Three time KOH Champ, Jason Scherer, Episode 25

Three time KOH Champion Jason Scherer talks all things rock crawling, Ford, racing and family.  The stories are epic, they take place all over the country with all kinds of characters. And characters they are, get to know Jason and his friends.   Check out https://www.rage4th.com/ for great quality bumpers.

1:55 – A pivotable moment

5:30 – Every kid wants to be a fireman or baseball player, right?  

11:03 – sixteen years old on the Rubicon (with no supervision)

16:32 – You learn from the best teachers – learning to weld

19:06 – What do you mean we have to compete in Unlimited, we only have 35” tires?

27:30 – new car blues 

34:45 – The highlight event of rockcrawling

38:47 – two events, three trophies, and a near-death experience

44:50 – Baja, baby!! 

58:45 – Street outlaws in the parking lot

62:34 – putting Jason Berger in the car for the first KOH win

72:04 – Opportunities that come

80:08 – The Ford team

We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.

www.maxxis.com

www.4lowmagazine.com 

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

Big Rich Klein: Welcome to the Big Rich show. This podcast will focus on conversations with friends and acquaintances within the four wheel drive industry. Many of the people that I will be interviewing, you may know the name. You may know some of the history, but let's get in depth with these people and find out what truly makes them a four wheel drive. So now's the time to sit back, grab a cold one and enjoy our conversation. 

Maxxis Advertisement: Whether you're crawling the red rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail. Maxxis Tires has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels, or two Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver, choose Maxxis tread victoriously.

4Low Advertisement: Why should you read 4low Magazine Because 4Low magazine is about your lifestyle. The four wheel drive adventure lifestyle that we all enjoy. Rock crawling trail riding event, coverage vehicle builds, and do it yourself tech all in a beautifully presented package. You won't find 4low on the newstand rack. So subscribe today and have it delivered to you. 

Big Rich Klein: On today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich is Jason Scherer. Everybody knows Jason Scherererer.  You've got a bunch of brothers out there. Actually. You have one brother. in fact, I just saw him yesterday or Friday and, and getting your history on rock sports and how you grew up and everything. So let's start right there. Where did you grow up

Jason Scherer: Well, first of all, thanks for having me Rich. I'm really stoked that you're putting this show together because, you know, I think the memories are starting to fade. 

Jason Scherer: It's good to kind of archive them here because it's a cool sport. And that was a really great time in all of our lives and, you know, listening to a few of the shows, it brought back memories of all the, all the things that we accomplished and all the excitement and fun that we had and, you know, kind of stealing a line from Dust to Glory. But if we, if we kind of knew what we were, what we were doing, then we would get a little more attention. But, it was, it was sure a great time. So, you know, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area kind of moved from the Oakland area to the East Bay as I grew up, you know, through the years. And, I think a real pivotable pivotal moment for me was when we moved to Danville, when I was in fifth grade, I became friends with a guy named Jan DeYoung, and he, he, his dad ended up having a Jeep and that Jeep and going dirt bike riding with him was sort of the, the, you know, changing point of like what kind of vehicles I liked and you know, what direction I would head in life. 

Jason Scherer: So, it was a good, good thing. We moved here and I still live in the same town today. Believe it or not. It's awesome. That's that's Danville. Yep. Home of myself and Jeff Mello. So, you know, a small town, but it's, it's actually not anymore. You know, it wasn't, we grew up here. I think it's, you know, quadrupled in size in the last 30 years or something. So it's lost a little of that small town feel, but it's still got a lot of great people and, the same, you know, core group of us that were in the Contra Costa jeepers and all that. So it's a good, good town to grow up in and I'm glad to raise my kids here.

Jason Scherer: Excellent. What sports influenced you as a youngster 

Jason Scherer: You know, I played, I think I played water polo only because my parents would get me a ride to school and high school that way, but I played baseball the way growing up. 

Jason Scherer: I actually stopped playing when I was like 12 years old. which kind of was interesting. Cause I think it was like, my parents pushed me to play baseball or at least my dad, you know, everybody played baseball. So from T-ball on, I played and I burned out on it and wanted to ride my bike and stuff like that. It was cool because when I went to high school, I wanted to play fresh. You know, it's like, you're going to try out for the baseball team and you haven't played in a few years, you know, good luck. Right. And, made the team and he made a big commitment. he bought a pitching machine, in a batting cage for me. And I'd hit a bucket of balls every day from like, you know, into my freshman year, through my sophomore year. And when I try, you know, started playing on my sophomore year, I had grown a lot. 

Jason Scherer: Like I had that big growth spurt and was hitting a couple of buckets of balls every night. And that thing, you know, 80 miles an hour. And when I got to the regular games, it was like, it looked like they are throwing softballs at me because I was used to seeing such a fast pitch. So, made it up to, you know, playing JV and then varsity, but, you know, it was, it was cool. I got MVP. Baseball was like super influential in my life. Cause I love the team. I love the coaches, you know, Got MVP and the Brother Jerome award at DeLaSalle high school. It was just a really cool thing. And then I chased it a little bit in college, playing in a bunch of different colleges and bouncing all over the place. You know, didn't, didn't end up making it knew, knew after a couple of games where I saw pitchers that had stuff that I had never seen before that it wasn't going to be my career. 

Jason Scherer: But up until that point, you know, that was my, my drive every day. I actually thought that would be my career if you will. You know, every kid wants to grow up to be a fireman or baseball player. Right. And that was what I wanted to be. And didn't, you know, have really a backup plan, after the baseball thing. But as it turned out, my dad needed help at work. So I came home from school and helped him with work. he had started his own company and it grew to the point where it was doing well. And he ended up with some employees that had left. And so he said, Hey, is there any chance you can come home for a semester and helped me with work And I was like, sure. And I never, you know, that was 26 years ago now. So that's how that worked out. 

Big Rich Klein: And that was, that was Pelican communications. Yep. 

Jason Scherer: Great. little tough in the COVID times here because we've diversified into a lot of things. Some of them are doing extremely well and some of them are really struggling. So it's a, it's an interesting time. It's not terrible, but it's not great. You know, so we're getting through it though. So how big is the telephone 

Big Rich Klein: Now The pay telephones, is that any part of the business anymore 

Jason Scherer: It's completely gone. you know, I installed over 2000 payphones like myself. Like I was just, it was a great time, right I learned a lot about business. there is no rule book in the pay phone world. They deregulated from what was Pacbell back then I could buy a payphone for about a thousand dollars and then I had to go install it somewhere. So I had to learn how to convince a liquor store or a gas station owner to let me put my payphone out there. I'd give them more share of what money it made. Then he was getting from PAC bell and I'd sign him up to a contract. So I learned the sales side and the contracting, and then I order the telephone lines and pour the concrete, installed the equipment, run the conduit and run the phone lines, get them up and running and then send them out, you know, so we can schedule the routing and have collections done and learned a lot about computer systems and software systems to, to operate them and to manage the route. 

Jason Scherer: You know, it was a neat business, you know, at one point it was a gravy train. We had 2000 payphones making $150 a month net. And you know, you thought he could do no wrong. and that business quickly went away and we diversified into digital jukeboxes. They had just come out. So then we moved into where we had 600 digital jukeboxes in the bars and all that stuff. And I was very worried. It was very capital intensive, took years off my life because of the stress of all that. But the business, I always worried, I I'd go to bed every night, worried that like Apple or somebody who was going to come out with technology that would put us out of business who would've thought it'd be COVID right. But that business I sold four years ago and focused mainly on our managed accounts, which were chains that had a need for those services, but didn't necessarily have a geographical area that you could operate within. 

Jason Scherer: So we ended up with national chains that said, Hey, we want, you know, if it was music, we have the Hooters account. We have every jukebox that every Hooters in the country, if it's ATMS, you know, I have every Family dollar with an ATM machine in it and things like that. So, you know, we've diversified to where we've got a lot of national out there, but we don't have all our eggs in one basket. And that makes me sleep a lot better at night. So it's a good, good thing. We're also doing stuff like video games at K1 Speed and things like that that you wouldn't expect. And like right now, you know, Regal cinemas came one they're all closed. Right. And are not all of them, but a lot of them are closed. So there's been hard stuff and great stuff. You know, the teams are killing it because everybody got stimulus checks or it got their, you know, their money through their ACH and other going to the ATMs and getting those, getting their money out. 

Big Rich Klein: That's that's good. And so through the years you've been able to what now, I guess is the term pivot, but you know, looking at what's going to happen and then, or what's happening and then being able to diversify. That's awesome. 

Jason Scherer: Oh yeah. Some of it's just luck, but we're always looking for other pieces of equipment that earned and what we can, what else we can do within that footprint and what else our customers need. So it's been good and it keeps you, you know, with an open mind and, and I think that's good in business is to stay open and, you know, not just say, Oh, we only do this one thing. And I think we've taken that aspect in the racing side as well. You know, when it was rock crawling, looking at different ideas, or if it's now in the ultra4 stuff, trying to make the cars faster and look at different ways to do things without a kind of a, well, that'll never work attitude. Cause you see that a lot in racing, you know, we do it this way or that won't work or whatever. And we try to try as much as we can out there and learn from that stuff. 

Big Rich Klein: Well, like I can remember would jump ahead a little bit, but in the rock crawling world, when a Walker, Evan showed up with the four wheel independent car, you know, or I guess it was just front independent, but he, he cut that out after moon rocks and showed back up at the next event. Like two weeks later with the drag axle with a, with a solid axle again. 

Jason Scherer: Yeah. Who would have thought it would take us 10 years later to build that same car again for the hammers. Right. 

Big Rich Klein: Let's find out a little bit about, you know, you said you're riding bikes, motorcycles, and bicycles. 

Jason Scherer: my parents wouldn't let me have a dirt bike. So my buddy had a couple and, and we'd ride his together all the time. we were doing, it was like ABA, BMX and racing, BMX bikes, and then riding dirt bikes up in the mountains. And he had a cabin off highway 50 up in strawberry and we would ride, you know, the overlook trail or like the most influential thing was this parents taking us on Barrett Lake, you know, wrote an XR 100 through Barrett Lake. And it like 12 years old. Right. You know, just seeing all that stuff and being part of it. We made it a real easy decision when I turned 16, what kind of car I wanted And it was like, I want a Jeep. You know, what I didn't know at the time was that we'd turn into teenagers and say, Hey, we should go up and do Rubicon this weekend. You know, I was 16. My buddy was 16. We both said, I'll tell my parents, I'm spending the night at your house. You tell your parents or spend the night at my house. And you know, here we were on the Rubicon and 16 year old kids, but no spare parts, no tools. We didn't know anything. And you know, luckily we made it through it all, you know Sure. A lot of fun. And I can't imagine being a parent now letting my kids go to that. 

Big Rich Klein: There was a lot more freedom, you know, I'm, I'm 60, almost 63. Now I read something today that you'll never be able to raise your kids the way you were raised because the world is completely different. I can remember taking my bicycle and we rode from San Bruno to Santa Cruz and then hitchhiked back. So we'd get back before dark. You wouldn't dare do that. 

Jason Scherer: I've had some neighbors give me the evil eye just because we let our kids go to the neighbors house, you know, five doors down on their own without supervision. And I mean, he's seven years old. It's not like, you know, my daughter's 12. It's not like, I'm really worried about them making it seven house, you know, five houses down the street. But they were like, Oh my gosh, what's this kid doing, walking by himself or about ready to call child protective services on us, you know, but whatever. 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah. It's it life's crazy right now. So you bought a Jeep then when you were 16 or that was your first vehicle Yeah. 

Jason Scherer: Yeah. I have, I made a deal with my dad early on that, whatever money I made working for him during the summers, he would, you know, I saved it all and whatever I had, he would match so I could buy a Jeep and 

Big Rich Klein: That's a great deal. 

Jason Scherer: It's a great program. It really incentivize me to work. You know, and I worked from the time I was about 12 years old with them. You know, whether it was the holiday breaks or summer, I was down there with them every day. I was, their babysitter was taking me to work. So my dad had a shop. He was in the video game business. It wasn't terrible to go down there, but I couldn't just play him all day. I had to clean them and fix them and they also had a cigarette route. And so I put stamps on the cigarettes so that they knew what County they came from and all that. It was, you know, hard work. It wasn't just playing games, but it was cool. And the people that work down there were really nice to me. They taught me how to clean up the equipment and how to fix a button that was bad in microswitch. 

Jason Scherer: You know, I learned a little bit mechanically that way and also, you know, just putting in the hours and, you know, I worked hard enough that they all respected me so that I didn't embarrass my dad down there. And so, you know, it was great and he paid me decent enough that I could save up some money. And so I bought a 72 CJ five that was fixed up pretty nice for the times. And I loved it. It was such a great Jeep, you know, and I still have it today and it's the Jeep. I started my first rock crawling competitions at CalRocs in. Wow. So same. And, it's kinda cool that it stuck around all these years. 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah, that's awesome. So you went to high school at de LaSalle with a Jeep. You, you said you went to a couple of colleges, is that where they all in the Bay area or outside of the area 

Jason Scherer: they were all over California for the most part. And in one of them about that Jeep, Chico state, which was the division two baseball team that I was playing out the first year and it got stolen, out of the parking lot in the dorms. And so the, it was just crazy. It was like unrelated to anything. It was just a gang that came by and stole it. And it was a super bummer, but I bought a, rusted out Jeep on the way home. And you know, like that summer lift, you know, sprung it over and did a few things, ended up at San Diego state for school and got to take it down to Baja. And so I learned, you know, got a little love for going down to Baja back then, early on. And about Thanksgiving of that year, I got a phone call from a CHP officer who said that they found my Jeep, seven or eight months later or something. 

Jason Scherer: Right. It trashed like the pinion was missing out of the rear end. So we weren't sure about this and the transmission was broken. So we were like, should we buy it back from the insurance company and, and fix it up And we did it wasn't worth it, but it was totally, you know, cool thing to get the Jeep back. And that's about the time I met Jeff Mello. I came home. One of those weekends, he was doing some welding on a gate for my parents and my Jeep was in a million pieces and he saw it and he was like, what are you doing And I'm like, Oh, I'm rebuilding my Jeep. And he's like, Oh wow. You know So, he, he was super cool. I got the thing all back together. It had some broken spring hangers and stuff, and I didn't have a welder even know how to weld. 

Jason Scherer: So Jeff taught me how to stick welc and got the thing back together. and he was always so nice. I remember all the way back then it was like eight or nine o'clock at night. And I said, Hey, man, I can't make it this weekend. I just noticed the spring hanger is broken. I couldn't make the Contra Costa Jeep trip. And he's like, huh, we're not leaving until the morning. It's only nine o'clock at night. Bring it over here, let's fix it. You know And I was like, seriously, you know, I couldn't believe it. You know, at nine o'clock at night, somebody invite you over to work on their stuff. And he was always that way. And he did, he does that today to this day, right. He always takes people under his wing and teaches them, you know, the right ways to do stuff. 

Jason Scherer: And, you know, he's a good guy that way in it, it taught me to be the same way. We always have kind of a kid in the shop that we're teaching stuff to. And it, it, it's a nice thing. You know, you teach some of that stuff to people and it goes a long way. So, you know, I got to thank him for giving me that like extra little bit of effort back as you know, when I was a kid and he didn't do it before me, he wouldn't weld it up for you, but he would teach you how to use the welder and stand right behind you. And, you know, that's the way to do it. You get them to hands on instead of doing it all for them. And it's great. 

Big Rich Klein: Excellent. And now, you know, to move to jump forward real quick again now you're, you're doing a lot of building. 

Jason Scherer: Yeah, yeah. You know, all over the board, I guess we're, we're building stuff like crazy. I, I can't even believe that, you know, it went from, I couldn't get the exhaust to fit on my Jeep cause it had a 304 in it and I was trying to spring it over and the exhaust was rubbing. So I ended up at the first CalRocs event that I did. It was a place I don't think we ever went back. It was like a Lions club or something. We called it, it was near Lucerne. I can't remember the name of it. It was like a little lions club thing. It was a lion's pride park, lion's pride park. And I had, you know, a T 18 manual in there at the granny lo Dana 20 transfer case and, you know, stock axles in it and open headers. 

Jason Scherer: And I got in that first course and the carburetor was causing me Fitz. And, you know, I was ripping all the way around that thing. And you know, I think we finished like one or two courses the whole weekend, that's it You know And it was just, I mean, the thing sounded like it was ready for the drags drag races, but it was just going nowhere on rock courses. And you know, that was the first one. And that was the first season. I think, I think it was 2001, if I recall now I had spotted a little bit. I had, I had helped a Bob rice who was in the Jeep club. Right. I really liked Bob. I mean, I love Bob to this day, but he, he asked me if I wanted a spot for him. He's the first person that ever took me to the hammers. 

Jason Scherer: I think there was an ARCA event or something out there and, you know, we'd go down there and play around. And, we went to Farmington, New Mexico, or hold on, we went to Las Cruces, New Mexico for one of the events we were supposed to be in the stock class. This is great. So far thirty-five inch tire, but he had put a black diamond suspension on it when Warn was making the suspension and, you know, as a coil over kit and we got to the first spot that we were supposed to go into and they go, Oh, you're in the unlimited class. And he goes, no, we're on 35 inch tires and they go, well, you have aftermarket suspension. You're in the unlimited class. So, you know, Tracy Jordan and Don Robbins and these monster Toyotas with four wheel steer. And we spanked him on the first obstacle. 

Jason Scherer: I was like, Hey, we got a shot. When we got to the next obstacle, we couldn't make it over. Some of these break over ledges and stuff. And we didn't, we didn't do too well. But man, we had a lot of fun. I was doing competitive trials bikes at the time, you know, really enjoying picking lines. And it was a good cross over to rock because necessarily, but you had to help hold your balance or you would get a dab, which was like a point, right. It was kind of similar to a backup and you needed to clear the Gates and the order they were run. And so it was a little easier for me, I think, to kind of adapt to what we were going after, you know, different ways to get through the Gates. You didn't just have to follow the Gates. You could turn around over here to get a better line. 

Jason Scherer: You could do things like that, as long as you stayed within the flow. And I was kind of a natural thing. So I felt like we had a good handle on what the goal was. And it helped us think outside the box. You know, you're driving into this one and backing up through this one and doing a little bit different maybe at the early onset than everybody else. It was just following the Gates. I think the courses and the people making them, we're starting to think, Hey, if they're smart, they'll try to do this. And they were set in the courses that way and it made it really fun if you could really get into it and really enjoy, you know, what you, what the options were that were out there. You know, the last event of the first season was Donner ski ranch, which was kind of my home track if you will, because we had a cabin right there at this point, I was already dating Dana. 

Jason Scherer: I hadn't gotten married yet, but we were, you know, we were together and they had a cabin right there. So it was really easy for me. We got up to Donner that time, you know, and the Jeep was rough by the end of the season. I mean, it had been rolled over and smashed and had different colored fenders on it. You know, I had gone and put a, Vortec V6 in it cause it was fuel injected. I bought a change and then Atlas from advance, adapters got that in there, met a lot of good people along the way and welding up steel beam blocks in my driveway. You know, neighbors stopping by that I know to this day cause they helped me weld them up. And you know, it was all kind of, you know, low buck and a little bit like not very fancy, but we, we had the suspension working, we had everything steering correctly, which, you know, back in the stock model days, it was hard to get stuff to steer you in. 

Jason Scherer: Right So we had the Jeep working well enough that we ended up winning that event at the Donner ski ranch. And that was our first, well, it wasn't our first win and only you will remember this because there's probably nobody else that was around for this. But you hosted what I consider to be the first rock race of all time Napa Fairgrounds, gosh I'm glad we're doing this talk, because I had forgotten about this until just now I got there, I showed up 35 inch tire stock mod Jeep. Some guy in the parking lot looked at me and said, he's not gonna make it through the course. And that I was like, well, let's see. You know And so we went out there and I mean, it was brutal. Right And I, I had lightened it all up. I had, you know, the Jeep was stripped down. So it was really, really lightweight car kind of Jessie Haynes style on nowadays world of, of the Jeep stock mod stuff. 

Jason Scherer: And we went out there and we won and I still have the trophy. It's like six foot tall trophy. No, that poor Jeep though it got smashed, like the right rear corner hit a rock without the tailgate in there. And it was pushed in about 10 degrees. And so the tailgate no longer fit until I took a high lift Jack and pushed the Jeep back out so I could get the tailgate in there. And so it was trashed at this point, all the body mounts were broken off of it. So we win Donner, you know, it was pretty cool things we're doing, we're looking at. And we started to get some interest from sponsors because we were doing well. You know, I called John marking and emailed John marking at Fox and you know, just kept on them. Hey man, I know what we need. 

Jason Scherer: We need, we need tons of rebound, but we don't need much compression, but I needed to hit a rock and stay instead of bouncing off of it. He finally either because I was bugging him or he was interested, I'll never know. He sent me a set of shocks. You know, they were valved the way we wanted them. And I think it really helped us get in, you know, at that Calrocs event at Donner. I think that was like the difference because people were struggling on these ledges that we had to climb and we were able to balance them and kind of stick. And we made it up at that was the last event for my Jeep. The rules changed a little bit and they should have right. They were just, there was people who are going to come on the stock wheelbase and the stock steering box. 

Jason Scherer: Can I move the wheelbase out two inches And can I do this and that And it was a fair thing because 83 inch wheel bases and these ledges just weren't getting along well. But at the same time, I didn't want to take a Jeep and turn it into a buggy. So that's when I call a Schaffer and said, okay, you know, I was doing okay, work-wise business was getting better. And I was like, I want to build a buggy. I want to compete in that. And the unlimited class and Shaffer was just about to start building the Diablo, the first one. And I said, why don't we build two of them You know And in the meantime, I had hung out with Lance Clifford, become friends with them a little bit and Shaffer was going to build mine first. And so he got started on it. 

Jason Scherer: Bender was working there, right So Rob and Shaffer, we're working on the buggy together. And I think they were in roundhouse area at the time that Dayton roundhouse area. And I'd go up there and they'd start making progress. And this thing was beautiful, right. But we started it with the grill first and the hood and we made it a cage and then the chassis was all laid out. And then we saw where we could make the suspension clear and where to put it was just so backwards from today's world. Right. And tires were rubbing here and links were hitting here and drive lines didn't clear and all that stuff, but it looked cool. Right. It was just the evolution of how we got to where we are now is we started that way and Mike didn't get my car done in time, but he certainly didn't get his car done in time. 

Jason Scherer: And he had the first ARCA championship. Right. I think it was ARCA could have been UROC, but it was one of 'em. And it was the one that like, I think it ruined the, the deal up at, moon rocks. And I don't know if it was, the wind came up at the end of the event. Right. Blew all of the trash out of the cans. So just a nightmare. And I think that's what killed us up there as the BLM thing, you know, and everything. But anyway, not to digress into that. Mike said, Hey, I need to borrow your buggy or I'll build you the buck, the second buggy, but I need to compete. Cause he had just won the championship in his Zuki. So he and Lance had done that and I was a little bit bummed. And then Lance calls me out of the blue and he goes, dude, if you want to compete, just take my land cruiser. 

Jason Scherer: So I was like, are you sure You know what I mean You really want me to compete in your Land Cruiser. He's like, dude, how about it You can't hurt it. So I competed in that thing and had a blast, you know I mean, it was super fun. We did. Okay. But I mean not nothing to discredit Lance's land cruiser, but it had all kinds of crazy suspension. And you know, you'd say the rear would start going about 20 degrees one way when you're still driving over here. Cause it would flex out and rear steer on its own. And you know, we didn't have much time to practice. So got through those first events and then finally got the car and we went to a place that I think nor Cal rock racing is going back to, which is Fernly,Nevada, you know, it wasn't that story and I'll get into the details of it. 

Jason Scherer: But I think when I showed up bender was finishing the last tubes on the chassis and we were supposed to compete the day after that. So the motor was on the table, but wasn't in the car and this was like the third delay. So Bendor stayed for 30 hours as did all of us. my friend Vernon come down from Canada, mellow, all these guys were there and we wired it and plumbed it and got it fired up and running and took it to Fernley. And you know, Shaffer's car was already, already run a few events. And so, I show up, I think the first obstacle I drove up to, I broke every wheel stud off the front left wheel because they were the, they were just like the wrong taper for, for what we had. They were like five eights and we had half inch studs and it just sheared them all off. 

Jason Scherer: So I made it about four feet into the floor. I don't even know if I had cleared the entry gate. So that was the debut of the new car, right So we went to the hardware store and we bought bolts and we tightened them from the other side with the right size, lug nuts on there. We'd got them all tight on all the wheels. And we went out there with one 40 on that course or whatever, and we made it to the finals and it was of all people. It was myself against Shafer. Here's the kid that just gets the car from Shaffer against the world champion rock crawler for, and we'd go out there and I'll never forget Shaffer's face when we got to the bottom and he goes, I cannot believe it. I build a car for you and you go out and beat me in the first event. 

Jason Scherer: It was like, yes, we did it. You know, it was such an awesome feeling, but, Shaffer was cool as could be, you know, it was, it was, he was stoked for us, super happy and everybody had a good time and we had our highs and lows from that point, you know, it was a, it was a lot of fun. The things change really quickly. There was a, a pro class then for ARCA and UROCthat merged and it was just ARCA and Ranch set up a deal where you had to have, you know, enough points. And unfortunately, I don't think the CalRocs points were levied very heavily into their formula. You know, I was just doing the local stuff. And so we were driving well enough at the time that we probably deserved to be there, but we didn't, we didn't fit into their criteria, which, you know, they have to have some way to do it. 

Jason Scherer: And I know that probably a lot of people complained, but at the end of the day they needed a system. So we went to the West and that's where Jeff and I had had a ton of fun mellow. And I had had just a blast doing trail wheeling and, and playing at sand dunes and racing at the Marysville sand drags. And just wherever you could think of Pismo, COOs Bay, we were going all over the place, having a blast, doing Jeep stuff. He said, well, I made the pro class and I don't have a buggy. You made the West or you didn't make it. And you've got the buggy. And I went for, why don't you just drive my buggy in the pro class and I'll drive it in the West. And he's like, man, I don't know. Can we do that And I mean, there was weekends where the motor wouldn't even get cold and we'd swap somewhere in a different state and you know, I'd swap the body panels off cause he had a sky Jacker suspension sponsorships. 

Jason Scherer: So we'd had different body panels and we'd throw them on there and I'd go out and compete in it. And it was a heck of a lot easier to do something like that back then because the prep was, it was there, but it was pretty minuscule. You know, we had a great time. I mean, we really had a lot of fun and it was, it was good. It was good times. It really was. Then I showed up at your event, which was called put up or shut up at Cougar Buttes. I don't remember how many people were there. It was a decent turnout though, for anyone who doesn't know, I guess to give the backstory on this put up or shut up was the pre season non points, race, run, what you brung one class best winter, you know, best driver when's the event and that's it. 

Jason Scherer: And it was, I think it was a level up on the hard obstacle side. It was kinda, you know, the precursor maybe to super crawl if you will. And you know, I showed up there and it ended up being John Nelson it was Bundurant. It was John Bundurant. It, but it was Nelson's, you know, and Nelson and Nelson tiny. And here I am in my first event against those guys. So when you got to remember is I had the buggy for a whole year, but I had never seen any of these guys head to head because I didn't make it into the pro class. So they didn't go to the West. Right. And so they had never seen me. So like John, but John Bundrant knew who I was. John Nelson had never seen me before because I raised Cal rocks or competed in CalRocs and show up, showed up there. 

Jason Scherer: Well, we had to go to like a triple elimination final because we kept smoking every course together. And we were tied, tied, tied at the very end. And finally, we did a final shootout and I just remember John Nelson, I got done with it. And John comes over. He goes, who the hell are you You know And he was always competing against, it was always, it was pretty much always Tracy. You know, you had a, you had a handful of other guys that could have won, you know, you had a, who was it The worst shorts everywhere. Can't think of it. Shorts and flip flops, one of the guys from the East, but you had, you had Durham and you had a handful of guys or, you know, they could have one, any other, any of the events. So some of the stuff had gone their way, but he had never met us. 

Jason Scherer: Shoot can. Yup. Yup. You know, there are some really good guys that were competing at the time. And of course, you know, you had Shannon Campbell and some other people out there that were winning events here and there. And, but it was, it was really, Tracy was the, you know, Tracy and Jason Paule. And a couple of those guys were the top dogs at the time. And Bunderant came out and went in tiny and won just about every event for a couple of years there. And he ended up winning the next event at that put up or shut up. But I mean, it was down to, you know, I think he went out of bounds and it was like a rule change coming for the next year that you could do that, but he really didn't win that event, but the rules kind of led them into it. 

Jason Scherer: And it was like, okay, whatever. But that's where John Nelson sort of saw that I could drive. And when, when John Bundrant sorta wanted to quit doing it, that's when Nelson was cool with me and said, you know, you want to, you want to buy time tiny or you want to drive it, or what do you want to do And we worked out something where I could drive the car and ended up buying it from them. That was probably right about the time we were peaking. Right So like 2004, 2005, whatever that was, we were now competing with the big boys. We were doing better and better at each event and taking it really seriously. And Lance had become my spotter Schaefer had sorta focus more on building cars, right. And going to Baja, which was great. And we can segue to all that stuff too, at some point in this, because if Shaffer hadn't done the Baja thing, I don't think my career would have gone the direction that went because desert side of it was totally foreign to me, except for liking to go down to Baja. 

Jason Scherer: I had never driven or ridden or been in anything that went fast through the desert. Not that Jeep speeds were fast, but I hadn't been at anything faster than a pickup truck. So, you know, it was, it was cool that that all happen. But buying tiny was, was one of those pivotal moments that sort of changed everything for me because we were now competing against Tracy. And at the top level, you know, we had a lot of success. We, we, I think that 2005 event that they had in it, SEMA was sort of it, in my opinion, I think that was the highlight or rock crawling. Like that was the event that put us on the map, parking lot of SEMA and made course. And everyone, it seemed like, wow, I can't believe they're driving up. That, I mean, it was, it was quite a display of our, of our skill, you know, to race craft at the time. 

Jason Scherer: I know that there was some cool events out there and everything, and it wasn't necessarily the best obstacles or really anything that was like, it was the biggest showcase. It was the biggest show ever. You know, I think that night, I always remember like Todd Timbrook from Fox now he's, he's got his own tuning company for shocks and everything, but I always remember, he said, I had gone to a bunch of rock crawling events. I had never jumped up and down and screamed at the top of my lungs before until that event, because you know, that final and that event was, it was crazy. Right. And you know, w BZ and Trey, it was Tracy and I, at the end of the shoot, we had something going on with our car, whether it was sabotage that happened in the parking lot or whatever happened, we showed up, you know, went to the first obstacle on the shootout, which had been pushed till like eight or nine o'clock that night. 

Jason Scherer: And the car sat from the last obstacle at two in the afternoon. But when we got into the obstacle, somehow the regulator on the air pressure for the lockers, the screw was all the way screwed out. We tried switching bottles in the beginning, you know, we couldn't get in the entry gate. we weren't sure if the time had started because we hadn't actually broken the plane, but we swapped the bottles. I was carrying a full size power tank on my lap at this point, because we had tried a little bottle and it didn't make it work. So somebody handed me a full sized power tank, you know, I've got a 10 pound bottle on my lap and I'm trying to drive through the obstacles. And once we decided that we couldn't get the lockers to work, I was like, well, the front right tire is spinning. 

Jason Scherer: So if I pull the front right, cutting break, maybe the front left will differentiate, get some power. So we got through the first of the obstacles and we were, we were pegged. We were on full tilt. I mean, tires were spinning. Tires are getting taller cause they were spinning so fast trying to get up stuff. And I was pulling cutting breaks and pulling, you know, moving stuff. And we got all the way through the course. And unfortunately we had taken one or two too many backups to get the win. Cause we went into the obstacle with the lead. We didn't win, but we were the fan favorite by a long shot. We walked out of there and you know, it was cool. We had such a good time. I always remember that like night, you know, just being such an awesome thing. I just, it was like, we were, we felt like it was starting to get to a bigger and bigger career in racing. 

Jason Scherer: You know, things were really looking up. We were kind of, you know, I know Tracy won, but we were kind of the top of the game right then. And there, like we felt like we were getting the sponsors, things were growing. You know, you had so much interest from, from BFGoodrich and Fox. And everybody was like, all right, this is, this is cool. And that next, you know, couple of years, it sort of stagnated. it didn't keep growing. I got a great story for you. You'll love this one. I know we've been talking a long time, so you can keep going. We were competing in pro rock. I think it was like CalRocs. And then we rock right in that same time. And then UROC all of them. And we were using tiny for all the events and Lance and I had an event that came up and I think it was probably six or Oh seven. 

Jason Scherer: It was Oh seven. And I didn't know it, it was in Farmington. It choked cherry, but we didn't know it was going to be the last UROC event of all time. Like it was, but nobody knew it at the event. So I was leading the pro rock championship. I couldn't, I had to go to the UROC championship as well. And they were on the same weekend. You know, there was, there was a rock crawl pretty much every weekend back then. And when it wasn't winter, I was leading the pro rock championship. And I knew if I finished, like in the top three or four, we could lock up the championship. So I was like, well, the UROC events on Friday and Saturday, right They never competed on Sunday, but the pro rocks on Saturday and Sunday. So maybe we could get from, from Farmington to Cougar Buttes from Friday night or sorry, Saturday night after the UROC event drive all night and then compete on Sunday. 

Jason Scherer: Well, one day, so we get to Farmington we're in the motor home or the trailer at a trailer, you know, a forest river trailer at the buggy in the back. It was great setup. And my father in law goes, man, I wish I had gone with you. And I said, we'll just fly into Farmington. We'll come pick you up. So we went and picked him up at the airport and that was his flight got in around midnight. We were supposed to compete the next morning at 8:00 AM. Well, he got there and the next thing you know, he's like, Oh, let's, you know, let's have a drink and 10 turned into 20. And the next thing you know, he's doing his thing with, you know, Steve-O does in there and I've got rap music on, we was listened to Andre nicotine, right So it's four in the morning, in our trucks singing every word at the top of our lungs. 

Jason Scherer: And somebody comes up with their trailer and goes, will you turn that And they said some explicit words and then shut off. And so we finally calmed down a little bit. We turned it off and we got up at 8:00 AM and we went out there and we won the event. So here's the guys we had, nobody had more fun than us for sure. Right We won on the fun side every time. And we didn't turn off the car. After the last obstacle, we drove it right into the back of the trailer and we skipped the awards. Lance's dad, Larry. He went to the award ceremony for us. We weren't even positive. We had won because there are still some other guys on courses. And we peeled out. We drove all night. We had breakfast at Denny's and in Barstow cut over to 47 and hit Cougar Buttes. 

Jason Scherer: We ended up having such a good day on Sunday that we won the event because Cody Waggoner had such a crappy day on Saturday. We'd still outpointed them by the end and in the shootout and everything. So we won the event and we skipped the first day. What happened was we won the UROC event. We won the pro rock event and the pro rock championship all in one weekend. And it was like, we came home with three trophies and man on Sunday. We were so tired, but I had to be at work on Monday. So Steve was there with us, my father in law. He says, well, I'll drive the truck and trailer. You guys sleep. So, you know, Lance goes and he gets in the trailer and he's sleeping in the trailer. I were pulling it down. I five and Steve-oa falls asleep at the wheel. 

Jason Scherer: But he tells us to this day that he saw a cow and he was dodging a cow into the center of I five. We spun the fifth wheel out across the center. I five in the median and Lance was on the bed on the like, you know, front of it. And he ended up on the ground with all the plates and dishes and pots and pans and everything up on top of him. And he said, for sure, he thought he was going to die like right there, because that's how I was going to die in the middle of the fifth wheel. Right. I'm like, sorry, bro. And Steve swears to this day, there is a cow, there was a cow, but we made it home and I got to work on Monday. But man, we, we did that a lot. You know, all these events that were Saturday, Sunday, we drove home. 

Jason Scherer: Most of the time for me, they felt like it took 10 minutes to get home because I would pick apart everything we did wrong. And it wore on me. Right. It was, I constantly wanted to get better. And so everything that happened that was wrong, I sat there and tried to figure out a way to fix it. You know, what could I have done better What did I do wrong What do I need to improve on the car How do I fix our communications between the spotter and I, and that is one thing that I don't think has changed the day, right Like if we go to the hammers and tests and I drive home, it's somehow it's crazy. Cause the next thing I know, it's like, Whoa, it just past Bakersfield, I better get fuel. Cause I don't even remember the drive through Mojave. 

Jason Scherer: Cause I'm sitting there thinking about everything we need to work on. And it's just, you know, one of those, one of those character traits that, you know, I've kept since those days, but a lot of sleepless nights over it, you know, I get really into it and I know it's probably hard for people to believe now, but I took it really seriously. You know, it meant a lot to try to win those. And they were so hard to win. The competition was fierce. The drivers were incredible. And you know, in the Rock crawling days there was a new driver, probably at every event we went to and you know, after two or three or four minutes, they were a contender a lot of times because they could build a new car and come out there. And you know, they had a little advantage with some newer technology and everything and it was, it was good times. So let's talk about transitioning in from the rock crawling and going into KOH before 

Big Rich Klein: K O H K. We did a couple of trips together, down to Baja. Yup. With the Jeep speed and then with a pistol and Lance where you were one of the three guys in, in the, in the truck. 

Jason Scherer: Well, 2007 was that year. I mean, I remember riding around with you and your truck down in like between Cabo and La Paz a couple of times trying to get, you know, what we did so everyone can understand it. As I rode and Pete's trophy truck is a passenger, he had to co- dog seats and he sat in the middle. So it was a Geyser truck with three seats. And I was the gauge guy gauge boy, he called it and then Lance was the navigator and he called this book padding. We were padding, if anything went wrong. our deal that year, we had been to Baja a few times, racing in shaffers, Jeep speed. And I wasn't as big a part of that. You know, I'd go down there, but I wasn't in the car. You know, it was, it was Jody Everding and cammo Melo, Lance, Lance and Mike. who else 

Jason Scherer: Roggy I don't know how I forgot Roggy yep. Yeah. So anyway, that was kind of our group. I wanted to do Jeep speed. Lance bought Stobaughs Jeep speed. We were competing like I was just at Parker this week and it's funny cause you know, I just memories of, of Parker in the Terminator, which was named from that race, right When we, we hit Jason LaFortunes class three Jeep speed deals that we hit in a silt bed, they were stuck in the silt bed or it stopped in the middle of it. And we were, we were still going 60. We never saw it. And it was a full throttle from 60 miles an hour to zero. And all I saw was fuel safe. Cause that was the last thing in the back of the car when we hit it and just, you know, knocked this out. 

Jason Scherer: I think we got hit seven times from the rear in that, in the, in the car while we were still in there. And one time I always remember Todd LeDuc just were bouncing all over, but Parker in the Jeep speed, the tool bag, it was actually it's back to the floorboard. And the radiator had gotten stuck in the fan. The fan had gotten smashed into the radiator. And so we couldn't start the Jeep. So he went up there to try to get the fan out there so we can send it over or loose up belt enough that it would just slip and we can drive. And so he needed the tool bag. So I turned around with the tool bag and I look up and here comes Todd LeDuc and I could see the white of his eyes when I'm holding this tool bag up and he saw the stop, the car. 

Jason Scherer: And so the next thing I know, I ping pong through the roll cage a little bit. And then I'm looking around for this a tool bag. And I can't find, I mean, I'm like turn it around and going back and forth, looking for this tool bag everywhere. And it turned out, hit us hard enough that the tool bag stayed in the air. The Jeep went forward 10 feet and it fell out into the sand behind the Jeep. So I can get out of the Jeep and I go out there and I grabbed the bag and Lance and I get the belt loose. We get right ready to get back in. And here comes Todd running from over there and he goes, Oh my God, man. I thought I killed you. I could see you in there. And I just hit you. And I'm like, nah, I smashed him. 

Jason Scherer: It's the few tubes, but it didn't hurt. You know what I mean I'm not mad. I'm okay. He's like, Oh, I thought for sure, I killed you, I'm like, Nope, I'm good, man. Go ahead. Get out there. And he's like, okay. And we still talk about it to this day. Whenever I see him. Cause he was, he was shaking enough to get out of the car and come running back across there to see if I was okay. It was, it was wild. Anyway, Lance was getting good at being a co-driver. He had learned the Jeep stuff. He then learned the Jeep speed stuff. And he was, he was Pete's pick for being a co-driver. And then after that, I think he was Roger Norman's pick. So he had gotten some good seats as a navigator. What happened was we were still doing the Jeep speed. 

Jason Scherer: So Schaefer said, why don't you guys drive from La Paz to, or wherever we came across there that year, I know seven. Why don't you guys drive the Jeep speed from there down to Cabo We'll get it to you, but you'll be done with the trophy truck and I've already been able to get back up. So we were like, okay, that works. So, you know, except that what they forgot was it was like 16 hours in the trophy truck. We got to that hotel man. We were smoked and we came in fourth. So we came in fourth in in trophy truck. I mean, that was a pretty, I think that was Pete's best effort in the thousand. I mean, I know it was yeah, 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah. It was, that was a hell of a race. Everything that happened. Not only on the course for you guys, but for the, for the pit crew, just getting there to each stop. Yeah. It was nuts. Yeah. 

Jason Scherer: And so for those of, you know, no, Pete's got like two trucks. One of them has the trailer hooked up and the other one's doing the fueling and has the spares and the tires and they have to leapfrog each other down the coast. And that there's no way to get ahead because the trophy truck, unless it breaks is going at such a clip that you're hauling the mail on the road, be there. I think we had to wait for fuel for a second at one of the pits. Cause the guys weren't even there yet. And we're, you know, we're driving through the dirt and they're driving through the pavement. So, you know, it was, it was a low buck effort. That was really cool. Something happened in that race. You know, Pete doesn't Pete was gave everyone a hard time, but he loved everybody, but he gave everybody a hard time. And some people who liked more than others, right. 

Big Rich Klein: Doesn't know me very well. I bought this seat, 

Jason Scherer: It was $5,000 to buy the seat and I get in his truck. I had written, I had pre-run with him and Harbor freight. And when I got in the actual trophy truck, you know, we rode around in Ensenada and make sure was good. But we basically had never been in the vehicle before the race, except for up and down the street and in Ensenada So we're starting to hit out of town. We go through the wash and I looked down, no, you got to remember this. This is important. Part of the story back then they didn't have qualifying. You picked a number out of a hat kind of deal. Right. Drew first. So the 40th Baja, 1000, we left the line first. So my first trophy truck event, we go off the line first. I'm like, wow, this is Epic. You know And it was, I mean, it was quite an honor, but you also get, you know, all the booby traps and all this stuff and everything going well. 

Jason Scherer: I'm like watching the gauges, it's all I've got, I've got gauges. It's not like I'm navigating and doing a bunch of other stuff. And I'm watching the temperature gauge and it's bouncing up and down and I'm like, Ooh, that's not good. You know so I told them when it got to like two 20, I said, Hey, Pete, you got to 20 on the water temp. Unfortunately the problem is that bounces back down to like one 60. And I have a bad feeling that we've got an air bubble in the cooling system. I've been pretty familiar with that stuff, dealing with rock crawlers and you know, all the different engine combinations and moving radiators around and not getting them bled out. We did a lot of that crap in the rock crawling days. So Pete goes, okay, keep an eye on it. If it gets to two 30, let me know. 

Jason Scherer: And what I didn't realize is that he was so cool, calm and collected about that, that he was looking, he knew it was bad. He knew he had a problem, but he kind of acted like, let me know if it gets to two 30. In the meantime, he's driving around looking for groups of people on the race course, it hadn't water. And he sees somebody with a five gallon jug of water and he pulls over to that spot. We hop out of the car, we pull the belt off. Sure enough. He had an a in fitting, on a radiator hose that had come loose. So we tightened it up. We filled up the water, he ran over there while we were tight in the hose, got the guy's water. We filled up the radiator. We got passed by like 25 trucks. I mean, we gave up all the starting position and adjusted time, but we got back in there and I'm thinking this guy is going to be pissed I was completely the contrary. He said, dude, you saved her race and you saved the motor. Thank you. You can ride with me anytime you want. And I was like, wow. Right on man. You know So he just had a good attitude when the pressure was on, we ripped down the coast, you know, we had Chad and Ron Stobaugh and 

Big Rich Klein: You and Lance stayed like in the car the whole time or pretty much the whole time drivers. And that night before this all happened, when Pete got out and then Chad got in, there's some crazy stories in that one that night too, because Robbie's on your tail with just a dangling light. And he's trying to follow you guys 

Jason Scherer: Misjudge what time they'd need their lights needed, smashed the rest of his lights off. So coming down from Mike's, which is a gnarly road coming down. Mike's sky ranch there he's on our donkey. And then we, I kinda talked Chad down. I'm like, dude, he can't pass you even though he's right on us. Just drive your race, bro. There's nothing he can do. If he passes you, he's in the dark. So he's following you and he wants you to go fast, but don't let it affect your line. He can only stay behind you in the dark. So he did, he held it together. He drove really, really well. Stobaugh didn't drive so well, I love him like a brother, but Oh my God, he got in the center seat and he had never driven the truck. And if you're in the middle, your sense of left and right, you think would be like, well, it's really easy. 

Jason Scherer: They're equal. No, he decided to shift off to one side. So we were like two feet off the line everywhere for the first like 30 or 40 miles. Unfortunately that section had cactus all the way up and down it. So I had cactus all throughout my fire suit. I couldn't move. I could barely pick them out. It hurt to move. It hurt to hit bumps. I was pulling cactus out of my fire suit for like the next 300 miles. and I don't think I ever got them all out. And I also had something else that was funny at that race. He, Pete made us wear a head neck restraint and nobody was doing this. This was unheard of. But Pete said, you gotta wear a head and neck restraint. So we got R3'sback in the day. I still use today. Right. I still run that same or three. 

Jason Scherer: And I had to buy a home with the tethers back then the helmets didn't even have the attachment points. So I got a helmet, but it was one size too big. And I'm thinking whatever, it's no big deal. Right Well the R three would stop in my head would slide in the helmet and I knew it was getting bad when I had fluid running down into my eyes. But I had blistered my forehead from the front so that, you know, all the way across and that my head would slide in there until that whole, all the skin peeled off my forehead. It was like so gnarly. But you know, in the heat of the moment, it didn't really matter. It just sucked at the pool the next day. so you know, we, we did really well. You and I jumped back up. I don't remember what happened to the Jeep Shaffer decided to drive it right. 

Jason Scherer: Something happened or did we, I don't remember what happened to the Jeep, but we didn't have to go back or can we be still one You know, there's still somebody else must've taken over. Then I think we got to a certain spot on the road and I feel like they had already passed us or something. I don't know, but we didn't get back to them in time, which showed they had a pretty good pace or we had stayed at the hotel too long. I don't remember which, but one way or another, we, it all worked out. And so let's talk about how that influenced King of the hammers. So I just ride in a trophy truck in November, you got December, January, and then February is King of the hammers. And Jeff mellow said, come ride with me at King of the hammers. I was like, okay, cool. 

Jason Scherer: Didn't know too much about it. Kind of missed the post on pirate that talked about it, you know, and wasn't super into it at the time I wasn't super into pirate. Right then I was busy working and everything was going on at once. I was into pirate every day for years and years and years, I just happened to miss a little bit for like a six month segment with work. And I get invited to go down there with Jeff. And I was like, this is it. This is what I want to do. You know, it was rock crawling in desert racing, and yet it hadn't gotten blown out to trophy truck dollars. And I was like, we could do this. I could build a car for this. So I fell in love with it. I mean, you know, even with the error shocks and Jeff's car and watching how well he drove it and how it made a difference to be a good driver through the desert. 

Jason Scherer: And then when you got to the rocks being smart and picking good lines and, you know, tire management and all the things that I'm like, okay, this is cool. I know I'm in. And so something happened in rock crawling. We had a pro mod class that had picked up a lot of steam. A lot of people were building pro mod cars. Top guys said, you know, the moon buggies have kind of ruined the sport a little bit. And so a bunch of people were building pro mod cars. And I was like, all right, let's build a pro mod car that we can use for King of the hammers. And we'll build it with an LS seven, we'll build it with spider tracks, lightweight nine inch axle housings, as opposed to like, you know, Dana sixties and, you know, everyone was running well. I mean, God, I went from a Volkswagen to an LS seven, so it was a big change that way. 

Jason Scherer: Right. And, you know, we, we got to the Shannon Campbell built it. We built it in a week down at his shop. You know, it was a big thread on pirate. Cause we built the car sorta with Lance there, filming it and people got to see how good Shannon was in fabrication and Don, right and Nick, you know, the whole, the whole Campbell enterprises crew, how they built the cars, their own little thing to do. And they, they built that car in a week and everybody was blown away. Right. It was an incredible feat. Might have taken a little bit longer to actually get the car. I had never driven it, but we were, we were at the, WE ROCK, Paris and Paris, California. Right. So we, we go the parking lot. I think tech was at the, home Depot with the Hooters there, we take it out of the trailer. 

Jason Scherer: I've never driven the car. And some guys come by drag racers come by, you know, and this is like street Outlaws, you know, 2008. and they show up in the parking lot with their, you know, blower, motor Mustangs with nitrous and you know, big slicks tub, her Wells, we wills and everything. And they go, where's the, where's the, you know, I think they said, where's the sprint car race or something. And we're like, no, these are rock crawlers. And they're like, really like, okay. And Shannon goes, Hey man, you want to race And I'm like, what are you doing Shannon I want to race right now. And the guy's like, yeah, we'll race you anywhere. And so we re we set up a drag race in the parking lot. So here's a car I've never driven before 

Speaker 1: I remember in the passenger seat and we beltup and I'm like, Hey, I don't know if we should be in four wheel drive or two wheel drive, but whatever, just be careful because 

Jason Scherer: It might like, you know, go off the course and who knows what the steering's going to feel like, like, just be careful, right. 

Speaker 1: And she's like, be careful, I'm in the passenger seat. I can't be with anything. I'm like, alright, let's go for it. 

Jason Scherer: I know, side by side it. 

Speaker 1: And that thing was so fricking fast. It was 2,950 pounds and had an LS seven in it. And it smoked this Mustang and the guy was pissed. Like he couldn't believe that he just got beat. And so then there is this, like, you know, whole thing and 

Jason Scherer: Guarded with you just got beat by a rock crawler. And then it went into, Dave's the thing in Baja, you just got passed by a rock crawler. Right. But Dan said some funny stuff that night and it'll stand in history forever is one of the funniest moments. I think of that whole, that whole thing. Unfortunately, the car wasn't much of a rock crawler. I think we had compromised too much to make it a, a good, you know, pro mod bar. And so I went right away to a, I think I went back to Shaffer's shop and bill Koons was racing a seven truck and we looked at it and we said, you know what This is the perfect rear suspension. This is what this far needs in order to be able to go fast, the King of the hammers, because the rock crawling setup had. 

Jason Scherer: And I know you probably don't think about this stuff, but you Mount your links above the axle housing for rock crawling so that you could get that ground clearance. And it would fight the suspension. Geometry would fight itself. And you know, it was just a terrible setup to try to go fast. And, and we were learning, we didn't know about going fast, but I just, I could feel it binding up. I mean, it was eating the high ends out of the thing. And it was like, alright, Shaffer, cut the car off at the back section there. I mean, the tubes weren't even arrested yet. And we were cutting them off and redoing it. We copied Bill's truck, which was a wishbone suspension and three link kind of set up and it worked great. I called Fox and said, Hey, ma'am I need bypasses and coil overs to copy this thing. 

Jason Scherer: And they're like, you'll never make a rock crawler go fast in the desert. It's a waste of time. I actually had to buy the shocks. So, you know, I bought the shocks and I think in the meantime, they had wanted to try some bypass air shocks and we tried them and that's where I lost Lance. the bypass or shocks didn't work really well. I was trying to make it go fast and he was scared to death in the passenger seat. He finally said, let me out of this thing, man, you're going to kill us. And so that's when he kinda said, I don't wanna, I don't want to do that. Now, coupled with the fact that Dave said they needed live coverage and he really had a huge opportunity to do live coverage. so he, he basically got the pirate van. Do you remember that thing 

Jason Scherer: Crazy looking van. And he put up a live internet connection. I don't, I think he ran a wire, like all the way to backdoor or something crazy. Like it was, it was crazy, but he put all of his effort into it. It was super important. Pirate TV was doing well, pirate was booming. And it was a good time for him to step over to that side and Ms. King of the hammers as a passenger. And it was also a good time for me to bring over a friend of mine, Jason Berger, who had been snowmobiling with me and taught me how to snowmobile basically. And we'd get lost out there. And he always knew his way. I'm like you, you're a great navigator. And you know, he's calm under pressure. We had a couple of crazy incidents happen and he always said, you know, knew how to handle the situation. 

Jason Scherer: And I was like, all right, you're born for this. This is your jam. You know So, I was able to get him to go into the passenger seat, which wasn't easy. I got him in the car and he physically didn't fit. He was too small. So I think his initial reaction was that I was going to say, you can't view that. You know what I mean I said, let's just cut the roof off and make a call. He was like, seriously. I'm like, yeah, let's get you in the car. So Jesse Haines cut the roof off the car and re-skinned it. So, you know, it was pretty cool that that all worked out, got the roof and tin work, all done and away. We went so practiced a lot down at the hammers. And, you know, we spent, we probably made 12 trips between the end of Oh eight and the race in Oh nine, down there. 

Jason Scherer: One of them, we ripped the front axle housing off two weeks before the race spun it all the way around and destroyed all the shocks, upper link mounts, drive lines, everything. And I said, Oh my God, I don't know if we'll get this thing back together for the race. Everybody came through Shaffer and just all my friends, everybody busted and we got it all back together and we made it down there. And luckily we did because obviously in Oh nine, we won the race. But what the cool part of that story is, you know, awesome race, really tight with, with easy rig. We really had a battle that was bad ass. Cause I hadn't really raised anybody yet. Still. I actually raced through the desert against somebody that was the first time that that ever happened. I didn't see a passenger all the time until I had my own car. 

Jason Scherer: And so I raced there with easy Rick. He was significantly better than us at the time, but you know, we were still learning and getting better and we were faster in the desert. You just handed us our lunch in the rocks. And I had never seen anybody drive through rocks like that. I mean, we'd been rock crawling our whole life and this was a new whole new thing. And when we got to sledgehammer, Rick had already broken, we got the sledgehammer and I rolled it onto its side. I guess who's there pistol Pete. He comes over to the past to the window, the driver's side window. And he goes, we're going to roll you over. The guys are going to push you. And I said, no, I think there's no outside assistance. He goes, we're not fixing your car. We're just pushing it back on its wheels. 

Jason Scherer: And I said, I don't know if you can do that. And he said, get on race ops and find out. So I clicked down to re you know, weatherman or whatever we were on back. And then I think, I don't know if Katie was out the channel now, but I get on there. And I remember them saying, yeah, the passengers can, you know, spectators can roll you over. And man, that thing was on its wheels before the sentence was finished and you can set up the rest of a sledge and we went on to win the race. And that was Pete pan me back for saving the motor in Baja. Like that whole thing came full circle and we got that win. So that was pretty cool. And then I think the rest is history. We haven't, we haven't stopped breathing that, you know, dust for 12 years now or 13 years now. And you know, it's been, it's been a great ride. I missed the rock crawling, but I can only, only have so much bandwidth, you know 

Big Rich Klein: Right. Yep. That's all, it's all fun stuff though. Well, we just had our, we just had our, we rock finals. We had to move it from Farmington to Cedar city and we had 59 cars, which is biggest that we've had since housing downturn in Oh eight Oh nine. And then, we had 16 unlimited cars, all rear steer, and it was a phenomenal event, phenomenal event. 

Jason Scherer: It makes me so glad to know that it's still happening and doing well and thriving because it is such a great sport. And it's such a great time to, you know, like see it off, you get popular again. I think, you know, the last three or four years to see the rise of it again is awesome. I knew I got a chance to go back and do it again. I think three years ago, think we pulled PIL, Coons, his old car out of a field and got it running again. We went out there and it wasn't quite ready for competition, but we still had a lot of fun that weekend. And I think what, you know, if the guys that are competing today, watch this they're so much better today than they were back then. You know And I think that it's incredible to see because, you know, we were probably as good as we were back then and we got it, we got it handed to us and they were significantly better today. 

Jason Scherer: You know, I'm thinking if I had tiny, I'd be a little more comfortable, you know, you hop in somebody's car that you don't know every intricacy of, but I drove scrap or, or the copy of it, of Cody Wagner's and it still wasn't quite, you know, up to speed with what it takes to still win those events. It'd be fun to try again, you know, and I think seeing some of Jessie Haynes, his cars and everything, I'm like, man, that'd be fun to have one of those, you know, and go out and do it again. 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah. The, the level of technology in the rock crawlers has just in the last three years has just gotten blown out of the water. Just amazing, like what Jesse is doing. And, and a couple of the other guys that are doing that are building cars that are very similar. You know, the, the super lightweight everything's going smaller, smaller, smaller, there's a guy building everything on with because of the portals being able to build with samurai axles and a little, you know, 1.1 CC motor or something, you know, just stupid, lightweight, and small, but it's crazy. 

Speaker 1: And they'll probably be electric and lithium powered and no time. And Tony K will have been right. 

Big Rich Klein: Just a what 12, 14, 14, 15 years ahead of his time 

Speaker 1: On T V today, he was, on a, on a trip Palmer, his videos doing his shocks for the stole planes. And I happened to run into him at one of the, one of the rallies they have for, I think it was in Livermore. They had a fly in and he was there and he walked me around and introduced me a bunch of people. And it was cool to see him. So it's cool that he made a name and airplane suspension after, you know, the rock crawling stuff. 

Big Rich Klein: I saw him in, in March, in Texas, in Gainesville at a stole event, he was there, it was Doug Jackson, one of his events. And it was, it was awesome to see here's all these rock crawlers and rock racers and everybody, you know, at a fly, in an event. So it was 

Speaker 1: Doug Jackson who never knew Tony K during the rock crawling days. And they ended up with their worlds colliding. Right 

Big Rich Klein: Yep. And then right in the middle, that was kind of crazy. 

Speaker 1: Again, I got to know each other well down in Baja four years ago, when we ran the class 11 bug, I guess it was it's coming up on five years right now, but it was the JTS, you know, that it was the project elf that moved along and he purchased that and we raced down there and we hung out, you know what a good dude. So now is the year that I met Adam, which was my crew chief last few years. So, you know, we've just the people you meet and all this stuff that happens and how all that stuff goes around in a circle. It's just crazy. You know what I mean 

Big Rich Klein: Oh, absolutely. I really appreciate all the opportunities that I've been given through the rock crawling and then Vora owning Vora. And that's how I got to go to Baja. The first time was with Jack Sai Polton BFG. And that happened to be when they were shooting dust to glory. So 2003, and then going down, you know, with you guys and pirate, and then with pistol Pete, I helped Pete for a number of years. I remember one time we had a beach house, you guys had a beach house outside of Ensenada and everybody was getting hungry. And you said, Hey rich, why don't you go get us some, El Pastore tacos from our favorite taco cart. I go down there and, and I said, how many to get And he goes, well, whatever, you can get with this and you handed me a handful of cash, you know, it's like a 30 minute drive down there. 

Big Rich Klein: I stand in line and I figured out how much I needed. And the guy goes, how many tacos And I said, 200. And he goes 200. You know what I mean It was like, he was amazed. And I said, yes, 200. So he'd make him like 10 at a time and then take care of a couple of customers 10 at a time. And I can remember, I came back with that bags full of El Pastore tacos. And for like, I don't know, there was probably a, there might've been 15 guys at the house or whatever, but man, we ate a lot of El Pastore tacos. 

Speaker 1: You remember that I've done that a couple of times now, you know, random pits in the middle of Mexico. And I'm like here, how much for a hundred bucks And they're like a hundred dollars. I'm like, yup. They're like, go feed all you guys. It's like, it's the best I love. That's the part of all that you just gotta love, you know, the, the way that it's all gone, it's just crazy too. I mean, you know, starting off rock crawling and then, you know, moving along, you know, there's a lot of cool stuff. Like, you know, I became friends with Cameron Steele in such a, an amazing, like weird way. He was the announcer for the hammers. And two years in a row that we won, he was the announcer. He's the first person you see on stage and you start talking to him and somehow we just kind of made a connection. 

Speaker 1: And then he invited me to go on trail emissions and I got to take the family down and explore Baja with them. And that was a cool experience. You know, that, that whole thing was just something else. Because taking like there was 76 people the year that we went, which was two years ago, we would've gone this year too, but you know, the COVID stuff, it was closed down, did some different stuff instead, you know, to take all those families down there. I think there was over 20 kids under 18 on that trip. And you know, you get to meet all these great people, right Like old Huggies. And, you get to meet the curries outside of the normal realm, you know, hang out with guys like Ricky Bray back and stuff. That just one Takhar and just, it was just a great group. 

Speaker 1: And everybody had such a good time down there, but that, that went to the next level where it was like, okay, I'm down there for that. And he goes, Hey, what do you think about race in the Ford Bronco in Baja You know, you want to be part of that effort. I was like, heck yeah. So one opportunity that can open a door for another, you just can't believe. And you know, here, I just got back from Parker doing a 1500 mile durability test. And the Bronco are, you know, besides it being 116 or something, it was a great time. And you know, you're starting to learn the next level, right There's 10 Ford engineers there and they're getting data points off of cars. I mean, they literally have load sensors on parts and they're seeing what the loads are between things and you're going, wow. 

Speaker 1: So like, you know, I don't know where it's going to go, but the technology is there right now for them to get data and be able to tell us what we need to do to build faster cars. And, you know, it's gonna take a while to get them to learn the data and then be able to know how that transmits into what the next logical step is. But it's cool that it's happening because you know, there's just, it's not that it's not being developed, but it's being developed by people who don't have all the other resources, right. It's it's owner builders or builders that are engineers, but they need to build the cars to make a living. They don't have unlimited resources to come in and engineer and engineer stuff until they're like, okay, cool. This is what you need to do. You know, we're seeing that develop right now. And it's pretty, pretty interesting to see it all go down. 

Big Rich Klein: Now you're a, you're a Raptor owner too. Aren't ya I love my Raptor. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm now a Raptor owner, 

Speaker 1: So, Oh, congratulations. Welcome to the club. 

Big Rich Klein: Yes. I've got an old school. It's a six to 12, but I wouldn't trade it in for anything else. It's always the vehicle I wanted and picked it up last September a year ago. I've already put like 43,000 miles on it. 

Speaker 1: Other than law has got the same one. And it is awesome. I mean, he's already got 175,000 miles on it and it is just awesome. Like we still love that one. It sounds so good. You know, and, and it's, it's a great setup when my brother got hurt at the, ultra four race up in Reno, you know, one of the things I talked him into was, you know, I knew he couldn't race anymore. And I'm like, dude, so you don't need a pickup truck to tow your trailer anymore, get a Raptor. You're going to have so much fun. So he's hooked on the rafters. Luckily Lance was right there, you know, the same time. I'm like, dude, get her after you're going to love it. And so he sold his van or whatever and got her after it. Wasn't a hard choice in my opinion. 

Speaker 1: And I think he's just gone. So we've all had fun, you know, ways has got one and you know, we're planning adventure trips all the time to go do fun stuff. And I kind of look at it as like, you know, once you get to that stage where you can't Modo hard, or you want to take your family and go do stuff, it's, it's a pretty, you can still get pretty aggressive with them and, you know, rip along pretty hard and still take all your stuff with you and the family and have a good time. And in a lot of ways, you know, they're, they're the most practical tool cause you don't have to unload whatever it is from the trailer. And then find your way back to the trailer. At the end of the day, you can just keep going. And we've had a lot of fun and hopefully I get a gig going on a Bronco here and it'll be the same fun and no time, you know 

Big Rich Klein: Well, they're supposed to come out with that, the Raptor Bronco or the whatever they're going to call it. The, yeah, we'll see what that has ends up being. Okay. 

Speaker 1: I can't say anything, but yeah, 

Big Rich Klein: I've just been hearing rumors everywhere. You know, not nobody from Ford, it's all the Raptor owner groups and everything else. Everybody, everybody thinks they know somebody. I tried to get a Von getting to give me a little information this weekend while we were at the ultra four race at area BFE and he was like, well, I can't really talk about it right now, but I can get you in touch with the right people. And I said, okay, perfect. 

Speaker 1: We have to steal that from him. 

Big Rich Klein: Well, you know, we want to do some magazine stuff, but I don't want to do the magazine stuff where there's 20 other magazines or media outlets all doing the same thing. It's, it's not as personal. It's not, what are our readers want to read 

Speaker 1: That's pretty cool to see, you know, Brad and Brad level be able to get into that program as well. You know, and he's worked hard for it. And he's been on the Ford program for years. I mean, he's raised a ranger and competed in that same ranger back in the rock crawling days, I feel like that's gotta be one of the oldest cars still competing in, in a good way. Like he's managed to keep that thing going from, I can't remember what year rich, but that thing's been around for a minute. You know, he's sure done a lot of neat stuff over his career from rock crawling. You know, I think there's quite a few people that can say that and he's one of them for sure, but it's cool to see him be part of the program. There's a couple other people that are going to be involved in it too, that are, that are, you know, in that same realm of got their start in rock crawling and are moving along with the sport as it's progressing. So 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah, I interviewed, Shelby hall and she was part of the race program. She's not sure where that's where, you know, she's the same way lips are sealed. You know, I know that she's doing, I don't know what you'd call it, product testing, but you know, she goes out and does some things with them and stuff. And you know, she, she learned off road racing from one of the best, you know 

Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah. I think their films coming out really soon to a documentary about her dad. And I want to see that the moment it comes out. So, you know, this one, 

Big Rich Klein: I think posted something up about it being available on paper view. Now 

Speaker 1: I think it's it's if it's not today, it's, you know, it's this week. So yeah. You know, I'm looking through my phone to see if I can find out when, because I know she said something, but I don't see it, but it's definitely, Oh, here it is. It premiered yesterday. If you're interested in watching it, it's the part of the Breck film festival. So if, you know, people want to check it out, check out the Breck film festival and it's on their site, but yeah, it's, it's cool that they did that and she's a heck of a driver too. So it'll be, it's a good team. You know, we're going to go down there. I think Cameron steel myself, Kurt LeDoux, who you gotta get on this show. I know he only did a couple of rock crawls, but he's right. Yeah. 

Big Rich Klein: I'm not going to go to another one cause I won. That's all I need to do. He is 

Speaker 1: Undefeated. Yep. He he's a character and he's a great guy. I've had so much fun with them. He's such a great trainer to all the team, you know, because he's been around it, he's done it all. Obviously. I mean, look at his kids and their successes too. And you know, just the way though that he teaches you stuff or, you know, it's not like any of us need to pick up speed. We all need to learn how to respect sort of a stock class vehicle in the desert. Right We get sucked into this, you know, 800 horsepower through the desert thing. And the next thing you know, you get into a vehicle that's got sort of its own happy place on speed and you have to learn how to drive it. As he says, he's got a great saying on everything he says, you know, it's not like you drive it to your limit, but you drive it to, Oh, let me think of how he says it. 

Speaker 1: Cause it's so good. But it's a Kurt LOGiQ saying, I'll have to think of it here. If it comes to me, I'll bring it back up. But he, he, he has got a great tactic about the way he handles things and the way he drives, we drive very similarly, which makes me really comfortable when I'm in the car with them because you know, the way he is hard on the brakes gets slowed down and then it goes through stuff as opposed to like break and wait for early for it and rolling up to it. You know, he's got that same style and the way he approaches a corner and everything. So you, you know, you can see what he's going into and you feel like, okay, this guy's, you know, he's ahead of it. Instead of it stuff kind of coming at him, he's doing some instructional driving for people that at the same time through driven, I know he's working with those guys to take Ford engineers and different people out and teach them how to drive the rafters and things like that. And they're using Johnson Valley and places like that. So he's doing training and it's a perfect fit for him because he's such a good trainer. and then Johnny Campbell is leading that effort for us with running the team. And, you know, he's the logistical expert of all logistical experts. I mean, he has it dialed in and you know, it's pretty impressive to see how he orchestrates it. 

Big Rich Klein: How many championships he won 

Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we all call them 11 times, so I know he's one 11, one thousands overalls or something like that, which is pretty unbelievable. He's just the greatest guy to hang out with too. Like it's like an honor to be able to hang out with them, you know, and to have him and just to be part of that team is like a dream come true. So I'm very, very, very fortunate to have had all those doors opened up just in a, you know, from kind of from doing well and, and meeting the right people at the right time and seeing this stuff unfold. It's really cool. So, 

Big Rich Klein: Well, I'll say you have the right personality too, because you're, you're easy to get along with. You've always been a gentlemen, even when things, I mean, I can remember sometimes I'm not going to bring them up. There were things kind of went sideways at events, but you were always, you've always been a gentleman and you've always been a great ambassador for the sports for rock sports in general. So, you know, that's, that's, that's why you get these kinds of opportunities. 

Speaker 1: Oh, it's nice to be, to say, you know, I think that's a good, good parenting as a kid or something. They taught me to always be respectful. And you know, I try to instill that in my kids too, you know, it's crazy though. My is competing in the horse stuff and she's got that like passion for it and she gets all into it and I'm like, Oh boy, here we go. So we're doing that stuff on the weekends and you know, she's, she's super into it. Like as much as I was ever into the racing she's into the worst stuff and a lot better than boys. So I'm happy. 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah. True enough. So is there anything else that you want to touch on What do you, what do you see for Jason share in the future Just a, is there any thing particular you haven't done yet that you want to do 

Speaker 1: There's a few things. you know, I started my own line of products for the, for the Jeep crowd at first, you know, kind of a race quality Jeep thing. And it was really kind of in a response to the fact that there wasn't a poison spider left in the market anymore. We're making out of the higher quality stuff and it's, it's really taken off. I mean, it's, it's crazy to see, but people who want to build a nice quality part, are still out there. You know, there's still a lot of people who are totally happy with just having it look like it's ready to go, but there's still a group of people who are like, you know what, I want that next level of performance and stuff. And it's a cool relationship. You know, I, I've got a couple of people in the industry that had built the race cars with that are doing, you know, the solid works design on everything. 

Speaker 1: And we're putting out all of our thoughts on paper and getting them out there where we're like, okay, here's look at how cool we can do this and this and this. And we're not sitting there saying that, you know, cost is our basis. It's more, what other kinds of attributes can we build into these to make them nice And it's a great relationship with laser, not cause they do all the laser cutting and welding and you know, the quality of it, it stays really high with, with Cody's relationship there, you know, that's been going well, obviously we're going to branch into this Bronco stuff with other relationship that we've built there. And so we've got parts coming out for those. And it's neat that that's something that we're able to, you know, get the drawings early and work on the parts early because we're going to go out and do the testing and we'll know what's what needs to be there. 

Speaker 1: And we're branching into system suspension, parts on, you know, things that we'll find out and through our durability testing on that stuff, but like, ha ha look at this. You know, so it's neat that we're, we're at that stage, I think from a product development side, I still enjoy that, you know, luckily the Campbell's showed me how to build the cars years ago because it became as much of a passion to build them as it did to race them. And you know, I'm not the best fabricator, but I really have a passion for, you know, trying to design the part to make it faster. there's people who are awesome. I mean like the Dan trouts and, you know, keep, you know, keep it, get bent is doing all the fag for me today, on stuff as we switched my car over to a Ford engine and things like that. 

Speaker 1: So, you know, I've got good people that are, are surrounding us to build good cars, even if I'm not the world's best. I can, I can fabricate stuff and weld stuff up, but it looks like it got done at my house, but it's still, you know, still works. It's functional. It's just not the artwork that those guys create. And, you know, I've had fun with that. I do have a Hanker to either build or find a way to get into a trophy truck with the technology we've learned in ultra four. And you know, there's some guys that are really switched on an ultra for right now. You know, I think this weekend we watched the race where you saw the Gomez's and Horschel battling it out. And I think Joe Thompson is, you know, on the top of the game and Horschel is right next to him as far as, you know, builders that are getting the cars to that next level. 

Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting because, you know, in trophy trucks, there's like one game in town on the all wheel drive stuff right now. I'm not sure they've got it figured out as well as some of these other guys, they're building incredibly beautiful cars and they're engineered to the T and their fabrication skills are top notch and the quality of their products is unparalleled. But I think there's some ideas that the ultra four guys had that are keeping the cars alive through the harsh terrain. And that would actually benefit them quite a bit. And it's in some stuff that they probably think of is kind of low budget. And I don't think they've looked at it, but I think that we can, we could build a competitive car, you know, and still make it finish the races. And so, you know, I think it'd be fun to go give it a shot and at least get it, you know, in the next 10 year window. 

Speaker 1: And we're still, you know, able to go out and compete for that. You know, I've been working out hard to try to stay in shape to be able to do that. You know, I think there's a limited window of opportunities because if it takes us a couple of years to build and develop a car and you know, you get so many shots at the thousand, right. It's a once a year deal and go down there and give them hell and try to see if we can actually hang with them. So, you know, that's on the list for sure. And I want to win another hammers. So I'm at least, you know, a couple more, if I, if I had my druthers, I think that race to me is the hardest race it's brutal. And I don't know, you know, maybe it's gotten a little easier and people are saying it's, you know, not quite the challenge it used to be, but I don't feel that way. I feel like the pace that the guys at the front are racing at, it's harder than it's ever been. You know, I know that if the trails are a little easier, it does make it so a lot more people are finishing, but it doesn't change the how hard we're raising the guys in the front, 

Big Rich Klein: You know And, and more people finishing is not a bad thing. Yeah, 

Speaker 1: No, the Carters are better. The parts are better. The prep is better. The trails might be a little easier and more blown in, but we went from seven miles an hour to nine miles an hour and the rocks and they didn't get any softer when you hit them. So it's, you know, we're just, we're just going a little faster and you know, that's got its toll on a whole nother level of parts and I think it's cool and yeah, more people are going to finish it. Cause there's just more, more depth of vehicles and more preparation. And you know, you're never going to have this situation where a guys hadn't run it before. Like they have now it's going into its 13th year or whatever she's going into like its 15th years with something. Right. So it's been around for a minute and people have kind of figured it out. So it's going to have a higher finishing rate over time, just like the thousands. 

Big Rich Klein: Yep. Well, I want to say thank you so much for, for coming on conversations with big rich, there's some things like I told you beforehand that, you know, I always learn something about the people that I interview, even though I've known you for so long and you know, we've been down to Baja together and all that kind of stuff. When you do do the trophy truck thing, I would love to cover that in the magazine, especially since I know it will be all wheel drive. I'd like to be part of that in whatever small way I can help. So 

Speaker 1: I have to go down there with us and enjoy it too. You know, that I'm sure had a lot of fun with you over the years. I think, you know, there's been, I know there is some people who are competitors and they couldn't get past the promoter competitor thing. We've always just had a great friendship. You know, I was competitive, but I wasn't, I wasn't ever at the stage where I was going to blame somebody else for something that happened from a volunteer judge, you know, I, I looked past it and said, Hey man, it's a judgment call. The guy made the wrong call. It's just the way the cookie crumbles. And I never got into that. Like, you know, took it too far. And I know that was hard for a lot of people, but I always respected you and the job and the effort that you put into it, that little put into it. 

Speaker 1: And then even Shelly, as, you know, the time moved on with, you know, over the years and how hard you worked at it, because it is a lot of work setting those courses and getting everybody checked in and doing all this stuff that you guys did. And I don't know if you guys got enough credit for putting all those together and finding the venues and orchestrating at all. So I know as you know, from all the years that we did it, I always appreciated it and had a lot of fun, met some of the greatest people in my life from it. So, you know, really a, a great time for me, I hope to be able to do some of it again in the future someday, but glad to see it successful still, or again, or however you want to look at it. And I'm really happy for you too rich. 

Big Rich Klein: Well, thank you, Jason. And, say hello to the family for me. And, again, thank you so much for your time. 

Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Cheers. You guys. Thanks a lot for having me on. 

Big Rich Klein: Okay. Thank you. If you enjoy these podcasts, please give us a rating. Share some feedback with us via Facebook or Instagram and share our link among your friends who might be likeminded. Well, that brings this episode to an end book. You enjoyed it. We'll catch you next week with conversations with big rich. Thank you very much.