Jackson Conn & Wil Posey

Eric Girouard  0:00  

This is bucket talk weekly podcast where people who work in the trades and construction that aren't just trying to survive but have the ambition and desire to thrive. The opportunity to trade and construction is absolutely ridiculous right now. So if you're hungry, it's time to eat. We discussed what it takes to rise from the bottom to the top with people who are well on their way and roll up their sleeves every single day.

Jeremy Perkins  0:28  

This is Jeremy and Eric here with Bucket Talk powered by BRUNT. On this episode we have Will Posey and Jackson Conn, both in mechanics but before we jump in, Eric, what's been going on?

Eric Girouard  0:38  

All right, so a lot of action going on in my day job over at BRUNT. Two exciting things. We launched our brand new Shevlin hoodie. It's a killer hoodie price, right and only 60 bucks. It's got an incredible big belly pocket with a tech pocket inside of your phone or keys extended waist by an inch and a half hard hat compatible. What else do you need super cozy for that fall weather. We also introduced armor and eight inch finally in a soft toe. We heard from a ton of folks that didn't need to safety till they wanted to wear that boot, especially going into the colder months. And so yeah, getting those to live was was a bear and they're starting to crank now. So we had a lot of action going on. What about you?

Jeremy Perkins  1:13  

Speaking of the fall, we just got five quarts delivered up at the farm. So it's been an all hands on deck with the family getting it all stack but this time around, my daughter took an interest in to stack in the woods. So she started helping us and then turn turn to me and goes Dad, if I do it all can I get 100 bucks. So we'll see when I get back if if that task has been achieved, but ya know, it's pretty cool to see the young ones working. All right.

Eric Girouard  1:41  

All right. And as a big thanks to the folks joining us on our podcast today we got a special code CRANE10 that you can use for $10 off your first purchase of $60 or more whether it's a pair of boots, pants, apparel, or a couple accessories or most you can use crane 10 at checkout CRA any 10 All right, let's dig in.

Jeremy Perkins  2:04  

Alright, today we're here with Jackson Conn of Conn Equipment Rental. And Will Posey of Big Oak Garage. Boys. Welcome.

Jackson Conn  2:12  

Thanks for having us. Oh, yeah.

Will Posey  2:14  

Thanks for having us.

Jeremy Perkins  2:15  

Awesome. Awesome. So this is gonna be unique podcast, Jackson, and will our friends and we're gonna get more into their relationship and how this all formed out. But let's start with Jackson Jackson, where are you based out of kind of want to get a little sense of what you do how you got into it. And then once Jackson is done, we'll get right into well and figure out how this story evolves. Yeah, so

Jackson Conn  2:38  

I'm from a little small town about 45 minutes south of Birmingham, Alabama is called Scylla Kaga we're not really known for much but uh, we got marble and marble quarries. And it's really about it. But my background is more of a we have a crane rental business and ready mix concrete and industrial welding and fabrication that this year we are 76 years in the business. Wow. That's a long time actually. Yeah, so I'm, uh, I'm third generation. And then so we do that the day job and then, you know, that's our 730 to 536 o'clock to whenever and then when we get done with that, we make it back home to our shop and start working on the Nice, nice, good projects that hit me. Nice, nice.

Jeremy Perkins  3:29  

Well, give me a little background about yourself.

Will Posey  3:33  

Alright, so I'm from a little small town in Alabama called hopes plus, about an hour north of Birmingham. So being Jackson is about an hour and 45 minutes apart. I'm a graduate of McPherson college, I have a degree in automobile restoration, grew up drag race and building hot rods with my dad, something that I always wanted to do. 2007 opened up a shop called bigger garage, and just man had never looked back. It's been building hot rods and touring the country and got a customer base of some of the best dudes on the planet that just kind of let me go crazy with their projects and spend a bunch of their money and go cars.

Jeremy Perkins  4:13  

That's awesome. That's awesome. Now, I mean, I'm in the automotive trade. And it's been only up until recently that I started to hear about automotive restoration degree like I was always like UTI. You know, WyoTech you know, there was a couple up in like Michigan that I actually offered two and four year automotive degrees because they were up by the GM plan and stuff like that. But that's crazy. So what did you learn? Was it just like actual tear down old cars or?

Will Posey  4:42  

Yeah, absolutely. So actually, this program has been around since the 70s. It's the only skilled in the country where you can actually get a real degree in automotive restoration. So I have associate's technology and automobile restoration. And you start off by learning how how to weld. And then you learn how to rebuild an engine. And then you learn how to tear a car down. You learn how to do paint and bodywork, you learn how to do Interior, you know, and then you're just learning the basics of all of this stuff. So once you become you know, your last semester, you can kind of pick and choose what you'd like the best. So I like metal fab. So I went to the metal fab side, and then did as much of that as I could.

Jeremy Perkins  5:25  

Nice, nice. And Jackson, you did it the down and dirty way and just got your hands dirty and learned.

Jackson Conn  5:31  

Yeah, so got down and dirty. And then so. So I graduated high school. I'm young. I'm very young. I graduated high school in 2017. And I had been around the whole crane rental and industrial fab and concrete my whole life. So I always loved doing hot rods and building cars and custom motorcycles. My dad, that was kind of his get away from the whole construction world was to build old cars, motorcycles. And so in 2018, I ended up moving up to Atlanta, Georgia, and got the opportunity to internship with a guy named Brian fuller. He owns a company called fuller moto he did, he was on a couple seasons of overhaul and right when they started and so I learned a lot of metal fab from him and had to do a lot to do all my TIG welding and metal shaping and, you know, all those, all those sorts of stuff. So I learned a lot from a lot of people and and a lot of stuff I had to I kind of had to pick up on my own. So it's been a wild journey. I've kind of bounced around. I'm out of the I'm currently doing the apprenticeship program out of the local 312 Union operators local right now. So I'm kinda, you know, all over the place, but we're making it happen.

Jeremy Perkins  6:44  

Yeah, so. So give me a little story on on how you guys met and what this partnership means and what you guys are into right now.

Will Posey  6:52  

So here we go. Right. So I got approached by Courtney Hanson, to do a TV show where they're called Rat of your life. And we got over there and started late and some of the guys that wanted to participate, figured out pretty quick that and didn't know if these guys would work out, you know, they had automotive backgrounds, but it wasn't classic car background, there's a big difference between working on a nuclear and a 55 Chevrolet, not saying those guys didn't have skills they did, but just not where we needed to have skills that we organized the Build crew. And we figured out real quick that we were extremely short handed. That's where Jackson's name got brought up. So Jackson came in what about the fourth week?

Jackson Conn  7:46  

We were filming? Yeah, it was the fourth week.

Will Posey  7:49  

So Jackson came in. And they me and him hit it off. I mean, immediately. You know, they say love at first sight. Yeah, man, Jackson, love it first.

Jackson Conn  8:02  

My eyes and Will's eyes locked each other. With somebody, you're in love with somebody and you're like, oh, my gosh, that's my first app. And it's, it's like going on a big shutdown. And like, you always find that one guy that's your friend. Well, yeah, that'll be your friend for those few months. You're on that shutdown. Well, this was a whole different experience for me, me and we'll met now we're lifetime friends. after all.

Will Posey  8:29  

I mean, seriously, it was that quick that we hit it off. I think we wound up at the bar that night together. And that was when it really started. It was kind of cool how all that worked out. And then, you know, the craziest thing about it was, Jackson came in. And him and Caleb parents don't RJ on the show. They stole the show, you know, between Mikey, RJ and Dan Jackson. The show would be crap. Without those three guys. Jackson makes the funniest comments. And they say never look at the camera. He's always making little smartass comments and he'll stare at the camera. It's hilarious. But yeah, we just hit it off. Like I said, Love at first sight in. I mean, I don't think there's a week goes by. We don't talk on the phone. And he's bought projects from me and I've got stuff from him. And you know, it is pretty cool how it all worked out.

Jeremy Perkins  9:31  

That's awesome. And, and I actually wanted to bring it back a little bit further. A lot of a lot of young kids a lot of you know guys in their 20s and 30s. Or they get on Instagram and they see all these big things that big people can do but y'all are two normal fellas and how did you get to this point was it you know, if you could tell a younger version of you? This is the steps you need to succeed in life to get to where I am right now. What would you tell a younger version of yourself?

Will Posey  9:59  

One What are his passion? Gotta have a passion to do this. If it's not what you eat, breathe, sleep, shit. You know, you're just gonna be another normal guy out there trying to make a living doing something, you know?

Jackson Conn  10:18  

Yeah, we'll sum that up law, you know, I've got a lot of older friends, and I'm only 23 years old. So I go see a lot of younger guys all the time, whether it's getting into the welding field, the crane operating or excavating pipeline work in there, like, just wanting to get into anything. Bunch of their questions are like, you know, how did you get to where you are, and it's like, you got to sacrifice a lot. You know, it's a lot of time away from your family, it's got to be spent. But, you know, it's like, we'll set it gets back to passion. You know, if you've got the passion to do it, and you've got the will to do it, you can make it happen.

Jeremy Perkins  10:55  

That's a great point. I mean, there's a ton of us out in the trade, there's a ton of us that are talented, but you got to push for it, you got to want it. So no, I agree with you, it'd be top 1%, top 2%. In the industry. I mean, whether it's NASCAR, whether, you know, like me, and we'll were talking earlier about auto cross and stuff like that his on time and off time is living and breathing auto, it's definitely something that you need to keep in perspective, if this is what you want to do,

Jackson Conn  11:22  

I've always been raised to look at is, yeah, you might think you're good. And you might think you know what you're doing, but there's always somebody else out there that is better than you. So you've got to always be working towards achieving bigger goals. You know, you can celebrate and congratulate yourself on this goal that was made. But while you're celebrating and congratulating yourself, there's somebody else in the shop grinding, working in their books, learn and try new things. So they can be one step ahead of you, or whoever else they're competing with their sales are competing, there's always gonna be somebody else one step ahead of you. So you've got to keep yourself head down, driven and ready to go.

Jeremy Perkins  12:03  

That brings up a good point, because one of the shops I first started out, I was probably I don't know, 2021 22. Anyway, I was getting good at everything, right. But it was just a little auto, you know, shop that did front end work, brakes, alignments, stuff like that. And I found myself to be the top. And then I found myself not learning. Right, I realized that, you know, I needed to go to another job or another experience, and work for somebody again, because being the top dog at this age in my life was not doing me any favors. Yeah, it was great. I'm the boss. But it wasn't like I said, doing me any favors. So you're right, you got to keep you got to keep drive, and you gotta keep pushing for it.

Will Posey  12:44  

Yeah, there's always it doesn't matter if you're in the number one spot, or you're, you know, 100 there's always somebody behind you looking to get ahead.

Jeremy Perkins  12:54  

So what is the challenge that you guys are facing right now? What's your, what's your biggest challenge that you guys are up against?

Will Posey  13:02  

I'd say the biggest thing I struggle with right now Steve Jackson. I mean, he's such a good looking dude. Everybody's coming after him. And you know, just trying to keep my word like in our industry, you're always trying to outdo yourself, you know, you're the next one needs to be better than the last one. And in the Hot Rod industry. You know, not every car has an open checkbook. But so yeah, that's one of the things that's tough is, okay, we just finished a 61 dialer that kind of set the world on fire this year.

Jackson Conn  13:42  

Let's go ahead and jump on that real quick. For a second. We'll like any six, you want to empower the Dirty Martini, which is absolutely the dirtiest, nastiest, most? Like, I don't know, I'm fixing to get hard on if I don't stop talking.

Will Posey  13:59  

You know, and so when you try to talk with car like that, is kind of tough. Not that. I'm trying to talk that or I'm, you know, I gotta build cars for my customers. You know what I mean? I gotta make them happy. If they don't want a car like that, then I'm not gonna build them a car like that. So that that's one of the things mentally you always trying to outdo yourself, but not every chance. You get to do that. You know what I mean? It's always tough finding people that have the same passion and drive. As you right now. I'm great. I've got a group of 10 dudes at the shop that love it. They can't get enough. You know, in the past I struggled pretty pretty hard because finding the right guys to put on the team work together and making shit talking and wires and crap like that, you know, that's always a struggle with a small business, you know, in a niche in a niche market as well.

Jeremy Perkins  14:55  

Yeah, yeah. Tell me more about this. This show this build that you guys We're doing

Jackson Conn  15:00  

the kind of the gist of the whole deal is everybody's got a car or a truck or a vehicle that they had before, which they won't they and they always want it back, always coming up to you saying, Man, I really wish I had this car back. But I wish I hadn't done this, you know, it's just kind of everybody always has something they want it back. So what what is brewed up with this show, is what we do is we find somebody with that story. And we build their dream car forward, build the car they used to have and bring it back to him. And you got an amazing host will Posey and Courtney Hansen and we have wills, builders will get to know you and gets with it. And, you know, that's one way we can make it happen. It's somebody with wheels expertise to guide us along to some of this stuff. Because we do get in some situations where you know, we're like, Oh, crap, we don't know how to do this and wheel comes in. But that's what we'll do. So we'll build these cars in. Essentially, it's two and a half weeks, we'll build a full car from floor paying up and plan a reveal will will surprise the person getting the vehicle with the car and it's pretty awesome. Some of these guys, they even basically all of them, they really get they really get emotional about it. You know, they're like, you know, maybe like some I given you a 69 Camaro.

Jeremy Perkins  16:16  

So you said that, that, you know, he helps you through some things. What are some of the challenges that you guys faced on a daily basis? I mean, are you talking about like, the car was hitting you didn't you thought it was pristine? And now you got to doing a ton of body work? Are you talking about mismatched parts and you thought it was a whole car? Like what are we at?

Will Posey  16:34  

Do use the Volkswagen as an example? Oh,

Jackson Conn  16:37  

all wagon for sure. All right. So Will's gonna have to probably jump in a little bit and get the numbers the year models, right. So we're building a 73 Volkswagen super V. Convertible, convertible, and lots of real estate. There's no floor pans in this thing. And like, I mean, so we built the back package tray and

Will Posey  17:00  

let's back up a minute here. We buy this car out of a barn. It looks like it's original paint. It looks like an original top. And it looks solid. As the day is alone. Yeah, we are so excited when we roll this car in the shop. Because every car that had come into the shop to do was a total piece of shit. I mean, go garbage all right.

Jackson Conn  17:31  

For pans in six hours kind of stuff like on deadlines.

Will Posey  17:36  

So we get this little Volkswagen in the shop and we blast it and it's gonna it's just like the rest you got to be kidding me. Right?

Jackson Conn  17:43  

Well, I mean, it was solid but when we blast this car, the wind pick the car up and put it in the bay Joan, it's like some verbiage like we thought we had some good here

Will Posey  18:03  

had the wrong year model top bone it welded the convertible top on this car. So we couldn't take the convertible top off to do all the paint and bodywork. So they had to stay on there the whole time. And then we ordered the convertible top floor it and you know we ordered it for that car. Well the top was for either an earlier or later model. Volkswagen I can't remember. Luckily Ricky Howard did the interior in the Volkswagen and he was able to slice and dice that tarp and make it work. I mean, it's stuff like that the entire the entire show.

Jackson Conn  18:44  

Moral of all that is like we'll if we'll ever been there wouldn't even know where to begin. Like, I'd be like, All right, let's go find another car like this. Probably should have never should have just, you know, full paint on it went down to Sherwin Williams, grab some paint, sprayed it.

Jeremy Perkins  19:01  

People don't realize that I mean, I gotta say the same thing. This car came from mica guy just bought it spent a boatload of money was a 57 convertible. So he brings it to the shop and he has cracking so obviously, you know Bondo is pop and all that stuff. So we get into it. We realized that even though the VIN tag is correct that it's a convertible, the body is not a convertible, somebody chopped it and made it look back. So we're just like, Oh my God. And that's when we kind of learned about mica and everything, like not to shit on me comm or anything like that. But I always was under the assumption that if you got something from Meachem that it was a good product. And that's not the case. There's an ass for every seat, you can sell whatever the fuck you want there as long as as long as through. Yeah, dude. I mean, that guy probably put, I don't know, he probably put 70 $80,000 into just a car that he probably already spent 50 $60,000 I mean, come on. I mean, it was it was a lie. It was it was crazy. And it was a painful process. That's because they're just better from the start, you know what I mean? And, and, and there's no winning with this build,

Will Posey  20:06  

unfortunately, that that's very common with auction cars. It's not the auction companies fault. You know, it's not make them or Barrett Jackson, they're their fault because, you know, you send pictures of the car and they accept you over pictures. You know, they're not there to physically inspect every northern case. But the person selling the car knows that very few people are going to come up and really, really, really inspect that car. They're gonna be sitting in the audience have blitzed out of their mind, and they're gonna buy it was a lackey you know? Yeah. And then they get it back home and they start looking at it and they're like, oh, shit, what the hell did I use do?

Jeremy Perkins  20:50  

We used to get the you know, the little lady her husband passed away and that was that was his car and then she didn't know what to do with it so they sent it to auction or whatever. So she has plausible deniability was her husband's nightmare but he happened to pass so now he's got somebody else's

Jackson Conn  21:10  

you know, some of these people they build these cars in their motto is, as long as the car outlives you, that's all good man. pretty horrible cars. And I think there's a lot of people that really, really live by that. Yeah.

Will Posey  21:25  

Oh, they are. Go to Pigeon Forge during rod rod and look at the cars sail out there.

Jeremy Perkins  21:31  

Well, it's amazing too, because, you know, you go to like Carlisle, up to the car show up there. And now we're telling people, when I was in the business, you're better off going there. Looking at a car buying it for 20 grand, has clean paint is straight body, you know, had some under the hood work done. And then you make it yours versus trying to build it from the ground up, you're gonna spend so much money doing a full restoration and you never get it back.

Will Posey  21:58  

Easy. Now, that's what I do for a living now.

Jeremy Perkins  22:01  

We'll cut that out, then.

Will Posey  22:05  

I'm giving you shit. Every customer that comes into my shop, I'm like, Listen, if you're looking for us to build you a car, and then you sell it and make money you need to leave right now. We're we're the our custom tailored Armani suit of building hot rods. Yeah, the seats gonna be where you want it, the shifter is going to be where you want it, the AC controls are going to be where you want it. It's going to be whatever color you bought, if the color don't exist, guess what will make the color if

Jackson Conn  22:35  

you know it, find the wheels, you won't will and then we just sit down with a piece of paper and start drawing some wheels. And guess what? They'll have a made for you.

Will Posey  22:44  

Exactly. So you know, I think you need to leave that in there as it's giving you shit because there's that's good. That is definitely the truth. You know, if you're looking to just have a car and eventually sell it, you need to go buy something that's close to what you will, and then make a year off.

Jeremy Perkins  23:03  

It's 100%, right? Because I mean, we had those, we had some big budget guys, and they were able to do it. But you get like a middle of the road guy in there that just retired on a fixed income and he wants his dream car and you're like, you gotta You almost got to lay it all out there for him. You know, I don't know, I've seen guys lose their shirt. I've seen guys be real happy. I mean, we had a guy put a coyote into like a 90s Mustang. And it was we put the engineer and wiring harness and everything. It was great. And then he did some like lights and some other stuff. And just like he had wires running across the engine and yeah, it was, it was awful. But then he brought it back and was like the dash that I didn't want you guys to hook up because it was too much money. I want you to hook it up. Now we're like, Dude, you, you butchered it, like we can't do anything. That's gonna cost you too much money to do it. So it's a wild world in the automotive industry. Let me tell you, Well, what do you like to do outside of work?

Will Posey  24:00  

Well, when I'm not working, I'm either racing out of girls are cooking, I'm a food snob. I like barbecuing and smoke include and, you know, having parties at the house and a lot of people over and stuff like that. So, um, you know, 99% of the time I'm doing something automotive related. So it's either that or cooking or, you know, we take a pretty good vacation every year that that's about it. I don't I don't fish. You know, I get some kind of a boring person. Really? Yes. At the end of the day,

Jeremy Perkins  24:40  

nobody really gets into this question with a good answer. It's always you know, when you're talking to the top and their trade, that's all they're focused on. And that's all they're they're doing is really, you know, they're eating, breathing sleeping decks and what do you like doing?

Jackson Conn  24:56  

Yeah, so I'm pretty much the same as well. So like, you know what? it'll just play around with the hot rods all day long. So, which is I'm so jealous of. So we're around all the cranes in the welding and all that. So usually it surrounds around me either being in the shop working on my own projects or doing a lot of motorcycle ride and we do a pretty good bit of a motorcycle ride. And right now when the weather's getting out of summer kind of easy to fall, we got not as hot outside, but down here in Alabama still scorching. But yes, we do some motorcycle trips and go ride and yeah, and you just hang out. You love going up to the mountains.

Jeremy Perkins  25:34  

Do you ride that Indian that you just built or no, we don't ride the

Jackson Conn  25:37  

Indians much we'll put about when we finished the Indians will put about a mile on him. We've got a little private collection put together that we drain all the fluids out of them. And then we'll put them up and then every now and then we'll pull a few out. But we primarily build just straight Indian motorcycles, but it's kind of funny, we'll do what we aren't. We ride Harley's. So we're not necessarily we're just a motorcycle and automotive people. So I've got a couple of new Indians that we ride but in when it comes down to the older Indian stuff, we would get so much time and stuff put into them that with all the crazy people on the road nowadays, you know, God forbid we get an accident, but I'd rather get an accident on your bike than an accident on one of my old bikes.

Jeremy Perkins  26:20  

So growing up as a kid I was I grew up a little bit in Springfield, but then moved just outside of the suburbs of Springfield, what my dad used to take me down to essentially the birthplace of Indian motorcycles, thankful Massachusetts, but they have where the plant was they still have a Indian Motorcycle Museum. It is downtrodden. But it still has all the bikes there. Have you ever been up that way?

Jackson Conn  26:45  

No, I haven't. So that we're planning on doing that trip. So the Indian Motorcycle stuff runs pretty deep with us. I've got I've got pictures from in my hometown of in 1910. My great, great, great uncle on an Indian Motorcycle. So we've been trying to make that way up there. I was like, you know, how cool would need to give them that picture. Like look, you know, these motorcycles? Look, this is where it was in 1910 in small town, Alabama. You know, here's your Indian motorcycles right here.

Jeremy Perkins  27:18  

Yeah, yeah,

Jackson Conn  27:19  

I'm gonna make my way up that way to come check it out.

Jeremy Perkins  27:23  

Well, you should come up that way. During Bike Week, Laconia, New Hampshire, passed right through through Springfield and on up to Laconia. That's a good time to bike we got there.

Will Posey  27:33  

Yeah, hey, hey, Jackson. You know, if we go up that way, we'll have to have some paddles, right?

Jackson Conn  27:39  

Yeah, we definitely will have to have some

Jeremy Perkins  27:43  

understanding just fine. All right.

Will Posey  27:47  

Maybe you guys need subtitles?

Jeremy Perkins  27:53  

Well, have you ever felt this way? You know, you guys gotta stop by. Yeah, hopefully we're gonna we're gonna run a NASCAR again next July for our Loudon race, which is up in New Hampshire too. So that's always a blast. But that would be that will be fun. But this is the end of the show. Y'all have been amazing. Well, Jackson have been awesome. But if anybody wants to kind of learn more about the industry, catch you on a TV show, kind of learn more about, you know the ins and outs. Will where can they find you and then Jackson, you can follow it up after.

Will Posey  28:31  

Alright, so I'm on. I'm on Facebook and Instagram. It's a big garage. I have a Twitter account, but I don't do a lot with it. Got a tick tock account. Don't do a lot with that. You can always go to bigger garage.com TV show is right of your life. There's a Facebook and Instagram on it. The show airs on Wednesday night. Eastern is 10 o'clock. Central is nine o'clock. Or you can watch it on the Motor Trend app. On Wednesday. I think it's open all day on Wednesday. So you can check us out on on the TV show or Instagram, Facebook, whatever. If anybody Young is wondering how to get into the industry, you know, I get this a lot, man hit me up on Instagram. And you know, I'd be more than happy to have a conversation with you. And I've got friends that have hot rod shops all over the country. So I've actually gotten young guys jobs in Hot Rod shops that wanted to get their foot in the door. You know a lot of these hot rod shops are a little intimidating to walk into because they're a little private. And you know, just about everybody that owns a hot rod shop to the level of big go garage. We're all anal retentive assholes, you know? Nothing. Nothing's good. A lot of us are not real personable people because we're so focused on our craft. We're not assholes. We're just extremely focused on what We do for a living and want to make it perfect so some of the guys are a little hard to approach but man if there's any kid out there that that wants to get into this trade more than more than happy to help out