Jeremy Perkins 0:00
All right, we're here on this episode of bucket talk with diesel. Dave. Welcome, Dave. Hey, it's good to be on the bucket with you. Hell, hell yeah, hell yeah. So a lot of people from the show may know you from the diesel brothers, but we want to get to know the man behind the scenes. We want to learn a little bit more about, you know, Dave as a mechanic in the early life, and, you know, deep, oh yeah, we're going, we're going far back, but I guess let's start with, like, childhood and kind of how you got into being a mechanic, and kind of going from there,
Diesel Dave 0:31
I think, where it all started for me, it wasn't mechanics. Well, I'll tell you how I got into mechanics after but first was landscaping crew came through my neighborhood. It's like the area behind my parents house was getting developed, yep, and I was 12 or 13, and summer was about to hit, and I'm like, I need to make some money. And I went got a job with Sherwood landscaping, all right, mainly because I saw a guy out in the skid store doing wheelies in the skid store. And I said, that's I could have a good time this summer doing wheelies in a skid store. And so I started operating the wheelbarrow first as a 12 year old. I was a great wheelbarrow driver. Yeah. And one day after work, Andy Sherwood put me in the in the skid store, and I did my first wheelie. And I was sold. How old were you at the time? I think it's 12. It could have been 13. I might've been a teenager. Wow. And bro, I was bringing home $10 an hour. I was I was like, I'm gonna drop out of school. This is it. For me. I am making some bank. I mean, that summer, I was living the high life. That's cool. That's we're doing, like, 16 hour days, yep.
Jeremy Perkins 1:31
So that's awesome. That's awesome. So landscaping, and then you did that up until what age I did that
Diesel Dave 1:38
every summer, probably for is, is a handoff between landscaping and construction, because my buddy's dad owned a construction company, so we built his, some of his houses too, until I was 18 or 19, just every summer in between school,
Jeremy Perkins 1:51
all right, so all the way up until high school, it was a, you know, a combination of landscaping and construction, which is, you know, a whole bunch of trade background there, but like, How'd you get into where you are today? Well,
Diesel Dave 2:05
to bring in the mechanics side,
we were going through my neighborhood one day, and this lady had two broke down motorcycles on the side of her house, and she's just little later, kids weren't around anymore, and she's like, I don't need these bikes. If you want them, you can have them just go get them running. And so me and my buddy took these two dirt bikes home. They'd just been sitting behind the shed forever. So we opened up the carburetor, thinking we're just the best mechanics in the whole world, and we just did a clean out and got these bikes fired up again. And I'm like, Okay, I could work on some some motors, learn how to clean out a carburetor and started a motorcycle, and I got into dirt biking from that, and rode dirt bikes every day for almost the rest of my life. But then Dave and I sparks. We started well, he already had it going. It was a landscaping company where we did driveway tear outs and like rock walls, waterfalls, water features, things like that. And so we're back to operating equipment. And we would every once a while have to work on a machine, work on a truck, or it was like, it kept sneaking into my life, the mechanics. It was like, You need to fix this, figure this out. And we're the type of guys where we don't, like, hire it out, or we didn't have money to hire it out, to be honest, I was like, if we're going to make this business work, we need to figure out how to fix this on our own, and so that that aspect of mechanics kind of just kept creeping in, like that. That's
Jeremy Perkins 3:28
cool, like for me, my path to becoming a mechanic was some level of formal schooling, whether it was in the military or post military career. I went to, you know, a school to learn how to work on automotive and diesel vehicles. But for you, it was just honestly jumping right into it.
Diesel Dave 3:48
I'll be honest, I think your pathway was probably the quicker, better way I was the figure it out and trial by error. Yeah, there was a lot of a lot of learning lessons along the way, one of those excavators we got, we we ended up bending a boom on it. We had it rented, and we tried to fix it, and that's what it got us out of doing landscaping, because that ended that business, yeah. And we moved on to buying and selling cars out of people's backyards or at auctions, and which was another opportunity to work, to work on cars. And I started driving tow truck. So I would then offer people 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, whatever they had in their backyard that was worth it, shine up that car a little bit, make it run good, kind of the same concept as the motorcycles, and then flip it and sell it on. It was before marketplace. This was back when classified ads were used. We had a KSL, which is like Craigslist, but KSL is out west, and so we would buy and sell cars on KSL or through the auction. And what actually got us started, I think we were just kind of scraping by, trying to make enough money to go to the lake or or try and have some fun. We were young, single and dumb, but we. We put some videos out of me driving some stuff back from the auction, and people loved it. It's like, right? When Facebook hit, yep. And I think that is what sparked a lot of our luck in our industry, is we had these videos that people would watch, and we created a following we're like, we got to figure out what to do. They're like, online. People were like, your trucks are kind of cool. Why don't you just give us one of your trucks? Give us one. Give us something you got, like keyboard warriors at home. You would normally pay no attention to that. And we're like, well, we've got all these followers, maybe, maybe we should try to do a giveaway. Yeah. And so we spawned this sweepstakes, idea of, if you buy this bracelet or this sweater or whatever from us, you could have a chance of winning one of these trucks. And that is what our business essentially turned into. We weren't mechanics. We were mechanics, but it's like we became a sweepstakes marketing company more than a shop. That's interesting,
Jeremy Perkins 5:56
that's interesting. So were you guys at a shop at that point in time, or Dave was doing his thing. You were doing the tow truck job. Like, how did it all kind of come together? I guess I did. I did skip
Diesel Dave 6:09
that part? Yeah, skipped ahead. So there's a company down the road from where we're at now, called Rockwell watches. Yeah, and we were driving their semi around, setting up events for them. They did a lot of the Super Cross and events like that. So we would like, like, I said we were like, 2223 we want to go to these events. We'll drive the semi, we'll go set up your booth, and then you let us in the event. We'll have a good time. Yeah. And so we're basically working for the benefit of going to these events for Rockwell. Well, once we started buying those other cars, we we got a twin turbo Cummins out of California from the auction, and that's the one I was driving home when Dave filmed that first video on Facebook. He had this white boat and this big black Cummins. It was blowing tons of smoke. And I sent him a funny video of painting his white boat black on the freeway going home, because this is just smoking. I was like, your white boat's gonna be black. It's gonna be terrible. And people thought That's hilarious. Well, we took that same truck and one of the guys at Rockwell was doing his business in the bathroom, and we ran a hose from the exhaust into the window at the bathroom and smoked out the bathroom. That's a nice little, nice little prank. Well, that video got us on to Jay Leno. Jay Leno saw it, and they said, I want you to come on a segment of my show called prank. You very much. Yeah. And so we sat down with Jay Leno, who is like the auto legend, yeah. He walks into the the studio beforehand and sits down in our room with us, and he's wearing his denim, top denim, bottom right. He just talks cars for an hour. Nothing did, nothing to do about the shop, nothing, I mean, about the show. It was all, you guys like cars. I like cars. Just talk. And it was just one of the coolest experiences. Well, he that segment on his show must have gone somewhere in discovery, because the discovery guys called us a week later, like, we want to do a show with you. We're like, Yeah, sure, we were on a prank segment of a show, and now you're calling me to tell me you want to do a show. We'll just let this one ride. When they ended up just sending people out to our shop say, No, we we really want to film a show. I think you guys got something, and that led into the eight seasons of diesel brothers.
Jeremy Perkins 8:08
Now so was, and forgive me, because, you know, I don't know the earlier episodes, but were you always at the sparks motors location from day one or so
Diesel Dave 8:18
the when they first filmed what they call a sizzle. We were in a smaller shop, yep, and we moved shops like the week the show started. Okay. So if you look at the early episodes, the back lot is dirt. We're still diamond grinding the floor out in the shop to put down some epoxy and make it look nice, tearing down walls because it was an old, I don't remember what they did there was a hanger. It is a hanger. But they also had, like a fabric shop or something. They were doing something weird out of there before, yeah, and they left all the machines, and it's abandoned it so we tore down the walls, built office buildings, took out the old machines, cleaned it up. Yeah,
Jeremy Perkins 8:55
it took me a minute when we were when we were down there the first time, and you're kind of taking it all in. It was a little nostalgic for me, obviously, being on this side of the TV screen, seeing, seeing the show, and then actually being there in person and but one of the cool things was, there's an airport behind you, chain link fence, and then at some point in time I turned around, it was either you guys open the garage or close the garage. And I didn't realize how large the garage door was. It wasn't like a set of garage doors and the way that it folded. I was like, this used to be an airplane hangar. And I was like, that's actually pretty cool. And obviously proximity to the airport. I was like, this a cool and unique way of having a garage. And, you know, I mean, we, you know, when I was working, it was funny, because, you know, you have high bay doors like this. What, an awesome, uh, setup to be able to just have, like, one long door that runs the entire way that you could just, like, pull in anything, in any way. That's awesome. I
Diesel Dave 9:48
mean, the door takes a little bit longer to open than, you know, but Right, right. But summertime and you leave it open, and you can put four lifts in there and just pull, pull cars in and out. Yeah, it's nice. And they actually used to build helicopters in the hangar, which is. Ironic now that we've gotten ourselves into helicopters. Yep. So now, what's
Jeremy Perkins 10:03
pretty cool about your garage that's different from other garage? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I only saw one lift in that garage. In the
Diesel Dave 10:13
the big one, there's only one. There's only one. We call it the show bay because it's the nice area the murals on the wall. But yeah, there's only one lift in there, and it's kind of off to the right, so you have the big open, blank spot, and that's where we build the off the wall, stuff, the tanks, the barges,
Jeremy Perkins 10:30
no. So when you were, when you were designing the layout of the shop, you know, most people would have been like, you know, my shop was half the size of that and had seven lifts in it. What was the thesis behind like not having lifts in there? So that
Diesel Dave 10:45
area happened at the exact same time the show started. So they wanted to keep it as like the show Bay for all the reveals of the vehicles, right? Have one lift where it's not cluttered background of all the other things going on in your shop. And so if you look at the other side of the shop, we got three bay doors like this, and another hanger door, yeah? And there's three lifts over there, and each one of the bays, okay? And every single spot is just jam packed full. Yeah, that one has always been like one. Vehicles there, the cameras can go around it, they show it, and it's more of a beauty area, cool. So
Jeremy Perkins 11:16
that was, by design, awesome. So what was, what was the first build that you guys did to kind of get the show rolling on
Diesel Dave 11:23
the show. Our very first one we did was a Jeep Willies, and we ended up having to cut a hole in the hood. We put the Cummins motor in there, put a big turbo on the top, cut a hole in the hood, so the turbo came out and just made it look really cool. But I think that was the one that put us on the map before, was our big six door. I call it the mega the mega RAM, just a mega cab that we turn into six door truck, right in bed. Custom suspension. That's just four link and military axles, huge tires like really blow you away as soon as you see it. That we built right before the show started. And I think that's what kind of put us on a map for trucks. That's
Jeremy Perkins 11:59
cool. That's cool. Now, when you're, you know, your builds are now, like, absolutely complicated, and you know, you got a lot of good people behind you that have, you know, deep backgrounds, and whether it's engineering or fabricating and stuff like that. But like, starting off, you know, I started off in restoration and working on old cars. So you kind of see the vision you had manuals, you can kind of go through it. Oh, there's a bolt that's supposed to go there. There's a bolt that's supposed to go there. But like, for you guys, how did you guys conceptualize it? Like, who was the brains behind the operation? Or would you all guys sit around a table, draw something on the back of a napkin and then kind of fumble your way through it. Or was there, was there an actual plan put in place?
Diesel Dave 12:45
Uh, plans always changing, yeah, evolving. It's like a dream that someone would have, or something like a napkin idea, yeah, but as soon as you started building it, it would, it would morph itself into what, what it was supposed to be, I guess is what I would say, just kind of evolving dream. So
Jeremy Perkins 12:59
is there like one little piece. So like, you take a piece of the project and you build it, and you put it in, and you're like, Oh, I got room for this. Or was it, was it kind of all thought out ahead of time? And you're like, All right, we're gonna tackle this part of the project. Or is it just like, again, step by step? It'd be nice
Diesel Dave 13:13
if it was all thought out beforehand go step by step. We probably would have got done a lot faster. But no, it was like a you start working in one area, like, what if we added a bigger motor? What if we did this right? Then it would just get bigger and bigger. Yeah,
Jeremy Perkins 13:26
and now, have things changed from then to now? Are you? I've got, like,
Diesel Dave 13:30
the dream team of fabricators and engineers that work at the shop. Yeah, we still evolve the ideas, but they they're better at making the plan, executing it, and going through it, and being ready for when we come in with those changes, because we will, right time we come Dave and I'll come in there, we'll come up with a different plan for it, or want to add something to it, right? And there's just they are very talented dudes that I got in the shop.
Jeremy Perkins 13:58
Now, one of the cool things that like I got this, I got to see in my lifetime, you know, you don't get out of the shop much as a mechanic, but there's, like, once or twice a year you you got to go get a part, or you got to go get a piece from somewhere. So you end up in, you end up in a town that, you know, driving a pickup truck out there to go pick up an axle or or an engine or something, and then all of a sudden, you're in this nostalgic place. You know, there's a there's a history behind it. And the reason why I'm thinking about it is, is, like, you guys went to pick up some military axles at one point, and it was just, you know, a guy that had rows and rows and rows of military axles. So, you know, stepping out of the shop and going to these places, like, how, how awesome is that? And like, what is one of your best places that you've been to that you're like, holy shit, this is like, this is almost like a museum of sorts. We've been
Diesel Dave 14:48
a lot of places. Yeah,
favorite off the top of my list, I like the old military arts. We actually just got back from from a place in Reno. Guy had a bunch of i. Uh, he collectible, old military stuff. A lot of broke down planes and things like that, but also really cool military trucks, yeah, then the guy next to us, where those axles were, he's got the same thing. I don't military vehicles just fascinate me. They're big, powerful. They got all the utilities that we use for our recoveries. Because we've kind of branched out from being the mechanics and in the shop where we build custom trucks to wanting to build custom trucks for us to recover other people, yeah, I
Jeremy Perkins 15:26
was gonna get into that. But roll right into that is more so like, yeah. How did that spin off? From, obviously, you know, building trucks like bro dozer and broke amino, to now you're in a whole nother segment where you're saving, you know, RVs and boats that are stranded. I mean, like, there's nothing really you guys shy away from.
Diesel Dave 15:45
And I think it's honestly my favorite thing that we've, we've ever done. I love building the trucks, the Camino, the bro, the bro dos are, they're fun, but being able to use them as tools to help other people is my favorite part of the job. Yeah. And the challenge is what we love. It's like someone gets really stuck that someone else can't get to, or even search and rescue can't get there. And we get to find a way to build a vehicle to go to the tracks on it and go up to snow, or build some sort of winch system that will pull somebody up a cliff. It adds a whole new level to the challenge. And then I get to bring in my engineers to help me build a design that's in my head that's like, this will help us, yeah, pull this guy out of the ditch, yeah? And, I mean, between Dave and these guys in the shop, they're like, some of the smartest dudes I know in my life, yeah? And we just get to make it happen. It's like, I don't know how we got to this point where, if we can dream it, we can do it, but we're here with we dream it. We can do it. Yeah,
Jeremy Perkins 16:41
I mean, it's, it's cool because you've done, you've done some like, I mean, maybe it's life changing, maybe it's not. But, like, you've helped out some people. I mean, you guys were with mats off road, recovering those vehicles off the clip for an Eagle Scout project. Like, absolutely giving back to the community. Then you guys are up in the snowy mountain areas, digging people out when they got how much snow did they get? It was it like five feet of snow and like a pop, probably
Diesel Dave 17:07
even more than that, it was up and over most people's roofs, really. Here in California, it was wild. So you guys seen so
Jeremy Perkins 17:12
much snow, you guys brought in all the equipment, the cats, everything, and just started going to town and helping people out. That's crazy.
Diesel Dave 17:18
Yeah, it was, uh, it's fun to be able to do that, to do that, to be able to just load the semi truck with the equipment you need to go help somebody and just do it. Now, how do you coordinate
Jeremy Perkins 17:27
something like that? Do you got to talk with, like, local officials and like, Hey, I'm going to bring up this and they're like, hey, work in this area. Or do you just kind of show up and start doing it?
Diesel Dave 17:38
That's what was our approach at first. Was show up and start doing it. We can coordinate now a lot better than we used to, yeah, because the search and rescue efforts and and organizations that do those don't really like you to come step on their toes, yeah, and get in the way, so it makes it difficult, but we've got in enough doors where they know us now, and we can call ahead of time and say, This is what we have. This is how we can help, yeah? And a lot of times they'll just let us okay, you guys have the better equipment. Come, come, do it, yeah. How can we help you? Type thing, it's like,
I don't know how we got here,
Jeremy Perkins 18:12
but we're here now. There was an older gentleman had his boat stranded, and you guys need Yeah. And then you guys came in, fabricated some brackets, put it on, and you guys worked well into the night, stressing out the boat, your boat, and just, I mean, there was a point in time, obviously, you know, story arcs, there's, there's some sort of climax, and then you guys overcome it. But it's, it's kind of interesting. Has there ever been a point where you guys couldn't get something done or
Diesel Dave 18:43
no, we're the kind of guys that will just keep going, keep hitting our head against the wall, until we figure it out. Yeah, we have spent many days on certain projects. One, I mean, we buried an excavator out and some quicksand once up to the boom, and that's kind of how we figured out we were going to get into recoveries. Yeah, because we said, if we can get ourselves out of this, we could probably get anybody else out of anything that they're in. And it was four days of digging and making sure the excavator stayed running so it wouldn't die and keep sinking right, bringing equipment out, learning about swamp mats and snow cats and pulleys and snatch blocks and
Jeremy Perkins 19:20
right. So you're talking about all that. That's all recovery equipment. And anybody who's a rigger or works in, you know, recovery, whether it's, you know, your local towing company or whatnot, that's an art there's exactly, I mean, up up to the ice roads, those guys that slide off all the time, and you're pulling semis out, you know, obviously it's super dangerous. And you know, one thing can pull a rotator right over the right over the bridge back onto the semi that you're trying to pull up. But like, did you guys have to do some sort of like outreach? And hey, I need to learn more about this from professionals, versus trying to figure it out. Because I think there's a point where. So figuring it out can put you in a bad situation. Yep. So did you guys have a network of people that you learned from? Or how'd that go? I
Diesel Dave 20:06
think people saw us learning the hard way, and came to came to our aid. Yep, we have bumped into a lot of people that that are better than us. Oh yeah, and they have taught us along the way, like that. Allen guy that works for us. Now, Allen knows all the ins and outs of the military trucks. He's building a fortress up on the hill, but when he first met us, he kind of didn't want to we wanted to buy a truck from him, and he's like, blew us off. And then all sudden, he showed up at the shop wanting to buy something from us. And then if we figured out who each other were, and now we work together, but he is the guy that just figure out how to make it work. Yep, same with the guys that teaches the rigging the tow truck guys, um, we've just been lucky that we learn. We learn a lot of the lessons from other people as we go. I can't really think of a example off top my head right now. I'm like getting one of those brain farts, but we've just, we've collected a lot of knowledge from other people and collected a team of guys that are really good, yeah.
Jeremy Perkins 21:08
I mean, I totally get it. You move from, I mean, again, to recap, you've gone from landscaping to construction to working on dirt bikes and motocross stuff to moving to flipping cars, to driving a tow truck, to driving, you know, CDL trucks, and now you guys build them, and then moved into the recovery space. Obviously, there's a lot of stuff you learn along the way, but it's like a constant, a rebranding of yourself, and then, like, just more education and trying to build a network of people around you that can help you out in these certain areas. I think that's great. Yeah, leverage, leverage your circle.
Diesel Dave 21:45
Yep, learn as much as you can along the way. Cool, cool. So
Jeremy Perkins 21:50
now you guys are in the helicopters and shit, yeah, like, what was that like? Was that somebody's dream was that, like, was heavy D, like, I've always wanted to learn how to fly. I mean, does anybody
Diesel Dave 22:01
not have a dream to fly a helicopter? I don't. You don't know, not at all. You'll have that dream someday. No, it'll be there. So
Jeremy Perkins 22:08
like saying, I like saying on the ground, but like, where did that come from? Was that, I think
Diesel Dave 22:13
we've always just wanted to fly, and we found that hangar, and then we found a deal on a broader way helicopter, a long time ago, got it on the show, and it just kept expanding from
Jeremy Perkins 22:23
there. Mm, hmm, and so heavy. D the muscle. They all got their pilot's license to you.
Diesel Dave 22:28
No, I just fly with them. Oh, yeah, yeah. Did you ever want to get your pilot's license? I would love to, yeah, what's, what's holding your back? Time, yeah, time, yeah. Take time away from the family. And it's like, that's if I'm gonna have free time, I'm gonna go hang out with my family first. Yeah, there will be a time where I I get it. I got hours. I know how to fly, right? I just to sit down and do the school work. I guess is not my forte.
Jeremy Perkins 22:53
It's kind of, it's kind of interesting, because, like, you do see this point in anyone's career that, like, you'll do anything for hours and hours week you work whatever, nights, weekends, whatever. But then we're at the stage now where we have little ones and and all you want to do is get home and hang out exactly, exactly. So has that kind of slowed the whole progress down? Because now you guys all have kids, yeah, you know was that? Was that the reason why the show went away. I mean, like, what was, what was all that thought? I
Diesel Dave 23:26
don't know if it's the reason that it slowed down, but it's definitely like, had to figure out how to keep working. I guess once you had your kids, because all you want to do is go home and play with them, right? And now you got little mouths to feed. So it's like, you can't stop working. You got to keep working. But you also don't want to be gone all the time. It's just a new balance to learn. Was that
Jeremy Perkins 23:44
part of the question? No, it was like, it was like, you know, you guys had a pretty successful show, and then,
Diesel Dave 23:50
oh, then we switched to YouTube. Yeah. So we started running a YouTube channel at the same time the show was kind of coming to an end, and it was just a choice they want us to make, either do content for YouTube or content for the show, and it was a little bit more freedom through YouTube. Yeah. So also, if Dave and Keaton and I weren't all on the same page, couldn't really separate and go to different ways, yeah, wasn't gonna work to do one person stay at the show, one person go to YouTube. Yeah, it's kind of a group effort. So when they want to do YouTube, it was a, okay, we're gonna stick together. We're gonna do this. And so we branched off and did the YouTube stuff.
Jeremy Perkins 24:30
That's, I mean, you don't see that nowadays, like, that's, that's loyalty, right there. So I assume at some point in time, you guys had a discussion on, like, you know, we're gonna, we're all going to be in this together. If not, then either it's going to have to end or we're just going to move together and do something else. So that's I mean, so you guys are that tight and been that tight for
Diesel Dave 24:51
kind of how Dave and I have been since we were 2223 years old. When we work together, we're going to figure it out. Yeah.
Jeremy Perkins 24:57
Now, did you meet Dave? Did you. Guys grow up. Or did you meet Dave?
Diesel Dave 25:01
I met Dave. So met him at a they call him singles ward. So for young LDS people, they've got church branch you go to that is just all young single adults, you should probably find your, your soul mate and your, your love of your life there. And instead, Dave and I found each other.
Jeremy Perkins 25:18
That's funny. That's funny. So, yeah, I mean, and back to your, back to the point about, you know, incorporating your family. You know, I called you for something not too long ago, and you're like, I'm stuck in, I think it was Arizona. You gotta,
Diesel Dave 25:32
oh, yeah, we picked up the semi down middle of Wickenburg, Arizona. But
Jeremy Perkins 25:37
what's cool about that story was, your family was with you. My girls with me, yeah. So now that you've you've kind of brought them in, not his personalities yet, but as like, hey, come, come join the experience. Come be with dad. So I think that's huge.
Diesel Dave 25:51
Oh, it helps so much. And the girls love a good adventure. And they love super trucking, because, I mean, you got the sleeper in the back of the truck, and they can just hang out back there. But if I get my kids more involved, I love for them to see what dad does, and then I get to spend time with my kids at the same time. And it's like, you get the best of both worlds the same time. I put myself in a lot of precarious situations. I can't bring them with me all the time, yep. Like, I don't want to bring them out into the desert where I'm there for days. But on the fun ones, bring kids.
Jeremy Perkins 26:21
All right, all right. So one thing I did want to dive into is Monster Truck. Oh, yeah. So is that? Is that like your favorite thing to do?
Diesel Dave 26:30
I don't think there's been anything more fun than I've ever done than drive a monster truck.
Jeremy Perkins 26:33
Okay, so you guys, you guys built a monster truck. We built
Diesel Dave 26:37
the bro dozer, which is
our version of a monster truck. It's not, you wouldn't go jump it in Monster Jam. It's more like a rock crawler, okay? But it's very beefy and can take a beating. And then we got in with Monster Jam and built a replica of the bro dozer and the bro Camino as monster trucks, okay? And then legit, 12,000 pound monster trucks, these six inch tires that'll fly through the air and land, and you won't die.
Jeremy Perkins 27:02
And now that I've seen them, I've seen the inside of monster trucks. They're, they're a whole nother beast. You know, you got, it's, it's not like just a gas and a break. I mean, there's, it's got rear wheel steering. It's, it's insane, right? Was there like a learning curve there for you on this
Diesel Dave 27:21
in us to Champaign,
Illinois, I think, is where Champagne is anyway. We're not to Tom Manson's place, and he taught us about monsters. They literally threw us in and they said, Okay, floor it and see what happens. Yeah. And you're in there, you are ratchet strapped as tight as you can to these seats. You're basically formed to the seat, yeah? And you ratchet your strap so tight that you can't breathe, and your helmet is on, and you can move your eyes like this. And if you can move your head more than about an inch, you're probably gonna have headache when you land, yeah? And you got your arms to control your rear steer, and your and yours, and you can move your pedals. That's as much movement as you have in a monster truck, yeah? So they strap you in, they set you up, they point you to jump there, okay, floors, yeah, and you got to do these jumps. I mean, the first two days of us, we probably wrecked five, six trucks. They probably were second guessing themselves, pretty hard, because we would either go long or come short or try a flip and like, things we probably weren't supposed to be doing yet. Yeah, but that got us comfortable enough to to know we could drive in a show and take our own trucks and flying through the air 2030, feet high in a 12,000 pound truck, and looking to your left and your right, and seeing this, the fans cheering. And you're like, normally coming down from this high you should die, yeah. And then it just soaking up the land, and you keep going, and the amount of power those trucks have, right? It's surreal. It's like, if you ever get the chance to have a monster truck, take it because you will not have more fun in your
Jeremy Perkins 28:45
I mean, the level of skill that you need, especially in like some of these smaller arenas and, you know, civic centers or what have you, to not hit the walls, to not hit the people tonight, the walls to, you know, not wreck the truck. I mean, obviously those trucks are meant to be beaten up. And, you know, the bodies of multiple have been replaced multiple times,
Diesel Dave 29:07
but, but if you break on your first jump, the show is no good, yeah, and then you're not gonna have a job. So it's like, you gotta find the fine breaking point of put on a good show. Don't break it until the very end in a big blaze of glory. Get the fans on their feet, and then you can do it again the next
Jeremy Perkins 29:22
week. So why didn't you pursue a career in monster truck driving? Oh,
Diesel Dave 29:27
I'd love to. We're trying to get back in it.
I think our trucks were more like a nostalgia decent brothers coming to drive, bring the crowd in. And when COVID hit, they couldn't really bring a crowd. And so it kind of fizzled a little bit there. We still have a great relationship with Monster Jam. But I would love, I would love to drive some more dude. That's crazy. I would, I'd probably write them a text or an email at least once a month, like, Hey, how's going? Any trucks available? Just keeping the door open. Guys doing good. That's awesome. Come over for Thanksgiving. Pretty fingers. Yeah, Adam and Ryan and Wes, and I love the whole family, and Chris and they are some of the best people on the planet. We went out to Dennis's and got to do the mud truck event, which is like the same kind of truck, but on different tires, different motors. It's more drag racing. And the power is, I couldn't tell you what I like more, between monster gym and the mud truck, the mega trucks, yeah, because it's like a race and a but that's what they did out of Dennis's. So we got to know them all through that. We got to do monster gym with all of his kids and talk about talented drivers. Yeah, those are family legacy, the best drivers on the planet, hands down as the Anderson boys, young girls. Kristen, you're in there,
Jeremy Perkins 30:42
that's cool. So, I mean, is there anything you can't drive? I like to think
Diesel Dave 30:47
not. I'll learn how to if I don't know immediately, I will put myself in the cockpit or in the seat and figure it out. I would like, I would like to learn how to drive everything. Yeah, I think, I think all we got left is, like, submarines and things like that that we haven't driven
Jeremy Perkins 31:03
yet. Yeah? I mean, it's maybe a spaceship, yeah, yeah. If anything fixed wing, you guys have done some
Diesel Dave 31:10
fixed wing stuff. Oh, really. Some turbo prop airplanes, some little Cessnas, fun little ones, my rotary, we haven't done any. What would they call them? Twin prop, twin bladed helicopters, like Chinooks. So we've been looking at some, yeah, it's on the to do list.
Jeremy Perkins 31:26
So what'd you guys? What'd you guys do with that big so you let me step back, you guys decided that you were gonna, and I believe it was on Lake Mead. You guys were going to land a helicopter on a pontoon boat at Lake
Diesel Dave 31:38
Powell. Okay, we built a giant bar. So that same room you were talking about earlier, one lift in it. Yeah, it's good thing only one lift, because we had to build an entire bars that would land a Black Hawk on there. So we built this. And I can't remember the dimensions of it. I want to say it was like 80 by 40, maybe right around there, yeah, of size. We built it in the shop, took it apart, stacked it on a semi trailer, drove it down to Lake Powell, reassembled it. So you have this giant Fauci that's probably to the wall back 40 feet wide, right? I'm out there one single driver tied off to the wall just trying to line it the first time and just trying to keep the distance away from the wall. And he just came in the Black Hawk, and just touched down perfectly. And it was a mystery. We didn't know if we had it weighted right, if it would sit heavy in the back, if it would sink the boat. But we had to try. So,
Jeremy Perkins 32:24
yeah, I mean, that was, that was an incredible feat. Was great engineering. The thing still hauled with the Black Hawk on it. What do you do with these builds when they're done? I mean, like, that's a monster build that, like, cost a lot of money.
Diesel Dave 32:37
You can't leave it there, no, well, it is still there right now. The concept is, there's a lot of guys with helicopters that go down to Lake Powell. Some of them land on top of their house boat. But it would be nice to be able to land on a barge, yeah, so we could build a handful of these barges. Some to the guys that have helicopters, park them out in the on the buoys or on the wherever it is on the lake. Yeah. You're not supposed to land on land in the National Park, okay, on Lake Powell, you have to land on a barge or on a boat in the water. Oh, so
Jeremy Perkins 33:06
there was an actual, there's
Diesel Dave 33:07
purpose behind. There was a purpose behind. There is there's a there's a method or madness every once in a while, yeah, so we have the idea of now selling some of these barges to the guys at helicopters that go down there. Okay, how's that working? So far, so good. We got one online. I mean, we only have one barge done, so we don't want to sell two yet.
Jeremy Perkins 33:26
So are you gonna, is that the prototype? Are you gonna sell that one and then build another one?
Diesel Dave 33:30
So it is a prototype, but we'll probably end up selling it and building another one on top of it. Okay? We'll make tweaks and changes. Same same concept as the builds. Yep. So now that we've started building it, we see the things we want to change, we'll add to it. Change a couple of other options. Sell this one as it is, unless we can change it, yes, we can, like, make it work, yep. Or we sell it cheaper to somebody and build a bigger, better one next time. Now,
Jeremy Perkins 33:52
most likely the buyer is not going to be listening to this. So what would you change from the first one to the second one? You know,
Diesel Dave 33:59
right now, I think it just needs more ropes when you put some cranes on the side so you can swing. You can swing off once you get in. To be honest, we did it that one time, and we need to probably go down there and test it some more and see what else we want to do. Right? We had, I mean, it had a hot tub, it had a mister, it had a loading deck that you could pull wave runners and things up onto or right off of the Black Hawk fit on there, perfect. Which means I think just about any helicopter you have is going, Yeah, most people aren't gonna have to have a smaller Yeah, exactly, yeah. So it's probably a little overkill for most little helicopters, yep, but you have a giant deck that should be used as like a party barge. Okay, the ground did get a little warm on there, so I need to find some sort of material that absorbs me any dock in the summertime, the sun's beating, it's gonna get hot, yeah, find something that absorbs a heat a little bit better, if what I'd want to do that's
Jeremy Perkins 34:49
cool, and it was powered correctly. I believe
Diesel Dave 34:54
we had two 400 Mercury motors on the back. Yeah, it's, no, it wasn't, but it did good. It might have been. Two hundreds, four hundreds in my mind and 200 in real life.
Jeremy Perkins 35:05
So kind of looking forward what's next for you, what's next for the show or the YouTube channel, anything that you can share on some upcoming
projects or or adventures that you guys are having. No we just finished
Diesel Dave 35:19
up with that snowed in series, and just finished cleaning it up. Cleaning it up. And now Summer is coming. I think we're going to try and do a similar event, summer style, on a lake somewhere, which will involve perfecting that barge and doing more water things. But we haven't quite come up with that solid plan yet. Yeah, yeah, for now, we just recoveries and rescues and those come in on the daily. So I can't really plan ahead for someone to be in a precarious situation. It's like they call me. We figure out how to go rescue when we go now
Jeremy Perkins 35:49
on the recovery side, like, do you guys have all the equipment you need? Or is there, is there a goal you're working towards? Of
Diesel Dave 35:55
we think we have it all, yeah, until we get in a situation where, like, oh, we wish we had something else. We actually did just pick up a new truck that has an auxiliary hydraulic system, which is rad, yeah, because we've done a recovery on some old tractors and trailer excavators that you can't work because they're dead as door nails, you could plug in that auxiliary hydraulic system, yeah, and operate the controls. So I am excited to use that one. Oh, that is true, old military truck that we found in that Reno yard. And it's to be honest, I've been just looking for a situation to use it. Now, yeah, yeah. Now,
Jeremy Perkins 36:27
was it you found it and then came up with the reason for purchasing it? Or were you looking for that specific piece? No,
Diesel Dave 36:36
we were not looking for it. We found it. It found us, and then we had to have it, yeah. Now, is it in shambles? And you guys got to know it looks really nice. This one, the guy took really good care of it, finished fixing it all up, and got our hands on it. A lot of stuff we get it's in shambles. But this one was not. Must be nice to get a project, which means we're not allowed to touch it for a while.
Jeremy Perkins 36:57
Sweet. Now, the garage sparks motors. Have you guys outgrown it? Is it the right size? You guys? We've
Diesel Dave 37:03
got a lot of we've collected a lot of vehicles and items I saw. So yes, we've outgrown the lot, but we we don't want to move. So it's like we got to just sell some of the stuff we got, yeah, to bring in the new and so we're just in this cycle stage where we kick some of the old stuff out, bring in the new stuff. Now
Jeremy Perkins 37:22
you have the ability, I mean, not that, not that it's in the future, but do you have the ability to go left or right? Anyway,
Diesel Dave 37:29
not unless we buy the neighbors property, yeah, which
would be nice. Then the if we go left or right, we would, yeah, because we love where we're at, yep, it's nice, cool. First when we got it, we're like, we'll never fill this place up. This is huge. Look how big this lot is. What are we doing? We're kind of worried that we might have been off where we could chew right within a year was completely
full a bigger place. That's
Jeremy Perkins 37:56
crazy. That's when
Diesel Dave 37:57
we knew we had a problem. Maybe we shouldn't expand. We'll just get more junk.
Jeremy Perkins 38:01
Early days, you guys are doing, you know, obviously, picked up the dirt bikes and somebody gave it to you for free, which you don't even see that nowadays. But, like, what was one of the coolest garage finds, you know, that you got that you flipped, and you're like, holy shit, I made three four grand. Or do you have any
Diesel Dave 38:17
of those? Yeah. I mean, the bike was definitely the best one. It was like an old 77 Suzuki 100 like, just teeny little thing. I never sold it. I think I still have it somewhere, really. Uh, no, I got different bike. I got my Brazil bike. That was so I'll tell you that story before we move into that story, yep. Um, I was a vagabond for a long time. I worked after, after we broke that one excavator and needed to move on to something different. Yeah, I hit the road, yeah. Dave ended up finding his wife. Ashley got married, started his family, and I was a homeless man. Going from I went to China to run a marathon on the Great Wall. I went to South Africa. I literally just got an airplane and start traveling the world. You almost left this out of the podcast, yeah, almost did. But the best one I did was I went to Brazil with two buddies. They served missions for the church down there, and we were visiting some of their friends, and we're on a bus one day, and it's hot in Brazil. It's like February here, so it's 100 degrees in Brazil. We're shoulder to shoulder with people on this bus, right? And we're stuck in traffic. And I look out the window, and I can see these motorcycles go up the sidewalk on the grass. They have no rules for motorcycles down there. It's the best. And I looked at my friend Jim, I said, we are buying motorcycles tomorrow. Tomorrow we are. So we went down, we bought these little bikes that were maybe 1000 bucks, yeah, and they were 100 or 200 cc's, and his was 250 so it's like these, basically, Scooter is what. We got, and we start cruising around the side of walks, getting everywhere we wanted to go. And it came time to to either go home or or live there. Yeah. We're like, why would we go home? Why don't we go to the other side of Brazil? Because my other buddy that was there served mission up north in the Amazon. We're like, we'll just ride our motorcycles up there. Great. We'll strap our bags on the back, we'll cruise up the road and go, Well, this is probably a longer distance than it is from like LA to New York, yeah. And we're on these little scooters, and we hit it three four months. We're living on the beaches. We're eating fruit off the tree. We see a sign to go to a cave. We're going, we're like, the ultimate adventure, and we end up in the Amazon we we took a Amazon boat down the river with our bikes in the tunnel and visited this guy's mission. Then we're like, okay, let's sell the bikes and go home. And we went to sell the bikes. They're like, Oh, you can. You have to register them back where you bought them, in Florida, inopolis. We're like, well, we could drive them back down there and register them, or we could just try and go home. No. And so we hit the road north to go back to Utah on these bikes. And we made it. We went all the way through Venezuela Colombia. We hitchhiked on a boat with a I call him pirate Pedro. His name's Captain Pedro, but from Colombia to Panama, because there's a 200 mile gap. This is wild.
I can't believe almost off this part, so,
but that's what leads me into no after made at home, then I went over to like, China and and ran the marathon. And Dave hit me up. He's like, on the Great Wall, yeah, on the Great Wall. Because I said in my mind, like I'm probably gonna run one marathon in my life. I'm not a runner, right? But it'd be cool to say that I ran a marathon. I should probably pick the hardest one, which one's got stairs. Oh, but it was, it was a super cool marathon. You get on top of the wall. Everybody stops and takes pictures, so we're not pushing ourselves too hard, right, but I get an email from Dave, like shortly after he's, are you ready to come make some money at and he just sent me a picture of the tow truck. Yeah, they need me to come drive, because that's when he had started his dealership license, and we started buying cars out of the backyards. And so that was the negotiation from him to get me back, which was essentially good because I came home, I met my wife. So
Jeremy Perkins 42:22
on the road, though, like, homeless. How did you survive? Like, what were you doing? Were you doing odd jobs? Or, like,
Diesel Dave 42:29
we had to, every once in
a while, we did some, we did negotiations and trades for fuel, yeah. Like, a lot of times, like, we'd have random trinkets that, for some reason, we were hauling with us, yeah, like my buddy had some cologne. We didn't use cologne. He traded it for toiletries and fuel for his motorcycle. One time in Panama, we gave shoes away, things like that, to just get either food or the nice thing about Brazilian people in South America is they will put you in their house. Yeah, a lot of times we were sleeping in people's backyards, they'd make us breakfast in the morning just to hang morning just to hang out. There's, like, some of the coolest people on the planet. But when it came to fuel, we had to make trades for fuel. That's
Jeremy Perkins 43:08
wild. Yeah? I mean, I think it was one of my scariest times being on the road was, it was either Columbia or Panama, but, like, there are two lane roads, but they're wide enough for one car, yeah, and see you're in a taxi, and you're just flying down these roads. You're like, I'm gonna die. Yeah, dude, it's wild. You into COVID? I've been to Columbia a couple of times, Panama, Curacao, the island above Colombia. Yeah,
Diesel Dave 43:34
I've been all around those are awesome. Columbia is one of the prettiest places I've been. Yeah, it was a Cartagena. You into Cartagena? Yeah, that's where it was. Man, it's a pirate town.
Jeremy Perkins 43:43
Captain Pedro, yeah, no, that was pretty cool, the old town and then like, the New City. So it was, like, still old forts and everything like that. And I was in the military at the time, so this big white Coast Guard ship showed up in the middle of the town, and everybody's like, Oh, whole bunch of Americans are here. So we then take a then we take a boat to the port, and then once we stepped out of the the gate, we were just greeted with, like, everybody, they're like, where do you want to go? Where do you want to go? So it's funny, we partnered up with a local kid, I don't know, probably 10. Yeah, he had a cooler around his neck, and there was, like, six of us. We were young, and he had cooler full of beer and and water, and we bought the whole thing from them to start. We're like, Come hang out with us. Yeah, so my buddy carried the cooler. So the kid didn't have to carry the cooler. He had, like, Nike shoes. He had, like, everything by the time. It was great. It's phenomenal. But, yeah, no, Cartagena was a beautiful place. Costa Rica was great. I was on portal mode and go Fito, so both sides, I went through the Panama Canal. I went through the canal. I did. Oh, over we went through it. Though I did. Yeah, I was, I was lucky to that our ship did operations on the California coast side. So had went right through the Panama Canal. And. And it's pretty cool, because, like, they have these little tugs that pull the boat along, and then they fill up the locks, and then they'll pull it along. But the way they get the ropes up to the boat is, like, these guys practice over and over again with, like, a little monkey's fist, and they'll throw it right through, really, the bull nose. Yeah, exactly. And they practice it, and they have competitions. So these guys are that good that they could throw the lead line right through the and then you can pull up the pull up the mooring line. So it's wild. That's
Diesel Dave 45:28
so cool. How long does it take to go through the lock
Jeremy Perkins 45:30
system? It probably took us a day. I don't know. I can't remember.
Diesel Dave 45:34
There's gotta be a bunch of them too, right? Or they're just, there's a bunch
Jeremy Perkins 45:37
of locks, and then there's, like, a there's long straight portions too. Yeah, um, but, yeah, no, I can't remember how long it took us. It had to have been a day. But, yeah, you're there with other ships. Yeah, it was, it was, it was awesome. It was a great experience. Panama
Diesel Dave 45:49
Canal. Panama Canal, going back to where you're talking about, that two lane road in Colombia. Yeah. Have you ever been down to Uruguay? No, Colombia was the furthest I want. So on the border down there of Brazil and like igua Siu falls, Paraguay. There's a bridge that goes from Brazil to Paraguay. We got on back to before we had our no we had our motorcycles, and there's about like a four lane highway, but there's no rhyme or reason to lanes and traffic. People are just going and coming at the same time, oh shit. And they're all moto taxis and cars, and it's all mirror to mirror. And then nobody is going slow. I'm talking you are praying as you are twisting your throttle, and mirrors are getting hit and flapping backwards, yeah. And people are like, hanging on the back of these motorcycles, not worried. And Jim and nine and I are cruising through like, we're all gonna die. We're gonna pile everybody up right here on this bridge. Now,
Jeremy Perkins 46:42
how'd you deal with the language barrier down there? Did you actually become fluent in Portuguese? So
Diesel Dave 46:47
I speak Portuguese? Oh, you do, yeah. I learned Portuguese and Portugal. I lived there for two years, served mission for my church and and so did Jim and Nyan. They served in Brazil, though, and so we learned our Portuguese. It was going into the Spanish speaking countries where Portuguese and Spanish are close, close. Yep, they're close, and you can understand probably 50, 60% of Spanish speakers. Yeah, they can't understand a word you say, though, for some reason, Portuguese doesn't translate the same as Spanish, right? But was enough to get by and communicate, right?
Jeremy Perkins 47:16
Yeah, I was fortunate enough to be friends with our our our Spanish interpreter, so he came along. But yeah, I mean, anytime I was on my own in those countries, it was cool, it was a challenge. I mean, you're dusting off your high school Spanish. And yep, I think I ordered, was it chicken and rice more often than I could, because that was the only thing I knew how to order. Yeah, it's amazing how
Diesel Dave 47:43
many people you run into that can speak English too. Yeah, really. Well, yep, I feel like it's not the same here. It's like Panama.
Jeremy Perkins 47:51
Panama was, like, completely Americanized. It was, yeah, it was, you know, they still had a ton of products in them from the United States. It was kind of interesting, because, like, when you went when you went, when you went to these areas, and then you'd refuel and stuff like that, we'd end up with your, your cleaning products would change from, like Clorox to Fabuloso, or you get cow milk, and now you're getting goat milk. So it was kind of interesting, like seeing, seeing the change. But like, Panama was, it was almost like being home. It was, it was kind of cool because they still had that infrastructure. I served for eight years in total, but four years active station down there, so station in key, what? Wait, who's hosting this podcast? Yeah? I did, yeah, I did four years active. My first duty station was wild. They're like, get as far away from home as possible. You're gonna get wrapped up in the same bullshit that you would. So we're we're all listening to the drill instructors, because we get to pick our duty station. So they give us, actually, we didn't pick our duty station. We picked an area we wanted to be at, and then whether you wanted to be a ship or a land unit. So I'm like, fuck it. So I put Guam Puerto Rico, Alaska and a couple other places, because I'm originally from Massachusetts, yeah, and my first duty station was Key West Florida, really. Yeah, it was, it was, like, probably the worst place to put a 17 year old kid. But I was attached to a ship. So our ship was in two months out, two months we were doing Counter Narcotics. You did two months out, two months out, yeah. So we were doing Counter Narcotics, immigration and disaster relief in the Gulf of Mexico, stuff like that. So yeah, I mean, I was down there. We were down there for Katrina. We were down there for a whole bunch of branch Coast
Diesel Dave 49:43
Guard. You were Coast Guard? Yeah, we went to fly with hitron, yeah, yeah. So we did the hit run unit and went on the helicopters and I got to be the drug smuggler on the boat, yeah, dude, wow.
Jeremy Perkins 49:53
That was crazy. So I was part of that was so hitron rolled out when I was there. We switched from. Um, the dolphins were kind of doing it to, or you guys call them dolphins, Dolphin whatever. So we'd usually detach with one of those. But they didn't have the capabilities. I forget what the, what the, what the side the, sorry, the style helicopter it was. But they were all leased the the US Coast Guard didn't own them, so they released them, yeah. So it came with a, it came with a guy from the company that would maintain it. Obviously, we had our own guys that would maintain it as well. But, yeah, they came with a 240 machine gun and a 50 Cal, and they'd go out and do eight hours worth of flying to look for go fast boats. Yeah. And then I was on the other side, so it was called over the horizon. So I hadn't we had an oth boat, which I was a mechanic for that, but we'd go out and chase the drug runners once they were spotted. So they'd shoot out the engines, and then we'd respond and then go deal with it. Yeah, three drug busts. So that was really cool,
Diesel Dave 50:56
nerve wracking with rolling up on some a bus,
Jeremy Perkins 50:59
shutout boat. So what's, what's interesting is, is the first time you do it, yeah, you think that, but the reality is, is, like, they're in a bad situation, yeah, like, so the people that are running drugs. And now, this might not be across the board, but this is my experience when we finally got them off the boat, and now we have to have a security detail until we can bring them to either Guantanamo Bay or wherever we're sitting there. And they're nice, normal people. You know, a lot of them are in their 60s. They just are looking for a source of money, and whether they're forced into it, or whether it's a large sum of money to help their family out, they just, I mean, they travel with firearms, and usually the firearms are the first thing to go over the boat, yeah? Because they're not for us, they're for pirates, yeah? So they'll end up throwing them in the water. They know they're not gonna win that battle, no, but it was weird. It was a I we never had any hostile drug runners, if you will. It's just those cartels and whatever, using these people as guinea pigs, and they don't give a shit about
