.

Like never.

I've checked Chevelle fenders to make sure they weren't Camaro fenders.

When we reassembled it, you're like, that is, there's no way that stuff is not fit that

we fucking bodywork this car with.

And whatever happens, it is a absolute mystery and everybody will tell you that.

Everybody out there listening is going to get this exaggerated reference, but the more,

the more you finger fuck that thing and the more perfect and the more

sharper and that time that you gunsight that side, you know, right before you're about to

put sealer on and you're like, it doesn't get any better.

Like that line to that line to that line to that line, boom, that all this hard work is paying off.

The harder you go there, as soon as it's blown apart, coated, rubbed on, color sanded,

polished, buff, you go and start putting it back.

The harder you went from the first side, the worst it's going to fit on the backside.

It always happens that way.

The more work that you put in on making it.

And then the ones where you're like, you know, it's the fifth car for the customer,

you're building him three nice show cars.

And he's like, I just want to build this for my wife.

You know, we're not going to do much paint and body.

You're like, all right, we're going to spot in that door.

We're going to do this.

You know, it's a good little no time and effort put into it short of making it right.

And the door falls out of the booth into place, lined up like just like it's.

It's an anomaly, man.

But what you're saying, the more time you spend, you're chasing perfection at that point.

So you're more in tune with trying to make it flawless.

Yeah.

Zoom wins goes in.

Yeah.

It's just going to get more and more difficult to get it assembled and gapped and flush and like

the panel line and it's.

Yeah.

But you shouldn't have if you've, if you're matching up two lines and again,

I'm going to go on this because there's people out there that are maybe hanging the

door right now that are, that are fighting with it or have just done it or about to do it.

If you've got a fender or a door that has, you know, two peaks, right?

Two horizon lines that are super sharp.

You got this one.

Same distance apart on both panels, right?

And they're perfectly square and they're perfectly lined up.

And somehow when it goes after bodywork and in paint and polish,

he goes back together and it's grown a half inch in between the panels.

Like that can't happen.

Like, you know, they don't get taller.

Like, how did it get taller?

I mean, I don't care if you drill it, pin it, label the shim stacks, weld the shim stacks,

machine shim stacks.

These are only going this.

You put all that back together exactly like it was, pin everything exactly like it was.

Yeah.

And I thought that was kind of the trick.

And then you did all the things.

I pinned everything.

I measure and mill thickness.

You'd be like, oh, I'm going to add this for this build up.

I would drill it with eighth inch drill bits and metal.

And then once I got done with the body, I would redrill that same hole with a three

sixteenths bit that way it's bigger and you're done.

That's your final size.

Bleed apart, had everything on like weight in the doors, make up for the glass.

Oh, yeah.

All the street stuff, all that stuff.

Did it right.

And when we got to put together it, we got it pretty damn close right out.

But you still have to tweak it.

It's not going to be just put the pins and bolt it on and be done.

You still have to tweak once you get your fenders on, your cowl and move stuff around.

So, but that was, you know, I've never done that before the Shelby.

I think I pinned the door hinges, but the gaps on that car or not is tied as this one.

This one's like all three sixteenths.

So it was like you had to get it lined up as close as you could and buy work because

like if you don't, you're going to chip something.

So and but yeah, you know, coming with that is a lot more stress because it's like you're

trying to chase that perfection.

And at the end of the day, it's like you move one thing on one side and then the next

side's moves.

It's like you got to find a, the end of the day, you got to find like a happy medium

before you end up doing something regret.

So how'd that build come about?

So after I did the Shelby at SEMA, I got back.

We were, I was kind of hoping I would gain a client from that show.

We had a couple inquiries, but it wasn't anything firm.

And so I told my dad, I'm like, you know, I met with a lot of companies out there.

That was my main goal being at SEMA in 21 was like talk to every company I want to,

I want to work with hopefully in the future.

So I got back, talked to my dad.

I'm like, we have a 67 seats in our farm as our grandfathers.

And I'm like, why don't we build that and I'll leverage some of the stuff with the

companies and see if they'd want to partner with me and sponsor with me and we can build

that truck and take it to a different level.

And so that's kind of how it came about.

I basically shot out 200 something emails two weeks after SEMA in 21.

And out of that, I have about, I think it's 32 companies I partnered with on that truck.

So these are like very high end companies, not just, you know, in the closet companies.

Yeah, people like y'all probably know and stuff like that.

And so that's kind of how it came about.

And at the time, same thing with the Shelby, I didn't have a shot.

I was strictly working on my technical college, believe it or not.

And so when I started the truck, I started that one at Athens Technical College too.

The president there was super on board with it.

And as we were trying to figure out, you know, what's the next step?

Because we're, neither of my parents were in this industry.

And so we're trying to figure out, you know, what's the next step I need to take to pursue

this if this is something I want to do as a career.

And so I started building the truck there at Athens Tech.

And that's kind of how it came about.

But it was originally my grandfather's trucks.

We already had it.

So we didn't have to go buy something.

And so that was, you know, I'm a little bit regretting doing the truck,

but I don't want to do one for a little bit.

I learned a lot on the truck.

I thought the truck would be a little bit quicker than the must thing,

but I was completely wrong.

So I learned a lot.

And that was the main thing.

C10s are a little more forgiving than some of the 50s stuff.

Yes.

Like 47 to 54 trucks.

47, 54 Chevy will kick your ass trying to get it.

Yeah, especially the doors.

55 to 59, no walk in the park, but a 47 to 54 has a lot there.

Glad we didn't have one of those.

Yeah, those hoods are.

But the F-150s, F-100s are not much better either.

No, that's a tough one to build.

So you mentioned neither your parents are in this industry,

and they're super supportive and they're helping you and coaching you through

and figuring out the what the best path forward if you're going to make this a living,

which is super cool.

Where did that start?

Like at what point?

Take me back to when you started, I mean.

Thinking about it.

And then also that like that conversation to your parents like,

you know what I'm going to do for a living.

You're going to do what?

Yeah.

So getting back from seeing with the with the Shelby in 21,

that following year in 22, I went to World of Wheels in Birmingham.

So that was the first show.

I was like, let's go to the show.

Let's try it.

I know that show very well.

I had Adam reach out to me and he was like, hey, why don't you bring your car?

We'll try to give you a good display.

And so I took it there.

Adam McLean, right?

Sonny McLean's son and for everybody out there.

That's a good name.

Sonny McLean.

Sonny McLean's a good dude.

Ended up taking it there.

Had it on display.

Won a ton of awards with it.

It was kind of a little bit embarrassing how many awards it got,

but I met Will Posey with Big O Garage.

He had Dirty Martini at the time, finished up.

And so, you know, coming and just a little bit background,

like a lot of the guys that I had met in local shows and just shows that I had kind of been around.

We had, I had a little bit of a,

I guess kind of like a confrontation with some other guys that were very secretive

and they didn't want to talk like, how do you do this?

And I had questions because I've never done it before.

Which guys were those?

Probably none you would know, but you know, just the average show car.

They were just gate keeping stuff.

So, and for me, I was trying to learn.

I wasn't older guys.

Yeah, older guys.

It was the older generation.

And so, when I've walked up to Will and Will noticed me on the stage,

getting the rewards and stuff, and I walked over and was talking to him.

I was looking at the car and he gave me, he showed me this book they had for the Dirty Martini,

flipping through pages and kind of showing me what they did to it, how they did it and stuff like that.

And, you know, looking back now, it was probably God's grace.

I met Will because he steered me in a whole different direction, I think.

And but also,

he was probably trying to hire you.

Maybe.

That backfired on him.

No, but yeah, so I met him and he just told me, he's like,

if you ever need anything, reach out, let me know.

That's awesome.

But that, it took a couple of shows before I felt confident that this is the career I wanted to be in.

But you built the Shelby not with the intention of doing this for a living?

My initial goal was to do it for a living.

At the time, I mean, SEMA completely came out nowhere on the Shelby.

I did not expect that that car would have gone to SEMA.

It was just out of the blue like, I think, 2020.

Obviously, we had COVID, so that screwed up a whole bunch of stuff on that.

And I was trying, I was like, I was partially, I had it at our house and I was like,

I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to finish the car because the school got shut down.

We couldn't go in there and paint.

We had a wear mask and all this other stuff.

And so it was one of those things where it was like, am I even gonna finish it?

And then things picked up.

We were able to get back in there.

And so it was just kind of, just trying to figure out kind of what direction,

then I ended up entering it for Young Guns and then it moved on with that.

But it was kind of a slow process.

Like, is this something I wanted to get into?

Because mainly my idea was to do Shelby.

It's kind of like what Ravology does if you've seen them.

And it was kind of, that was my idea.

And after meeting Will, completely changed my mindset because I was like,

I really kind of like the custom stuff rather than the cookie cutter stuff.

And so while doing the truck, that's where it was like,

I feel confident that I can make a good career in this industry.

And mainly because of the people like Will, like Jonathan.

Will and Jonathan are both two of my main mentors,

Crystal and Kurt at KTL are my mentors.

And so I think with them being so open and honest to me and also just their true guidance,

I felt comfortable like, I can make a career in this.

My parents saw that too, because Will would pull my dad aside and talk to him about stuff.

And I think if we didn't have that, I don't think we'd be here right now,

just because we've had a lot of guidance.

I've learned a lot of lessons from them, because obviously you're starting a shop.

You're going to learn a lot.

And I know that they've saved me a lot of headaches from making

probably some bad, poor business decisions.

Just starting out and stuff that you don't know until you talk to builders.

And so people like that who are open, that kind of changed my outlook on,

because it was very secretive is what I was kind of getting.

What was the primary sort of advice?

I mean, what did he tell you that steered you away from?

You get this vision of you're going to be a

revology or a velocity and you're going to start producing cars.

But now you said something and now you want to build custom.

I think mainly it was just like going over to his shop.

I guess what happened was is I had to make wheel tubs on the C town, the front.

And I got that point.

Everything on the back of the truck is done.

Everything on the cab is done.

I got all the flesh mount glass and everything's done.

The wheel tubs need to be done.

So I text them like, look, I was trying to find a kid.

I was looking at Chris Austin, Chassisworks on their wheel tubs are very basic.

I'm like, I don't know if it's going to fit what I want to do.

And then I just text them like, hey, is there any way I can come to your shop,

bring the truck, borrow some of your equipment, make some stuff and learn some stuff.

Because I told him like, I want to learn how to make wheel tubs.

I never done before, but I want to learn.

He's like, I got these couple of weeks open, come down to my shop, we'll set you up.

I'll show you how the equipment works.

And I'll get one of my guys to kind of show you just the basics.

And then you can bring it over here and work on it.

And so that's why I did.

And it was over there for four weeks.

So I got a hotel room, stayed over there so much so late at night that will basically

he's like, look, here's a key lock the shop up when you're done.

Because I'd stay there till like 1am and then I'm back at 7.

And he's like, you beat all my guys here and you're still working.

And so it was pretty cool.

But I think just will what he had in his shop at that time, but also what he did

at Dirty Martini.

I'd never seen that before.

That was the first time I got eyesight of that.

And so getting to see a lot of that custom work was like, it was new to me because I

didn't know that was a thing.

And so after seeing that, it was like, I want to try to dip a toe in it and try it online.

So but he showed me how to do the wheel tubs and use this power max, the bead roller,

a lot of that equipment.

I just didn't have at the time because at tech school, we literally got a sheer

and metal break, some basic metal equipment, hammers and all these stuff like that.

But nothing, nothing to that extreme.

No major form.

And so what was your plan when you went to technical college in the first place?

Learn painting body.

So when I graduated Westminster Christian Academy in 2018, I had purchased that 67 fast

bag.

It was a shell and I knew all the mechanical stuff.

I had people that I knew locally who ran engine shops, mainly Gabriel's engines who

were near me.

He did a lot of the dry car stuff, Volkswagen stuff.

And so I kind of had that.

I had a good grasp on that knowledge.

It was painting body was completely something that I was like, I don't know what to do.

And so I was like, you know, where do you go to learn that stuff?

And so I started Googling it and I ended up finding that technical college taught it.

And so I just like was Athens have technical college.

So I checked there and enrolled after the first semester of me being there.

I would fly through my work so quick.

I just told my teacher, I'm like, look, I have this 67 fast back up.

Is it possible I just bring it up here a couple of weeks to some stuff.

I had some seat practice.

I wanted to basically made that would accommodate 2018 Mustang seats because I want to do a

modern seat with the old vintage style on the interior.

And so that was one of the first things I did.

And I mean, after that it stayed there until 2021.

And thankfully I had a really good teacher who used to do this kind of work.

He was he was a tech at Mercedes, but he also like he's got a truck that he's working on

right now at his home.

And I think a lot of my success so far has come from just his willingness to

allow me to work on that stuff at school because he would stay late late nights when

I'm working on that Shelby, especially during COVID all the stuff that was going on.

We, you know, class was basically eight to four.

That's what the hours he was there and we'd be there from sometimes eight to nine.

And he's taken that time out his day to spend with me and show me

how to do this stuff.

And so I think just, you know, if I if I hadn't had that,

I mean, that's a huge step just on that first car that took this next step.

So I mean, you're doubling up time, you know, you're doubling a year and

doing it in one year, you know, the amount of time that you're working.

Girlfriend, wife, no, none of that through any of that.

No, yeah.

That makes it a lot easier.

Are you aware of the sales pitch that you're going to have to put on for a new girlfriend

and soon to be wife with this type of work?

I don't know yet, but I'm starting to learn it.

But I haven't really put a whole lot of thought.

You have two of the best.

Right here if you have any questions.

It's the the the thing I don't have much of advice for is

Doing it the right way.

Definitely not doing it the right way, but also not doing it at this stage new coming in.

Like the workload that you're doing, you're kind of already in this and then meeting somebody.

Luckily, I well, dude, let's just be honest.

You speak to women like it's the 1950s, right?

We're almost in 2026.

Now it's the times have changed.

I didn't I can't approach it the same way that you did.

No, it was I don't I mean, yes, you're right a lot about that.

I mean, unfortunately, but Jody still lights your cigarettes for you.

If I tell her to, she'll like it.

But no, it was I remember vividly like the day I met my wife and it was, you know,

in custom cars, right?

I mean that she came in and we started dating a little bit here and there.

But like the first date was like, well, yeah, but it's going to have to be like 10 o'clock

because I'm not leaving the shop till like 930, you know.

So my point was like the stage was set very early on, you know, and then it was like if

we want to do something on the weekend, like we're about to go to a show.

Like if you want to go along with us to the show, right?

But like during the day, I'm like at the show.

Like we might be able to do something at night and hang out.

But if only if like we don't have like something else going on, like we still use that excuse.

Well, it's the but it is the truth.

And it's only reason I bring it up is that was from the get go setting the stage, I guess.

And I guess it is the same advice because it doesn't really matter.

It's I see it to all too often where it's trying to do that work life balance, right?

And you try to do the things that you know is either halfway the right thing and halfway

probably what's going to keep them around.

But sooner or later, it's going to be like, well, yeah, but it's it's SEMA and there's a thrash.

So you're going to see me for three months.

And that's difficult when it hasn't happened.

It's a little easier to pallet when it's been that way.

But again, we don't listen to us.

We have the worst advice.

We did it all the wrong ways.

But yeah, they're still with us.

So yeah, yeah, good looks.

I think I think for me, I mean, just, you know, I know there's a lot of other young guys listening,

but it's I learned it firsthand with my parents.

It's been like on day one when we basically decide this is what we're going to do.

This is how we're going to do it.

And it's like, I'm I'm someone, unfortunately, where it's like, if I have a goal, like,

by God, I'm going to make it happen.

So it and getting into this industry, I mean, it's so freaking expensive.

I mean, and when you got like, we got that kind of money I'm thinking about, I'm like,

I got to make this work.

And so for me, it's just been I'm just one of those people where it's like, I'm going to obsess over

making sure we get to that point because I had the truck going at the same time.

We bought a shop, been renovating the shop, doing the electrical, the plumbing,

the HVAC, all doing that ourselves to try to save money.

And, you know, I loaded my own paint booth last, you know, last this end December.

And so it was just careful with those putting paint booths together.

Oh, yeah.

Just don't get on top of it.

You heard what happened to Troy, didn't you?

Big Troy.

Troy Chopin, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

He was on top of one until he wasn't.

And he was on the bottom of one.

Well, yeah, be careful.

Can't believe you haven't heard that story.

Everybody's heard that story.

He'll tell everybody out the text.

No, I mean, it's that's a lot going out.

Yes.

And not a lot coming in.

Well, and so that was a lot to do with the truck, too, was like this truck needs to do what we

needed to do to in order to, you know, prove yourself that you can gain those kind of clients.

And it worked, but and we're still like, we're still not, we're still not out of it yet.

This is like the stepping stone to the next thing.

And it's, we got some stuff that we're going to be doing in the background.

I got a couple of kids at Athens Tech that I'm hopefully going to be bringing on once

things get taken off and slowly introduce them into it because they want to get into it.

And it's just, you know, it's a process, but going back to the thing, it's like, I'm just

someone where if I have a goal, it's just unfortunate.

And one of those things where I'm just prioritizing because I want to make sure

it's going to work. And again, we had the truck going on at the same time renovating a shop.

And then we heard about same months like, all right, this is it, we need to make this happen.

This is, this is our time to get, get our name out there because it's like, you know,

if I age out of young guns, I'm going to miss the young gun opportunity.

And so we had that going back and forth.

And we had the offer from HRA.

And so it was like, all right, because we were initially going to like show it in February,

maybe at like Grand National.

And that's, that's a lot of money going out just to get out there to begin with.

And so it was like, I think young guns and SEMA would be better for me.

And so that was why we were like, all right, let's just do SEMA and commit to it.

So where were you at with the truck when the decision was made that I'm going to see?

But what stage is the truck at?

It was painted, polished. I painted it basically October of the year before.

And so everything from then on was just cutting and buffing it.

We already had the upholstery done for the most part.

There was a couple like headliner and stuff like that.

I had to finish up, but primarily everything was done.

It's just pieces simply getting polished.

Yeah. And so I think it was July.

Yeah, it was July when I basically, I think I sent my paint looks like that.

That's certainly been getting sitting around, getting hard and all gasped out.

That's perfect. Ready time.

I learned that trick too.

Things are a lot different versus the five days out of the booth.

Even if you sprayed it in July.

I basically applied for HRA in May and then like July was like,

we heard back and it was like, are we going to do it or not?

And I told my dad, I'm like, I think we need to take this opportunity.

Because it's, you know, because I want to make sure, you know, with me being 26,

my birthday was basically right. It was on Halloween before SEMA.

And so it's like, I'm 25, 26. I'm like, I got the age.

I think it's going to do good with publicity.

And so it was like, we need to do it this year.

We don't need to wait. We need to go and do it this year.

Cause we were going to, I wanted to run it through good guys this next year,

this coming year in 2026. And so that was, that was the whole goal.

He'd already paid half the influencers and builders in the industry to like hype it too.

So like that whole, that whole underground army.

Look, we got, we got another one here.

He's one of your biggest fans too.

His, uh, he's been really good a few months back and excited to see his build out here

and see him a 67 C 10. He's a good dude. Yes.

He's got whole all y'all's chess. He's under his car, but he's a beast too.

I'm getting stuff knocked down.

I'm sure he's going to need some help on that Chevelle.

That one's a step up. That one's going to have some,

I've been, I've been giving him some help with that.

So I gave him that I sold him that LT for, I bought two LT for assault him one.

And then Dale, uh, his buddy that's got the Corvette that I'm going to be building,

sold him in one. So we got those two LT fours, but I've been giving him some tips and pours

on the LT four, getting it to fix. You got intercoolers and you got a whole bunch of stuff

that make that motor run properly. And so, um, but yeah, he, he's been one of those guys.

I told him initially, like he came out to my shop and did like a walk through a shop tour.

Like I think it was like sometime before it was a before SEMA.

It was like in July, I think, and I told him, I'm like, you know,

you're one of the only people that have come out to my shop and actually like put this up on social.

Like SEMA did a lot for me in young guns and 21, but it kind of, you know, it was just with that

car. It wasn't about what's, what's your history? What, what are you doing? How'd you get here?

That kind of thing. And so he came out and I mean, he's been phenomenal about,

you know, getting my name out there. And I can't thank him enough just for, you know,

his loyalty to, to my name, trying to get me going. So really good, dude. Makes me,

uh, yet again, another person that makes me realize that there's so many better people out there than

who we are out of curiosity. Who have you come across that you felt is a worse person than you?

Oh, there's a few. Example, give me an example.

Uh, I mean, it doesn't even have to be in the end. It's just in general.

Like if you, oh, most of the time in life, I come across people that are,

that are worse than me in public. Yeah. Go through the airport.

Worse is like, it just like spatial awareness. Just living, just being,

but they're probably as a human being. Good people. Yeah. I don't interact with them.

Like we've had, we've had a few on this podcast, whatever they're like, dude, I'm way better of

a person than him. He's, he's one of the ones I missed. I've only missed a couple.

Uh, I'm not named names. Uh, I wanted to, you mentioned about the LT four. Um,

we're going to take a little segue to do some business, but it's perfect because you mentioned

down when we were doing a little tour on the LT four about tuning and you specifically asked,

Hey, what's the deal with HP tuners? And I said, Hey, hold, this is what I said. I said, hold up.

Hold on a second. Right. We're going to talk about that. Perfect segue to talk about HP tuners.

So you said, what's the deal with HP tuners? HP tuners, they are absolutely bar none the leader

in die. The diagnostic industry in allowing you, they make the software and the dongle and the

portal and the hardware pieces to tune your GM and a lot of other OE platforms. Um, right here in

the Chicago land area, about like 15 minutes down the road, 20 years deep. They've been doing this.

Um, regular shops, race car drivers, race shops, hot rod shops everywhere. Um, they've got the

VCM suite, which is specifically the software package. That's the VCM scanner and VCM editor.

That's the diagnose scan review data, recalibrate those modern vehicles. The MP VI four is the

actual interface. That's the newest OBD two interface, which is a great piece that we typically

will send out to customers when we deliver cars or we can mail them out as needed because when a car

goes to California, if it goes to New York, you don't ever know where it's going and sometimes

things need to be touched up. You can jump on team viewer. So easy to make some adjustments to the

car with along with that RTD for, which is that remote tuning thing. So you do the MPVI for and

the RTD for it allows that person to begin. It's like that. You say, Hey, this is in your little

kit. Keep this with the car anywhere anytime. Um, then the, uh, which we'll do more further. Um,

expanding upon in a future episode around the core ECU, which is their newest,

fully configurable standalone engine control solution. Um,

they are absolutely, if you don't know much about them, it's kind of like this, you know,

it's this great logo and ever they hold themselves very, um, um, professional, very, very professional.

It's almost like the rest of the industry's street racing and their formula one. Yeah.

Like they're, you know, they, they carry themselves that way. They're very professional.

It's a group of amazing enthusiasts, awesome guys being neighbors of ours.

We work closely with them on integrating the core ECU on a project recently.

We've got another one coming down the pipeline, really impressed with it. All good stuff, man.

Great. It's amazing stuff. It's wild. Um, we've had a lot of, um, their staff and, and

upper management on the podcast before we're personal friends with a lot of them as well.

And it's funny, like the stories we have, I've been to the facility,

I haven't done a full tour. We're actually going to be doing that, um, this year coming up at some

point, but it's wild. The amount of, of people, uh, and that skill set, right? To run the company

and do all the things they're doing for manufacturing packaging and management and stuff.

But then you got like those code breakers, right? Then you got like those heroes.

And there's just, they're in line and they're just all working on different platforms every

single day. You don't really don't know what's going to be like, what code's going to be broken

when, right? Yeah. So it's, you know, in my mind, I put on these like, you know, the bell rings and

it's like the new BMW one, we cracked it, right? I'm still waiting on that, that new, there's a new

GM one that we're waiting on. If they can crack that new GM one, then there will be good. But, uh,

yeah, HP tuners offline, we're going to get you hooked up with HP tuners because you've got to

tune that LT four with that 10 speed. There's, it's great or it's good. It can be great. It's

just that extra little bit. We learned that early on, we're sort of one of the first adapters of the

LT four back when it was only a dry sump motor struggled through a lot of the integration

stuff on that. But the, the throttle response and some of the fueling was really, really difficult

to work through. It took us some time, but once you sort of master that, it's a lot of torque

management on the, on the transmission too, right? It's truly an awesome package. Yeah. But it is,

it's that extra, just like no matter how slick you can get it coming out of the booth. Yeah. There's

that extra 10% to just a great first, first for what's standing above in it. It would be shiny

and you know, a connecting cruise or a crate will run. You can make it shinier and you can make it

run better. That's the next. Connecting cruise is definitely an off the gun paint job. Yeah.

You get into HP tuners and you're like, you know, that's 600. You're started with 600 and that's

even the guy that's like, I go 3000, 5000 and 7000. You're like, 7000 was a waste because it's doing

nothing. Even the wool pad's harder than that. But let's go down in the weeds, right? But no,

we're going to hook you up with them with HP tuners and then we got some connections on the

tuning side of things too to get that thing really dialed in. Makes a difference, makes all the

difference in the world. So that was our, that was a little brief, a little business. We got more

business to get to, but we're going to space it out. We're going to get so business heavy right

off the front, right? These are my files. In case you don't know, we've got a big thing for years.

It's been running on files, right? Just to talk about files. We're going to go into this. Phil and

Josh use it as like a badge of honor. They have lots of files. The amount. The more files you got

than the other. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're basically judged by the amount of files you have, right?

And so no matter what, it always comes up in conversation of like, so you see all these, these

are, these are just one of my many files. I have so many files. I have multiple cabinets to hold

all of my files in. And it was a couple of years ago, just look, look, I've got files, whatever

you're, you dabble, you dabble in files, right? You're, you're not even at hobbyist level in

files yet. It's fuck files. Spiral notebook with just chicken scratch on it. And then I stack them

up. I've got an organized drawer full of one, because I just notes, turn the page notes, turn

the page, punch list, turn the page, important notes to do list, turn the page. And then I keep

them all because I can go back. Those are my file. It's a stack probably this high. The lower drawer,

the file drawer, you know, that's in your desk. That's just old ass spiral notebooks. Yep. And

there is, there's some information in there that is priceless. I'm with you. I have some of that

as well. I went into Jeremy's office the other day, help yesterday or day before, and he's got

like a 73 inch, you know, computer screen monitor. Like the thing is fucking huge,

like rap. It's almost like a driving simulator. It's so big, right? Wrap around. I've got the,

the racing chair. Yeah. I've got the keyboards up here. You know, I got it's like the matrix,

right? It's just huge screen. And he's got, he's got like four, he's got like four documents all

pulled up at the same time. And he's just just just going to town. I come in, I said, what the

fuck are you doing? He's like, Oh, these, these are all my files. Those are our files. He's like,

once they're completed, they'll be turned into files. Great pull. You're right.

So that's the kind of cool shit we do as you get older and you step away from, you know,

doing paint work, fabrication work. That's the kind of awesome shit. Super cool shit we do.

You'll get to sit and talk. You can talk to Will Posey about files and set a bill.

Goes downhill pretty quick, I guess. Careful what you wish for. Yes, it does. Careful what you

wish for. Because all of that, all of what you're at right now is, you know, the next step is, is,

is scaling, right? And growth, right? With scaling and growth comes a little bit more

of the shit you're like, all right, well, that's, I'll find, I'll take this little bit of crap that

I don't want to do because, you know, I do need to bring in these, you know, one more employee,

two more employees. And I got us a little bit of crap. And you're like, all right, we've got to

bring in this piece of equipment and got to do this. And we need, now that we've got these employees,

probably need to start tracking this labor and those stuff a little bit different, like a little bit

more crap that I'll have to deal with to be able to do this stuff. And then it's, I'm starting to

deal with a little bit more crap than I want to deal with. So I need to probably hire somebody

to deal with this crap that I don't want to deal with. Then you start scaling, I can take another

build in, take another build in, then I'm going to take on this new employee. And then

this employee that you've hired to like take care of all this crap, you know, you're like,

well, I'm, now I'm having to do a lot of crap to like have him take care of this crap before you

know it, like you've got, or you know, you're just like crap crap. All right, you fucking lost me,

dude. You lost me. You touched on one important thing. I didn't lose you. Oh, I might have lost

you. Right. I just wasn't paying attention. Right. You have to deal with so much more stuff

that you didn't plan on and exponentially gross as you were talking through scaling and equipment.

This is an interesting topic. You were over at Posey's place and you were, you didn't have any

equipment, right? So you're getting over there and you're seeing, you've got a bead roller,

he's got a pro line, sort of a pole max power hand, whatever. Yeah. What did you see and what

were your first purchases as you started scaling, you're building higher and stuff? What did you

feel like I need this to grow my company? This is what I need in the shop that makes me a better

fabricator, makes me put out a better question. That's another whole other rabbit hole that you

could go down. We're going to go down there. No, I'm saying it's good. Um, so carried away there.

Yeah. When I got over there, um, getting familiar with some of the equipment I had, no idea existed

and kind of like, you know, how do you make these complex shapes and stuff? So, um, just some of the

basic ones I purchased lately, I bought a Bailey magnetic break off Facebook. I got that one. I

got a metal shear. I got a end mill that I purchased that might be on my Instagram too, but I got an

end mill from a guy, uh, local to me because I took machine and in college took CNC machine in

college. And so, um, got taught a lot of the manual machining stuff. And so he was like, if you buy

the end mill, you got to take all the end mills and all the metal and everything else. There's

probably $12,000 worth of stuff. And he's like, if you don't take it, I'm scrapping it. So like,

I'll take all it. So I've just got my toolbox filled up, uh, last month and put everything in it.

And there's like, I think I counted 3,400 end mills, like good end mills. Like he was the head

of the F 35 project in Athens. And so they were machining some high end stuff. But, um, but yeah,

so I got, I got an email. I'm still got my eyes out for a power hammer at some point. Um, with

this next project I got coming in, it's not as critical at the moment, but it's one of those

things I got on my list. Um, and then a good shrinker stretcher, which those aren't gonna be too

hard to get. Um, would you end up with for shrinker stretcher? Or what do you get? What do you get

your eye? I mean, I know, I know Bailey has one, but I know there's some better ones out there.

So I'm honestly not too sure. I mean, Will's got a big heavy duty Bailey one that they did with

their Bailey fab class that they had. And so he's got like a pretty good size one, but it's also

for more heavy duty stuff. So, um, I've been keeping my eye out for a good one. Let me ask you

that's, I want to ask you, this is something we, I don't think talked about. So it is easy to go

to get that, uh, that tool envy, right? And think that there's no way that I can even progress

a half a step forward until I have all of this, right? And, and get caught up in the like, I

can't do any of it until I have all of it. It is a progression. It's progression for most people,

and it should be a progression. It's probably a more positive if it is a progression because

you appreciate each one of them. You acquire new tools as you acquire those skill sets,

and then you continue to grow. However, if somebody's out there listening, right, newer shop shops,

and you know, they are limited on tooling right now, right? Mostly hand tools, right? Welding

and stuff like that. Um, hand tool stuff. And it is trying to, because everybody is,

everybody's trying to progress. Everybody's trying to check, chase that perfection. Everybody's

trying to chase that little bit of different and like, Oh man, if I could just make inner

inner fenders as always, like comes to like under the hood, the jewelry box is where everybody's

like, Oh man, if I could just do firewalls and inner fenders like this, then I would be on the,

on the next stage. So say you've got, say you've got a $15,000 budget, right? And you're ready to

progress from predominantly all hand tools, you know, in a, in a, uh, maybe a decent belt sander,

right? And like, I gotta start doing some forming. What's going to make the guy's life easy?

What's the purchases? Uh, I mean, it depends on what your direction is. Like what's going to

be your thing. If you're wanting to do stuff that I think is sort of just like productive and your

goal is maybe making nice parts, making money, uh, doing survivor cars, doing just general tasks.

I'd say that the two pieces that you just sort of have to have is going to be a bead roller and

a shrink or stretcher. Like there are two things that you almost can't do what they do without

anything. I mean, shrinking, what are you, what are you going to do? I mean, you could pie cut stuff,

you can tuck shrink things, but you're not going to do what, and for the money,

like a kick shrinker, even if you got to buy a budget one, for what it can do,

you, you got to have one, you know, and a bead roller, it's so versatile that

like you can do almost everything that can be done. Well, I mean, a lot of the, sorry,

any of the beading operations on like a pole max or like a Bailey MH 19 or something, you could do

most of that on a bead rolling down to like tipping flanges and folding edges and wire

edge and thing. Like you can make louvers. Like you can really do a lot that will just sort of

get carried away. You know, I think a bead roller is the one tool that it should be taken away from

a lot of people as much as it should be given to a lot of people. Like just because you have it,

doesn't mean you put on everything, doesn't mean you need to roll. You know, like a package tray,

it's for the speakers, like, and nobody sees it. Like, you know, fold it, you can run if you need

the bead, maybe you're better off putting like a folding up, folding yourself a little hat channel

underneath that spot. Well, rather than rolling 4,000 hours worth of beads in it, only to upholster

it. If you're looking to do more, like you want to shape up some stuff, you want to make some more

complex shape, like for me, the pole max is the machine. It's the most versatile. You can put

thumbnail dies in it. You can shrink, you can put doming dies in it. I mean, you can sort of

planish with it, you can shape with it, you can do about anything. But the reality is like for the

price and the functionality, the Bailey hammer, I think is that the MH 19 that has the reciprocating

feature? I think it is. I forget the exact one, but it's you really can't beat that. It's an expensive

tool. I mean, I think it's 20 something thousand bucks. Yeah. So it's not like the run out and get

it. But once you're at that stage, I mean, to buy yourself a nice pole max, get some equipment,

you're probably seven to 10 grand. And it's an old machine. I mean, it things are going to run

like a motherfucker, and it's good, but you probably got to got to make some tools. You got to buy

some tools. That is and, you know, Chris Ross is one of the guys who actually designed that. So

you know, it's good. Like Bailey has a lot of awesome stuff. I will also say I'll give him a

ton of props for making some amazing metal shaping equipment that I've got a lot of it here. I'll

buy a lot of it. We go. But that mag break sucks. I think everybody that break should come with three

really good C clamps, because that's how we use it. Yeah. What what links y'all got 72. Yeah. Yeah.

I got a four foot one. Yeah. And it's I know it's awesome because it does things that nothing else

can do like you're unrestricted. Yeah. But it also doesn't work. So it's that's been a Yeah,

that was a problem, child. That was not a rush machine. But so it's so you definitely and I

understand why so you're definitely your name and tools that there is no way regardless how much

time it takes, there's no way to achieve some of the things without having that tool, like that

tools that you either do the thing that yeah, or you don't do the thing right pivot and you and

even over like more expediency or time savers such as, you know, small plasma table or something

like that where because you again, that's where it gets into on a thing like you absolutely are

going to have to cut brackets, you're going to have to cut brackets, you can cut brackets,

bandsaw, clean them up all that you're going to have 10 times the amount of labor

in cutting those brackets, but you could at least cut the bracket without having this tool.

Yes, there's a way of getting it done. Yeah, but then there's get some time, you know, depending on

that on the other side of car building, you know, when you're looking outside of like, I mean,

yes, I'm sort of focused on the sheet metal. So it wasn't a right or wrong answer.

You're right. Like the opportunities that that opens up to get a little creative to cut things

that save you time like I mean to cut anything that's got you're going to cut 10 gauge that's

got a big hole in it and it's got some inner curves and it's long. Yeah. Plasms is going to

pay for itself pretty quickly. It's just it can be like a bead roller. It can become a distraction

where it just cut it. Just cut it. You're just now you're cutting everything and you're putting

windows and everything and you're like, dude, we get it. You have a plasma cutter. Okay. It's like

just but you can make some phenomenal brackets. That's really that's up there at the top of the

list of things to get your hand. The way the way we traditionally did it

was always try to have a use case for the for the next purchase, right? So it was the next big

project that came in and you talk through, you know, the design and you're working with the

customer and where the car is going to go and some things you're going to try and do

with the vehicle that really need that next piece of equipment, whatever that piece of

equipment is, right? And try to make that use case like, all right, well, we know on this job,

we're going to do this, this, this, this, this and this, right? So it's an investment

in to make sure that this job can be done and versus just because I don't know, I've always been OCD

about getting like so far ahead and be like, well, gotta have those pieces of equipment,

right? And then you get those pieces of equipment and those pieces of equipment sit there,

like seeing that piece of equipment sit there for three months, you're going to use it. But

seeing it sit there for three months until the next job needs that piece of equipment,

well, you should have just waited till the job requested it, you know,

I think just starting out like I agree that probably the main piece of equipment that I mean,

at least for me that I'm looking at was the mag break, a full eight foot break, bead roller,

and stomps here. Yeah. Yeah, I want to get high draw one for thicker stuff,

but a, and then a shrinker structure, I think just those, that's a good starting point. And then

kind of like Josh said, is like when you're growing and you have a job come in that's like,

hey, that piece of equipment justifies this purchase or, you know, that job or whatever

justifies that purchase to buy that, you know, power hammer or power max and then it would make

sense. Those are like probably for me, those would be like elite tools for me because I'm still

practicing on them. So I'm not y'all's level yet, obviously on the, on that kind of equipment yet,

but I've dipped a toe in it. Now I know kind of that's a thing. And so for me, it's always been

like, if I see something on Facebook or in a group and they got like a power hammer and it's

like a really good deal, then I might justify doing it early, but I wouldn't go out and just buy one

just to let it sit, you know, I guess with the way I was thinking about it too. And I'm looking at

things and you talk about sheet metal breaks and stuff like that. I look at those as just like,

you've got them. Yeah, because you can get, that's a marketplace tool. You can buy, I mean,

honestly, you could buy like a Woodward fab. You could buy a Harbor freight. You can buy hundreds

of dollars for some of that stuff. You could buy an ENCO like, yeah, and it's going to get the job

done. Or there's a means of making something with a piece of angle iron on a table and like,

you'll get it. Yeah, that's stuff like 100%. Yeah. It's Phil. Look who decided to join us,

speaking of files and things. Yeah. You said you're going to come right here from the pickleball

court. That's a lie because you've changed. There's no way you played pickleball in that.

The game must have got canceled. It was outdoor. It's raining, raining,

rain delay. Phil's the rain delay. Phil's a little liar. No, I had a serious issue.

Lock cylinder on the Miata jammed up. So I couldn't get the pickleball equipment out of the trunk.

So I couldn't even go to the pickleball game. Damn. Yeah, it was just bad. It's been a little

icy out there. It was Miata. That's what that's in from the 90s at lock cylinders. That was a stage

three of a round robin tournament. So really let the team down. That's too bad. Hopefully,

they carried it for you. Still the Barrington Brawlers. Yeah. Not publicly known, but yeah,

it's like our street name. We're just, uh, I hope both of you were able to properly go fuck yourself

without me. We took it easy. We waited until you were. They were comparing. They were comparing

who had the most files in their filing cabinet. Oh yeah. I'd said Jer just dabbles in files.

He's not even a hobbyist level yet. Phil's a pro on file. Well, that's not even a question. No,

Phil's shit on a file. He's profiled. He's got multiple filing cabinets. Like they don't even

match the desk set because he had to add additional filing. Phil pays for storage units to hold

filing cabinets because how many files he has. Anyway, we were, we got through a lot. We were

talking equipment, tools, how he's grown his shop. I'm like first equipment for other shops.

So just I was asking Jeremy his advice and stuff. I did, I had a question again. Um,

this has around, has to do with, you know, progressing as a shop. I'd be interested

where you are right now, right? You, you built this truck specifically at your name out there.

That's business card, great business card. You've, you've built the new shop. You got,

like this, this is all investments to in the business, right? You get those builds. Say a

guy comes in and you've got, I know you've got the, uh, the Corvette, um, C2 that you're building,

you know, you got some stuff. Say a guy comes in next week, right? He's like,

saw you on the oil and whiskey podcast, which just be prepared. It's going to happen. There's

a lot of people out there that are like, Oh, I don't have a lot of money and I want to have a car

built. So I'm going to go leverage one of these younger new coming builders. It's going to be

super hungry. That's going to do whatever I ask them to do, regardless of what it's going to look

like, even though I can't pay for it. That shit happens. I've already run into that. I've learned

that shit happens. Uh, so a guy calls in and says, Hey, look, money's, uh, not a problem. Unlimited

budget. I want you to build everything from scratch, scratch, build the body, scratch, build the

chassis. We want to go win whatever, name the award, right? Let's get after it. What do you,

what do you tell him knowing where you are? I mean, I'd be 100% upfront with him and just

tell him like, you know, look, this is, um, this is going to be my next big project. If this is

something you want to pursue, but, um, I have a lot of guys, especially locally, um,

who I'm going to be bouncing stuff between each other. I think Ken Diggs said on one

podcast where in the future there could be more contractors bouncing stuff between each other.

And so I took that a little bit to heart and trying to not, you know, you can do everything,

but some stuff it's just like where you draw a line. And so I learned that that might be a good

idea. And so, um, I wouldn't be opposed to doing something, something like that and building a

car completely from scratch, but I tell him like, you know, I've never built a whole

quarter panel from scratch. You know, that's something where we're going to be getting

the unknown. I wouldn't be opposed to it, but it would be a learning curve and it'd be something

too. Like when you get the billing and stuff, it's like, you know, where do you add the hours

because you're learning, but you're also charging. So do you get into that stuff? So I think

out of respect for the client and what he's wanting to do with an investment, I would

probably tell him like, I'll do one, but I would prefer we start with maybe like a body,

like let's just say like 67 fastback Mustang, a body that's there. We can, many of it, we can

do flares. We can modify the metal that's there, but I don't think for me, I'm at that point where

I want to tell the client, yes, let's do this because if I can't pull that off, it's going to

hurt me, but also I'm not doing that client. Like I'm basically telling them a lie.

And I haven't had experience doing that. And so I don't think until I personally have a project,

like if I have a project, I'm doing on the side for myself and I want to dip a toe in that and

expand that skill. That's my whole goal is like have something on the side that I can work on

that stuff. I'm not charging a client hours for something I can mess with. If I screw it up,

I screw it up, I can redo it, but get practice on and continue to grow. That's kind of probably

what I would tell them realistically. I think I think it's a great answer. I think it's it's

sound advice for a lot of people out there. And no matter what size of business they are,

it's knowing your lane and knowing your skill set. Regardless of how broad your skill set is,

everybody has a limit. I mean, you mentioned you can do all things. I don't know of anybody

that can do all things perfect, right? So Adam Banks to get Adam Banks. But I mean,

looking at Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan was amazing basketball player, right? He's a pretty

damn good NASCAR team owner. He was a horrible basketball coach and an even worse NBA team owner,

right? Not a great baseball player. But he played more MLB than any of us, right? So I'll give he

did play and succeeded that game. But he can't do everything well, even at our stage, right? If

somebody came in tomorrow and said, look, when he's no object, I've seen these badass cars you do.

Got an idea. I've seen guys have build cars that are inspired by airplanes. I want you to build me

an airplane that's inspired by a car. I want you to make a car that flies, right? Build me a plane

that's got a Camaro nose on it. Be like, first gen or second gen. Second. That's out there.

Wall unit though. Like, dude, look at the wall unit. Look at that. We built that. Like, that's,

yeah, we could build some shit. Well, a hundred percent planes. Exactly. That's my point. You'd

be like, dude, we could figure out some shit, but you can come up making it fly. Like you want us

to skin it. All right, we'll skin that plane. But yeah, I think going back to that question, like

each builder has their own, I wouldn't say theme, but has their own like touch. Like you go to Rad

Rides for this, you go to Candid for this, you get a road shot for this. So mine.

You go to Rad Rides to spend all your money. That's what you get.

Like my, when I did the, he gets too much positive. He's got to get knocked down a couple of notches.

Well, like when I did the truck, my whole goal with that truck was to keep it where anyone

realistically can recognize the truck, but someone who is in this industry, they walk

up on and they can see all the custom stuff that's done. That's kind of why I have the engineering

in my name. I know my Instagram is like miles long and some point that will change, but at least

for now, that's why I have engineering in my name is because I'm basically integrating the

performance and the engineering into the build, but also keeping it to where it's a full design.

And so that was kind of my whole thought process on that. But I think like going back to it,

it would be something where I would tell the client, like, look, I'm willing to do a vehicle,

but I'd prefer that we start with a vehicle. Like just like a generic, like if you want to do a

GTO, you want to do a Mustang or a Camaro, let's start with a body and then get it rendered. And

let's, we can change things and move things around, but let's start with a base or a ground,

you know, a foundation to start from. Right. At least until I get to a level like that later in

my career, when I can take on stuff like that, you know, that's a great answer, man. And it's,

I mean, very mature and definitely get the customer's best interests in mind. You see,

all too often shops, customer comes in that's prepared to spend some money and they sort of

just think like they've got this big fish on the line. Yeah. And it's just, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Let's do it. And you don't stop to think like, am I the right guy for that? Like,

are we qualified? Have I ever done that before? Right. Yeah. You know, and it's one thing as

a young guy like you, I think you sound like, you know, you'd be honest and straightforward and

a guy give you the opportunity to sort of learn some things along the way. There's always going

to be things you've never done, but guy walks in the door and like, you know, wants to scratch,

build a body. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you're not the guy and there's nothing wrong with not being the guy.

You're not the guy for everything. Yeah. I mean, on the back end too, it's like,

like I'm thinking of it too from like, you know, business level. It's like, I'm trying,

I'm starting out. I gotta be able to build, build hours that I can confidently do work

that I can be doing right now. And that's something that I'm not at that point yet.

And so like for me, that's kind of where that decision would come in is like,

I'm not going to be able to build complete hours because this is something I'm going to have to

learn. And at this point in time in my career, this is something that would not be a beneficial

thing to me. Although learning it early would be, but probably not. It's gonna put you in the hole.

It's gonna put in the hole. And that's something I don't need right now. And so that's why I would

probably respectively tell, you know, whoever that would be possibly is, you know, at this time

in my career, I'm not at that point yet. So it's, it's, it's a great answer.

I am the stress that comes with it. Some guys that doesn't stress about. Well, like you said,

though, it's very, it's, there's a, there's always the amount of like, ooh, that's going to be a little

push, right? I'm going to learn a few things on that one, right? Done something similar to like

that in the past, but this is going to take it to it. Your eyes are always going to be bigger than,

you know, your, your, your stomach, right? You're always going to bite off more than you can chew,

but within reason, right? You don't, Uncle Rico, right? You're not going to be like, oh yeah, no problem.

672 ounce steaks, no problem. I can eat all those, right?

And throw them over the mountain. Yeah. And throw them. It's, there's within reason. You're always

going to say, you know, no, no problem. I can eat that, but let's not get carried away on saying,

yeah, not a problem. I've never done anything remotely like that, but I'm going to look at

you in your eyes and be like, yeah, not a problem. We can figure that out. Yeah. I can design that.

I can engineer that. Yeah. I think coming from the C10, so I did the Mustang and then the C10,

and now I got this 63 split window for Dale. The core of that, I feel like is the, is probably

one of the perfect stepping stones for me coming off of the truck because I'd learned how to do

the high end bodywork on the truck. I learned the modern drive train stuff, doing the chassis for

the first time because the Shelby didn't have it had ride tech on one and like Chris Austin on the

front. So that wasn't a full chassis. So this one was like everything that, you know, people like

I've been watching y'all and Jonathan and KTL and, and Will at Big O, that's what they've been doing.

It's like, that's what I want to do. And so I think the Corvette fits that next step for me in

my career. Although it is fiberglass, I've done fiberglass. That's what we got taught a lot in

school, whether it's SMC or just fiberglass. And so the Corvette, yes, it's going to be difficult,

but it's not going to be as difficult as shaping a whole car from, from scratch. And so I feel

like the Corvette fits. And that's why we, we ended up going with that project and moving forward

on that one because I've already done an LT four. He's going to have an LT four. But yeah, so

you mentioned earlier, and now that Phil's here, I'd like to hear it.

What's the deal with the ride height on the C 10? You mentioned that there was something to talk

about on that. I need to stop talking. I'll listen to him. Just don't, just don't, just don't do it

on here. Like, okay, people don't forget because you can just listen to it again. But yeah, that

is what he said. Yeah, we were basically, I was blowing it up to go to the show. I had the front

dialed in perfectly. And you know, you got to drive them to get the shocks to settle. And

that's what ended up happening. I, it dropped three eighths of an inch or seven 16. It was seven

sixteenths on the right side. Yeah. So there's, I know you could tell. So there's no shot. It's

like, yes, I agree. It did. And this is the reason why if you, I would have rather you came, I would

rather you have come on here and been like, that's the stance it needed. I, I wanted it like that.

It was one of those things where it's like, I was at the show and Scott told me, he's like,

they're talking about your truck on the podcast. And he's like, go to this point. I was like,

damn it. I knew someone was literally, I was at the show and I could tell him like,

you just give it a little bit low in the back. And I'm like, I don't have the right spanner for

I'm like, did you try just giving it up and let it, I'm not that strong. That bed's heavy.

I got that. So I'll tell you, I was just sort of busting your balls a minute. I'm wildly impressed

with the truck, right? But I've been in that position before. And it reminds me of a funny

story. I forget the exact car. I think it was that the gray Mustang. We did same thing. We just

finished the car and way light on spring rate and put it in the trailer. And it was like

right off the jack stands down on the floor in the trailer, get it to the show. And I mean,

it is dumped. This is Seema, right? This had to be made might have been debuted because I stuck

magazines in the jounce bumpers. It wasn't in the mat. It was in, it was in their booth. Yes,

it was. Yeah. So we had the car that was in Eaton's booth. Oh, the charge. I mean,

it just just hammered in the back end, but it was an independent rear. So it had, you know,

jounce bumpers on the arms. And all we could find that was like right there at our disposal

was like, there was somebody at a stand of magazines. So we took them and we ripped big

chunks out of the magazines. And then a couple guys kind of got under the wheel openings and got

them. And I was underneath and I slid a bunch of them in between the jounce bumper and the

control arm just to support it. Yeah. Tits at the show. We'll see the pros. Yeah. I mean,

to your point, it's just it's nothing wrong with the truck. No, I wind the spanner. Someone's got

bust my balls every now and then. That's why we have between the three of us. It keeps you level

headed. You know, you need it and completely stressed out all the time. I noticed the show

will like when I was walking, I think we parked it Tuesday night or Monday night or whatever. Once

it got part top 40, I didn't notice outside because it was on a hill with a tree outside the

the hall. And when it was inside, I was walking up on that morning to just do a quick wipe down

detail. I was like, the back looks a little bit low. I was like, I hope no one notices. And when

Scott told me, I'm like, damn it. Sorry. No, you know, hey, I prefer it come from y'all than

you. You had a great answer on the how you would handle that situation to providing off more than

you could chew. You just said it's a secret of the pros. I don't know if they discuss in Roger

and Troy's class about stuffing magazines between the Jones bumpers, but if they don't, I'm sure

they touch on similar subjects about how you present yourself and putting your best foot

forward. And you only have one time to make a first impression. So see tie in taking a little

little bit of a of a turn here to mention because it's right around the corner, just

I think a couple of weeks away from now, February 20 through 21. We've been mentioned this the last

couple podcasts, the business development class that Roger at Ironworks puts on. I don't know if

you've ever done the class. If you haven't, I strongly suggest you do. It's a lot of good advice

and a lot of great in depth conversations with other shops, similar shops and other shops in

different in different sizes and how everybody's dealing with running the business side of things.

Right. Something's everybody always like whenever we get around and talking, everyone's so

self conscious about talking about the business side. So it's like, yeah, so what'd you do with

it? So would you? How do you guys, how do you guys bill for? Yeah, you got grinding. Just charge

for it. We charge whatever it costs and charge all of it, you know, and billing's fine. No problem.

Financials are all what they need to be, you know, and 100% profits and yeah. Yeah. I mean,

right now I'm working on trying to get a, I got a couple, I mean, obviously my mentors and stuff,

Jonathan and Will have been guiding me on this as well as KTL. And so I'm kind of trying to develop

a system. I'm going to try it on the Corvette, but basically I got a stock room that I'm going

to basically have. It's going to have a lot of stuff. And so I'll basically anytime I pull

stuff out, it'll get signed off on that way. I know what to account for and stuff like that.

And just try that. There's, I know there's tons of different ways. Some people do percentages.

Some people do every single disc and stuff like that. And so one thought I had was I was going to

keep a box next to the, to the vehicle, anything I'm done using, put it in the box that we know,

use it, stuff like that. So, but starting out, I'm only doing two projects at a time until I get

a good year under my belt, get a good system going. And then from there, because I got a couple guys

that probably will get on if things take off that I feel comfortable pulling on. And so

it's going to be a baby step kind of thing initially because we run quick books and accounting and we

got, we're learning the system. And so once we have that system in place, then we'll take that next

up and, you know, get from there. That sounds great. I think that's kind of where I guess I was

initially going, not looking for specifics and how you were doing anything. I think the,

that Roger and Troy have done a great job kind of opening that conversation up to the industry.

Absolutely. And it's an area that most guys don't really want to talk about. It's not like the cool

flashy, you know, what color do you use? Who do you use to chrome this? How do you machine that?

But that's kind of what keeps the lights on. And that's the important part about the end of the

day. So just getting around with all the other guys, you can kind of bounce, you know, best practices

off of 15, 20 other shops, what's worked for them, what hasn't, where they've gotten burned,

where they've seen success. And I think that just really builds the industry absolutely better.

Yeah. A lot of great guys and a lot of great conversation, a lot of great shops there. It's

coming up again, February 20th through 22nd, right there at Mohama, Illinois at BBT Fab Shop.

Go to ironworksspeedandcustom.com, custom with a K right there at the top, the business development

class. I, as I'm thinking about this, you know, I think you really need to go. I wonder if we

should do this year. This is the new year, right? New season, new year, new me. Fuck, I hope it's a

new year. Yeah. I don't know what, I don't know what, I haven't decided what 2026 is going to hold

you back and me up, bringing some heat. Yeah. We've all told him's getting a lot like it's,

it is, it's going to be too much, but I'm getting older and just now it's just older me.

Is this thing with the hat and shit? So this is 2026. Is this going to be a thing or is this just

tonight? This is my first and last episode of 2026. It's got, I mean, I'll give it,

it's got a little over the top vibe, like it feels like it's got a little like you turn that

around. It's like a switch going off. It's got that kind of look to it. I haven't decided what

2026 is going to be. You know, we've had, you know, 2023 and then 2025 was 2023 revised, right?

Because we didn't perform. Right. We had to bring 2023 was the year of letting people know. Right.

2023 went hard. Everything you thought in your mind, you said the quiet part out loud.

If somebody was done something stupid, you called it out. You owed it to the greater good of the

public to make sure that somebody doing something stupid, you let them know how stupid it was.

2023, I think we've made great traction doing that through 2023. We pulled off on it in 2024.

It's hard to stick with. And we had to get back. We had to get back hard into 2025.

However, it's 2026. I'm wondering back to, you know, what would be good? We needed

possibly do an oil and whiskey like scholarship for the business development class. We need to

find the person that should go. You know, okay. You want to sponsor somebody and put them in the

class. Yeah. It could be a good thing. That's interesting. It's an idea. It is. It's an idea.

We have to do it, but it's an idea. As a whole, though, like with you, what do you think?

Pivot back. I don't know. I haven't decided yet. It's new. There's nothing new yet, like in the

works. A couple of things I'm thinking about. I haven't committed to doing them yet, but a

couple of things I'm thinking about. Give me a little teaser. The turtlenecks are not a good

idea. I'm just going to throw that out there. Give me a teaser. I'm still in the fence on the

turtlenecks. The jury is still out. Mixed emotions on the turtlenecks. Give you a teaser. Yeah.

No, I'm not going to because you're going to hold me to it. And I don't know if I'm for sure

going to do it or not. Non hooded sweatshirts. No, that's just crew necks. Only my son and

serial killers works crew necks. It's all one thing. He should get the wireless. That's for

all of us. We're doing like the football players college that get your logo on the side of them.

Yeah, we're doing logos on. We're doing new headphones. We're going to find some Ripper

ass headphones. I think that's a brand Ripper ass headphones and new and logos on the sides.

Long ass wires is out. Well, we kind of forgot he brought he asked us how long we've been doing

this and it's been a long time. Yeah. Four years. Four years. Treat yourself. And we sort of

realized I mean, this is the start of the fifth year, buddy. The first year we were slumming a

little bit before we built the studio. But I think coming into year five, we need to we need

some upgrades. Headphones. Maybe that's one of them. Maybe some chairs. We do like the Viper

chair sit when we brought the Viper chairs in and sat in them. I liked the seating position.

The high in highness. Well, you can bring them up, bring them down. You know, those were too

high. But the regular height, I didn't sit a regular height. I said it a high to a high one.

Well, let's see. Maybe maybe Viper chairs for the maybe it's maybe the time for change up.

They do swivel. He also gets you probably you know what it probably do gets you up. Get

you up like this. It does. It gets gets the sofa guy straightened in that voice. Is that multiple

esophaguses? Yeah, all of our esophaguses. That's something something to think about on the

on the on the. Let's think about some upgrade. Give it maybe some ideas that might be nice

for somebody to kind of jump on. Careful if you ask. Well, hit the comments section. Some

upgrades, some podcast studio upgrades. What would make this a more pleasant? We know no personal

attacks, right? Well, because I know what's coming. You can you can put those in because

we'll delete. We'll delete them if they're too harsh, right? All right. So what so we're asking

right now where this is this is a call to action for everybody to leave your comments now on what

upgrades to the podcast to the podcast studio or things that we needed to venture into. Josh's

wardrobe is an option like we could upgrade. We can upgrade or we could downgrade. I just wear

dark t-shirts. That's all I've ever wore on this. Maybe a few times a long sleep. Right. Well,

we're looking for ideas. More Katana. So it's yeah, it's do you want to see something in the

background? Yeah, let's you know it is only going to be Josh and Jeremy fight. That's all

anybody's going to want to see. That's going to be the number one comment. Paper view, make enough

money. Giving this shit away. All right, rolling into the next thing. So get the shop rolling.

You've got customer does what's parents think about the whole situation? Were they at Seema?

Yes. So my dad has been going with me since 2021. I'm an ambassador for BASF. And so I worked their

booth and 22 and 23 didn't go last year. But he's always been out there with me. My mom never

went out there before. And so she's used to seeing a lot of the local car show stuff, which is great.

But my dad understands it. I want her to see firsthand kind of like what,

you know, while the work I put in the truck for, you know, because this isn't a local car show

car. And so I'm trying to attract this next clientele. Don't be that guy that takes it to

local car shows either. No, because that's no, no, yeah, we'll take other stuff, but not that one.

But, you know, I want to bring it just don't try to enter. No, it's like that's like Ron going

back with the super rolling to like high school football games. You're like, oh, yeah, I remember

I used to throw around the pig skin a few times. But yeah, my mom ended up going, I want her to go

and see it and, you know, be there if the truck did well, which it did. And so I want her just to

be a part of it and see the cars that my goal was to compete against and see the level because

that was the whole goal as far as my career going is that's the level I need to get to

ultimately to make this a viable business. And so my business goal and the way that we're

financially set up is primarily to do full builds. I don't really like getting into doing

partial stuff just because you got other guys that might have worked on it and you're dealing with

that and then budgets kind of might come into play. And so I'm going to try to stick to doing

full builds and then we're doing a lot of chassis stuff that's going to be kind of taking shape

in the background and doing chassis builds, getting people set up on chassis with motors,

drive trains, basically the whole thing rolling on Guna wheels and then with drive train power

code, hold on yards. So that's kind of something that, you know, if that takes off, I can get a

student come over, I can mentor them on how that would work. And then that would be an easy way

for me to get that going gets on in there. Who would you even reach out to on like chassis wise?

I don't know. I mean, while there's like so many options out there. No, I think I know the options

only one good option. You put me in a corner on this one. That's kind of the point you see

those white bright lights. I think I know we've I know y'all have talked about it in the past with

other guys and stuff on the shows. I think the end one of my clients was talking about it last

month was basically the only two chassis I really recognize in this industry and they both have their

places Roadster shop in Morrison. So like on the truck, we ended up going with Morrison just because

the show aspect we knew it was gonna be a show car and just for that we ended up going with them.

But like, you know, I was telling my dad, if I do another 67 fastback and I'm gonna channel the

car, I'm gonna do floorboards and all that. It makes sense to use a Roadster shop spec chassis,

cut the car well into the frame and build floors like it's just better set up fast track chassis.

Yeah, fast spec be both spec will be both just for the listeners. So that's kind of the whole

like it just depends on the built to like some chassis yours are going to be quicker than Morrison.

And then it just it all depends on I could not agree more. It all depends on the build.

You want to do a good build? You wrote your shop chassis. I mean, if you don't, you use something

else. That's that that's the that's the I mean, honestly, that's dude, you knew you were walking

into the gauntlet coming on. Hey, you've already busted you've listened to enough of these. Did

you think this was going to be like easy? Yeah, now following up on the hard questions. Not so hard.

I mean, it's an easy for most of the industry to understand.

You seem like an honest guy. You've answered questions, honestly. I need to know.

I had to reach out via text to a couple of people prior to this party. Yeah. Did you have any idea

that something was going down at this party? No, so I was with Crystal and Kurt at

where were we at? We're at some we're at the sports book inside of Westgate hanging out.

And they're like, Hey, have you heard of this roaster shop party? I'm like,

heard of that one ago. I didn't have a ticket because I know they sold out like immediately.

And so Crystal and Kurt are like, why don't you just come with us? You can stay with us.

My mom and dad, we're going to stay with some friends that we had drive out there to see the

truck and stuff. And so they went to dinner with them. And I was like, all right, I'll catch

y'all at the show. And so I went to the roaster shop party. Absolutely freaking crazy. So you had

no idea something was going on. All right, good. I just wanted to make sure it was it was cool.

Well, I was I wanted to make sure all of us wanted to make sure you were there for a hot

minute trying to find me. Yeah, I was like, I was told he was here. But we wanted to make

sure that you were there. We'd already touched on at the beginning of the episode that we went

by and looked at the truck. It was an instant no brainer. Hell yeah. This is the pick done handled

then wanted to make sure that you were going to be there. But at the same time, it's very

difficult to be like, Hey, dude, like you really, really, really need to be at the. So definitely

come and then sort of towards the front. Yeah. So I was able to send a couple of texts and make

sure but I wanted to make sure that it wasn't you weren't tipped off. And then at the same time,

I was like, Oh, shit, he might be at the Morrison party. But then quickly, I was like, Oh, that's

right. They don't do a party. So I knew that you had to come to this party. He wasn't at the Morrison

party or something. No, they didn't do they don't do a party. Got it. But he's heard of the Roadster

Shop Party. Okay. And yet also got a pretty ripper badass award too. It's a fun, fun. Yeah,

I've never been before. And I had always seen post leading up to it because like every year I

go out there, I'm, I'm, you know, like I said early on, I'm all about focused on work,

meaning people mean that next company I need to work with and trying to represent, you know,

because BASF helped me get out there. And so I'm trying to make sure I'm doing my part,

helping set up the booth, tear down, et cetera, and stuff like that. And so, you know,

almost all the time when I'm out there, it's all about working. This is the first year that was

kind of like, you know, try to enjoy the moment, but also it was about work. But so you had no idea

what to expect. I've just seen pictures. I was like, I, when I walked in, I was like, this is,

and everyone's there. Everyone in the industry is there, which is great. I mean, you had ring

brothers and, um, Georgia paying it, they're all sitting in just those booths. I mean,

and everyone's having a good time. And so that's like,

something to think about when you start doing those, those chassis builds.

But I mean, it's just, hey, if it's wavy, what do you do?

He's throttled down.

Right. Yeah.

I've learned that.

Yeah, you sort of work the throttle.

Yeah, you back off a little bit.

But you've got to get over the wave, right?

Yeah, you're more of like that, uh,

Yeah, you said 24 foot by.

He's more of the last one.

All the way down.

Oh, that's not the way to do it.

That's the

way to do it.

It's a way to do it.

Yeah.

No, I mean, it was, it was really eye-opening for me because like I told you initially on,

like a lot of people when I was trying to get mine, you know, just trying to get started

where to go, how to learn the stuff, it was very secretive and kept to yourself kind of thing.

And after seeing that last night, it's like, this is the group of people I need to be hanging out with.

Like this is, this was about everyone in that room was talking to each other,

having a good time with each other. It wasn't, you know,

having egos and everything. It wasn't there.

And that, and my dad, he's like I told you earlier on, he, he's worked in a distillery

business. So he works with a lot of the, uh, bourbon companies throughout Kentucky,

just throughout the Eastern United States.

And so he sells all the packaging equipment and it's a very cutthroat.

And so when he was out there and cause he's one, he's, and I'll have a story about that later.

But, um, he's been one of the most supportive, um, and when he saw that, or when I explained that

to him and he saw the pictures from the party and everything else, he's like, this is a complete

different industry than what I'm used to. And that also helped affirm my parents that I can

build a career in this industry just because of that. Cause you got people who are there

willing to talk to you. If you got questions about business, you know, probably nine times out

of 10, you can get that question answered and they're not going to be, you know, holding you

to a grudge or what, you know, some stupid bull crap. So no, no bullshit. I know we've been

giving you, uh, you know, some, some shit that quite frankly could be one of the, the best

unknowingly you didn't, the best compliments or the best thing that you could have ever said

was you go into that party and your dad, knowing his industry, saying this is completely

different than what he's used to, you're the takeaway of like, man, they're not doing these

gatekeeping things, not secretive. Everybody's talking to you because that, forget all the other

bullshit. 100% that was the point. I still remember the very first time the conversation

got started about why we were going to do what we were doing. And it was specifically for that

reason. It was specifically for that reason. That was 2017. And there's never been anything

like it. The things, I mean, there's another gathering at SEMA where everybody in the industry

used to always be and some of them still are. And when you go in there, it's like, dude,

you're self conscious. You walk in, it's like groups of people sitting at tables and everybody's

sort of looking at each other and there's animosity and it's like, everybody's got their

guard up. And I can remember just like even trying to find a place to sit and click, click. It felt

uncomfortable. And it's supposed to be like, dude, we have some cool people in the industry.

We're all in one big click. Not a bunch of different ones.

And the reality is it's more like artists. Everybody has their own way of expressing

themselves and the type of car they build. And you're not in competition. You've got your

signature, your trademark. People are going to go to you for a reason. People go to Troy for a

reason. People go to the Ring Brothers for a reason. People go to each and every builder

for a particular reason. And every single one of those people that have those reasons,

those shops, the people are coming, all of them, more people are coming to them than they can

build anyway. So there's always enough for everybody. Yeah. And that's my next point. It's

like there's so much work to go around. I'm slowly starting to learn that, but it's like

going back to what you said, each builder has their niche. And when you brought it up with

Kendig, I think it was Kendig or I don't know who else it would have been on the podcast that

you did. But basically, it's like, you know, each of them has their own thing and you're not going

to like take a job out of them just because it's like you get a better price. I think if you get,

if you got people asking about price and stuff, that's just someone, you know, they're trying to

use you maybe at that point. Maybe I don't know if that's what I'm trying to say. But it's like

each builder has their own niche. And if a client sees that in the builder, they're going to go to

them for that reason. That's, you know, they find something and what you build that they relate

to. Yeah, you have a brand. I think I have a core value with it. Exactly. Yeah. And at the end of the

day, too, you mentioned it, talking about like guys being more subcontractors. When you really

look at this group of people, like they're all they're all guys that build cars, but we all work

together. Right. You can look and, you know, I'll probably miss a name here. But I mean, think about

it, right? We build a car, you've got greening auto company wheels, and he's machined some other

parts. He builds cars. Yeah. Ghouls be painted it for us. You've got Ring Brothers hinges and a

Rad Rides column or a booster assembly. BBT mirrors. BBT mirrors and like Johnson's radiators.

Kindig handles. Johnson's ready. And it just keeps going. Like you, you want to surround

yourselves. You've narrowed it down to the right people. And you've got products that work and

people that stand behind them. Yep. And it is an absolute just think about that. Think about that

party and do like a map, right? Of all of the people, everybody, not just companies, every

single person that was there, right? And then do like the criminal like yarns, spaghettis.

Because there is some criminal in there. But of all, all the money and services exchanged

between the right thing. Think about that. Like it's basically just a red ball.

And like how many people touched it? I mean, just I mean, the services back and forth all

different ways. And, and again, to that, that was, that was the point to

one, it's kind of like that. Hey, everybody's, everybody's, but they're best foot forward.

Everybody kicked ass to get to SEMA. Everybody's worked their ass off at SEMA. Yep. Now,

relax, put the guard down. Everybody can work together. Let's have fucking fun. Let's party,

right? And it's amazing the conversations that you can have there, even first time

meeting somebody, you know, a newer builder or something like that. And then even as much

drinking as everybody does, like you remember those, oh, yeah, you're so-and-so, so-and-so,

we had this great conversation, blah, blah. But the amount, I mean, you're talking about

different companies. I mean, Sanders on the brake line clamps, like just every, I think that the,

our niche of the industry, right? In the automotive aftermarket, traditionally,

you know, custom hot rods, trucks, muscle cars, this side of things, right, is healthier, specifically

because of lowering those clicks, dropping those things and everybody working together and

lowering the guard, working together, having honest conversations, regardless, even if it's

sometimes you're like, hey, dude, what the fuck? And then because you're friends, you can get to

the bottom of whatever's going on, help out, solve a problem, take care of, do whatever. At the end

of the day, the industry is better off for it than the customer also benefits from it.

Yes. Because then, how many times any customer that comes in here and any customer that goes

into any of these shops that we're talking about, your shop included, you got, hey, so-and-so, man,

it would be great. Do you think we could use so-and-so, so-and-so? How cool is it to be like,

I got a guy? I got, oh, let me text him. I got the guy. Think about the relationships that you've

built and all of these other builds that you can be like, oh. That's, yeah. As he said, like, I'm

doing a Corvette. I'm like, yeah, you got to get with them and give them the rundown on primers and

materials, do you use to? It's, you got a guy. Sort of building network. You build a network,

you got the inside scoop, and then even, I mean, there's, there's, we see it even today. Builders,

I mean, shop, customers will come in and they'll start naming stuff and be like, oh, man, you

know, I was looking at like maybe doing like HRE wheels or something like that. Oh, no problem.

I got a guy. We got a guy. Yeah. I got the guy, you know, and it's, and you, and you always have

those, the guys, right? And I think it's, it's such a different experience. Yeah, it is. And I think

just with anyone who's getting into the industry, people who are similar my age and stuff, it's,

you have to build those connections. And it's not all about going back to the thing earlier. It's

not all about ego and what you can do. And like, if you're going to build a car and you're going

to machine every part on the car and et cetera, it's like, you can, but like, it's more fun to

bring other people into it because everyone works together. And that's, that's what I've learned.

Like real quick when I started, I mean, it was really at SEMA with the Shelby was when I learned

that it's a lot more connected than I thought. And that was when it was eyeopening for me is

seeing that because everyone was talking each other. And I just had a lot of different experiences

while I was building the Shelby with different people and it was, you know, holding back secrets.

And I'm trying to learn stuff and firsthand. And so when I saw that, I was like, this is

completely different. And so I think for me, getting to this level so quick, it was because

of those contacts that I had made and fostered. But also, like before I even built the truck,

I had a proposal, I had a five page proposal that sent these companies. I'm like, this is the goal

with the truck. This is where I want to do with my business and my career. And I would love to work

with you on the truck. And that's how I networked with a lot of the companies a being at SEMA and

being able to talk to them face to face. And then sending them that follow up email and being like,

hey, this is the truck I want to do. Would you want to work with me? And that was, you know,

it took off from there. But yeah, a lot of it's just been me working with other people. And,

you know, like there's no ego to hold because at the end of the day, I mean,

I just don't understand why people would be so secretive about stuff. I mean, it's like,

what are you going to do with that? I mean, it's just going to be stress and you're not going to

have any friends in your life. Unless you're a fucking asshole. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like that is

one. Yeah. In this industry, everybody, it's, I mean, I love it. I love the camaraderie and

like I want to see you succeed. And if there's something that I know that I've failed at and

I've figured out that will save you a tremendous amount of headache or or propel you, you know,

I will gladly share it with you. Yeah. And at the end of the day, you look at that C 10 and you

don't know, I mean, sure, you see, it's your name on it. But the amount of people that you sort of

bring into that project, you didn't need to machine the hood hinges and design them scratch. Yeah.

Right. That would have done absolutely nothing for your name and your image. Exactly. Except the

truck wouldn't have been finished in that SEMA. Yeah. Because that simple thing, if you had

that big of an ego that you're like, I'm making everything. Yeah, you gotta figure out geometry

and I mean, the strength of aluminum and I mean, it's just because that customer

is not paying for nor is he benefiting from your ego. Yeah. Because he's only going to benefit

from your openness, your quality and design and your honesty to give him the best product. And

if you know that buying some XYZ from company ABC is the absolute best way to give him the best

experience for that car, then that's what you're supposed to do. I mean, he's in trust in you with

his money and so you're responsible making those calls and that ultimately falls upon your shoulders.

So you gotta, it's like exactly what you said. It's like, you could have $10,000 or more design

and machine and probably more than that. Or you could buy Ring Brothers who they literally

specialized on that. They got the engineering down. You know the things that you've worked with it for.

You've got a process. You've got a relationship with those people and that cuts both ways for

any customers out there listening. Somebody's like, I really want to use so and so and so and

so and the builder says, I don't want to use that. We've had problems with that in the past.

I want to use so and so and so and so. They're telling you because they know, right? They've got

your best interest at heart when you're like, Hey, you know what? Don't worry about the motor.

I got a buddy of mine has built it. I'm gonna bring that in when they say,

that's probably gonna be problems because we've lost untold hundreds of thousands of dollars on

the previous three builds. When somebody's brought there, it goes both ways. When the when the customer

is respecting or trusting you, the builder needs to make sure that they live up to their

end of the bargain. And the when the builder says, Hey, this and they get pushed back from

the owner says this, the builders steering you in a different direction. If you got that trust

level, it's it's coming from a place where we always talked about it. You get it's got to hurt

to learn, right? Yeah, it's got to remember it. You remember it when it comes. So if the guy's

like, No, dude, I'm telling you never again, I've had if they're saying never again, because it was

such a painful experience, they've learned. Yeah. So don't make them go through that again. Yeah,

you know, you got to learn though. Sometimes you do have to learn. You do have to learn.

Young shop starting out like that's one of the biggest things that we dealt with at the beginning

was the customer wanted this motor or this radiator or this fan because he saw it in a magazine.

Doesn't mean they all work together. Right. Yeah. Or they might not be a good piece to begin with.

So but if it's your first pay and build, sometimes you don't know everything. Yeah. Well,

sometimes you don't know that the part's not good. Yeah. Sometimes you do know, but you may,

you don't have enough experience to say that, yeah, or stand up to the customer.

We learned a lot, you know, in the very beginning and now it's at the point where it's like, you

get no options when it comes to mechanical components that we know work in every single car.

We're doing proven stuff. Yeah. You got to have that track record, I guess, to get there. Yeah,

it's difficult. But what products would you say you learn the hardest on? I appreciate it. I'm trying

to think. Radiators. I was about to say, probably I heard on another podcast where

radiators have always been touching go, which podcast was this one? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we

I think y'all asked at one point that was one place about a hundred percent of a certain

manufacturers radiators. Make sure you ground your radiators to ground. Yeah, it's there's

a new solution out there. Ground them. Yeah, we're not going to talk about it because he paid for it,

but I'm just kidding. We've been using a lot of Allen stuff, which is like, look,

there's a place for an aluminum radiator, right? There will always be. But Johnson's radiators,

and we've we've used a couple of them now. I got another one coming in for a new pretty high end

project. And it it sort of takes the stress of worrying about when that aluminum radiator is

going to crack. It could because it's it's not a matter of if it's when you know what I think is

really funny. What's that? Just it's just dawned on me and not to give Alan a huge plug, right?

But listen, this is I think you're going to enjoy this. I'll make it. I was giving

like a good plug and now you're going to walk that back. No, I'm not walking it back. What I

think is interesting specifically about the dynamic of you and Alan, right? Neither will speak to

anybody. Well, no, let's listen to Alan. Alan has traditionally been a very traditional guy.

Traditionally, traditionally, traditionally, traditional, right? Alan's done the things

the way he's done. Very traditional, inspired, great style. Alan delves off into some newer

technology every now and then, right? But that Alan's gonna at least style it. So Alan's kind of

stuck in his ways is a bad thing to say. But let's just say Alan's a little more stuck in his ways.

You, however, are generally not, right? If it's the newest, you know,

bollowax coming down the throat, it like, absolutely, let's try it, right? Perpetual,

you know, motion, try it. Flying cars, try it. Absolutely. Let's push. Not a negative. I'm just

saying it. Pushing, pushing, pushing. When it's you and Alan talking, Alan's like, they're even

go, right? You don't have to do this, this and this. You can go smaller. That's like stuff.

You're like, we've always used, we've always used those aluminum, make it bigger. I just

do one area where we sort of don't, we don't see it. I'm like, you make it bigger. It's

so funny where he's like, no, you got to understand this is going to do this. And it's,

hey, I'm an old school guy, though. I want a bigger aluminum rating. It's so funny to watch

two people that are on exact opposite ends of where they normally are. We'll get there.

Y'all are going to get there. I want to say one thing about the roaster shop,

before we get too far away from it. But I think with my experience being there with,

I mean, you had Bryce and Tyler from Adams Brothers there. You had a lot of the other young

guys there. I think if it's something doable, I think it'd be cool to offer maybe five spots to

up and coming young guys maybe on social media, just to get them the exposure to get there.

If they're, if you see that they're very hard after, I think that could do a lot.

You don't get there where it seems like just to get to the party show or what, you know,

and which I know that might be hard just being at the party versus the SEMA show. But it's just

a thought. That's something I thought about while I was there is like, what if there's

a couple other young guys out there that are, you know, if they're busting their ass and you see

that, it's like, you know, I think that could just open their eyes to like the fact that everyone's

working together, you know, that kind of aspect of it. I like that a lot. And we could even do it

as like when we set that up, we usually start picking like, you've got X amount of boots and

tables and things that kind of be nice because I think you'd find that a lot of the builders would

sort of migrate that way and want to. I'm going to tell you what, Adams Brothers don't get no

young guns treatment no more. They're full blown pro builders, right? You, you bring that many cars

and think, guess what? Sorry, now you're with us. Like, so you're gonna compete with us. No more

young guns. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't see any other elves in their shop when I went down there after

Dino's. It's freaking impressive. Yeah, that's just them. They, uh, there's no secret recipe. It's just

busting hard work. Bust ass. I mean, they're talented. Roadster shop chassis. Yeah. Bust ass.

Yeah. Just a hundred percent. Yes, I love what you did there. Hard working dudes. No secret. Sure.

Hardly great family. You know, I think that's, they are, that's the secret. And you know,

talking to you, I haven't met your parents, but it sounds like, you know, you've got a great

relationship. They're very supportive of you. You got a lot of these younger guys that have some

great mentors, great families and it's important. Yeah. It's sort of always one or the other. I

feel like it's either the family life is so poor and somebody's got such a, I don't know, drive or

determination to get out, break out from that. Yeah. Or you have so much support and such a great

mentor that they sort of bring you up. Yeah. I don't, there's nothing in between. No, no. It's

one or the other. I mean, we've talked about this a last, the last several podcasts and maybe,

I mean, because we just, maybe that speaks to the volume of what we're talking about. But

SEMA really opened our eyes. We all had the same takeaway. A lot of guests that we've

tied on since then. I don't know of another time, you know, I've been going to SEMA since 2000.

So whatever that math is, 25 years. Yeah. But what I'm saying is, is in this industry,

I don't, I cannot remember a time when it's been this positively robust on mass at scale.

This many builders at this high of quality, at this amount of positivity, it's never happened.

When we were coming up, there was zero. None of that. And like, if, you know, Boyd Cottington

walked by and looked at you and grunted, you're like, Oh shit, I talked to Boyd, like,

she were going to have another interaction with him. No, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's,

it's, Troy did come by a couple of times and that was pretty fucking awesome to shake his hand

and have him call out a car that we built. But yeah, I think, I don't know, maybe it's not just

none of us had that. So now you have a little bit of that paternal instinct and trying to grow

the industry and help it move forward. Yeah. I don't, regardless of the, of why

I just know it is and it's a, well, I mean, now you got such a good, like, I mean,

looking back at now, like everyone that's in the industry right now, including y'all,

ring brothers, you know, Will, Big Oat, Jonathan,

they're maybe two thirds of the way through their career, you know, and I think, and

Jonathan met the point for the rings. Well, Jonathan's way

Jonathan looks like he's like 17. He's like in his fifties. Yeah, he's 50. He's 50 or 51. Yeah,

he's old. Yeah. But I think he got, he got another third left. I don't know.

You never know with him, but I know his diet. I'm telling you,

Red Bull is sugar in the veins, man. That's got to petrify at some point.

I think there's such a good group of guys just out there

on, you know, I guess in the industry right now that people like us and the Adams brothers,

Michaels and, you know, all these other young guys we can look to. And we got people that we

can kind of go to. And I think that's, I mean, that's, that's a big part of it because it's like

once, you know, once those shops either get handed over to their, their kids or if they even have

interest in taking it over, then it's going to shift from there to there. But you got all

that experience that's in them that you need to learn from. I think you're right. And I do

appreciate the humbleness in the giving that credit to the people that are giving you the

information. But you and all of these other young guns, right? Adams, Stafford, Logan,

Logan, right, all of these other guys that we've talked about. No, but as far as business wise,

right, newer to the industry, right? You guys bear a lot of the responsibility because you're

willing to interact. You're willing to ask the questions and you're willing to learn and you're

willing to take advice and you're also willing to just be fucking normal and not be an asshole about

it. And not honestly, that there is coming out the right way. That one's very comfortable and

appreciative and it's so it's a two way street just just because somebody's willing to give the

information. These same people that are so willing to give the information, right and help out

would not be so willing if. Yeah, if you're an asshole. If you're an asshole about it,

right? Because it's been that way before. Well, you're right. And there's two ways of doing like

that truck right there. I mean, there's no ifs ands or buts about it. It's better than a lot of

things that are out there. So you there's two approaches with debut and that it's either you

could walk in like Connor fucking McGregor and be like, fuck you, you old fuckers. There's a new

sheriff in town, right? What? Josh, whatever. Yeah. Or there's the like, dude, you walked in

and you let the truck speak for itself. I remember you introducing yourself to me and I want to say

it was the Columbus and then again, I talked to it. I think the triple, triple crowd. Yeah. And

just like, dude, I remember it because you were very respectful. I'm like, this is a young guy

that's definitely got a lot going for him and is going to do something here. And you know, whether

I don't know if I offered up you up any advice or if you're like probably not good stuff, but

you've approached it the right way, I guess is what I'm getting at. And I think that's that's why

things are progressing well with the younger builders is you've got more talent, very talented

young guys that are very respectful and sort of letting the car speak for themselves. And

yeah, I mean, they're just you guys are leapfrog and you're going to there.

Yeah, it's a balancing act between like letting the car speak for itself and then also just like,

you know, you got Instagram now. That's the like when I was doing the Shelby, I didn't really have

a big presence on there. Second, I started doing this truck. I learned like I'm going to hit that

hard. And so I've been like, I do all my own Instagram, social media stuff, Instagram, Facebook,

all that. And so, you know, you're trying not to boost your ego by posting certain things because

it's a give and draw kind of thing because it's like I want my work to just speak for itself

because I'm still learning. I'm not at Jonathan's level or Will's level. And so the work I'm going

to do my best and I'm going to put my best foot forward and I'm going to let the work speak for

itself and I'm going to get advice or compliments from that and then I'm going to learn from it.

But like on Instagram and stuff, you're like primarily, I kind of just like to post pictures

of what I'm doing, put a little description. So like, this is how I did this and that. I'm not

really like, Hey, check this out. It's better than blah, blah. That's, you know, I've kind of learned

like just let the, let your work speak. Do your best. Do the truck. You're, you're at way more

people's level than you think. I promise you that based on that truck. Is that the tough one

most guys that I think have your, I don't know, stature maybe miss the mark that you're too scared

to put it out there. Like you have to promote yourself and you have to get the truck out there.

But you may be like thinking that it's coming off as too arrogant or cocky, but doing it the

right way. I think it's just going to be phenomenal for your business and the growth. So yeah,

you're building, you're building the brand, you're building a brand, you're building a business,

like put it out there. You should not feel guilty about that at all. The thing I would say,

the thing that bugs me is the emotionally driven posts and comments. Like, dude, it's a business.

Steer clear. Oh, yeah. Shit. Like the amount of things of like, yeah, you worked a ton of hours.

You worked on like, you don't need the thing about like the sacrifices I've made and like,

like my blood is just dripping down my hands. This, you know, my soul is just bleeding out of

my like, dude, who gives a shit? Everybody's working hard. Put the car out there. Build the

brand, build your business, leave the fucking drama and emotion out of it. Sure. How you built

that bumper and the splitter and this in process, right? Yeah. And I'm mainly doing that too. Just

for like, I got something. I got something good. I'm mainly also doing that too. Just for other

young guys. Cause like when I was doing the, well, when I was doing the truck too, like I

didn't really have anything to go by. Tavis did the rendering on the truck. And so other than that,

you know, I was completely blind trying to figure out how to do stuff. And so like,

I try to post some stuff to try and show that to the other people out there, like young guns who

might be trying to do something similar to me. It's like now they got something to look at,

you know, I'm trying to leave somewhat of a path maybe for someone else to follow. So

and you should post the hell out of what you're doing, pump your business, pump you,

pump the hell out of it. You build a brand. Yeah. We, uh, look, little, uh,

little expanding upon a topic, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's what that's what we do. This is what we do.

Just hold on and go for the ride. All right. This is, uh, we talked about all the great

business advice that, uh, Roger at Ironworks and George from BBT give, right? They charge for that

and well worth it. You're about to give something free. Better for your, better for your business

than this is. However, once you go through their class and you want to know some real shit,

listen to this right here, right? This is, this is the top five things. This is going to be priceless.

I'm sure you are charming in. Okay. Maybe this is, this is the top five things that you do not

want to see on a, all right. I know exactly where you're going. Let me phrase, let me phrase this

correctly for everybody to have the, the proper plausible deniability, right? So this is the things

that Josh Henning doesn't want to see on anybody's Instagram, regardless. However, prefaced the things

that you shouldn't see on any businesses, Instagram pages, specifically in this thing,

in order, it's going to be like family feud. This is going to be like family food.

Yeah. Is this a question? So number, I know exactly. I know one of them. No, number one in no,

in no order, right? You want me to say it? Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Is this me saying what

I'm thinking or me saying what I know is Josh is number one. You, you go ahead and pick my number

one. Your kids. Yeah. Nobody wants to see your kids. It's number one toddlers or infants on your

company, Instagram page. Yeah. No point in it. And I'm not saying that because I'm a good person.

And I love my kid. I love your kids. No, I love kids. I'm going to print. There's,

this is for, uh, I forget his name right now. Great listener from Canada that I give a lot of

shit because he had a lot of kids, a lot of pictures of his kids on there and he always

comments. I think he's, he's, yeah. No, again, it's not, it's not ever, that's not my

it's not ever, but if you go to your tiles and it's heavier on the kids than, than any other

things, that's a little, it's a little too much, right? On a business page, right? So that's number

one. Uh, there's places that your wife can post your kids on Facebook. All she wants to holiday

cards. Yeah. All those things. If I follow, if I gave you the follow for a reason, because you

sent a cool picture of something, I'm expecting more similar of that. I promise you, I didn't

follow you because of your kids, right? There's never time, been a time I've seen a picture of

kids like, man, that's cool. I'm into that. Let me follow that guy. Cool. No, but if I followed

you because you built a cool knife or you did something like that and then you flood me with

pictures of your kids, that's a unfollow. Anyway, so that's number one. Number two.

How many pictures of your kids do you have? He ain't got no kids.

Yeah. Well, he ain't even got a girlfriend yet. We've, we've already, we've already put him through

the initiation gauntlet. He's in the safe zone here, I think. So number two, tell me if I'm wrong.

Number two. No injury or hospital pictures.

Right? We all get fucked up at some point. Something always happens. But the thing is,

it's always framed in a like. A woe is me. And it's like, oh, is that it? Oh, it's his leg. And

then it's a, it's a tile of like, okay, yeah, you got IVs hooked up to you. And then it's

generally followed with what I consider the number three worst way is when it's,

when it's a paragraph, when you have to scroll and it's just words, blah, blah. And you've

taken that. That's too much. Okay. Way too much. That's the top because it goes to your emotional

like. Yep. So we're, we're in line on that one. Right. But isn't, am I, am I wrong about the

fucking hospital? And I broke this and I cut this inside that unless it's like a cool story.

If it's a story, a cool one. Yeah. Like if it's a fabricator and they're like thumbs gone. Yeah.

Yeah. Like Travis Pastrana, like that's cool. Like, dude, look at, I just broke the shit out of

everything. My hips used to be where my hips, my hips are where my shoulders are. Like that's,

yeah, you're, oh, yeah. Yeah. Or yeah, like you said, like, I felt like, uh, cut off disc,

just cut half my head off. Yeah. But because when you're still working, when you're scrolling

through and you're like, bad ass shit, cool fabricating, this is awesome. This is awesome.

Oh fuck. It cut his thumb off. Wow. The dude, the guy that the 50 cal backfired and went through

his neck and he like, yeah, dude, you're bad at, you tied that shit off and you sort of walked it

off like and I don't want to hit. I guess we should preference this. Okay. Pretty cool.

Massive injury doing something cool gets, gets an okay. I'm not saying I love it,

but it gets an okay. But the turns out I got an infection. It's good. Turns out you got a

one less follower. That's what you got because not interested. Do not care who you are. If we're

that good of friends, you could have texted me and it doesn't need to be kidney stones or a bitch.

No more Mountain Dews. Thought it was staff. Turns out it's something worse.

That's disgusting. I don't want to see that leg infection, right? Okay. And you, yeah. We got it.

So we're, you agree or disagree? Agreed. You've laid out your top three. You got two more. You

keep going. But we all know. Those are the three I know of that you speak of often.

Beyond that, I don't, where are you, where are you going with the next two?

I personally, and this can be, this can be shift around or somebody else could put another four

that, that beats it. I don't like the, you can tell the facial expression when it's before you

click on the video, right? And it's the guy, Hey guys, just got to tell you been a long way.

It's that emotional. I'm going to walk you through how hard all this stuff's going on,

blah, blah. The woe is me, this and this and this and this and this. And that sort of lands back

to number three, though, of just the emotional. Yeah. But the emotional number three is hospital,

right? Number three. Yeah. It's the I'm, I'm absolutely begging for work,

but I'm not going to be acting like I'm begging for work. Okay.

And in the number five spot, this one's going to, this is going to hurt some feelings.

As if the other four didn't. This one's going to hurt some feelings, but I think that there's

a larger majority of people that are going to laugh, even if they hadn't never noticed it before.

Say it. What is it? 10,000, 900? We're 11,000. We're 11. How many are you going to drop?

Okay. Let's see if we can get sub 9,000. Oh, you think you want to drop that, maybe? No,

don't, don't, don't. Let's see. No, do not put that out there.

Dude, as I opened my phone, though, the instant fucking Henry at steadfast.

That's a good dude. Better, better, better guy and a

amazing. He knows how to make a fucking hot rod sit. Yeah. Hot damn. Yeah. Now that's somebody

that I'd absolutely tell you. Get yourself a badass, the 32 chassis from Henry. He knows. Yeah.

What he's doing. I, you guys are going to be fucking pussies about this too,

because we've talked about it and you're going to be like, Oh no, I don't know.

That's fine. I'll take the hit. When have I ever done something like that?

Lay it out there. And if it's, if I agree, I will back you up 100%.

Major car event is going on. I'm with you. And yes, I'm with you.

So a major car events going on, such as SEMA, such as Detroit, such as something else.

Well, let's say SEMA 2025. SEMA 2025 is happening, right? Your truck's on there.

The Roadster shop booths on there. These cars are debuting on there.

Somebody that doesn't have a vehicle there, right? SEMA 2025 reminds me of

2016. I debuted this car at SEMA. I cannot stand that.

That's great, dude. It was 2016. Nobody gives a fuck.

I don't think he held back. No, I told you if I agreed, I'd back it up, dude.

And I just, I just cannot. We thought if, if that thing was cool in 2016,

we all thought it was cool in 2016. We don't need to see it again in 2025.

Right. That's, or if it was that cool, bring it out. We'll look at like,

bring out, bring out the G-Force Cuda again. I'll look at it again. It's badass.

Yeah. 100%. You don't need to talk about it. Because then you'd be like,

then you, if this, that's a perfect talking example. If Allen would have showed up with Angie's

Firebird and also been like, oh dude, you know, we brought the G-Force Cuda.

Well, fuck yeah, dude. But fuck yeah. Let's see that thing again.

If Allen would have debuted her car, right? And they're like, oh, seeing Angie's car makes me think

about 2009 when we debuted the G-Force Cuda. We all remember that. That's stupid. Don't do that.

If you don't have anything to bring to the table, it's not a shot that you don't have anything

that year, right? That would literally be like the fucking Patriots taking out a Super Bowl ad.

Oh, great Super Bowl. I remember when we won it six years ago.

That's not this year. That's stupid.

Yeah, I come with a new acronym for a variation of FOMO.

There's probably, there's a time and a place and probably a way to preface it.

But just the simply like, it seemed a time again, which reminds me of the,

like, no dude. Yeah. Don't do that.

All the, the reason is that's a lie. That didn't remind you of anything.

You're like, man, everything's going on. I don't have anything there. How can I get out in the line?

And it's not a, there's great shops out there that just don't have a car. Every single fucking SEMA.

Right. There's nothing bad with that. It's, it's, you're right. We got to go over the new acronym.

What's that? Fear of not getting noticed.

Fear of not getting noticed. Fun.

That's a tough one.

Funga. Fungan. Fungan. Fungan. Fungan.

Yeah. I don't know what.

Do you disagree with any of those?

No.

All right. Good. I just wanted to have your co-signing on that because it was you that said it as well.

I might add one too.

Yes. And this is social media stuff on your social media, right?

I thought it would be on one of your top five, but it might bump one of mine if this is that good.

Well, you double tapped on emotion. So I think you, you're right.

And I'm going to, I'm coming out of my

comfort zone saying this, but hot women. I think that doesn't need to be on your social media page.

I mean, before we edit it out, I sort of a little bit on it.

I mean, I'm guilty of doing a portion of that.

It wasn't anybody that's in my family. It wasn't my,

I guess we should, if we can expand and then decide to cut it out after.

Let's tell you, let's talk about it.

I want to, I want to get, I think there's a place, but if you're doing it like for me,

growing my business, I'm also more Christian minded.

So I'm trying to represent myself in a, in a positive family friendly manner.

So you're, all right. So you're coming from the aspect of

not a bikini clad model hanging all over a vehicle.

Yes. Okay.

Specifically, just that's, that's no BS pickup truck.

We wouldn't be, it would be.

So we've violated that unfortunately.

But it was, it was, we were, you don't remember,

you don't remember nineties truck in magazines, right?

We were recreating that whole vibe.

Yeah. And I know that was a thing. So I'm out of the, that's what I was saying.

I'm out of my zone.

That was more of a throwback versus like, Hey, this is what we do.

Right.

So I'm going to give ourselves a pass.

Yeah.

I mean, I, and I didn't know that.

Well, you know, I know, I get it.

I get, but I can, I can definitely, I can agree with you and then I can,

there's a portion I could disagree because I've sort of, uh,

sort of broke your rule.

And the reason I, you know, I get something in my head and it's like,

I'm not thinking about anything. I'm thinking, this is a good idea.

Let's do it.

Right.

And I sit with the OBS truck.

I'm like, dude, it just, it was the poster.

Right. And let's just fucking do it.

It'd be awesome.

There was nothing wrong with it.

A lot of people didn't like it.

So I can definitely, uh, see where you're coming from.

And you, on our marketing, it's not something we regularly do.

No, yeah.

It's, there's, I think there's a sense of class that goes with it.

There's a time and a place when it was, it was a chance.

It was, it's a throwback.

When something like, if I ever built a coontosh,

yeah, I would break that rule and you would not like it because I'm definitely

put with some high bikini standing up next to the coontosh, but.

Yeah. I mean, if it's with a car or something,

I get where Josh has come from, but if it's like completely not car related,

yeah, I don't know.

So, you know,

no, you're not, I mean, you're not out of line on that.

No, you're not.

You're a hundred percent out of line.

I, I think that there is.

But that's also just me because I got, you know,

I'm starting a business and so that just doesn't.

There is companies out there that do that.

Yeah.

With no relation to any business thing, just a boost following.

Yeah. Exactly.

It's just, it is what it is.

So that's, has no place.

Yeah.

I think it's like a case by case basis.

It just depends kind of what your, your goals are and where you're wanting to take stuff.

I mean, just like blatantly obvious, kind of what or blatantly honest of where I'm trying to

play, I guess, match my social media to is someone like

Chip Foos, Roadster Shop, Kendig, Rad Rides that, you know,

I'm looking at their pages and I'm like, what picture are they posting?

How are they going about posting it?

So for me, start my business.

That's kind of, that's been my go to, at least for, you know.

My initial takeaway was it needs to be a business page.

Not here's something we built.

Here's something we built.

Here's my family vacation.

Yes.

Here's my kids doing this.

Here's something we built.

You know, my stance on kids.

I mean, like if you're running a business, run it as a business.

Keep a personal page for your personal stuff.

Yeah.

I think a lot of guys try to play it, like target the hard strings with that.

Flip side, like, you know, if your wife's the one doing the marketing for you,

well, use it here and there, not in a, I mean, if you get like an appropriate way, but yeah,

if you get like an award at a show and your family's with you, I think that's different.

That's, you know, there'll be a fade in most of your family, right?

Like, that's not what I was saying.

I think people get, get a little wrapped up in it because this is one of the few businesses

that you sort of live.

So your life kind of intertwines with it.

And that's where with social media, I think people just get lost in it.

It's like, where's the divide of my life and my professional career?

And it just sort of, they intertwine and then they just spew it all out and one giant.

And that's some of what to do with the reason.

I mean, that's half of it's to just cause the industry ran and everyone owns their own shop.

And, you know, it's just, you're trying to manage everything, do everything.

And so some of that comes from that too, just by, by that nature.

So yeah, but another Facebook account is free.

Yeah, three seconds worth of work.

One last piece of advice, business-wise, that I would give before we get into standard questions.

Just because we're full of bangers.

This is either going to be the best or worst podcast that we've done.

Well, I hope it's not the worst for my sake.

Great segue because a personal piece of advice I would give is at your stage in career,

as nice of a person as you are, the quality of builds that you're doing,

I would probably screen the podcast that you go on in the future to where that's going to present

you in the best light and not come on with three absolute horrendous, horrible people.

I wasn't saying that the podcast was going to perform poorly because of you.

It was going to be our influence on it would be the thing that tanked it.

People, I think people are going to really enjoy your story.

I'm honest to you, you're a very impressive young guy.

What you've built is fucking awesome.

The business you've got, the quality you're building,

everybody's going to love hearing about it.

No, it's going to be one of the top three visually and audibly

difference of, oh, so a good person that cares about the right things and two degenerates, right?

And then Phil comes in.

Was the first half that bad?

No, first half was good.

It got worse when you got in here.

Honestly, you would think it would be the opposite.

And when the chaperone got here, we were like, oh, fuck it, we can do whatever.

What else?

I mean, where are we going?

Where's business going?

What are you trying to do?

Where's the growth?

What's the next step?

So, I mean, I'll just go through a little bit.

Just some background just on, you know, I guess kind of how we came about the billing

and going from the business and stuff.

So, me and my parents had purchased, we were going to build a shop down our,

we have about 800 acres of land further out in Lexington, Georgia.

About 800.

Honey, yeah, about 800.

Give it a take.

Around there a little bit.

Down in Georgia, you lose a couple acres every now and then.

If it ain't fenced in, you might lose one or two.

So, we were planning on building out there and within two months of us getting a

surveyor out there, just get property lines posted and stuff like that.

This building came available a lot closer.

It was right off Highway 78 in Lexington.

It's not, you don't have to go down these back roads to get to it.

None of that stuff.

You can get tractor troves and they're fine.

So, we went and looked at it and the people that owned it,

they were doing a lot of metal recycling there.

It was, I think they were doing grading in the front.

They kept all their grade equipment in the front and then the back was just,

I mean, there was metal as tall as pine trees.

It was about 40, 50 feet of just scrap metal.

And so, it's a lot of mitigation.

It was a lot.

And then they had batteries scattered all over the place.

It was all the things you want on property.

A little bit of an environmental issue.

Dabbling some tires over in the back corner.

They had everything you could think of.

So, we decided to look at it and my mom, she manages a city outside of Athens.

And so, that's what her job is.

She's a city administrator.

So, she has her masters in business.

That's all she does.

She organizes projects.

She works with other contractors and stuff.

And so, when we were looking at the property, she was like,

can you kind of see the vision I have?

And at the time, it was like, holy crap, I don't know about this.

And like, is this the right move for us?

And so, we were like, if we can get in the contract that the current owner would

clean up the property and do all that, I think it would be a good idea.

And we could maybe make it work.

So, we put in the proposal that and we had two companies come out,

roll off being one.

And to clean up the property, it would have been $150,000.

And that's without EPA being out there and doing other stuff.

And so, they ended up cleaning it up.

We had the EPA and the EPD out there.

They did their field samples and verified that everything was clean and within range.

And so, we were like, all right, well, I guess this is it.

So, we got in at the right time and purchased the property upon working on stuff

and starting to figure out kind of the layout of stuff.

We found some other stuff in the office primarily that had to be taken care of.

There were two bites walls that gotten completely eaten through with termites

that the inspectors just didn't see.

So, that turned into a project.

And so, by the end of it, we have gutted that entire building,

gutted all the previous electrical because they had a residential panel and commercial building.

So, we got with George Power, got a new panel, had to buy all that stuff.

And this is also for young people.

If you're trying to get a shop, try to do it at your house for as long as you can.

Write that out as long until you can.

And we didn't know because this is something new to us.

I mean, George Power, they wanted eight grand just for the panel.

We put an 1800 service on the building.

It's all single phase.

And so, we worked with people we know in the industry,

electrical contractors, plumbing contractors and HVAC.

And we did all the work in the building, gutted it, redid everything up to code

like it should have been the first place.

And then, that was kind of the scope on that.

But the goal has been to get a paint booth in there

because it didn't have a paint booth.

And I painted the truck at Athens Technical College.

And so, that's where the truck got painted.

And I moved it to my shop because I didn't have a paint booth.

And so, we just finished building a 4,000 square foot expansion

onto the existing 3,000 for paint and assembly.

And I was telling Josh earlier, after walking around,

you all shop out here as like we've been trying to keep everything separated.

I learned that in school really quick just because our collision shop

is just spread out at the school just because of funding and other things.

And so, I have a dedicated fabrication shop, a dedicated refinishing shop,

a dedicated paint shop and assembly shop.

So, everything, as I grow, I can accommodate more projects

and they're not going to overlap and stuff like that.

And so, I would say the overall goal with my business

has been to get that next client.

I ended up with the truck being at SEMA.

It got a lot of buzz.

And then, before SEMA in March, I met with Scott's Buddydale,

who has that 63 Corvette.

And so, I decided I was going to take on that project, get him going on that.

He already had a chassis.

We had to get some stuff straightened out on it and get that going.

We got him an LT4.

And I'm in the process of getting my Mark Bowler about getting that carbon T56.

He wants to do that.

And so, we're going to get that going.

And then, but I would say the long-term goal is...

You know, I've learned quick just through my mentors

is not taking too big of a step early.

I've learned that can be detrimental without the proper planning.

There's a sweet spot.

And I think right now, where I need to be is two projects at a time.

That way, I have one that can be worked on if I'm waiting on parts on the other.

I always have something to be working on.

And then, we're doing some chassis stuff on the side where,

if a client wants a chassis and they want it power-coded, painted,

whatever they want, we'll take care of the whole chassis where you can basically...

And the goal is just to build the chassis and deliver to the client.

Just build them a roller.

Exactly.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, as much as you can.

That's my goal.

And do that.

My goal is for my dad at some point to join on with me.

And he can focus on the sales side, the stuff in the office.

We have everything set up at the moment where everything is...

Seems like it's going to work really well.

But I've kind of...

I have a couple guys in the background that I can pull on pretty quick if I need,

but I feel like I need to get at least a year...

doing at least one build, maybe two, but get a good rhythm going.

Because for the past three years, I've been working on the truck,

but also renovating a shop.

So I've just been all over the place.

And now I need to transition just to building cars.

And that's been the next thing.

And so hopefully in January, we'll have the shop done.

We unloaded a GFS downdraft paint booth last week.

Got that in there.

And so we'll have everything at our disposal,

finally to where I can bring in a project.

I have everything at the shop I need to carry out that project and that work.

But yeah, that's kind of the goal.

And I think working, like I said,

early on is just working with other people in the industry to do stuff.

So I got one good buddy, Rockford Smith.

He might have...

You might have seen him at a show.

So he had the square body that was next to my seat in at SEMA,

the one with the red, white, and blue.

So he was a young gun.

He got a young gun ticket this year to be out there at SEMA.

And so he's one of my mentors.

He does...

He worked for Brian Fuller.

So he did a lot of the body and paint over there.

And so now he's got his own shop.

He's putting it together.

He's doing the same thing like I did.

And we were taking apart a paint booth for him.

He came over, helped me unload mine.

And I took a telehandler and a gooseneck over to Duluth.

And we pulled apart a whole paint booth over there.

And so me and him help each other get each other's backs and stuff.

And so...

But I think we're going to be definitely bouncing stuff between each other.

Just to alleviate some of that...

The stress of you got to do everything.

Because at the end of the day, you don't have to do everything.

Like if I'm better on this...

Like if I'm better with metal fab,

and I got two cars waiting to come in for metal fab,

the smart thing and business thing to do is shift that one to him.

Let him do the body on it.

When it gets back, I'll paint it.

And then he's getting business.

I'm getting business.

We're both helping each other out.

And so...

Because he's building him a new shop now.

And we're the same age.

And so we're trying to get each other up there.

So...

That's great.

Again, I'm so impressed at all...

The way all of you younger guys are approaching this.

Because years ago, when we were...

It's because of your podcast.

Well, I don't know about that, dude.

But years ago, when we were younger,

it was just like you're going to do everything.

And there was no thought.

It was literally just work seven days a week,

work all the hours,

and just build the baddest ass thing you could build.

And anybody you talk to that's sort of our age,

that was the exact recipe.

But listening to you guys,

the way you're departmentalizing your shop,

and prioritizing how you're going to build,

and having a backup car,

and not like getting out in front of your skis,

and bringing in a dozen cars,

and just grabbing a bunch of guys, it's...

I think he ran it through AI.

Maybe it is.

Yeah, I mean...

Hey, I just...

Much more.

AI would be like,

why are you doing this?

Yeah, find another fucking career, I would say.

I've never punched that in there.

Like, what do you think about building custom cars?

Old cars and chassis.

You are dumb.

Mental health institute.

But no, I mean, just a testament to some of the guys that are out.

There's Bryce, Tyler, Logan, Michael, Rockford.

A lot of these guys are...

None of us are trying to compete with each other.

And that's the cool thing.

It's like, we're all young.

We're all starting our own businesses.

We're all trying to get our name out there.

And it's like, we're not...

Like, we don't want to compete with each other

because we have friendships.

And at the end of the day,

if I need something, I know I can call one of them.

And if I need to shift something,

or if they need to shift something,

I think that's a huge benefit.

And starting a career in this industry

is having people like that.

If you need help, you can count on it.

Yeah, that's really cool to see.

Starting out and just having that support structure.

And because as we started,

it was nobody wanted to talk about anything.

And you'd have to be friends with somebody

for five years before you can reach a topic of,

hey, we're maybe having a little bit...

Like a tiny...

One time, we had this almost issue of this.

It wasn't even us.

It was somebody else.

But I'm trying to help them out.

Once you break the ice, like,

oh, fuck, we have the same problem.

And then, as you get four or five guys,

then they all have the same problem.

But one guy found the solution.

He was scared to tell anybody.

So it's cool to have that support group there

to watch everybody grow together.

Yeah, I mean, going back to the big guys there

in the industry, when I was painting the truck,

that color was the hardest.

I mean, that's also the only...

That's the second car I've ever painted fully, complete.

But that color was the biggest pain to paint

because it's got so much coarse metallic.

It's got a lot of fine metallic.

And getting the spray pattern right.

Because, you know...

Is it water or solvent?

Solvent, yeah.

Solvent, 55 line.

Do you spray it all together?

No.

You panel painted it?

So the bed was painted one week.

The following week, the cab was painted.

And then the week after that, doors,

cow, fenders, hood, grill, bumper roll.

Wow.

And that truck matches, like, perfectly.

I mean, there's a couple areas

you could probably pick up on

if you had really good damn eyesight.

But it's extremely hard to see.

And that was, like, one of the things that I worried about.

And so when I painted it,

I had all my sheets out, all my notes,

the mixed formulas, the humidity,

temperature, air pressure, gun distance.

I recorded myself to make sure that I...

Like, if I'm going to...

Spray pattern stuff and hanging things.

Yeah, keeping it all the same.

Because, like, you want to paint it

like it was on the vehicle.

And so...

But, like, I had issues with the hood and my lance.

I had to respray the hood because I had model.

And I was like, I don't know why it's doing this.

And so I called Jonathan.

And he kind of walked me through some stuff.

And I called Rockford.

And so he rocked for...

And Rockford, like, 40 minutes away from each other.

So I called him.

I'm like, hey, I got the hood prep.

Can you come over?

Because he's been painting a little bit longer than I have.

He's done a lot more complicated jobs.

And so I'm like, can you come over and help me just eyeball it?

See if you catch something I'm doing wrong.

So he came over and we spray it.

We got figured out.

But it's like, I could pull on him to come over

and just help me get through that.

Because I'm like, I don't know what's going on.

I don't have the experience yet to figure out

if there is something I'm doing wrong.

Because painting is just like, you might or might not

have a problem and it might not be your skill.

It's just, it could be something completely out of the blue

that's throwing you off.

It could be a chemical.

Well, the cool part is you don't figure it out.

It could be a coke machine.

Cool part, you don't figure it out until you've got another,

like, 600 hours in it.

You know what I'm saying?

When you're on the paint side of things.

Yeah, he's always going to fight you.

That's the one portion of the build that's like,

you used to talk about modeling, like there's,

there's going to be some aspect of that vehicle

that's going to get repainted.

Yeah, where did that come from?

Yeah, that's new.

You could spray it exactly the same way five times

and you'll get a different result every single time.

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean it, that was the biggest challenge for me.

And like I learned like doing that and doing the truck is like,

you know, everything I want to do in my career

is on the other side of hard.

So if you want to, if you want to do something like the truck,

it's like, it's, it's not going to be easy.

There's a reason why the pro guys are doing it at this level.

And it's because it's difficult.

And that's why I want to do it.

The paint just required that kind of stuff.

But I kind of learned early on when I was doing the shell,

because I painted all the stripes on that car

and I ran the same issues on that.

And it's like, you just, you don't freak out about when it happens.

You just have to get in that groove and just get it done

and then get on the other side of it.

I don't want to like steer this off track.

But as I'm looking at it, we're talking about paint and body.

How did you approach the doors defenders on that?

Yeah, those trucks, they're not exactly like,

you can lay a straight edge on them, right?

They're not meant to be that way.

But the truck looks slick.

And I remember seeing the panel gaps

and the way that the truck blended was really nice.

I mean, are you like shrinking down door skins?

Are you tipping panel edges?

Yeah, all the same because the Heim joints on those doors

like if you put a straight edge,

because they were brand new doors,

even the original ones, of course, there's crowned a ton.

So I shrink the center of the doors on both sides.

I had to shrink the fenders on the flat portion

and I shrink some of the bed.

The whole bed, I basically started with two bed sides,

put it on a Carl Iron machine, framed it,

and then I basically set the width of the bed

to the cab once I had the doors on.

So I got that byline perfectly straight with a level.

I have a six foot ruler I use.

Well, the bed sides are typically like proud on theirs.

So that was the trick.

But yeah, primarily there's a lot of shrinking on that.

And then the hood, I had to do some on that as well, getting that flat.

And these are the things that when you look at the truck

and you just, you appreciate it for being super high end

and it's impactful.

And all the guys were like, I'm gonna build a badass C10.

This kid built one.

I'll build a killer C10.

People don't understand that aspect,

the level of what goes into it that isn't just the wheels,

the obvious thing.

The cool shit.

You can see the obvious things that you've done.

You can recognize the notch in the front bumper,

the little splitter, the inner fenders.

You can see the modifications that hit in your face,

but you don't see the things that make it great.

Until they're not great.

You see the bad things if it was bad.

But the things that are done good on the not cool things,

like you said, lineups are glazed right past.

Cars and like cabinetry, you just walk up

and you know it's high end, but you don't know why.

Exactly.

And it just looks right.

And you could have something that's painted

the exact same color sitting next to it.

You can walk into a house and be like,

white cabinets, this looks like they came from Home Depot.

And the next one, you're like, holy shit, this thing's amazing.

Really hard to tell why unless you know what you're looking at.

Yeah, what to look for.

I haven't, I didn't do a whole lot of shrinking and stretching,

or at least using a shrinking disc on doors and stuff before.

And so that was something new for me.

But I mean, that's what you're doing is just

bringing them in with a shrinking disc.

Shrinking disc and then cooling them real quick.

And then sun watch.

Sun downer.

Sun chaser.

One of the guys, I mean a lot of guys make them.

It's tough to manage.

I mean, that can get away from you.

Yes, very quick.

You can go flat this way.

And also, well, once it's like, oh, I shrunk it inward.

Once it's sort of flat, it can have a tendency of going the other way.

Like, oh, yeah, you gotta leave.

And then you're really messed up.

Right.

It's a fine line of leaving enough crown in the panel

to sort of support it and still get the shape of the car.

It's that is an absolute battle.

Yeah.

What it shows is the finished product is amazing.

I've been, it's been years.

But there's, there's been a couple of precipice moments

that I remember on shrinking some things to get everything,

especially when you're done on a straight-edge ship

before you, before you fix and start doing your premium

lightweight body filler work.

Premium lightweight.

I've never heard of that.

Call that very well.

That's floating on there.

At least you didn't call it Bondo like everyone else does.

Premium lightweight body filler.

That's more.

That's exactly what it says on the, that's what it says on the can.

Right.

Yeah.

That's the professional way to say it.

Mud.

So when you start doing your mud work, right,

before you start, before you start doing that,

and you're doing that straight edge thing,

you know, that you, you're going to do some, you know,

Trigging disc work, you're going to do some tipping edges,

you know, that's probably a little,

you're doing all that fine.

There's always, there's been, I can think of like three or four

different times, right, with different metal guys,

body guys, stuff like that.

I'm just going to do just a, just a little bit of heat work.

Like, boom, right.

I'm just going to do one right there.

I think if I can just,

if I can just heat that and quench that right there, right?

I'll do, I'll just do the small tip.

I'm just going to do like just, I mean,

less than a dime size, right?

We're just going to do a look.

What are you, are you shrinking with the

dent puller with the shrinking torch?

That, the dent puller is less destructive.

Stud well.

Stud, stud, stud.

Yeah, stud work, you know, it's like, because

12 to 15 doesn't get any work, right?

So then you're like, oh, it's 12 to 15.

So I'm just, so 35 later, you're like, I'm, now I'm fucked, right?

But like torch work where it's just like,

I was just, I'm just going to hit it right there.

Just kiss it.

It's the time that that decision is just like deciding to paint a car.

That decision to just hit it that one time,

because I think that's going to bring that thing,

that's going to bring it down, right?

$100,000 in sake.

Yeah, because it's the only, it's the only time

it turns it into a fucking volcano.

Like, why didn't it go down?

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

There's been a, man, that didn't, that, are you,

all right, we'll hit it over here, right?

Then that'll instantly goes bad.

Low crown panels or like just adjusting panels is very tricky.

Like, well, I had, I had like a week and a half

and that's all I was doing for 60 hours.

Just over the week and a half, two weeks is just

working on getting the panels flat.

And then that's not even including

getting all your gaps fixed.

And you still got to do that and get the hind joints flat.

So, right.

The biggest problem I see, you know, I've experienced

is that you, like when you manipulate panels like that,

the longevity of it can bite you in the ass.

You want, you so want these things to look like a fucking mirror

or like you're looking down a sheet of flat,

like when you just look down flat water.

Yeah, but they have crown in them for a reason.

They got a little strength.

And then you've just spent all that time

putting all them bead rolls in them inner fenders

and now you're going to make them doors flat.

They need some support.

I mean, I've seen it, I've fought it on like deck lids

and things because you got certain deck lids

that don't want to blend into like a rear body panel

or into a quarter panel.

And some deck lids are just so proud, right?

And you take it all out and then just first car show out there

that thing sits out in the sun or you flip the booth on bake

and you're like, I know that panel is straight.

It was.

Yeah.

It's just not anymore.

It's a, it's a slippery slope.

Like you've got to, you've got to know when to draw the line.

But that's just don't do a basin.

Right.

Yeah.

Because every time you, at least I'm using a shrinking disc

because it's a little bit more manageable for me.

I've seen guys use torch and I think that's just that skill

and I haven't really dipped into that yet.

Don't.

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not too interested.

But the, if you don't know where to shrink,

you can get into a lot of trouble quick and you have to,

you know, you don't shrink it.

It just depends how long you're putting the disc on there

and then how quick you're cooling it how and, you know,

because it could get to where it's like a soda can now

you're dealing with that and then you got to take care of that

and go around it to try to get the tighten up.

So yeah, a lot of different things.

It's tricky, man.

My, I was sort of fortunate that my temper taught me

about shrinking and stretching like years ago.

The very first thing I did when I was like 18 years old

was welding patch panels, lower cowl patches into a Model A

and the well, you know, you, you weld it and obviously that's,

that's tight enough.

And in my mind, I just thought like, you know,

I had this snap on shrinking hammer, big old shrink and hammer.

And to me, I thought like, I need to shrink this hammer,

the shit the hell I was doing.

So like right on, you know, on dolly and like things,

it's like nothing's happening.

And that never came out good.

You just sort of like caved in and I was a kid, right?

But later in my career, early in my career,

welding up some like crazy flat hood side on a 32

that I put some wild modification

and this thing just like curled up.

And I was so pissed off that I start like beating this thing

like right where I welded it on the bench,

like on the metal bench.

And all of a sudden it's like laying itself down.

Because at that era, we didn't, I didn't have somebody

I could reach out to be like, dude, this panel is fucked.

Right.

Like what do you do after you weld something?

I mean, I did everything except like by, I mean,

it was beautifully fit and butt welded.

And then it just went to crap.

And all of a sudden like beating the crap out of it

on a flat bench on the part that I just welded

because I was pissed off.

And all of a sudden the panel is like laying itself down.

Huh.

It was like the aha moment.

I mean, I wish I had a guy in my Rolodex at that point

were on my iPhone.

And it wasn't rolling back then.

But to reach out to be like, dude, what do you do?

Yeah, what's going on?

Yeah.

And I did is we like progressed.

And I got a little older and got a little more skill

like that made contacts.

And there was like Clay Cook was always a guy

I could reach out to that would get me out of trouble.

But Clay was the best.

Not to come sort of full circle back to like just having

those contacts to help you out on that stuff is great.

Well, dude, we've reached the we've reached the point

in the episode where it's a standard questions time.

Standard questions brought to you by HRE.

The standard in wheels.

You're a little you're a lot younger than some of us.

How old is your dad?

Just got a curiosity.

Josh's age, probably.

Yeah, that's what I want to know.

You're on a guess.

52.

No.

That was a good guess.

40.

You're 24.

26.

58.

You're getting closer.

That is good.

Couple of really good numbers there in Josh's opinion.

60.

59.

He's over 60.

Huh?

Over 60.

You got any brothers scissors?

Yeah, I have two brothers.

I'll tell you about them.

You think I picked the crazy career.

What do they do?

My middle brother graduated from Alabama.

Roll tide.

Well, he got denied UGA.

So he was like, all right.

Second pass.

Alabama gave me a full scholarship.

Time to get there.

So now he graduated.

I don't have a comeback for that.

Damn it.

He's who won this year in the football game match.

We play tomorrow night.

Well, at this time, it might be over yet.

So let's not talk about football.

He works at SpaceX.

So he got hired on as an engineer.

And he is one of their youngest guys over there.

He's been working.

It's kind of cool how it works.

I wonder what he would have done

if he went into Georgia.

Probably not SpaceX.

Yeah, not that.

Yeah.

He's doing some pre-wild stuff over here.

He sends me pictures of stuff.

And it's freaking nuts, the stuff they're working on.

So he has to do technical before he can get even

put in engineering, which is a smart thing.

Learn how everything works, the technical side of things,

the maintenance, like he's rigging stuff, cranes,

moving rockets and stuff around.

So yeah, he's down there.

And he's 23.

And then my youngest brother is at Tennessee.

Yeah, we got all three great.

It's nuts.

Really?

Yeah.

You got a younger brother?

Yeah.

He's doing a chemical engineering.

Are you just one of those like smart ass families, dude?

You got good genetics.

Oh, my mom and dad bust our balls

because we don't know where y'all came from

because it ain't us.

Must be nice.

Where'd your parents go to school?

My mom went to University of Georgia.

My dad went to University of Georgia.

So my dad has its agricultural engineering degree.

So it's like a scope of electrical, civil, and mechanical.

And that was before the UGA branched into a full engineering school.

And then my mom, she went to the University of Georgia

and she's got her master's in business administration.

So good area down there in Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

Great part of you never been down in North Georgia area.

I heard this year.

You listen to a song Athens, Greece, that song country song.

No, from who?

REMs from Athens.

Yeah, I know.

We don't talk about that much.

Oh, try not to.

If you grew up in the 80s and 90s.

Michael Stipe.

Yeah, whatever.

If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, fuck REM.

It's like I couldn't stand when that came on MTV.

And it's like still can still can't.

Oh, great.

Here we go.

I'm going to go get some fucking Doritos.

It's time to walk away from the TV.

Couldn't fast forward that shit.

No, nobody nobody nobody likes REM.

REM didn't like REM.

That's what they talked about this shit they talked about all the time.

They hated themselves.

So Tennessee, Alabama, I'm technically Georgia.

You're technically Georgia.

Right.

All three.

We're going to go first up new year.

Some what new questions.

First up.

First up, we're going to say if you were doing anything else for a living,

even in your short term career, what would it be if you weren't building cars for a living?

I was thinking about this coming up here.

You prepared.

No, I hate math.

I don't like math.

Yeah, math is I think I think it'd be.

I was really hard set before I actually kind of fully decided on the car stuff, but

I was pretty hard set on aircraft maintenance.

So I actually interned at Delta Tech Ops in Atlanta.

They're monstrosity that's basically partially under the airport.

And then also it's a football city.

It's so I got to partially help rebuild a Trent 1000 triple seven ex engine for a Boeing

triple seven.

So the interns do that shit.

They let you move stuff, but can't really wrench on that stuff.

So but it was pretty cool getting to see that stuff because it's mind boggling

until you're actually up on it.

I mean, the blades are you're talking tens of thousand dollars a piece.

That motor that we were working on was $40 million.

Wow.

And I think, I mean, if one blade, all those blades, like, you know,

they're all balances of one blades out of balance and you can't rebalance that set,

you're scrapping it.

You're scrapping that rotation, that rotation assembly.

And you got to put any.

So it's just, I'm good with that though.

Scrap it, put all new shit in there.

We fly way too much, but all new aviation just frightens me.

Honestly, frightens you.

And the older I get, the more it frightens me.

The more experiences I have with everything in life and realize that,

like, when have you come across somebody or something that they've done such a good job at?

It's, you don't think that, like, there's a guy.

Aviation mechanics, a different thing.

Those guys, you know, is that good?

You don't come across those guys.

Well, so I'll tell you.

That much in just.

Am I right?

Like we, you know, it's like, what are people doing that they're just excelling it?

Aviation mechanics.

That's the only thing.

Get your that good.

Bring your car to the dealership.

Bring your car to a body shop.

Go to the doctor.

Go get, like, get an advanced surgery.

No offense to dealer mechanics.

But you think a dealer mechanic was on the fence of like,

I could go to work for Delta as an aviation mechanic,

or I could go down to the local Chevrolet dealer.

You're a Mercedes Benz.

Totally different world.

No, boss.

It's engineering.

It's engineering level.

High level attorneys.

Like, no, they're bad too.

Right.

So what I'm getting at is that those are the only people that are good at it.

Like really good.

Yes.

Aviation mechanics are.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, I have absolutely no idea.

I have to tell myself that to get on the next plane.

I'll tell you from.

So when I walked in there, this was 20.

21.

Yeah.

2021.

So I did two.

One was because I took, I took machine, CNC machine in college.

And so I went with one on that.

And then one with a buddy who's one of their main techs over there.

And the first time I went, I walked in with them and some of the guys were like,

what are you doing here?

We don't have any young people working here.

And so that was the main thing the whole time I was there is like,

are you, are you new?

You working here now?

And most of the people on the floor, and I haven't been there for the last couple of

years, things could completely have changed.

But a lot of the guys on the floor are from that baby boomer generation coming back from

the military.

And that was their way to get in the industry or, or, you know,

transition from military to, you know, normal.

They've all been there 25 years.

And they have, they have an immense amount of experience.

And the biggest thing that I've noticed when I was there, Delta does a really good job

trying to recruit people from a lot of technical college, certified technical

colleges and stuff.

But if we don't have text to get in there early enough to, and going back your point

earlier, listen to these guys who have been in the industry for years who have so many

tricks up their sleeve when it comes to diagnosing issues on engines like that industry.

I think we've seen it a little bit with the automotive industry and collision and,

and maintenance, but that industry is, it's huge.

I mean, it's huge how much it impacts the economy.

And like, we don't have just the awareness to call it or to high schools to basically

say like, this is a career path you can take.

It's always four year college, four year college, four year college.

And I think that's fine.

But for people like me, I would have been more interested in that.

And it pays astronomically well.

Yeah.

The guys working there, if you, if they hire, if Delta hires you to begin with, I mean,

it's, they're like Chick-fil-A.

They're hiring you for your, how you handle yourself, your integrity, how you go about

stuff.

Because when you're working on stuff like that, it's, it's high stress, but you can't make a

mistake.

I mean, you got, and they, they do a very good job with FA every time you do a task on a motor,

on a check sheet, they got like a couple of guys that run around the plant.

They got to come over and inspect what you did, stamp it, and then you go on the next task.

So it's not like you rebuild a whole engine.

Let's just say like a car engine, you can't just put the pistons in and go ahead and put

the heads on.

You put the pistons in and you got, wait for that.

Got to come back, look at it, certify it, and then you can put the heads on.

So they, they do.

You don't, you don't think that guy like that his girlfriend or wife's bitch.

Stop, stop.

I got to fly again.

Or like tech, tech blowing his phone up.

He's like, son of a bitch, Becky, God damn it.

And he's not focused on, no, never happens.

It just makes me nervous because I know society as a whole.

Never happens.

I think what you're scrolling Instagram and what you're saying though is that

if, if things keep telling myself, if things just progressed exactly the way they were,

let's take, I want to take AI out of the mix and say,

we just keep progressing on the way we are and there's no major advancements.

And that group of people sort of just retires and they disappear.

We can't do anything.

You're not flying on a fucking plane.

You can't fly.

You can't drive.

You can't do anything.

And you have AC at the house.

As I'm thinking through that, that's, it's, it's honestly our saving grace.

Like there's a reason it's coming now.

And that's going to be the thing.

Like there's not going to be some dude in 15 years that's just an aviation

mechanic that's passionate and on the ball with it.

And we, yeah, we have those guys like it.

Well, how does it, how do you fly then?

Because AI is going to, AI is going to what?

It's going to take, it's going to instruct AI.

I can't build an engine.

But it's going to instruct those individuals.

If they didn't give a shit from the written instructions,

they're not going to give a shit for AI.

Dude, there's going to be.

It's not going to, AI is not going to solve shit.

You're going to have fucking glasses and like gloves and shit, dude.

Fuck you.

AI is.

So then you're not going to fly.

You think that we're just going to correct course.

You're not going to have to worry about flying because of AI.

We are done in three years.

Fully done.

Okay.

All right.

Well, Iverson's got a lot on his shoulders.

I mean, like if there's no human beings that can do the task,

AI doesn't fix that.

It helps a lot, dude.

Like, so AI is going to help a dummy that's getting the text from his wife.

They have programs now coming out.

I've seen it in the automotive industry with some of the maintenance stuff where

you got those glasses, glasses, things that's how it picks out.

It's a program that they can write and it'll pick out where that part goes.

What that part, I saw one guy on Instagram their day and he was looking at electrical

harness.

It wasn't showing the motor, but he was looking at the engine bay and it showed

him where the harness was and where that connector was.

Yeah, stupid.

Yeah.

That's how they.

So it's just given this, it's good making stupid people have the instructions.

It's going to walk you through that and it's going to sort of.

It's going to make up for that experience.

That's how I mean machinery.

Dude, that's how the maintenance programs work now.

Like they don't send, they don't just send guys out.

Like you have the majority of the maintenance that you're going to do on like a high

end piece of machinery.

It's going to tell you what's wrong.

It's going to be through glasses and you're going to go through it and they're going to

observe it.

And you don't think that like at this point, like that's been around for 10, 12 years.

Now you don't think that that's channeling all through AI and that it can just sort of

observe that all, take it all in and then relay that information.

And just sort of you're not saying that's a better thing.

You're just saying it's good.

It's the thing because doing this isn't hard.

But knowing if you have to do that.

Inside of some fucking jet engine and where to do it is the tricky part.

You know, that's where it's going to.

But you think that that progression stops it just making those humans better at their tasks.

I don't think it's going to make humans better at their tasks.

So this is going to make the task, it's going to get the task done.

I think we're.

Well, it will make the human better at the task because they know the task better.

I think what he is, as you're talking, you're going to lose this generation of guys that

have the tribal knowledge and the actual skill set to do it with their own hands and their own

mind and that it's going to pivot to that on these high level things.

But it would be better to have a new generation learn.

Yeah, I just don't.

And we do have people coming in that I've met who are like the chip foods of the aviation

industry and they are like ridiculously sharp and they're in their thirties.

They're out there.

It's just not as common anymore because I personally, when I went through school,

a lot of what I was recommended was for your college, whether or not you wanted whatever

degree is just for your colleges and is going to help you be successful.

I don't disagree with that, but it depends on what field you go into.

Like for me, I'm very hands on.

I grew up with both my grandfather's being one being owning that property out in Lexington.

He did a lot of farming.

He was a pharmacist and, you know, we were always outside moving equipment around or farming

and stuff like that.

And so that's kind of where I came from.

And that was just natural for me that I want to do stuff with my hands.

And so like I did, I was, I interned with some engineers looking at like mechanical

engineering, civil engineering.

After like first week, I'm like, this is not for me.

I need to find something else.

And so that was during building the Mustang.

And, you know, I was still kind of in about the car stuff and then maybe looking at this

aviation stuff and there's guys out there.

It's just there, I think we could do a better job explaining the new and up and coming students

that are coming in, you know, going from high school to college is like,

there are these trades out here.

It's like what micro I told my dad, I'm like, yeah, I love to do a podcast with him and

just be like, you know, this is where I came from and this is where the gap is.

And there is a gap.

And I think some schools are doing a good job.

But like, I think overall as a country, people need to do a better job of representing the

trades in a more respectful manner because if we don't, it's going to be detrimental to.

Well, Mike, you've heard it right here tonight.

This is a call to micro.

I mean, he's we've been sort of toying with it.

He's probably going to end up coming on the podcast.

He needs to.

I think whether or not he comes in person or it's as I wish he doesn't.

It's sort of on him.

It's almost on him.

It's sort of like a fuck you to the whole reflection of his true.

Right.

You know, exactly.

I'm sure he'll come to make that happen.

I doubt it.

I can't.

Yeah.

I haven't been able to yet.

I could have you here for I have no idea.

I question that a lot.

So isn't somebody seen at the airport somewhere?

Who saw him at the airport?

Somebody saw him.

I don't know.

What do you think we can keep going?

We're going to go next question.

OK.

That's next standard question.

Next standard question.

Or it's going to be a topic we refer to.

Yeah.

2026 micro is coming on the podcast of anybody that can make it.

Make it happen.

And make it happen.

What about the future of the country?

If micro cares about the country of the United States of America,

he should come on this podcast.

He's got a great whiskey.

That Nobel.

It's good.

We've had it on here.

OK.

Without Mike.

Ro.

Yeah.

Mike wasn't here.

We had it.

He didn't.

He wasn't here.

Next up.

We'll go to first car.

This is a little outside of our wheelhouse.

We generally have trouble with this generation of vehicle.

But we're going to try.

We're going to ask a few questions first.

So you're 26.

So like you carry the one.

So you're 20.

I graduated in high school.

Reef.

I don't think you're going to get it.

But I know I don't like this.

I don't like this at all.

2018.

It's something to get.

I mean did y'all ask Bryce and Tyler when y'all had them on?

Were they.

What was their.

Pot.

They haven't.

I don't remember.

They don't have a driver's license.

Yeah.

I don't remember.

They even got their first car.

I don't.

We don't.

I don't remember yesterday.

Let alone that.

You have to go back and listen.

Basically like John Dutton's son.

He's on 800 acres.

Growing up with 800 acres.

2018.

It's something.

There's a.

It's a.

It was when you graduated.

Yeah.

High school.

Hand me down a vehicle.

35.

From a family member.

Was it a gift or did you buy.

I bought it.

Was it something.

The very first car I.

Was it something you sought after.

Or was it just a means.

Was this.

Oh hold on.

Very.

Key piece of.

The very first car you bought.

Was the very first car you bought.

Your first mode of transportation.

No.

The first very first mode of.

Transportation.

That's no longer with us.

Unfortunately.

Well that the.

The first.

Never is.

The first.

Never that's what we're asking.

The first mode of.

A lot of people have bought.

Their first car at all types of ages.

To build something.

But the first.

Mode of transportation.

That's actually I still have it.

So you're good.

The first mode of transportation.

Okay.

And that was a gift or hand me down.

It was my dad's truck and I basically.

Start driving it.

Okay.

So it's a truck.

Which we knew because I said he's.

All right.

Yeah.

We were going with trucks.

I figure I get you at least a little bit of it.

But we'll handle the first car.

Dad had it.

18.

So you're late.

Probably late 90s.

Dad wore it out.

Grandpa's got a.

C 10 in the yard.

What year was the cat eye Chevrolet.

That's what I was going with.

Was it.

Was that 2012.

I think it was up to 15 prior to 15.

I'm going single cab long bed.

OBS four by four.

2003 to 2006.

Really.

Oh wow.

I'm off where I'm at.

I was thinking 2012.

You're saying what.

No.

Sorry.

I'm going to push it.

It's still I'm still going with the same thing.

But it's the next gen.

My dad's an engineer.

So think about that.

It's very.

Something safe.

Fucking Volvo.

The Volvo didn't do a truck.

I was going to go Volvo too.

But I put it through my head.

Volvo and sob didn't do a truck.

Hilux.

Yeah.

I'm dancing engineers.

Some.

There's no way you were tooling around.

You know you're no way you're tooling around.

Yeah.

I think you got it.

Go ahead.

Taco.

A what.

Tacoma.

No.

It's a Titan.

Full size.

I'm going Titan.

I was going to.

That says there's no way you were tooling around North Georgia in a Honda Ridgeline.

Hell no.

But did you get.

I know.

That's why.

Oh yeah.

Nor are you in a Toyota I feel like.

Toyota is different.

Is it.

So it was accepted down there.

What's your.

Yeah.

What's your pick.

Hunter Green Taco.

Tacoma.

Yeah.

I'm going.

I'm going Nissan.

What was the full.

Nissan Titan.

Full size.

Going Nissan Titan.

Maroon.

Yeah.

But that.

I'm going Maroon.

Nissan Titan.

You keep around once that goes.

You pitch it to V8 to V8 thing lasts forever.

Horrible gas mileage will last forever.

Fuck.

I don't know.

Then I'm bowing out.

I got.

Yeah.

You ain't got it.

Sometimes you don't.

Sometimes I don't speak to you.

The engineer thing threw me off.

Yeah.

Because Volvo didn't make a pickup.

Maybe a Volvo on a Chevrolet frame.

For a four wheel drive Volvo.

Unimog.

2006.

Tundra.

Oh, I was right there.

You were.

V8 TRD package.

That was.

That pretty close.

Is this truck.

Pretty close.

Good truck.

I did say full size.

Hit three deer with it.

Still going.

When 60 one at 40 and one at 30.

I'm not even going to ask the music question

because there's absolutely no way.

I know any music in 2018.

I'd be curious.

So what are you listening to.

When you're rolling in that you're on the back road.

You got at that point.

You're not working 2017.

Maybe you got a girlfriend in there

and you are feeling good.

You're cranking during 2018.

Yeah.

In that truck.

Classic rock.

Just like I mean you.

Skinner.

Are you familiar with 97 one the river.

Oh yeah.

Okay.

So yeah it's all it's all the things.

As of lately it's been more.

More of the modern country ish kind of stuff like.

Trying to get someone like not Florida and Georgia.

The one.

Thank you.

Just more of the modern gods are coming up.

So.

Little Morgan Wallin.

Yeah.

All right.

Red clay.

Jelly roll.

Red clay.

Strays.

Isn't it good.

Not modern enough.

I mean that's not that's not that's not modern.

Yeah.

Good new country.

Okay.

Jase classic.

Bean.

Classic rock.

There is.

I want to know what classic rock is though.

Because it could been like what came out when we were.

Classic rock is is.

It's always always classic rock.

It doesn't at least continue to get more classic.

It's just always in that genre.

It's always the same.

Yeah.

John grunge should be classic rock but it's not.

It's did everybody skip that or is that coming back around.

I think there's just 90s like 90s rock.

A lot of kids were in like Nirvana.

T-shirts and sublime T-shirts.

Yeah.

But I don't know that the music.

High wife's hoping it comes back.

Yeah.

She's high.

There's a concert.

Something somewhere in 99.

Concert.

Yeah.

Round here.

It's like limp biscuit.

There's like 10 bands really to see like eight of them.

We should go see that.

All right.

Next up a new one.

New as of late last year.

Banger of a question.

You're young.

You're new.

However.

This is going to tell a lot about you know who you draw inspiration from and who you are interested in.

If you have the money and you're going to have somebody build you your dream vehicle.

What is it and who's building it.

Unlimited budget.

That's a difficult one.

Except Troy we're already ruled out right.

Nobody can answer Troy anymore.

Troy is actually at this point in time.

Troy is gone out of business.

He's retired.

You said in the budget.

He can still above that.

He can break the unlimited budget.

Right.

First vehicle that pops to your mind.

Yeah.

That's the most honest way to do it.

Yeah.

Start with the vehicle.

What's the thing you want to build.

I just I grab it.

I kind of gravitate towards the guy that maybe you would kick that to to build it.

Your car guy you got to have one thing that you're like this is what I want.

I kind of gravitate towards the early Shelby cars and the GT 40.

Okay.

Who built it.

Oh yeah.

Who does build something like that.

Honestly you give that to like Canapa like that's you don't build that you restore that.

I mean honestly it probably be Roadster shop just the way you were talking about how you

are and do that Pantera.

I mean that that kind of the number that's that's a that's a hey I like that you're back

in good graces good good answer.

That's good.

Great answer.

Well I mean I don't know who else.

Well I mean that's your that style but take it take it with some modern touches that no

one's ever like yeah I mean it was kind of like that 67 fastback I told you like I want to do if

I could find a client for is channel that car similar like what Jonathan did with the 69

and put that new GT 500 motor in it just get it sitting right I think y'all did was it the

65 or 66 that y'all did that was dark blue the cone of blue one that was sitting on the ground

with the flares that's the kind of look yep.

Mm-hmm yeah those make those perimeter frame mustangs make for good cars yeah narrow cars

though and when you're in order yeah like tiny yeah shockingly that'd probably be my uh

that's cool I just gravitate towards that just because I mean just the history behind it but

I also want to do it where it's very Ferrari kind of inspired maybe just with like the

mechanical openness of the aspect of the drive train stuff like that but no budget you do

Mustang over GT 40. Maybe GT 40. Yeah GT 40. That's the that's the race car Ford the one they

won Le Mans with and all that stuff engines in the back or in the back yeah it's in the back yeah

I don't know if you know much about the Ford GT's and stuff a little bit I like the A6 GT a friend

of ours has one and I'm I like that one it's just everybody has a Ford GT I don't know how many times

people on here I'm not as big of I like the look of the new one I'm not that big of a fan

everybody's got the new one it's not that big of a fan the six owner V8 is yeah yeah six owners

of downfall fucking supercharger on there that's a car right there yeah still kind of like an old

Ford though what kind of key does that have? Explorisk. Explorisk. I like your style of the

it's a that would be a great style build I mean if I get my hands on a client that wants to do

another Shelby um that's what I would do is get a chassis channel that thing drop that GT 500 motor

and well you're gonna get a chassis regardless of what they want to build from here on out

that's just that's shitting stone you're in the family now it's like this is literally like the mob

once you're in you can't get out you get boxed out yeah fucking kill you we could edit that out

seriously

last but not least everybody's favorite although from this last uh let's see what are we at three

hours and 20 minutes I'm gonna have to say that this is going to be boring and because he absolutely

zero excitement because he hasn't been arrested because he's too big of a he's too good of a person

what's your most memorable law enforcement interaction story I know you're gonna have to

be going up here and that's gonna be a seatbelt ticket I'm gonna be a harmless rollerblading

without his helmet on I don't have any any interactions and the only one I've had you're

a good person the only one I've had it's a lame story jaywalking warning this was one that I

basically called them uh that's the work don't don't tell that story I was not wearing it I was

going I knew I should have put it on I just want to let you know I did three miles with no seatbelt

this was on someone else but yeah I mean yeah you called on somebody else what were they doing

was it worthy if we live on a cul-de-sac road so because we didn't have the we had the shop I

normally come home I park our we got like a 30 32 foot enclosed trailer parking on the street and

I'd go down the drive turn around come back all that so I go down that home every day well like

if we had a car I can't get in my gate yeah it's not a dealie not the trailer so I go down there

one day and it's like this guy's got going back to self-awareness this guy's got everything on his

trailer basically spread out he's got a bobcat with a mulcher head on the front of it just

sitting there knowing you can't turn around all this other crowd this guy's f450 sitting there to

nowhere in sight not even there so I'm like I call Athens Clark County I'm like hey do y'all

do anything with cars just sitting in cul-de-sacs I can't turn my trailer around guys shows up like

20 minutes later I was like I don't have anything to do I'm like I'd rather

get this guy because this is just stupid like come on use your brain so he gets there he's like

I'll see what the problem is I mean you can back in the sky's drive when turn around get out here I'm like

I can't but you ever driven a trailer before I mean sounds like you've only driven a boat

on a little two axle thing so it's like you know like I like to truck the mist

so he didn't do anything so I just turned around the guy's yard and left but lame story

it's the perfect it's honestly the perfect sometimes some things just work out right you know

that's how you would have handled that too right no if I wasn't as reserved I would have taken

his f-450 and left my truck uh 2026 might be expanding on 2023 and 2025 and instead of just

telling them they might need to learn a lesson okay 2026 might need like move it you've been told

one too many times maybe it's just a you should have known better yeah and you don't need to be

there's no more talent you're you're just going to correct the situation oh yeah that in that

situation the situation would have been corrected left with a you were told in 23 and told in 25

obviously right when you tell the chick with two black eyes uh nothing you didn't told her twice

uh we had to double down on that um no touch on the uh like everybody's favorite question

which is what you can ask it this this this is no matter this is going to be a sidebar

what am I throwing a third he doesn't even know who they are go for what what am I missing

Bert Reynolds oh Sylvester Stallone or Ronald Weasley did y'all add Ronald too yeah it's for you

this is Georgia man you southern I set you right up walked right into that one dude there

what flat what tag is on the front of the bandits car who's who on Georgia State Georgia State flag

I'm a definite Stallone guy there you go big time yeah so it's filled away yeah I mean they're

currently there listen they're currently wrong again a movie about making the movie that was rocky

one that's going to be a blockbuster fucking blowout they like when have they made it if they

made a movie about making the movie that was not that good of a movie that is what the fuck is the

movie with uh what's his name go ahead I'm gonna let you walk yourself right off in this hole

there's 50 percent of the fans 52 percent of the fans actually but keep your eye out keep

your eye out for that movie though have you seen that no I haven't nobody's they're doing a whole

it's gonna be an indie flick under wraps right probably on hulu no it's probably on hulu over

instagram there there's gonna be like a legit movie coming out about the making of rocky one

Stallone it I I don't know if he's no of course not it's about him it's things about people all

the time that has that's no merit that's a worthless piece of advice or piece of content I

think that carries a lot of weight because the movie how many movies are they making about

Sylvester Stallone made one about Johnny Kent well they're making that about Sylvester Stallone

no it's about the movie that was him they're making it about him making the movie it's not about

rocky what are they calling it 101 tries it doesn't matter what they're calling it is that the name

of it doesn't matter what they're calling it if you just about it's it's if at first you don't

succeed try a hundred more times until you fucking win yeah right I would think that honestly I'm

shocked called dog trader I'm shocked at you with your winner's mentality that you're not a

Stallone fan I am a Stallone fan but that that you would even think to utter the words

Bert Reynolds over Stallone Stallone's way better Stallone's a fucking winner what'd you say Bert

Reynolds is way better I know you got me Stallone is a what's the absolute I just want to see that

so we can just Stallone I did mess up no we're gonna keep playing out yeah he's a fucking winner

dude what like I cannot fathom how you are not a Stallone guy and Bert's but Bert's Bert's not a

rental Bert is not a winner Bert's had a little bit of success with the ladies right I'll give him

that mm-hmm he made a decent film a little bit of success with the ladies probably he laid it down

laid it down a little bit right more than so nobody's told stories about anybody like they've

told about Bert I don't know the story I don't want to hurt you but crowd I think they named

Billy Bob's band after Bert okay I don't did you're never gonna sway me I'm just I'm just saying

in that regards that I mean he's not like a chamberlain level well yeah we see what where

that got him but you're thinking magic magic right he's all right what was that 100 or 1000

I think what was a thousand yeah yeah that's a little weird yeah that kid's a little excessive

I think the luster there but hey anyway I'm a I can appreciate a lot of things about Stallone

100% I've never said he was I never said he was like you said a lot of hurtful things a lot of

only when in comparison to to Bert only in comparison to Bert okay you put him again up against most

other people pretty much everybody else so Bert Reynolds he's just number one period no between

just between those two okay but I mean you can talk about stuff like Swayze was pretty cool

we're all gonna start to in Roadhouse what's that are y'all gonna start two new ones for 2026

we probably need to I think this is Rand's course who would you put up against Tom Cruise if you

could anybody yeah every single person in this entire facility I would put up against Tom Cruise

who would be the next two if you had to pick two people to start comparing that's a good question

what would be the genre all right Jean-Claude Van Damme speaking of Jean

Jean-Claude Van Damme fucked some shut up back in the day and did blood sport against who

anybody dude John basically undefeated I'm I'm with you on jv pre pre like 2005

okay that's about to say if you if you you got to preface that he fell off hard pre put

not a second Steven Seagal like Jason Statham Jason Statham kicks ass yeah I'm with Jason Statham

fan I'm with you on that he could be typecast more than Vinny but he did hang he's hung in the saddle

with the typecasting long time a little much yeah it's done well you know what you're getting

but he's in he's riding it you can't fault him for that I know but he only one that's done it

worse is and somebody that I was really a big fan of back in the day was Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson's now it's just like a special copy and copy and paste copy and paste copy and paste

87 years old like kicking dudes ass it's not believable yeah yeah but I don't know I mean

I'm trying to take that's a good that's a really good question who wouldn't be a bad one but who

would you just to offer one up for a hold in there Arnold never did much for me honestly

like yeah I like him and honestly him and pump and iron is the best Arnold just Arnold is Arnold

that's a great Arnold is the best little weirdo and all right then there but he's great he's the best

Arnold I'm I'm with you 100 but I was never like Arnold is a movie star and we met him remember

and he was an asshole yeah when did y'all meet him we ran into him and uh when he was filming

True Lies we were in Florida amazing movie yeah we ran amazing movie dickhead he was

fucking working dude ain't got time to fuck around with you we were just walking around on the street

was in some store oh who's he doesn't have to get to the chopper right yeah anyway don't judge him

but and he got political and stuff like yeah he should just come lift and wait Danny Glover

can't we saw Danny Glover remember that was cool I um that's a really good question I don't know who

you all know huh I got y'all you do you do there's there's not a lot of you don't have any of those

like Dolph Lundgren was a bit like wait if you're looking at like again I use this term a lot toxic

masculinity like the 80s 90s just fucking ripped ass like action heroes who's I got I've got one

Chuck Norris but he will yeah I've got I've got you one but I won't overplayed though you know

like I've got one but I will not say it on air oh you're going to wait it's gonna be because no

because this is this is worse than Bert and Stallone what's that put on a totally different

level that we would get yeah lose some followers for this is we're gonna cut this part out three

this is um I was just listening to something I was an interview with Dolph Lundgren and he's

actually Dolph he's pretty well spoken and uh the guy was asking him like he's a super smart guy

yeah really sharp yeah he's like a like insane physicist exactly where I was going yeah so he's

asking like back in the day like did you ever like use any supplement was there any like

steroid use and he's like yeah you know I mean I tried it like a little bit back then like so you

try it like how often would you say I mean sort of like often I'm like dabbled for like well like

how long like a little bit like 10 years you know just kind of like just recreationally just daily

dabbled I had to get big for my roles quit ask me those stupid questions um but yeah we don't have

any I mean currently who's out there well you had like John Cena ran his course the rock

was out there but he yeah it's nobody there's nobody there's nobody that's lived up to the

hype of those two that's why it's it's really the perfect question that can't be replaced right

is because nobody competes with them and there's so many I don't know who you I don't know who

else you'd bring into their arena if there's not a lot of JCVD is a solid JCVD could definitely

come in he has like three positives and a list of negatives just after the silk shirts like the

splits got a little weird out of if you want to take the all three of those and just say who's the

most feminine who's always going to win without great Volvo commercial the Volvo truck commercial

yeah the splits on the top yeah uh but in the reality so fake so fake in reality he's the dude

that would whoop your ass out of all three of those like in in reality to right now outside of the

movies oh even right now yeah sure like I'm sure Stallone learned a few things about punching

I would go I would go up I would go up against JCVD before I would go up against Stallone today

right now right now today a hundred percent I mean JCVD is a legit martial artist now he's

artist he's not a legit martial artist fighter it was like a perform it was like a performance

hey he did like he did one step above like ribbon dancing and stuff it was literally

river dance ribbon like ribbon I'm not fighting JCVD I hope he doesn't listen to this

you're gonna lock your door sets at this at this point nobody's listening well ended at this because

I would say that if you had to put him in line if you in real life an actual physical fight

Bert Reynolds is getting the shit kicked out of him by almost everybody

wait what era at what era in his prime Bert Reynolds is going down he's taking a fucking

dive here I would crazy any but in a I would pick a random guy out of a bar and do you realize

how much bigger Bert Reynolds is in real life than then Stallone does Stallone's jack dude he's fit

and he's got so much training he played pro football he played pro football he was tough

dude let's be let's be real we all we make points here let's be real Bert Reynolds in a

hand to hand like a bar fight bar fight Bert Reynolds taking a dive first Stallone is he's

gonna put up a fight he's going down second JCVD is winning it as much as a fan as I am of Stallone

JCVD is winning the bar fight dude JCVD steps in between the two of them says guys guys we don't

need to we don't need to fight we don't need to fight I think that's crystal clear you think JCVD

wins at all three of those yeah he's trace a trained fucking fighter dude he doesn't even

matter if you blinded him if you threw something in his eyes wow you're gonna take a head kick from

him the kick is you don't expect the kick that's the thing and it's not real with him that he's

not really he's not any of that he's a gymnast he's not a fighter you're gonna take a head kick

from JCVD you think you could telegraph that you can see that coming I would he could tell me I'm

about to kick you in the head I'd said go ahead kick me in the head he doesn't have any power I'd

loved it and then you just kicks the shit out yeah it'd be cool to see he's not doing JCVD it's

it's art maybe it's art look it up I'll look it up it's well-known maybe Segal Stigal but

but however even as weird as that kind of stuff is there is legit

what is it what's that thing I can do akimbo akimbo there is a thing in it now he

there's some of those videos are a little hyped on the throwing of the person by the finger

but he's also a big old boy

all right um still there is no there's no other batter I wouldn't there's I would never

bet against alone but we're talking bar fight here if I if we're putting money on it I think

I think JCVD one class question and then we're gonna go in this bar fight how many shots does

Stallone get is it a hundred punches because I'm sure after 101 like he'll land one after

enough times tried what doesn't matter you can't think about him yeah he doesn't matter

he'll take a hundred and keep coming oh I love this question uh we're just getting started on this

first of all we're going to talk about the whiskey um however absolute my biggest takeaway

I don't I'm I'm not going to listen to anybody else come on here or you know other interviews

or out talking when they're like oh you know the younger generation that's done all right no more

talking about the younger generation can't do this won't do this doesn't do this where's the

hot rod industry gonna go conversations over I'm questioning good hands what the hell happened

in the last five six seven years because not only are every single one of you guys all the ones that

we talked about today the quality is there the work ethics there you've all laughed we all talked

about the same thing what's work life balance you just got to get it you got to show up you got to

do this showing up in multiple cars back to back to back you don't want to be a one hit wonder

and the quality is absolutely outstanding this is no bullshit because you're here you wouldn't be

here if the quality what if it was just if if you would have been judged on a bell curve or

it's like oh that's pretty good for a young gun oh it's pretty good for a newcomer I mean and then

it would have been like that's pretty good for a newcomer and when you get to a certain point

then we'll talk to you like it's pretty good at any level it's like it's really good at all levels

the and after all that positivity what I'm saying is the thing that I'm so blown away by

all the ones that we talked about all of the checking all those boxes and every single one of

y'all's heads is screwed on straight like it's so positive doing things the right way smart

way smarter than us way better people than we are that completely in good hands yes you know

I'm saying yeah I mean I know we've talked about a lot of shit on this but we start the early days

of the podcast that came up a lot everybody was sort of concerned where are we going kids aren't

interested in cars where's where the hell's the industry going who's gonna step up no worries

you guys are kicking ass man you got a hell of a company and doing it the right way

again very impressed dude very impressed with the the product that you build in you in particular

and just thank you keep it up dude we're can't wait to see what you come out with next all of

y'all's parents yours included should be applauded because the last uh you know the whatever this

generation it would be considered you know the whoever's out there in their mid 20s mid to late

20s every time they've come on this podcast the cars that they're building the vehicles that

they're building the trucks that they're building like y'all are raised right it's uh yeah I mean

a little bit just a little side story real quick a little bit why my parents have been supportive

of that is my dad when when he was growing up he he wanted to get into that NASCAR pit crews

that kind of that that's what was going on at the time when he was going through high school and

stuff and so that was he could go down and work for awesome bill from Dawsonville that was his

dream was to work for a you know get in the NASCAR and stuff and so when I told him I was interested

in doing this fastback he was like I'll help you do it if you're serious about it and that was it

that's awesome so I mean it I think to to get a good solid foot in the industry I mean parent

having great parents make the process easier I'm not saying if you don't have that you can't do it

by any means but um having good solid mentors that you can lean on especially when you're

making business decisions and you're making financial decisions that are going to be impactful

long term or critical um and so yep well hats off to you man we'll uh really excited to see

what's coming next and uh I'll have it at good guys all this year so check him out can't wait to

be out there and see it man Thomas Dickerson Thomas performance design performance engineering

see I got it right we're gonna talk about the whiskey before we head on out we'd get in trouble

when we don't do the reviews this is a new one this is cold pick distillery I feel like we would

probably be fine not doing it it's uh personally not a huge fan it's different pretty harsh yeah

it's pretty harsh uh but I don't think it was harsh on the alcohol it was harsh on the the yeah

all of it I think it's the toasted maybe the toasted I haven't had any toasts that I'm blown

away with but there's nothing honestly nothing about it that was a positive for me so I'm

I'm not a fan 113 proof but it was I don't think it was the proof I think it was the

it's five year 113 weeded like had all the things that it should have been I think it's the it's

like that uh I think it's the oak the toasted gives you that too much oak which we've learned

makes you feel like it's too hot but it's not whatever it is without going into deep tasting

notes it's a don't buy it for me I will not buy it that is not going in my collection no I don't

even like who did buy it I didn't even like the bottle I bought it was it was a it was a shot

it was a it was a try it's a it's an age statement distilled in Kentucky you take a shot and see

let's just go back to fill but in the bottles he's been delivering some pretty good bottles

this is new it's going to turn into something that is worth a shot it's well documented I think

yeah yeah make sure there's a new bottle here every single week no problem downstairs I bought

one for you I know you did but you were also now we're late to the podcast so I had to like

fulfill like so what do you mean to do take care of business files all these kinds of things see you

again next week see you again next week

Thomas Dickerson | 2025 Oil & Whiskey On The Gas Award

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