YouTube Hates Flat Towing

SFJ 4x4 studios presents in my oversize 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 out, they all go out.

We are really professional with Jeeps.

This is I Speak Jeeps.

Good morning, afternoon, evening, wherever, however you are joining us.

This is the I Speak Jeep podcast presented by SFJ4x4.com.

My name is Neil with SFJ4x4, Simpson Family Jeeps, joined in Grandma's couch studio.

By that guy in that hoodie over there, I don't know how he's got a hoodie on.

He wore the hoodie last week when it was like 11,000 degrees, and it was cool at his desk

and then he went outside to do some work, and then he was stuck in the hoodie.

That was rough.

The sun was beating on me and I'm like trying to talk to this customer.

I'm worried about a circulation at this point.

The Italian stallion.

Jeff Shimani.

Our producer, our illustrious producer and front end associate.

Over there we've got that guy in the I Speak Jeep guy in black.

Sine.

Johnny Cash, you wearing for the broken and beaten down?

Something, I'm feeling that way.

Oh, well that's the mad scientist, Scott Brown.

I even got my black.

Full of positivity over there.

Yeah, black.

Scott's been sick.

Savage has been sick.

I blame Davey.

Yeah, Davey did it.

Jeff and I are holding out strong without the crud infecting us and yet we're

stuck in this closed space with Scott, which doesn't have a fan blowing at me, so they definitely

be sick next week.

Yep.

Trying to move the air around.

He literally said he was going to do that.

I'm like, so that we get sick because you're blowing the air right at us?

I was trying to move the air around.

Well, first of all, it was hot in here, so it was a little staggy, so I need to

turn the fan on.

I didn't think so, but okay.

It really might be something wrong with this circulation.

I'm saying.

So anyways, Nate got first this morning, then Billy Joe saying good morning, and then Nate

thinking that we started early, but we actually went live right at 10.19.

We just had our starting soon screen up.

We're actually professionals.

Sometimes.

I'll put that on me.

Let's not get too far out of ourselves.

Yeah.

So, and then we got Daddy Jeep saying, fellows, Bantam trails are looking good from our

work day yesterday, although a bit dusty.

I don't think it's dusty anymore, or I don't know if Bantam's getting rain, but we're

getting plenty.

I don't know if they got the rain that we got.

Roy is saying good morning, buds.

We got rank one off-road and four by four saying good morning.

Jagadjeeper says good morning.

Andrew Fornell says good morning, gentlemen.

Joe O'Brien says morning, and Robert Seaman, well, hello there.

Hello, hello, hello.

Good morning to everybody.

And if you are listening to us in your ear holes at a later day, first and foremost,

that is the broad majority of our listenership.

We thank you so very, very much.

But understand you too can join us live nearly every Monday morning at 10.19 a.m.

You can jump in the comments, share, collaborate, have a conversation with folks there.

And you know, as you can try to dethrone Nate and Joe from the, you know, getting

first as far as the morning greetings are concerned.

So, you know, definitely, definitely prioritize that at some point in the future.

Today, we are going to be, I'm kicking a dead horse.

That is what, that is just what we're doing.

Are we going to be beating it by the end of the episode then?

Well, we're, we're, we're beating it now.

I mean, and-

Well, the problem is Neil got his feelings hurt because he did a YouTube

video on a topic he's very passionate about and nobody watched it.

It tanked.

Nobody watched it.

And I think probably our worst video this year probably was even worse than

Scott's.

Scott's did a lot better than yours.

So here's the thing.

Yeah.

And I don't have a great explanation, but

I did, we did a video and it was on flat towing your Jeep behind an RV.

And I really like how we set up customers and we work with an industry

partner, Rockhard 4x4, and we take a very specialized approach, allowing

you to retain the kind of the off-road nature of a Jeep.

Because if you were to go to an RV shop, which is the most popular

way to get a Jeep set up for flat towing behind a RV, they, they

don't care.

They don't do environmentally sealed connections.

They just put a standard base plate on there.

Now you have stuff that's low, slung and, and, and impede your ability to

go off the beaten path.

Once you get to your destination, I have a lot of big feelings on it.

And I thought, man, this is really cool because we use a lot of cool

equipment and a particular recipe.

And I want to tell people about this and I want to tell them kind

of, you know, where flat towing came from and this and the third.

And then everybody was like, yeah, we don't care.

Well, I don't know if it was a crappy video.

I don't because you have boring flat towing.

Flat towing is supposed to get your adrenaline going.

You know, the car is doing weird stuff behind you or you beat all odds

and you towed it, I don't know, 1,100 miles like you weren't supposed

to, uh, there's people in the other car.

They, you passed a cop.

I mean, yeah, that's what flat towing is.

So today in the expectation of kicking this dead horse, we are going

to expand upon some aspects of flat towing for your infotainment purposes.

I'm sorry.

I'm here to try to make it entertaining.

I think the challenge is, are we going to get more downloads and

listeners on this episode than you got on your YouTube.

Well, finally get the penguins to listen.

And if you want to let us know how you feel about flat towing, you can

go on and leave us a review and try to get maybe not about flat towing.

How about about our podcast?

Well, let's let's leave the flat towing subject of it though.

And you don't want to do it with the most fanciest stuff.

You can use the awesomeness purple strap ever.

Oh, you mean you mean the.

What flat towing started as?

Use a purple strap for that.

Exactly.

No, you can get the equipment required.

I have a story about that.

I do too.

So that's what we're going to be doing today, folks.

We're going to be trying to kind of expand upon and entertain

through processes of some historical contextualization and moving

us forward into kind of the RV aspect.

But we're going to try to avoid the technical stuff that I apparently

put everybody to sleep or that they just flat out didn't care

about when I did this before.

And so, sir, do you have some some history?

I do.

So there isn't a whole lot of factual information other than I did

get some really cool stories on a race hot rod thing about all the

people doing inappropriate towing with their hot rods.

Well, and I will get to that in a second.

But a couple of facts.

First, the first trailer by Alexander Winton in 1898 was a modified

touring car towing a cart with a platform because you need to

haul two cars at once.

Huh.

Thank you, Mr.

Winton for it made me kind of think like that was actually an upgrade

because we don't think about it, but we've been towing things as

long as we went, Hey, look, there's a horse and he can drag

something.

Sure.

And how do we attach it to the horse?

So when the horse got replaced by the car, we just started

tying things to the car.

Yes.

No, any different than the horse.

Yes.

Anyway, a couple more facts before we get off that

tangent, the first camping trailer in the USA was 1910.

The first tow truck by Ernst Holmes, which Holmes Wreckers.

Yeah.

Is 1916.

And flat towing is also called dingy towing or four down towing.

Four down.

If that's not a towing name.

Right.

For a company somewhere.

Uh, and obviously it was first by necessity, uh, example, lack

of a trailer and lack of a tow rig, and which is then enters

into our hot rod talk.

Basically, we had a bunch of kids out of war war two, they

have a pot or a window and they wanted to go racing.

So what's the first thing you do?

You go find an old car that's gotten the snot kicked out of

it for, you know, years.

You shove it into the semblance of a car, but it's not

street legal.

So the thing that makes the most sense is you take your

daily driver.

Yes.

And you slash it to it somehow.

Yes.

By any means possible.

Now, if you were a leadist, you had a stick welder and you

made a tow bar because then the car sort of followed the other

car.

Sort of sort of it, but it could go down to, I heard read

about nylon rope being used.

Uh, I got a story about that.

I'm going to share jumper cables may or may not have

been used to tow vehicles.

Um, and usually the best ones were when the tow vehicle

blew up, uh, one specifically they were towing their race

car with a Henry J, which had a Jeep derived motor in it.

Yes.

The four cylinder and the Henry J went poop.

So they drove, they pushed the Henry J to the track with

the race car, which makes perfect sense.

Makes makes great sense to me.

So not only can you tow, but you can push, I guess.

Yeah, I guess.

Well, and one of the things that I have this distinct

recollection, uh, for purposes of, you know, there was a

necessity out of flat towing that, uh, you have, you have

these, these things where the vehicle on the back might not

be road legal or fully functional itself.

You might only have one driver and two vehicles.

Yep.

Um, the fuel economy, if you're running a big rig, uh, we

see it all the time with like oversized load movers.

They're running a big rig while they get somewhere and

they drop the house and the trailer off.

Well, now one of the chase vehicles or one of the clearance

vehicles, you know, instead of paying for the fuel, the

big rig doesn't care, right?

And so now you just lash the, the big rig to the chase

vehicle and you, you know, that occupant rides in the

big rig and you just ride home together because now

you've saved on gas.

Um, the, there are always concerns about, uh, you know,

wear and tear on the driveline system, but realistically

in World War two, we had these large A frame tow bars,

which again, it was by necessity because we had only

so many personnel and we were going to blow up four

deeps today.

So we had to have a spare.

Correct.

You had to have a spare and you could have a spare.

Yep.

And they had these pintle hitch equipped.

And, and so we had, you know, the trailer in

conversation, whether it was a, a cargo trailer,

uh, whether it was an ammunition trailer or the

flat, the flat tow bar, um, that would allow you, you

would hook it to another Jeep.

And you know, I remember seeing imagery and videos

of Jeeps getting pulled by, by other Jeeps and whatnot,

which stands out to me.

And I think it's pretty cool.

I think the biggest difference of the legitimacy back

in the day of going freeway speeds while flat

towing compared to today.

Yes.

It was usually something you did just to get off

the highway or to your destination in town.

Now, if you had, you know, NADS of steel and you just

didn't know what you should, you know, that you

shouldn't do it any better, which, you know, it's

kind of what made the country.

Then yeah, maybe you went from coast to coast, but

again, we were going slower speeds.

So the fact that we can take, uh, you know, a

huge class A border home, stick our brand new Jeep

behind it and the Jeep breaks along with the coach.

Uh, you don't have to worry about the wheels going

full lock and skidding down the road.

Not that I know anything about that.

Interesting.

Um, trying to hook up a tow bar back in the day.

Awful, awful, absolutely terrible, miserable, terrible,

terrible, um, floor jacks really make it much nicer.

Ah, my gosh, because you never can get them lined up

perfectly.

And that's the thing is that tow bars back in the day

were a arguably a fixed A frame and a they were an A.

And in fact, I recall, uh, I mean, even having in my

possession, because a lot of them were just two

bars coming off and they would, they would actually

attach to the bumper of the vehicle itself.

I mean, again, we go back to the most early

ones, somebody found an old trailer that had reached

its demise and you cut the front of it off and then

you drill two holes, you welded or bolted or lashed by

some means brackets to the front of the vehicle

that you're going to tow and you put pins in and

there you go.

You're ready to roll.

Right.

Now, if you really wanted to be elitist, then

you worried about lights.

Breaks weren't even on the table.

No, you didn't need breaks where you were

going, you didn't need to break things.

And I was going to say, you know, from the, the

tow bar that I had in my possession actually had

a crossbar in it.

So hooking it up to the vehicle, it was a one

vehicle tow bar, basically, you had to modify the

vehicle that you were attaching it to, uh, in

order to use that A frame.

Yep.

And it wasn't even that the, the bows, uh, went

side to side, which is what becomes, you

know, popular in the 80s and they finally

started making it, you know, you can adjust those.

Right.

And then, you know, they still weren't even

telescoping like they are today.

Right.

Today, I mean, you could have the, the, the

coach and the Jeep off by a foot and unlatch

it, bring it over, plop it on the ball, you

pull it forward and it locks and boom, you're

down the road.

Right.

You never got to experience the amazing

experience of trying to push it on the ball.

Trying to actually line it up so that it

perfectly, uh, that it perfectly kind of attached

together.

There's, there's no perfect.

Well, I think it's funny because you're using

the, you're using the term on the ball.

That's not even the vast majority of tow bars

anymore.

They are actually a two inch hitch, uh, themselves

and they insert into the receiver and then

the telescoping arms.

We don't even use the ball hitch on the

vast majority of today's modern tow bars.

And then again, if you were an elitist, you

went and got a length of chain and you hooked

one chain to your, your loop on the towing

vehicle and you wrapped it around the A frame.

However, many times you had to, because it

was never the right length.

Right.

And then you wrapped it around the front

bumper of that.

And that was emergency use only.

That's your safety chain there.

That was your safety chain.

So, so here's the thing.

So I have this A frame, uh, but, but that

would require modifying the bumper of

whatever vehicle you were putting it on.

So here I am as an enterprising young

individual doesn't know that he shouldn't

do stuff that he doesn't know he shouldn't

do stuff.

And of course, I grew up, uh, with a

family who had, you know, we didn't have

a lot of limitations ourselves.

And it was a farm.

So you're already fat towing.

Oh, all the time, right?

So when, when a vehicle was lashed to

the tow vehicle in some capacity, uh,

you, without the tow bar itself being in

position, somebody has to steer the

wheels, because if you're just pulling

off of a chain, a tow strap, jumper

cables, you never done that.

You, you have to have somebody steering

the wheel because it, if it's has some

form of, of give to it, that rear vehicle

will not track behind the tow vehicle.

And so I don't know if this was a term

that everybody used or just what I was

exposed to, but we called it, uh, being

a dead man.

You had to drive dead man.

That's literally what I was going to

reference.

Okay.

So.

And the police really love it when

you do that.

Oh, wait till I tell my story.

So, so I understand the necessity of

like, Hey, I'm broken down and I'm on a

tow strap and there's, there's 15 feet

behind us and somebody's got to run

dead man.

Oh, shit.

15 feet.

That's what's curious.

Somebody's got to write dead man and

you have to, you have to make sure

you're breaking with the vehicle in

front of you and you have to keep

that, that flat towed vehicle tracked

behind the tow vehicle.

Right.

Okay.

So here I am, uh, I'm, I'm kind of

starting out in, in, you know,

itchy story.

It is.

Okay.

It is the community story.

So I had just graduated college and I

had, uh, not had a very, I didn't

know a lot of people in the area at

that time.

And you really, really, really like

Jeep trucks.

I love Jeep trucks.

And my tow rig, uh, at the time was

a early nineties, uh, GM conversion

van and, uh, G 20, G 20, good old

Mark three G 20.

And, uh, with the plush interior

velour and the curtains and every

the whole, the whole nine yards, which,

which I've been looking, which I've

been looking for one again.

You have.

Um, so, uh, so I'm like, okay, I

see this Jeep available as flat as

this Comanche pick them up truck.

And I was like, I need to go get

that has no driveline has no, no

legal ease, you know, way to get

it home.

And I, I don't know where my trailer

was or what was wrong with my

trailer because I own my first

trailer by this time.

I had sort of bed sites.

It did.

It was, it was solid enough.

It was solid enough.

It had, we could see the dream.

I knew I was, I was buying the

dream, right?

But I needed to get the dream home.

So I took, I had a friend who was

not mechanically inclined, not

even in the least bit, which

this helps you when you're trying

to do this, right?

Oh, because he's none the wiser

of the crappy situation I'm

about to put him in.

And it was unfortunately a

little over somewhere between

30 and 40 minutes away.

And I went ahead and I throw

him in the van and I throw

some nylon tow strap in the

van.

And I don't even remember, you

know, and I threw a spare

tire in there as well.

You were, yeah, absolutely.

And I went and went to go and

pick up the Jeep.

Now, the funny thing about

Comanches and Cherokees of the

80s and early 90s, that front

bumper was metal and it had a

sharp edge on the backside of

it.

And I went ahead and I wrapped

the heck out of the two

bumpers.

I put the tire and I backed

up to the Comanche.

I made him hold it.

So now I'm backing up at him

and I back up to the Comanche

and I put them bumper to

bumper and I grabbed the tow

strap and I lash it around the

bumpers in this incredibly

cattywompous way.

So now I've got conversion van,

tire, Comanche, and I'm

lashed together with like a.

I mean, he's got a easy job now

because you can't rear in the

van.

You can't rear on the van.

It's perfect.

Kevin, all I need you to do

is steer is steer is stay

behind me.

Yeah, don't even break.

No breaking necessary.

Vans got got a big booty.

You can do it at the right.

The van's going to be perfectly

fine.

So we depart our destination

and I'm just I am of the

volition of like you'll figure

it out back there.

He has never done anything

like this in his whole entire

life.

Can you picture the guys from

the Big Bang Theory where

they literally wear their pole

buttoned all the way up to the

top of their neck and the pocket

protector and everything.

That was Kevin.

I graduated college with him.

An incredible human being not

an ounce of mechanical

inclination whatsoever.

And I have now thrust him into

the dead man position thinking,

I don't know.

This seems really straightforward

to me.

All you got to do is keep the

command team behind the van.

I also decided that

I would I was so confident

once we left the

the initial property.

And you got like 15 minutes

of experience.

Yeah, you got 15 minutes of

experience that I would go

ahead and go out and get on

the highway.

Makes perfect sense.

This is fantastic.

And I'm I'm relying on the

tail lights of the van to

again, I didn't need lights

and I didn't need breaks.

You know, those signs on the

freeway that says these are

some things you should not do

on the freeway.

Those were written for Neil.

I know that minimum.

Oh, my God.

I I went ahead

and I I hammered home

and it was

appropriately uneventful

from the driver's position.

I couldn't see the command

team.

And I mean, I would watch it

kind of like ebb out to the

side of the van and then back

and, you know, every once

on a blue moon, it would kind

of go side to side.

And we were hammered

down. I was fine.

You know, I was fine.

Cell phones weren't a thing.

So he couldn't call you like,

hey, stop what you're doing.

He was screwed

from the moment that I left.

I pulled back into town.

He gets out of the Jeep.

He is visibly shook.

He is pale.

He wants to throw up.

His knuckles hurt from being

on the Jeep so badly.

And I am like, well, that was

good. We got here, guys.

We're look at my dear Jeep.

Look at my new Jeep.

He is like visibly

shook. He wants to puke.

He's a little frustrated at me.

It was epic.

The worst part of this whole

conversation, despite the fact

that Kevin and I no longer speak.

Go figure.

Has only a little bit

to do with these shenanigans.

Great, dude.

I wish him the best in life.

The worst part was this was

one of those back in the day

when tow ropes were made

out of woven nylon.

As it should be, as I was

as I was deconstructing

this, you know, conglomeration

down to a thread or two.

It was down to a thread or two.

I pulled into town and as he had,

you know, swerved or weaved

behind the tow rig, it actually

worked that tow strap.

Soaring it off.

You were sighing at that tow

strap from the the edge

or the sharpness of those.

That folks is called a near miss.

Yep. That is 100 percent the case.

If we would have gone any further,

that vehicle would have

absolutely detached from the van.

There was absolutely no brakes.

I mean, the Jeep was the driveline

was out of the Jeep.

The master cylinder was out of the Jeep.

I could have authentically killed

my friend.

Poor Kevin. Poor Kevin.

So I have a similar

experience of the dead man.

And it was when I had a

automobile and the Delta 88

and my cousin, Jason, had a

Buick Regal, great vehicles, great vehicles.

His his regal died on the side of the road.

It was I don't know if our listeners

would, you know, some of them may know

this area, but South Hill and Coons

going towards the Mill Creek Mall in Erie.

So it's this it's this windy,

hilly back road that access

you dead head, facing the mall

at Peach Street.

Oh, perfect.

And it's a great towing road.

Yes, he's he's on that road.

And we were both headed somewhere

when his vehicle died.

So I just pull over, go back.

We try to figure out what's going on.

I can't get it figured out.

He has this, I don't know,

two and a half foot length of rope.

So we tie it to the rear bumper of mine,

the front bumper of his.

And he's going to dead man it.

But he has no brakes.

He has obviously no power steering at this point.

You know, that wasn't even a thing for that vehicle.

So it was it was great.

Going down a hilly windy road

and playing bumper cars.

I was just saying,

absolutely because you're because he's bumping into you.

Absolutely.

Bang in the back of your car.

Oh, yeah, I'm trying to slow airbags.

I'm trying to slow down

to get to the light at Peach.

Yes, it's just ramming into the back and just kind of he's got no choice.

You've got that little.

Yeah, the wave coming to us happening.

Turn on the Peach Street and wouldn't you know it?

There's a milk or cup just sitting right there watching traffic.

I'm like, hello, it is what it is.

Yeah, we just went right past them.

I didn't say a word.

But yeah, that was the whole way back.

And thank goodness, those had metal bumpers as well.

So right.

And that's and those are two good sized cars.

So I'm sure they were just boats.

They were just you were just boating each other.

Whereas the van in the commands,

the the van didn't know the commands.

He was back.

Oh, you know what I mean?

Oh, yeah.

Once I once I got up and going, it didn't matter.

You're you're going,

plop, plop, you know, the head.

You're getting whiplash in the process.

Oh, I was.

So it's a my good story.

Yes, we were in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

And I was at a friend's place.

We were going to do a derby demo derby.

And we got a call that so and so was broke down

on the side of the road.

So the logical thing is all the kids pile

into all the vehicles and we go up to see what we can do.

And like normal, I can't do anything with it.

So we got to tow it.

And of course, we got like 80 cars on the side of the road.

Brought the whole whole, you know,

shooting matches over there with their four ways on.

So Cot pulls up behind us as we're

thinking about lashing cars together.

And she walks up and she says,

she literally goes, oh, she's sized.

You know, we got like 15 young people standing

on the side of the road.

And she's like, I know what you guys are doing.

Tell you what I'm going to do.

I'm going to go up the road about two miles.

And I'm going to turn around.

And if you're not sitting here when I come back,

I didn't see a thing.

We're like, thank you, ladies, so much.

So when she pulled away, it was game on.

I don't even remember what we were

towing how we towed it or whatever, but it was go time.

Get that thing off the road by any means possible.

Bumper the bumper, rope, doesn't matter.

Get on the side road, pronto.

Right, right.

And so of course, the alternative to all of this,

and as a trailer, is either a trailer.

And if you are not in a position to A,

afford a trailer or B, trailers also require maintenance.

I want to say that the biggest problem of the trailer

is it is just the beginning, because now you need ramps.

Now you need straps.

Now you need lights on the trailer.

A good trailer has brakes.

Well, now we have more brakes to maintain.

You have registration on the trailer.

Registration.

Now you have to have a vehicle equipped to tow the trailer.

You have to store the trailer somewhere

when you're not using it.

Yep.

Now you're friends with everybody.

And the thing is, and this is what I have no reservation.

And when we talk about tow dollies, flat towing,

or full trailer towing, I am a full trailer towing guy.

When we had the class A and we were doing some traveling

with it and whatnot, I loaded Jeeps onto a full-size trailer.

That was my specific approach or interest.

I don't mind pulling the ramps out and loading the Jeep.

I don't mind that visual as I go up and your headlights

are looking at the sky.

And you have to then keep the Jeep centered

between the wheel wells and not crush them, Jeffrey,

in the process of loading the vehicle onto the trailer.

I don't mind strapping down a Jeep, right?

But my dad does.

And quite frankly, quite a few of the customers

that we have set up flat tow assemblies for them

don't want to own a trailer, store a trailer,

strap to a trailer.

Crush fenders on the trailer.

Crush fenders on their trailer.

I mean, the biggest challenge really

is it's intimidating to them, pull a trailer.

Because now you have to be mindful,

where is the trailer wheels at?

It's wider than your vehicle in front of it, 90% of the time.

So now, can you back up a trailer?

Can you back up a trailer?

Are you taking the road cones out with the fender of the trailer

because it's wider?

A telephone pole.

Neil.

Oh, that is true.

We've seen some stuff.

Or bring in some stuff.

Neil.

Yeah, Scott, make sure that the stuff you're putting

on the trailer.

Is that a cough thing?

Is it?

You've got some of the stuff in your throat.

Yeah, that's to say, maybe take a drink.

Busy your mouth, Jeffrey.

Sometimes you have to make sure the thing you're

putting on the trailer is too heavy for the trailer.

Dude, I just hit the light pole last year.

No, you didn't.

That was 20 years ago.

What are you talking about?

It was fictitious, yeah.

Portulito, Ohio.

I don't know anything about that.

Literally, Joe passed it.

The light pole is still crippled like this.

They just put a new one up next to it.

That's the shit.

Yeah, I'm just keeping those jobs going.

All right, well, nobody has any proof that it happened.

And Charles even said, plus,

owning a trailer, you are now a moving company

for friends and family.

It's exactly Scott's intention.

It's like owning a pickup truck.

You become best friends with everybody.

The best part, and one final story

before we get on to actually how you should do this.

So my father-in-law had a 79 F-150 four-wheel drive truck,

and it died in the middle of the busy road.

And so he walked to the house and was like,

hey, the truck's dead in the middle of the road.

I need someone to assist me to do this.

I don't remember why I didn't go.

But we're like, ah, Amy can go with that.

Then girlfriend, now current wife.

So she takes her Jeep, Cherokee, backs up to that.

And he had a cool chain.

He had a J-hook chain.

So he looked the J-hook around the front axle,

the Ford, hooked the other one to the hitch on the Jeep,

got in the truck said, all right, go ahead.

And she's like, oh, OK.

So she drove away like she was pulling it

from a traffic light.

Oh, buddy.

She pulled that Ford so hard.

He almost lost grip on the steering wheel.

Thankfully, he didn't have to go very far.

Right.

Well, and that's a chain as well, which has no give.

And we were a society that pulled with chains up

until 15 years ago.

Absolutely.

I mean, if you don't have an older person to tell you

a story about a chain that tried to connect dots

on a frame from doing this kind of towing,

because my dad had that story.

Sure.

I don't know the details enough to tell it,

but you could rip a frame in half pretty quick with a chain.

Yes.

And that's the thing.

We don't use chains in recovery anymore for a number of reasons.

Even when it was chains, and then it

was the chain links or chain hooks,

metal hooks on the ends, before it finally got away

from that completely.

But you could, the webbing with the metal hooks

was a thing for quite a while.

Absolutely.

And the metal hooks were almost worse, in my opinion,

than just straight chain.

Well, because the metal hooks became a projectile,

because now that potential energy, just when it snapped,

now we're shooting projectiles.

Right, absolutely.

Basically, a sling shot.

I think that's exciting.

Yes.

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

So we have these situations where

it is necessary to move a vehicle.

And in conjunction with the alternatives,

you decide that the benefit of the fact

that you can largely just pull the vehicle up

to the toe rig, you can hook it up,

that now with the A-frame, the solid A-frame,

it eliminates the need for a dead man, per se,

unless you have a worn out steering box.

Well, that's true.

And within reason, because that triangle connection,

it largely keeps the vehicle from a minimal side

to side sway, versus kind of something

that is more elasticity to it.

Like a tire.

And nylon rope.

That's along with that.

So you've also determined that you do not

want to own a trailer, or that towing via a trailer

is not to your specific comfort level.

I also want to point out, your tire conversation

doesn't work on most modern vehicles.

I've watched it literally just crush front bumpers.

Oh.

We're well.

I mean, we're 35 years past the point.

But I'm familiar with doing the tire in between.

I've done it.

But I also have watched people recently.

Because our first cars had metal bumpers.

And you know what's funny is that I

think that's lost on a lot of people generationally.

I mean, there are literally people

generationally in our generation because of when

we started driving in the vehicles that were available

to us, who do not recognize, since you have brought up

tow trucks, in your fun fact there, push bumpers

on the front of tow trucks.

Yeah.

And sling trucks, period.

Sling trucks, 100%, that apparatus

that people see on the back of a wrecker.

And a wrecker is not a flatbed.

Because now, most tow companies run a flatbed.

And if they're not running a flatbed,

you'll notice they run what's called a stinger.

And a stinger picks up.

It goes down under the tires.

But previous, and prior to, and look at tow mater from cars,

they had sling trucks.

And that was because you could sling

under those front metal bumpers.

And the push bumper on tow trucks

was exactly the objective that I could get somebody

in the dead man position, and I could push them off the road.

Yep.

That never happens anymore.

And the sling can't happen anymore.

You destroy the car.

That's true.

And the sling was an upgrade over just having a hook

that you hooked on the bumper.

On, like, 30s cars that had just this big spring bumper.

You could literally just pull.

They had J-hooks.

And that was the thing is that you had a single J-hook

or you had double J-hooks.

And it would come down and you'd hook under the vehicle

and you'd just pick the vehicle up from there.

And it would literally be swinging on the sling.

And if you had a all-wheel drive or a four-wheel drive

that was stuck in whatever, the little tiny tires

on the back of a wrecker, those are dollies.

And you would jack up the back of the car

and you'd stick those little baby tires under the back wheels.

And now you have a trailer.

Yes.

And now you've made a trailer.

And that's if you're lucky, because there's

been plenty of conversations and stories of tow operators

just needing to get the vehicle out of the space

and they just drug it.

Absolutely.

Which binds up your transmission, your transfer case,

everything, and ruins your tires in the process,

flat spotting them.

So these are all the contrary things

to effective flat towing.

Now the downside to flat towing is the fact

that the vehicle has to be road or speed worthy

of being towed behind.

But does it?

Well, I've been personally thinking

about the fun peculiar nature of flat towing

and off-road rig behind one of my vehicles.

So having an off-road rig that is kind of put together,

my own personal six weeks of interest

is an off-road rig that is really kind of dedicated to off-road

and not intending to be a daily driver.

Kind of that race car idea that you talked about, you know?

See, my only problem is, then you

can't break a driveline component.

Correct.

Axle shafts just got off the table.

Correct.

Wheels and tires need to stay inflated.

That's exactly.

You can't be aired down and then trying to go out and get

on the highway and do 55, 60 on the way home.

And now, depending on your area you live,

like poor souls and PA, if you suddenly

make it more trail than on-road,

they aren't going to be happy with it having

a tire on the road.

I was wondering about that, right?

And so that's literally one of the things

that as we talk about the concept of flat towing,

if I have a vehicle that does not have appropriate titling

registration and insurgency and state inspection.

Cannot be on the road.

Is it a trailer if I have an A-frame or a tow bar hooked

up to it before you understand that not all trailers have

to be registered as well, right?

But I'm going to interject and jump to the comments

because there's somebody commenting from YouTube

who their name on YouTube fits Neil to a T.

Days of Pain and Victory says, I saw the title of this video

and had to click because I literally just posted a video

yesterday about flat towing in RV with my truck

and it's doing terrible.

That trip was sketchy.

I don't recommend flat towing a 32-foot motor

home behind a pickup.

I want to know more.

I might go find your video.

Why need you to link?

Because we do have appropriately towing RVs.

There's also somebody on YouTube

who desperately was saying good morning.

I want to make sure we recognize that.

There's a bunch.

If we go back, we've got 415.

Alfredo say good morning.

We've got Mike Lentz saying morning, guys.

We had Bill McWilliam saying good morning.

So there's a whole bunch.

Joe O'Brien claiming he's a towing expert, LOL.

Then we've got Houseman saying part of the reason

the original video failed in his opinion

is that it was titled everything you need to know,

but you didn't cover things like backing up

or figuring out weight, et cetera.

Let's be honest, the title doesn't matter.

It was Neil presenting it.

It's flat towing.

I was just saying nobody cares about flat towing

is what it comes down to.

People are still asleep somewhere.

Right.

Yeah, so you towed a 32 motor home with a truck

and that is literally what that YouTuber is saying.

I want to see this video.

Yeah, even House is saying I got to see this video.

Daddy Jeep saying I towed a 32 foot RV 10 miles

behind a farm tractor once.

I think that's-

There's nothing more Warren, Pennsylvania.

Right?

Thank you, Rob Morgan.

Isn't that one of the three points for?

I wish I could say that I've never seen that before.

Three point hitch.

That's three point hitch.

That's basically a sling truck.

It is.

I mean, that's one that got the idea from.

So we have this concept.

And again, our objective today was not necessarily

to get into the technical data.

Jeff said we can only talk about how much the video sucked

and-

It's literally what I said.

I was like, we're not talking technical.

Our own experiences and why people

may choose one over the other.

I mean, like I said before,

it's just we've taken, we've legitimized flat towing.

Now we can do it safely, legally.

At speed.

It's boring.

I was just saying it's way less fun now.

Yeah, it's way less fun.

Right.

But back to before we went to the comments.

And this may be a Fredism, which.

Oh, Fred.

I can't wait for him to join us.

And it was a peculiar cat.

But he had such written rules

and I got pounded in my head

that if a vehicle set a tire on the road

and had to have a license plate,

had to have lights

and it had to have insurance.

Mm-hmm.

So if you're towing something

that's broken down, it better have those things.

It didn't say he had to propel itself down the road

but it had to have a plate, had to have insurance.

Should be in your name.

Should.

Should be.

To the point that we had a converted

pop-up camper trailer

that he had found things to make out of.

So we're talking a single axle,

the little fat tires

that should have been on every 70s and 80s pop-up camper.

And we had a 56 Chevy

that needed to go a couple miles away.

So he wedged this Chevy onto this trailer,

which the front tires were.

Onto a pop-up camper conversion trailer.

So the front tires were to the front of the box.

How does Fred do this?

This is something I would do.

And the back tires are at the back of the trailer

and he had made a gate that was removable.

And that's where the license plate was.

So in his thought,

the tail lights were off the 56 Chevy's

which is why we're not flat showing it.

Because we have no lights.

And it wasn't registered.

So he straps the trailer's gate to the back of the car.

Oh my God.

And we hook it to our K-10

and we're going down the road.

We make a turn and why not?

There's a state highway patrol.

Of course.

No one knows.

My dad had a very great relationship with...

In a contentious relationship with law enforcement.

So he of course pulls in behind us and pulls us over.

And I cannot make this up.

He walks up to the truck and he says,

well why I pulled you over was

and I didn't see your license plate for the trailer.

And my dad could have murdered him

right there on the side of the road.

And he says it's strapped to the back of the car

on the tailgate.

The cop walks to the back of the trailer,

looks at it, comes back.

So sorry I bothered you.

No talk about trailers overloaded as heck

because it was.

No talk about how it's hanging off

both ends of the trailer because it was.

None of that.

I don't even think it was properly strapped.

I don't know any of that.

Right.

And my dad wasn't happy

that we just didn't get in trouble.

He was mad because now he was on his desired course.

He was off course.

He was off course, yes.

Because he had to take that extra 30 minutes

to explain.

Absolutely because he didn't want to be in traffic

so he pulled off.

Yes.

And now we had to figure out

to get this rig moved around.

And I was like, oh boy.

Such a friend.

I've got a YouTube update.

days of pain and victory says,

yes we just wanted the big block out of it

but he had to get it to his house 120 miles.

I love it.

I want to watch the video.

So and I can't, oh my God.

Okay.

We can't go off subject here.

But I too days of pain acquired a 32 foot barth motor home.

So this is a problem though.

You probably didn't fall in love with the motor home.

You fell in love with the motor.

Neil fell in love with the barthness of the motor.

I still regret not having that RV.

It was one of the simply the coolest pieces

of automotive history that could never have been.

Oh my God.

And a low mileage 454.

Yep.

And you hand winched it onto a trailer.

So I appreciate your hillbilly nature to flat toe it.

100% because quite frankly,

it sounds like it's about the same size.

I just happened to have a like a 35, 40 foot trailer

because it too was hanging off the back.

I had to strap the ramps up to the back of the bar.

No winches at this point.

No winches.

I had to hand with a come along and tow straps.

Wasn't it my dad's come along?

It was your dad's come along.

Yeah, may have not survived.

It did not survive.

I had a hand come along,

which moved about four to six feet at any given time.

And then I would use the tie down straps.

I'd extend them, hook on.

I would then disconnect the come along.

The RV couldn't roll back

because it had one singular, you know, 5,000 pound strap

keeping it from rolling off the trailer.

And then I would reopen up the come along

and bring in another four to six feet.

We're the shortest come along.

They were stupid short.

Okay, so here's today's standards, right?

And for the boring, you know,

unassuming nature of what this subject is apparently,

despite the fact that I think it's super cool.

You do have to have a road worthy vehicle or you should.

And most people are choosing to do that.

There was a handful of great manufacturers

who have dedicated their product lines

to ensuring that you have a safe and uneventful experience.

Not only that, there is some auto manufacturers

that literally are knowledgeable of this movement

and try to make vehicles that are easier to do this.

I remember when it first happened in the 90s,

Saturns were like the first vehicles

that you could tow behind and not just destroy the vehicle.

There was this little secret saw she did with the transmission

and you were off to the races.

Well, and it's important to note that at one point in time

because there's a lot of misnomer,

a lot of misinformation when it came around jeeps

because how are you supposed to flat tow

these old school jeeps?

Some people knew that

and some people were out there removing drive shafts

from the application.

A Quadra Track all-wheel drive Jeep,

you had to reasonably remove the drive shafts.

Yes, unless you were one of those cool guys

that had hubs all the way around

and then you just unlocked all four.

Which then was this whole conversation

about front and rear manual hubs.

And that was a thing.

And I remember seeing in some rags,

reading about guys who installed hubs

for purposes of flat towing.

Especially on the early Willis vehicles.

There it is, there it is, there it is.

But, you know, so then there was this idea of like,

well, do I put the transmission in neutral?

Will it still, will it tow just fine?

Do I put the transfer case in neutral?

We had locking steering columns.

I still recall people, certainly in high school

when they were doing inappropriate flat towing

we shared the stories, they did not realize

that they needed to have the key in the forward position

and in order to not have the steering wheel lock engage.

Or if the earliest years of RVing

with a Jeep behind it,

you had to put the key in the accessory position,

well now your battery was dead

when you got to your destination.

And you were jumping it

and we didn't have the jump packs

that we currently have.

We were having to use jumper cables

to jump off the RV or, you know, a multi-battery setup.

So long story short, you should always go

in your owner's manual and read

what does a vehicle manufacturer suggest you should do

in the case of flat towing.

Everyone I've ever read in there, it tells you what to do.

Some will tell you just abandon all hope, don't do it.

All the newer Jeeps, that is not the case,

that will tell you like, okay,

this is the procedure you do.

This is how you do it.

And then you need to come to a shop

and you can properly have the lights on Jeep work.

You can have the Jeep battery being charged by the rig.

You can have appropriate tow bar

so you don't have to spend four days in a floor jack

to get it on the ball.

You don't have to have your significant other fear

for their life as the dead man anymore.

You can lose the brakes on the vehicle you're towing

to slow down that.

Right, less wear and tear on your tow rig.

And in many of our customer situation,

they're able to use an appropriately rated RV.

So the chassis of the RV, and this is always a conversation,

you can jump on those forums

and they'll people be fighting right now about it.

But you can use an appropriately rated RV

for the combination and not put any additional wear and tear.

If you're running a Class A on a freight liner chassis,

I gotta be honest with you,

brakes on a Jeep behind it don't matter.

It doesn't care.

If you got to push your RV,

you pretty much tow whatever you want.

Pretty much, right?

Until you get into a big extreme trailer,

which we've done in the past.

But the RV kind of doesn't care.

But if you're down into a sprinter assembly,

where you've got an appropriately sized

sprinter chassis based RV

and you want it not to get pushed by the

four to 5,000 pound towed in the process,

the vehicle that you are towing.

Or you have one of those RVs that has a van front.

That's just a classic van.

I see, I so desperately want to get a van

and a crappy off-road rig.

Oh my God, I want this so bad.

I want to flat tow it around inappropriately.

But I'm gonna have to air up the tires

and I'm gonna have to have decent tires.

My interest in having crappy tires

that are just like a crack away from exploding on the trail

or a valve stem that you kicked

and inappropriately taped off.

I'm not gonna be able to do that if I want a flat tow.

But I love the idea, I just love, love, love the idea

of the guy who shows up to the racetrack

with a dirt bike strapped to the back of his Lamborghini

or the old school.

The romance of it.

The romance of that idea that somebody showed up

to the dirt track and they are,

they're literally got the tire strapped

to the back of the car, their tow car

and the race cars behind them on a flat bar.

Because it takes passion to inappropriately tow something

to just be able to go experience it

where when you've got all those things,

all the stuff ready to go, it's so easy to go, you know, eh.

It's really just boring.

It's just a subject that arguably really the broad majority

and Jeffrey brought this up in our conversation the other

day and he was unpacking the topic in general going,

okay, well, how many people do you know who have an RV?

Well, first of all, amongst certain groupings

are very few people who have RVs, right?

Jeff was going, eh, you know, one, two hands maybe

and that would be in a scope of 10 years or so.

And then, and how many of them actually want

to tow a vehicle, you know?

Because as you mentioned, the struggle

or strife around towing can, you know,

can lead some people not to want to do it, you know?

And you have to really be committed to that process.

So he's like, you know, is the subject matter

really that engaging?

Where everybody's had their vehicle broke down

at some point.

Everybody's had to inappropriately get something home.

Now it's relatable, but now it's not the boring

It's not that, hey, this blue locks tow bar

with this rock hard bomber.

Because it's a phone call.

Hey, what you doing, Jimmy?

Oh, my car broke down.

Can you come save me?

Now you're grabbing what's at your disposal,

your jumper cables or your chain

or your purple strap or whatever you can find.

In my opinion, if you haven't towed

with jumper cables, you haven't towed.

I've never towed with jumper cables.

Are you serious?

By Blaine Fred.

You blame Fred?

Yes.

Quite limited.

Standards for a young person.

I'm sure you did.

Quite literally last year, quite literally last year

this couple was out in a vehicle

that did not have their winter tires on it.

They still had their summer tires on it.

It was one of the first big snow storms.

Oh yeah.

They were wildly unprepared.

I'm ashamed to admit that I was out there

in my comfort crocs.

And no, I was in my boots.

I was in my cab-on tractor with the heat on,

four-wheel drive.

I was just rumbling along down the road.

I was way too prepared for who I am.

And I just stopped in an attempt

to try and help them get off the road.

And they had a kid in the back

and they had groceries.

And I'll be honest with you,

they shouldn't have been on the road.

This is one of those situations.

And I was like, and it had plastic bumpers, right?

So I'm like, I can't, I would just use the tractor

and scoop them up and push them out of the way.

I can't.

And we were far enough from any particular destinations

and I said, well, what do you got?

How can I help you?

And he pulled jumper cables out,

but of course they're not even like the good,

absolutely robust jumper cables.

They were like some Kmart special,

blue light specials from back in the day.

And they just snap the moment we tried to extract them.

Extension cords probably better than jumper cables.

Golly.

Yeah, but have you ever towed a port-a-potty

with a golf cart?

Huh, I did that just this summer.

So did I.

Multiple times.

You know, it's off topic a little bit,

but I feel like it's fun.

You know, it's really hard to do,

roll over a frame with-

I did that with you.

I know.

Wow.

You know what it is.

You know how many hours we spent

trying to roll a frame upside down?

Yeah, we were trying to use a strap

to flip it on its side.

Drug inside weighs a lot.

Here's the piece that I need our listeners

to recognize again is often times

so many things I share.

I want people to be able to learn

from our indiscretions.

And I want to spread the message

that our modern day,

certainly if you are in the concept of RVing,

you, the objective is the fact

that you're traveling with your house on your back,

the destinations that you have the ability to get to,

the kind of the self-sustaining nature

and rugged individualism that the road trip

creates in the individual.

That, yes, flat towing does make a lot of sense

because you can just kind of get there.

You can unhook.

No, you can't back it up effectively at all.

I have.

It's not great.

It's easy to jackknife.

Farmers have been backing up free-standing,

free-turning vehicles for a long time.

There's scrub radius that you have to worry about

as far as your tires wearing out

a little faster than other.

A vehicle that's shoving it needs enough to be able to do it.

To get the job done.

It can be pricey, but in all said and done,

you can go out,

by the time that you pay for a good quality light,

charging system, tow bar, braking system,

you could have gone out and bought yourself

a brand new beautiful trailer in many situations.

Sometimes though, it's just the,

they're just not confident enough to tow the trailer.

Or the convenience of the fact

that they've made the tow bars so,

the telescoping nature, the redundant safety systems

that literally within 15 minutes

of hooking and unhooking some pins,

you can be in your towed vehicle

and off on your next adventure.

Absolutely.

Your time and energy is not invested in the trailer,

the tow dolly, the line, the precision alignment.

I will go as far as saying it.

And I am a trailer preferred guy.

If you streamline the trailer

so that you've made it

where there's like little spots for you to drive into

and you will bump into a certain spots,

you have the weight figured out,

you have proper straps the right length

so there's no tail to worry about.

If you've streamlined all that

so you're perfect for your vehicle

that's always on this trailer,

I bet you can still unhook a flat towed Jeep quicker

that you get unstrapped that vehicle

and get it off the trailer.

I, by today's modern standards.

And what I will simply say

is that today's modern Jeeps.

And I'll even give the,

I'll throw the JKs a little bit of love

in this conversation.

It's not just the JLs.

But honest to Pete, the JK, the JL and the JT

are some of the hands down best possible towed vehicles.

It literally requires so little

for them to be flat towed effectively and safely.

And in a manner that retains the utilization

and value of both the tow rig and the Jeep being towed.

I'm gonna add so little

after the initial setup and install.

Correct.

Because there is some technical knowledge

involved with the braking systems and all of that.

Absolutely.

But once you get that setup, it is very easy.

But there's other vehicles

you literally just can't do it, right?

Period.

Just real fast as we're wrapping up,

Jeanie Jumpton said hi, happy fall y'all.

So just wanted to say hi to her.

Absolutely, good morning.

We really appreciate everybody's participation

in the comments.

We don't read everything,

but read the vast majority of it.

I value people jumping in

and having a good time in the comments

and sharing and having the conversation with us.

I promised I would stay away from the technical minutia

that I nerd out on so much.

So to reward him,

you should send your Caddy Womp

his flat towing story to...

Contact, C-O-N-T-A-C-T at S-F-J-4-X-4.com.

Or you can text us directly.

It's a text only number.

Don't call us on this line.

Call the shop line if you need something else,

but text only 440-855-210-0.

We'd love to hear from you.

Share that Caddy Womp his story.

If it's engaging enough,

we might kind of put it on air sometime in the future.

Check out Days of Pain and Victory

and his video of flat towing a 32-foot

or better RV 120 miles.

You know the movie Step Brothers?

Yes.

You guys just become best friends.

Oh my goodness.

I can't wait to check that myself.

I wanna know what the motor is for.

What are they gonna stick to?

It was a small block or big block?

What did he say?

He did say big block.

I did this.

I get it, man.

Our gal or whoever, I get it.

I value that and I'm here for it.

I'm gonna check it out.

That's very cool.

And if you're interested in what's happening

in our personal lives,

I encourage you to hang out following the outro

and we'll update you there.

But until then, we have a ton of Jeeps on property.

Check out Jeffrey and Scott's Tuesday live updates

when Jeff remembers to actually do them.

And...

I've been remembering.

I just wasn't here for a year and a half.

That's what I know.

I know, I felt every bit of that.

And it is technically fall,

so we are quickly careening to Christmas

because we're just gonna skip over Turkey Day for haters.

Scott's favorite holiday coming up.

Scott and my wife, honestly.

You're skipping over the best holiday of Halloween.

I know, I know, I know.

He's attacking both of us, Scott.

And with that said,

there is a number of trunk retreats.

So if there's something that you're participating

with your Jeep club

or that we can kind of help support in verbalizing

or sharing out to the Jeep community,

we'd love to know about that as well.

And we are also counting down the days to SEMA

and we will factually have the swamp donkey

hashtag not a restoration

represented in the Crown Automotive booth in SEMA 2025.

So look for coverage coming up about that.

Trail Fest.

And Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival Trail Fest.

Which again, Rob Morgan is heavily involved

and a number of our listeners are.

And so best of luck to people who are attending that.

And I look forward to being there as well.

Until next time, Jeep on.

Jeep on, Jeep on.

So I don't have a whole lot of updates

because I was kind of sleeping and relaxing.

I know we were supposed to do more concrete work

and you tech said that we're not up for that much.

All right.

Yep.

I got the, we were supposed to dig down some holes

a little deeper to make my general contractor happy.

Well, the last six of the 24 holes.

And he said, hey, the skid steer is on a job

I didn't know about and I can't do it.

And I was like, you know what?

Calling it done.

Don't feel like it.

That's a sign from the universe.

So I let me release Jeff from his chains

and let him go enjoy his weekend like he should.

So that happens.

The only thing exciting I did was mow the lawn

and the only reason I justified that

was I was getting some vitamin D while I was doing it.

Yeah.

That's a pressure.

You got sick last Thursday or so.

Yep.

And the end of the day on Thursday, I got sick.

So it does pretty much,

I don't even know what happened this weekend.

Yeah.

I can't believe it's stuck in you and Savage at the moment.

Yeah.

I really hope that you guys keep it over there.

I hope that they're doing all the suffering

so that we don't have to.

That's right.

Well, thank you for murdering for us.

Oh, my goodness.

Jeffrey, you, me?

Well, I had a couple of things this weekend.

We did go to a really fun event in Erie

that's for an organization based out of Pittsburgh

called Band Together, Pittsburgh.

And they recently opened a chapter in Erie

called Band Together, Erie.

They, obviously the organizers that created it in Pittsburgh

also are involved in the Erie chapter.

But it is autism in music.

So they're supporting autistic,

anyone on the autistic spectrum with music

and they were doing an open mic night

at Keller's Magic and Comedy Club.

And this was really fun for me

because I've never, I have not been to it

since it became Keller's.

It used to be Junior's Last Laugh.

I used to go there all the time.

Now there's a whole history of magicians from Erie.

It's a really cool tribute to Erie history.

It is super fun.

I was just reading all the history

through the wall or on the walls and everything.

But a super cool event.

They're doing a great thing for the people

on the autistic spectrum.

There was a wide variety of, I guess,

range of spectrum up on stage,

from barely functioning all the way up to high functioning.

And it was really cool to see the differences there.

So great mission they're doing.

And besides that, they wanted to collab

with our nonprofit.

That was really what got us even aware of the event.

But besides all of that, we did a thing.

We, Kristen's laser has been really cool.

We've done a lot of good things with it.

And we've been getting a lot of requests

to do other things that we couldn't do with that laser.

So as of yesterday, we pulled the trigger

and financed the next level of laser.

Wow, congratulations to you guys.

Be doing and waiting on that to show up

and she gets to experiment now.

What that really means,

because acrylics have been

what her favorite thing to work with are,

is that we can now do any range of color of acrylics.

So before blues light colored

or transparent acrylics were not possible.

So now all of those will be clear acrylic as a possibility.

It opens up a lot of options for her to craft with.

And then also it increases the speed

and efficiency because now like a tumbler

would take her three to four hours

should take about 20 minutes.

Wow.

So a big difference.

Financially it was triple the price of the first laser.

So it's a huge investment.

Hopefully it pays off.

But we sat and looked at what people were asking for

and we added things up.

We're like, hey, the first couple months

of payments on this would be covered already

if we could do these options.

Sure.

So that's what allowed us to pull that trigger.

That's awesome.

That's very cool.

And we've talked about different equipment

and different aspects of our own personal life.

And I think that's one that I know

that other Jeep groups have reached out to you guys

and you've made some trail rated badges

and stuff for them before.

That was actually one of them was asking

for colored versions of the badges

and we simply couldn't do the colors they wanted.

And then there's another non-profit in Erie

that wanted her to do jewelry

but wanted it in blue and yellow

and because that's their colors.

Sure.

And blue and yellow were colors

that we cannot do with the current laser.

So we just, a lot of things kept adding up

and it's like, you know what, now's the time.

Let's try something new.

Yeah.

It's like physically larger as well.

Oh yeah.

It's just Jeff the builder is on the job.

No, no, this one comes with the enclosure.

I don't have to build anything.

It's not an open frame.

And it's a CO2 laser instead of a blue diode laser.

I was pretending I know what that is.

Just different forms,

because there's fiber lasers or CO2,

there's infrared,

each style laser does different types of materials.

You know, I think it's so interesting.

And it's just funny how both my own interests

and my own kind of world exists.

My brother-in-law and whether you would recall this or not,

my brother-in-law works for one of the country's largest

laser marking companies out of Pittsburgh, you know?

And so like on the top end of the scale,

I know the stuff that he works with.

And it's interesting because it actually is a company

that was started in the early 1900s

in the automotive community.

And it was dot-peen marketing,

which is basically the equivalent of taking a stamp

with the little embossed piece and hitting it with a hammer.

So dot-peen marketing,

marking was how they put serial numbers on parts

a hundred years ago.

And that company has existed just in time.

And as technicalities have changed,

they changed how they mark things.

And so he did a ton of lasering for me

and he works on the biggest, most extreme stuff.

And he does absolutely work for Cummins,

Stalantis, Bosch, you know, all that kind of stuff,

doing finite laser marking.

That's where their lasers are.

And I think it might be kind of fun,

not that it's one of the things we have to kind of

keep in mind and maybe, you know,

you guys should go visit him sometimes

since it's just North of Pittsburgh basically.

Kind of interesting kind of similarities there.

But the home, yes, Rob, it is actually.

That's impressive.

Good for you.

Yeah, that's pretty good that he just pulled that out.

Yeah, for sure.

In our comments, Rob is listing the business off.

So anywho, my own experience as I've kind of expanded upon,

I am in my six weeks of kind of re-embracing

my athletic pursuits and enjoying kind of that experience

with my child.

We just raced from one point to another all day, Saturday.

We were, Scott doesn't know.

Nobody was here except for Jeff on Saturday.

Yeah.

And so I swung through a couple of times,

which was okay.

And, you know, touching base with Jeff

and he held it down.

Thank you for doing that for us and managing.

There was a flow of people.

I've already done some flow of people.

And, but other than that,

I raced from one of my kid's pursuits to another.

I was gonna say, every time you swung in,

you had like 30 seconds

and you were running right back out the door.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I did, because of said pursuit,

I did want to kind of be able to concentrate

on some of my things that make me happy.

And so I managed to come in

and I spent some time doing stuff

that makes me happy here at the shop

and honestly put some lights on my lawn mower

because I need to be able to mow at night

because I find that to be a pretty underwhelming thing,

but it's required and my mower didn't come

with lights on it.

So I am, in fact, the guy who's got LED pods

fully wired onto my lawn mower.

I'm adding accessory lighting

in the most SFG way possible,

trying to over make it all that much nicer.

I think it's really funny that you're adding lights

on top of all the maintenance that you do to your tractor

and we just had a conversation with Greg

about how little maintenance I do to our tractors.

You weren't here for this, Scott,

but there was absolutely a conversation

and Greg's like,

haven't you ever done this with your tractor?

I'm like, no, Greg, I haven't.

No, it gets better when we're trying to mow the grass.

I was like, A8 and just because,

I don't want to be out here 80 hours.

You take the little deer and go mow

and I'll take the big deer and go mow the back

and he starts it up, he goes up there,

he goes to engage the deck and it dies.

I'm like, what's going on?

I had forgotten, for whatever reason,

now you have to be slightly giving it throttle

or forward motion while you engage the blades,

otherwise it kills the tractor.

I don't know.

Your PTO is getting weak.

That's something.

Yeah, it was this whole conversation on Friday

about a certain aspect of the tractor

and belts and stuff like that

and Greg is, of course, at the mindset,

it's like, well, haven't you done this?

I put a belt on it because it broke.

Jeff's going, no, I've never done this

because my tractor hasn't broken

and I didn't need to do this.

And he's like, you're supposed to do this.

I'm like, I don't care, it works.

Why am I gonna...

And I obsessively do it.

Joe Bryant's asking if it was nacho lights.

I...

They're nacho lights.

I had a set

and I decided that I was going to put them

on something else.

I decided that my nighttime mowing escapades

were not worthy of my nacho lights.

Not cool like my deer that came with

hella lights from the factory.

Ooh, did it come with hella lights?

Yeah, wow.

That is something.

But I did absolutely obsess over

and I was looking at,

I can't begin to tell you how many hours

it took for me to install these couple pod lights.

I did use nighlight just so people know.

When I go for a cheap Amazon light

that I think flat out works

and I've talked about it on some of my other content

and whatnot, I use nighlight

when I'm looking for a cheap alternative, you know?

And...

Harvard works.

The road shock lights.

I actually looked at road shock.

I'll be honest with you,

I did not go for that brand.

I went with nighlight.

And so anyways,

but I obsessively had to make a wiring harness, you know?

And so everything is heat shrinked

and everything has weather pack seals

and I'm trying to run it together.

You built a wiring harness

that's going to outlast the lights.

Right, right.

That's exactly what it was.

I had a nice time doing that

and then equally for purposes of kind of this things

that are inherently a crossover

between personal and professional,

there's some old projects that we need to do things with

that are lingering about our facility.

And I think that it would benefit both

Greg, our lead performance mechanic and ourselves

if we just get rid of the LS XJ.

And so I brought the LS XJ around front of the shop.

So folks who are listening and viewing and hanging out,

I'm going to do a,

once I have Greg's weigh in on certain things,

I'm going to do a hard push

and we're going to sell the LS XJ if you were unaware.

And super, super cool Jeep

that once was Jeep, if you will,

it's long-armed, built 88, built Dana 30,

built transmission, slip yoke eliminated.

And it's set up for a V8,

but we'll come without said V8 to my knowledge.

And we're not going to work on it.

That's the caveat.

You're buying this for parts or your own personal piece.

We sell a lot of our own personal vehicles

just because we move on to other projects and whatnot.

Our caveat, the individual buying this,

we will not work on it.

Greg wants it to go off into the sunset.

Right.

It's kind of like-

He doesn't want to see it again.

Correct.

You know what I mean?

It's that idea of like,

hey, I'm ready to part with this thing.

And as a hoarder, I oftentimes ask you guys

to help me dispose of things

because I myself cannot make it go away.

And that's what we're going to be doing

to this Jeep, I believe.

So we'll be pulling the engine for another project

that Greg has in mind to my knowledge.

And then he wants that to go off to somebody else

and for it to become their baby.

So I've made sure to move that around

to some other projects and stuff

that we have here on property.

I do have one last piece too.

Today is actually Morgan, my son's birthday.

Turn 10 today, so.

Oh, happy birthday to Morgan.

So yeah, look for us to outline some of these projects

and some of these special things

that we'll be doing here in the coming fall.

And I suppose without further ado, Jeep on.

Jeep on, Jeep on.

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