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Where in the world is Neil Simpson?! Return From SEMA
Where in the world is Neil Simpson?! Return From SEMA
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About this episode
Neil Simpson shares the challenging journey of transporting two Jeeps to the massive SEMA show in Las Vegas, detailing the grueling drive through the Walla Pi mountain range and harsh winter conditions while living out of a truck and trailer. Alongside his son, Neil navigates tough roads, mechanical issues, and quirky roadside stops, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the realities behind the glitz of SEMA. The episode mixes humor, personal stories, and insights into the logistics of showcasing Jeeps at a major industry event.
Topics:
sema show
jeep transport
road trip challenges
mountain driving
truck and trailer life
aftermarket builds
team effort
mechanical maintenance
roadside attractions
event logistics
Cars:
Dodge Charger
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This short episode involves Neil remotely joining Jeff and Scott. Turns out, right before the episode went live, the connection was lost and thus the awkward beginnings of an episode were born. Neil signs back on and the guys do their best to get some live updates on Neils adventure back from SEMA 2025. Tune in next week when Neil is hopefully back in studio for a full episode and tell all of SEMA.
Thanks for listening, give us a review and check us out on YouTube -SFJ4x4 and visit our website to grab some great gear or products for your Jeep, SFJ4x4.com. Don't forget, you can email [email protected] for special content requests, blind react videos, suggestions, special guests, or general questions. Check out our Patreon patreon.com/ISpeakJeep
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"...se of course, again, in Davy's wisdom. He put the charger on this on the the outlet overnight, but did not ..."
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SFJ 4x4 studios presents in my oversized four-wheel-drive Jeep.
A Jeep podcast starring industry experts.
Cure monocity.
What?
Say that again.
With mad scientist Scott Brown.
I used my drill press as a sort of lathe.
Our host, Neil Simpson.
If one leg goes on, they all go out.
Silver's shenanigans.
We are really professional with Jeeps.
This is I-Speak Jeeps.
Good morning.
This is Jeff with SFJ 4x4, starting it off with a train wreck of a day because we lost
Neil.
He was there.
He was somewhere in the US.
We thought maybe from Oklahoma City, but we're not sure.
So we are currently trying to retrieve Neil.
I don't know where he's at.
But over, try to get you guys a little bit of an episode.
Do something.
Something's better than nothing.
We got mad scientist Scott sitting over there and the producer guy over there, Jeff.
Just Jeff.
Just Jeff.
Yep.
I'm trying not to make it any more of a train wreck.
Well, in the comments here, we've got Nate saying good morning, Daddy Jeeps saying morning
guys, and Jeanie saying good morning.
Hope you all had a great weekend.
And we've got Joe O'Brien saying good morning.
So good morning, everyone.
And again, right now, we are, yes, we lost Neil.
That's correct.
But I think we may have found him.
Here we go.
I'm trying to bring him on now.
Nate says he beat you this week.
So that's a new record.
Yvonne says good morning.
Can you hear me okay?
You're there.
I'm going to do my spiel.
Go ahead, Jeff.
Did you do it?
I did.
I did kind of do an intro.
Yeah.
Kind of.
Wonderful.
No, he didn't.
I unplugged it and plugged it back in.
That's sometimes what you got to do.
I told everyone that we lost you and you're somewhere in the US, but we were trying
to relocate you.
So that's those things are accurate.
That's where we're at.
Davey put live from OKC on our overlay.
So live from Oklahoma City.
I don't know if that's actually where you are or not, but that's what we're running
with.
I am currently at the quite literally the cowboy truck plaza and smoky poke just north of Oklahoma
City.
Okay.
Sounds very fitting.
So that works.
You're live from the OK Corral.
That's not Oklahoma City.
That's the OK Corral.
Let's just get out of the way first and foremost that, you know, anybody who thinks that like,
you know, they see the coverage of Las Vegas and SEMA and they literally they see the
glitz in the glam.
Right.
And they think everybody's living the high life.
Let's just flat out and get out of the way that my son and I are sleeping in the
trailer and the pictures that I've posted online.
So you'll see our outfit are set up.
And last night it was in the teens.
We are north of the city enough that I'm officially in the plains of Oklahoma.
And it was real it was real cold.
It was real cold in the trailer.
There's snow on the ground here, so I don't think any of the local listeners are going
to care.
I'm just saying, you know, this has been an adventure of epic proportions.
And you know, again, I'm such a firm believer in like, you know, trying not to leave things
up to too much chance.
And so if we were going to get these jeeps out there and do us, then I'm going to handle
it personally.
I'm going to interrupt you because there may be some listeners that don't actually
know why you are remoting in from across the country.
So what if you quickly just do an overcap of why you're in Oklahoma and what's going on
and how you how you end up there?
Yeah.
So as one of our checkboxes of a business and a degree of legitimacy was to participate
in arguably the arguably the world's largest display of aftermarket parts and builds at
the FEMA 2025 in Las Vegas.
And so we had the unique opportunity to not have just one, but two jeeps displayed inside
the convention center in Las Vegas.
The caveat is we have to get them there.
And so most people know listening that not only, you know, among the many hats that I wear,
I am a loving and frustrated truck driver.
And I'm a firm believer.
And when you have something like this that has to be done, you have to do it yourself.
So about we're pushing just under two weeks ago, about two weeks ago, my son and
I loaded up in our international 4900 and wedge trailer, both Jeep strapped for good and headed
to headed out four days there, five days on the ground, five, six days on the ground
and four days back travel.
The truck sucks in the mountains like real bad.
That was flag stuff.
So I actually, I actually practiced saying the name of the mountain range, Jeff.
And it is Walla Pi, the Walla Pi mountain range.
Okay.
And it is about.
It's just under an authentic 100 miles of rolling mountains to then high, then high mountains
where you climb to about 7300 plus feet above sea level.
And it is a Walla Pi mountain range, which is what you and I were looking at on the map.
And honest to Pete, I actually believe that the roads and I guess off of 95 onto, I think
it was 40 or 44 are probably the worst roads in the entire U.S.
I used to say that about my 86 in Southern New York until they paved it.
It took me like six hours the other day to go about three hours worth of travel time
in a normal vehicle.
I was white knuckling the truck steering wheel and the load was all over the place
because I just simply have never encountered so terrible of roads.
Man, I'm so glad I sent you on that route.
Listen, you and I, at first of all, that route, this route, and the objective of today
is basically to prime people to tune in next week, right?
Where we do a reveal all or tell all and we try to, you know, kind of be able to kind
of compartmentalize all the thoughts of what SEMA looked like from our professional perspective.
Well, that and hopefully have a much clearer transmission.
Correct.
I couldn't imagine going through the Rockies in this setup.
I wouldn't have been able to do it.
There were absolutely times where I was running through that mountain range and I'm doing
27 miles per hour uphill, believe me.
I'm not making friends on the highway.
Now, everybody loves the Jeeps.
They drive by their truckers are honking, people are waving.
They drive by the cameras, you know, they're so slow or is it because of the cool
Jeeps?
What kind of waving were they doing?
Was it a certain sign language or was it were you number one the whole time?
You were number one the whole time.
So in the comments here, Nate said he can attest that it's a long drive.
He didn't have a trailer and definitely doesn't envy your drive, although there's some amazing
views.
And I would agree with that, Nate.
That's absolutely the case.
And I also don't envy you going with the trailer.
Charles said Louisiana roads are the worst.
And Diana said happy Monday.
This time of year is brutal for driving that route.
It was interesting.
I gotta tell you, folks, I mean, I encourage people to jump on my personal social pages.
I've got updates from the show.
I've got updates in a personal capacity, you know, from what my, you know, some of the
roadside attractions my kid and I have gotten ourselves into.
We've been, we've done some mild hiking.
We've tried to do all like the free kitschy roadside attractions that make sense to get
the big trucking trailer off off of.
With that said, we are just every day I'm putting in, I think my shortest drive days are like
10 hours at this point.
You know, the trucking trailer, I'm doing about 60 to 62 on average.
That's like 1990, you know, mile per hour anymore.
Yeah.
Right?
Like nobody travels that slow, but it's the nature of like trying not to listen.
This truck was not built for over the road.
It was built for regional stuff, you know, and we're living out of it.
We're living out of the truck.
We're living out of the trailer when we're on the road.
This was a team effort, you know, from you guys at home keeping the shop open and lots
of people asking about you to, you know, Greg and Davey, you know, huffing it everywhere
in Las Vegas and coming up with creative plans to, you know, do whatever, be in all the places
and do the things and feed ourselves.
And so it's been an amazing adventure so far and a huge, huge team effort.
So I thank you guys for all that.
And hopefully the people, the listeners at home, our followers online, our customers
have really enjoyed seeing the coverage that we were able to offer firsthand because of this
trip, you know?
Yeah.
So I think that, you know, within reason, unless there's anything too particular you
want to cover, I think we leave it there.
What is your estimated time to back home?
Well, I don't think you cut out.
I think we lost Neil again.
You broke him.
So.
There he is.
I think.
I've got.
I think it's going to be a fucking year.
What's that?
It keeps freezing up on you.
Go ahead and try again.
You know what it is.
Because I'm getting text messages and calls and all this kind of stuff in on my phone.
I don't think it's a signal as bad as it is.
I should have, like, I don't know, put do not disturb or something on.
I bet that would have helped that the GPS says that we have 16 hours.
And in normal experience, it might only take 16 hours.
Right.
Right.
You're talking 20 hours in that truck.
That's my concern.
That's my concern.
Well, it's okay because not that it's any rush for you to get home or anything, but in
an effort to conserve funding and make it the most affordable trip we could, Davey did
pack his bags with your truck and instead of taking him on the plane, and that is where
his memory devices are.
So all the footage from SEMA are in the truck.
You know, they contacted me as they're getting on the plane, as they're getting on the plane
because of truckies and goes to Pittsburgh to get on the plane in the first place.
Davey's truckies are in the bag and I thought to myself, you know, I bet you all of his
footage that he's supposed to be back working on is on the bag as well.
Yep.
Yep.
Sure is.
We're really good with jeeps, people.
We don't just do this for your entertainment, though you do benefit from it.
We mean well.
What we get on so good to is real.
I just, you know, I mean so well that, you know, in that moment, and here's the problem
and that I want you to know it has nothing to do with conserving funding.
He carried that bag on the plane with him previously.
Here's the thing or a bag like that.
I remember this moment in the hotel room when I was like, yeah, leave your bag here.
You know, he had like three, you know, his bags from the week and whatnot.
And I said, yeah, Leo and I will load them.
We'll pack the truck and trailer nicely, blah, blah, blah.
And I had this moment where like Davey pause, you know what Davey like stares
at you for a second?
Yeah.
Gen Z stare.
Put some loading.
Yeah.
Put some loading and he stares at me for a second and he's like, okay.
And I promise you, I hauled two bags out for him.
And in that moment where it's buffering in his brain and he's staring at me,
he puts a third bag down and I thought, okay, we've got plenty of room, you know.
Right, right.
And I thought, why am I hauling three bags back?
But whatever, you know, but whatever.
And then when he called, when Greg texts me, he's like, yeah, we have no keys to drive
the truck that's parked in the Pittsburgh airport, back to Coneyott.
But don't worry, somebody from Davey's family is going to travel the two and a half hours
down to the airport for us to break their keys.
Yep.
All of that happened.
I thought, but I thought in that moment and Davey the whole week is like, I got
to make this video.
We got to get this out.
You know, we got to shoot this intro.
He's like, I'm going to get back.
We're going to get this video out.
And I thought to myself, cool.
And in that moment when the keys were not in with them, I thought Davey is not going
to be working on that video until I get back.
That is true.
Yeah.
That is accurate.
And then in the comments here real quick, Daddy Jeep had said, the goal is always
to beat that time referring to your GPS time.
Sometimes we fall short of our goals.
We need to find the international 4,900 GPS so that it has my accurate change it to the
walking route.
Oh, God.
Bicycle.
Bicycle.
The bicycle route.
It might be more accurate.
I can beat the bicycle route.
I can beat the bicycle route.
What I hear is you need to do a little check on this social show, walking, bicycle
and then average Jeep travel time.
If you guys want to know, I'm averaging 6.3 miles per gallon.
All the smiles per gallon, just like the Jeep life.
Yeah.
But 6.3 miles per gallon.
And I believe we're reaching the point where the truck is shaking itself apart.
Oh, well, and you you did you did do a pseudo oil change.
Down there as well.
So those that aren't I did I did I did an oil change laying in a
an O'Reilly's parking lot that had bars on the windows, had the retractable
you know, bars that come down over the windows and doors.
Did they put them up when you pulled in?
There's so much I could tell you guys about that O'Reilly's.
Davy, I have pictures.
I'm going to post them on my social at some point of Davy making friends with a
truck driver had wandered off to see if the said truck driver had a charging
cord, because of course, again, in Davy's wisdom.
He put the charger on this on the the outlet overnight, but did not have
them like plugged in apparently.
So his batteries did not charge.
So now we're trying to shoot off site and and and he's his battery diminishing
more and more and he he decides to go make friends with a trucker
who who in that moment is moving all the Teslas that O'Reilly's happened
to be next to a Tesla holding area.
You've never seen so many Teslas penned up in one area.
And the guy says, no, I don't have anything for you.
Right. And Davy and him apparently have a full conversation enough
where I'm like, I tell my son to grab his camera.
Start taking pictures of Davy making friends with a truck driver.
Davy goes to leave said truck guy goes, hey, come here.
Davy walks back over to the truck.
Guy cracks open like a Miller light pours it into his coffee cup
laughs and starts drinking behind the wheel of his truck.
Oh, good.
Davy invited me to change.
I think I honestly think that's what's happening.
I honestly think that's what was happening.
You almost lost Davy to traffic.
I mean, it's like we almost lost the savage.
Tesla Tesla trafficking of sorts.
Oh, boy. Folks, if you see damage, you I mean.
Dang.
So Davy almost got trafficked in the O'Reilly Sparky lot.
So I do the pseudo oil change.
Yesterday, I ended up Leo and I ended up on a Native American
reservation, which is where we slept last night.
Pretty pretty cool truck stop, you know, a dive truck stop, if you will.
Did you did you get to join in any of their powwows?
How? No, no, no, no, that's not it.
It's just a space.
Yeah.
Just a space, normal, free US citizens in a space.
They just happen to have their own base.
And I know people that live down there.
They go to the powwows.
That's a normal thing.
There's not a powwow on a Sunday night.
In random Arizona, New Mexico.
I bet you there is.
You just don't know where to look.
They saw the truck and we're like, we're not telling about the powwows.
You'll like this, but you just don't want to share.
The face rose perfect for that.
Right.
And on that note.
All right.
Well, is he coming back?
He's done.
He's gone.
Yep, he's gone.
So, wait, he's trying to come back.
He's back.
We broke the internet.
You're back.
We broke the internet.
We broke it.
All right.
That's our signal.
This is off the rails.
Yeah.
We're going to do it again next Monday.
Join us live.
I'll be in studio.
I hope.
I hope I won't be on the road still.
The walking route.
I think we have enough time to get here by Monday.
You come in straight from the road.
You just go right into the studio.
Rolling, eyes are drooping.
Your frozen picture right after I talked about the peace pipe.
Tony says that's a profile pic if I've ever seen one.
Oh, God.
And my wife obviously commented that she grew up going to those powwows and it's an amazing experience.
So.
Of course she did.
I'm sure it was.
That was not.
I was tightening.
I was tightening fuel fittings on the truck.
With a 1990 Sears Craftsman made in China little home brood tool kit that I have on the truck.
Perfect.
Not at a powwow.
Until next time.
Jeep on.
Jeep on.
Jeep on.
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