Conversations with Big Rich
Hear conversations with the legacy stars of rockcrawling and off-road. Big Rich interviews the leaders in rock sports.
Conversations with Big Rich
No fear, no failure, Curt LeDuc on Episode 178
ORMHOF inductee Curt Leduc, Class of 2015, shares some great storytelling; living life to the best of his abilities, Curt has made his own luck along the way with hard work and dedication to his craft. Congratulations to Curt Leduc, a 2015 inductee into ORMHOF; Curt is why we say; legends live at ORMHOF.org. Be sure to tune in on your favorite podcast app.
3:10 – between mini-skirts and mary jane, it made for a very challenging time
8:58 – the entrepreneurs in this country are C students…looking out the window…thinking about what they’re going to do
14:58 –come outside, I want to show you something…
24:10 – “What scares you?” I had to think, the only thing that scares me is failure
31:13 – there’s two ways we can do this…
41:42 – oh, I want to go to Dakar
54:28 – I call it Paul because I’m stealing from Peter to build Paul
1:01:22 – when my boys started racing, they had to go to every sponsorship meeting, because I wanted them to hear what the people wanted
1:18:24 – his immune system is down, but his spirits are up
Special thanks to ORMHOF.org for support and sponsorship of this podcast.
Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
All Automotive with Matt ClawsonAutomotive related topics. Anything from owning an repair facility to racing. Anything...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
[00:00:01.060]
Welcome To Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the offroad industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future Legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land-use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call Offroad. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active in Offroad. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call Offroad.
[00:00:46.120]
This episode of Conversations with Big Rich is brought to you by the Offroad Motorports Hall of Fame. The mission of the Hall of Fame is to educate and inspire present and future generations of the Offroad community by celebrating the achievements of those who came before. We invite you to help fulfill the mission of the Offroad Motorports Hall of Fame. Join, partner, or donate today. Legendslive@ormhof.org.
[00:01:14.190] - Big Rich Klein
On this week's episode of Conversations, I will be talking with Curt Leduc. Curt is a 2015 Offroad Motorports Hall of Fame inductee.
[00:01:25.190] - Big Rich Klein
That's Ormhoff. His vast resume includes Dakar, K-O-H, Shortcourse, Best in the Desert score, and even rock crawling. I can't wait to get into this with Kurt. It's always a good conversation and a good time with Kurt. Kurt, thank you so much for agreeing to come on and talk with me today.
[00:01:47.340] - Curt Leduc
Awesome to be here with you, Rich, and as an inductee, I'm very proud of that fact. And there's a lot of older people, a lot of younger people in it than me, and so I'm privileged to be a part of that group.
[00:02:01.550] - Big Rich Klein
I would be as well, and I'm looking forward to this year's induction coming up here in September, and hope to see you there.
[00:02:10.320] - Curt Leduc
Definitely plan on being there.
[00:02:11.860] - Big Rich Klein
Perfect. Okay, so let's start with the easiest question. Where were you born and raised?
[00:02:19.550] - Curt Leduc
So my dad was in the Navy based out of Newport, Rhode Island. So that's where I was. My brother and I were both born there, my older brother, Dennis, and then we moved to Springfield area, which is like an hour and a half in Massachusetts from Boston. So that's where I grew up, went to school, started my businesses, and yeah, New England. I love Four Seasons.
[00:02:49.890] - Big Rich Klein
Nice. Those early years of school, what was that like in New England and back when you were a kid? You're just a couple of years older than me, so I know what it was like for me, but I grew up in a very heavily populated area, the San Francisco Bay area. What was it like for you?
[00:03:10.250] - Curt Leduc
The '70s in high school between mini-skirts and the availability of marijuana, it made it a very challenging time. That's all I can say about that. But we had the coolest cars. We had AMXs and we had show... High school kids had GT 500s. It was just... The car culture was amazing. I had a '57 Chevy Hot Rod I built. That's what I drove to school. And the car culture, it just enamored me.
[00:03:49.270] - Big Rich Klein
Right. And like you said, I thought that was a great opening line between the girls, the cars and the marijuana. I used to have a sticker on the side. I had a '54 Volkswagen Street Bug. And the sticker I had was, Ass, gas or grass. Nobody rides for free.
[00:04:11.220] - Curt Leduc
I remember seeing it. And I saved up and put an eight track in my '57 Chevy, and we rocked it.
[00:04:22.170] - Big Rich Klein
And so let's talk a little bit about that 57 Chevy, and then we'll get into school. What motor were you running?
[00:04:29.920] - Curt Leduc
Well, I had some friends of mine that were working on some stock cars. I figured out how to sneak into the pits with my parents at the local stock car track. So I bought a '57 Chevy two-door hard top, and the motor was in the trunk and it was $75. I think I was 14. I worked on it and fixed it and rebuilt the engine on a sheet of plywood in my dad's dirt floor garage. It was just where I started. I just had no fear. Except when I put the motor in, nobody in high school that I knew knew how to set a distributor. And so my dad would come home from work. He was a truck driver, and he would tell me with his Dodge station wagon around the block, and it would pop and miss, and I'd pull the distributor out and turn it one tooth, put it back in. It took us three different tries and finally got to start.
[00:05:32.670] - Big Rich Klein
And.
[00:05:33.880] - Curt Leduc
Then on then on, I figured out how to do it. I take out number one, spark plug, and impress the neighborhood. I could change the motor and start it in the driveway. I'd like the challenge, and I still enjoy a challenge.
[00:05:51.540] - Big Rich Klein
So was your dad or your older brother car guys?
[00:05:56.640] - Curt Leduc
No. My dad was a truck driver with seven kids, and he worked a lot. Yeah, I was free to start a paper route and get jobs and make money and work on my cars. And it was just a great time growing up. There was obviously no cell phones and no Internet. So it was a great time for me.
[00:06:22.060] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, we had wall phones and payphones.
[00:06:25.010] - Curt Leduc
Yeah. I was working with Reed, who was Kyle's son, and we were doing some stuff on his iPad. And he said, Papa, when you were growing up, did you have an iPad? I said, No. He's like, Did you have a good life? I was like, Yeah, I had a etch-a-sketch. He's like, What's that? So for Christmas, I got him an etch-a-sketch, but that was it.
[00:06:50.560] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, that was our iPad, wasn't it?
[00:06:53.250] - Curt Leduc
As close as we ever got.
[00:06:55.750] - Big Rich Klein
True. But you know what? It was a simpler life, and it was a safer time. I think that we were... Kids nowadays are forced into maturity before they're ready for it. By that, what I mean is everything that all the social and the information that comes to them forces them to try to be an adult, I think, or deal with adult things or what people perceive as adult things when they're not ready for it. Do you think there's anything, any legitimacy to that?
[00:07:54.610] - Curt Leduc
No. No? No, I think kids today are handed a different world than us, different world than our parents, different world than our grandparents.
[00:08:06.050] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, absolutely.
[00:08:07.400] - Curt Leduc
You know what I mean? And we've all learned to adapt. Before cars, there was horses, so it didn't change anybody. I think there's still going to be people that are driven, and I still think there are going to be people that are not driven and they're going to cruise through life. And luckily, I was never one of those guys. I got up every day like, I better get something done because I don't know how many days I have left. And I learned at a young age. I don't know how it struck me, but it stuck with me my whole career.
[00:08:41.100] - Big Rich Klein
So was there a teacher or somebody you might call a mentor from those days that helped you with that an idea? Or was it just something that was innate?
[00:08:58.570] - Curt Leduc
I never really thought of having a mentor. I had a few people that I would ask advice from when I shared buildings with other business people and learned that way. And then I watched now on Facebook, they say the entrepreneurs in this country are C students because they're looking out the window, not paying attention to class, thinking about what they're going to do. I was a solid C-plus student. So some of that makes sense to me now that they've studied it and I have data on it. But at the time, it was just I did what I wanted to do, got out of the school, made money, and never looked back. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, and I continue to this day. So it teaches you all those survival skills. You're going to fail. I watch all these motivational speakers and the stuff that I somehow picked up on my own. So you can't teach it. What I did, you can't teach. What I've done is impossible. If somebody said you're going to move from Massachusetts to California and build a car to win the Baha 1,000, what are the odds?
[00:10:17.680] - Big Rich Klein
Right. In high school, did you even know what... Was there even a Baha 1,000 yet?
[00:10:23.130] - Curt Leduc
Yes. Okay. Well, in the '70s, the whole off-roading thing, the magazines would come three months later, and they would have stories about the Mint 400 and the Baha'i 1,000. And I never saw it on TV. But yeah, I read about it. Yeah, for sure. I had Hot Rod magazines, the car custom magazines, some of the one of the craziest stories I have to tell is... So Donovie, the world's largest Jeep dealer at the time, owned by Clive Skilton, Darren's, Skilton's dad, I got to race for them. I got to win the trophy truck championship, had a great relationship still to this day. So as I'm going through stuff in my house, sorting out junk and paperwork, I find an old Hot Rod magazine from 1972, and I open it up and I like all the old ads for Kragers and Headman Headers, and I'm looking through it. And obviously, there's a magazine I kept for some reason as the only Hot Rod I kept magazine I kept. And as I'm looking through it, there's an article about this guy and he buys Dragsters and takes them to Europe and tours Europe doing exhibition runs with top fuel cars.
[00:11:43.720] - Curt Leduc
And as I read the article, it's Clive Skilton. So in 1972 in high school, I read about a guy that I would meet and sponsor me to race and win the Baha 1000.
[00:12:02.720] - Big Rich Klein
That's pretty awesome.
[00:12:04.070] - Curt Leduc
That's what Clive used to do. He would come over here at the end of the Winternationals. Somebody was ready to sell a car, had a new one in the works, Clive would buy it, ship it back to England. He was at a car dealership over there. And then that was his fun. He was always a racer. He always loved drag racing, didn't know anything about offroad. The first time he went with a customer to the Baha 1000, they were just the two guys in a car. They didn't even have a plan for gas, no chase trucks, no way to get home. I mean, he just was... So how crazy is that? In 1972, I read the book, met the guy, and I told Clive, he's like, I got to have the magazine. He goes, I don't even have a copy of it. I gave it to him and it was just one of those Dejavous things, bizarre.
[00:12:52.450] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah. And being that that's the one you kept?
[00:12:55.650] - Curt Leduc
The only one I kept. Right. No, and there wasn't anything special in the whole magazine about anything. I had read it cover to cover and put it in a box with all my other books, car customs, but that was the only hot rod I ever kept.
[00:13:12.830] - Big Rich Klein
Wow.
[00:13:13.370] - Curt Leduc
Okay. That was just a story. No, that's great. Nothing to do with offroad racing.
[00:13:18.210] - Big Rich Klein
No, it's amazing. That's a theme that goes through with the Ormhoff and DuckDies that I've interviewed is that there are so many tie-ins that nobody realizes are tie-ins until down the road at some point. It's pretty crazy. While in high school, you said you're a pretty solid C+ student, did you do a lot of shop classes?
[00:13:48.660] - Curt Leduc
Yes.
[00:13:49.700] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, yeah. You were the guy that looking out the window all the time, but during shop, you paid attention, right?
[00:13:54.230] - Curt Leduc
I did all the shop classes. I did woodworking, I did metal shop, I did electronics, I took typing, I took Homec, cooking. If you're going to meet girls, you better meet them in the typing class or Homec is all I'm saying. Not the girls in Wood shop.
[00:14:16.260] - Curt Leduc
Sorry, I don't mean to get off theme here.
[00:14:18.840] - Big Rich Klein
No, no, no. It's not off theme. I agree 100 % with you. When I was in college, I could have done laundry at home, but I found out, I realized that the laundromat was a great place to meet girls. That and the grocery store.
[00:14:42.950] - Curt Leduc
Yeah.
[00:14:43.200] - Big Rich Klein
So then when you were 14, you got that '57 Chevy, two door. Did you work on it during auto shop? Were you able to do that? Or did you- No. No, you weren't?
[00:14:58.100] - Curt Leduc
Okay. No, they didn't really have auto shop. They had mechanics, metalworking, but no auto shop. But no, I just worked on it at home on weekends. And then when my senior year, my parents moved away and started a business. And so my whole senior year, I rented an apartment, worked, and figured I wanted to make some money in the wintertime. So I sold my '57 and I bought a Jeep pickup truck, a J10 with a snow plow. So the only car I ever owned was that '57. And so it ties to a story. I turned 60 a few years ago and we have a birthday party at Kyle's house here in town. And he goes, Come outside. I want to show you something. So coming up the street is a red '57 Chevy, and it pulls in the driveway and they're sitting on a milk crate driving it. And he's like, Me and Todd and bought this car for you. We got into the house, found a Polaroid picture. I asked people what car it is, and they said, Well, it's a '57 Chevy. They found a survivor in Montana and had a truck down here.
[00:16:22.060] - Curt Leduc
Everybody that we raced with over the years from Wilwood to Curry, Stony from GM Hydromatic, everybody donated parts to build a Hot Rod. Kyle started on it, took it apart, except the motor was still in. It still ran and drove. Anyways, and he was going to build it. And he's like, This is way too much work. So I'm sitting here next to it right now and I've got most of it done. So I'm looking forward to maybe driving it, Route.
[00:16:54.970] - Big Rich Klein
66- That'd be awesome.
[00:16:56.890] - Curt Leduc
-to Chicago, go to Crandon, drive it in the and if Kim and I are still married, drive it home.
[00:17:04.590] - Big Rich Klein
Still married after that trip.
[00:17:07.380] - Curt Leduc
After that trip.
[00:17:09.010] - Big Rich Klein
Right.
[00:17:10.110] - Curt Leduc
But it will have AC.
[00:17:12.650] - Big Rich Klein
Well, I would imagine because the AC nowadays is a lot better than the 240 air that we used to have.
[00:17:22.010] - Curt Leduc
Yeah, they had vents in the front fenders by the headlights. Anyway, so I'm staying really busy. Let's just say that.
[00:17:32.700] - Big Rich Klein
So then after high school, was there any college at all?
[00:17:40.670] - Curt Leduc
Wasn't even a thought.
[00:17:42.040] - Big Rich Klein
No thought, okay.
[00:17:43.340] - Curt Leduc
No, but I got to say, the year that I graduated was the year the draft was abolished. And that's how I didn't end up in Vietnam like a lot of my friends did, that were a little older than me because the older kids all had cars. Anybody younger than me didn't have a car. Anyways, a lot of them never came back. I feel like I might have dodged a bullet, but it was just meant to be.
[00:18:14.300] - Big Rich Klein
I can remember growing up and watching the draft and the numbers that would come up and thinking, Okay, if this goes to '76, but they abolished you what? '73? '72? '73? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
[00:18:32.800] - Curt Leduc
'74, I thought. '73, '74. Right, okay.
[00:18:36.720] - Big Rich Klein
So then after high school, I'd imagine you were working at the time because you were putting yourself through high school, having your own apartment, your parents left for a business opportunity, you said? What was that business opportunity?
[00:18:55.250] - Curt Leduc
It was a service master, like a cleaning, fire damage. They stayed in Massachusetts but moved like an hour away, so I would see them. But yeah, so I fabricated some go-karts with motorcycle engines on the back with snowmobile engines, and I take my brothers and sisters and we'd go to K-Mark parking lots and set up some cones and shifter cart before... Anyways, just built some crazy stuff, worked at a steel mill, ran those big coils of steel you see on the semis. At 19 years old, I think, I was running the biggest slitter, which they called it, and I would take those big rolls and cut them down into the narrow strips. Yeah. Just super dangerous. Crazy. Second shift, made tons of money. I just worked up from the loading dock to all these different machines. In six months, I was running the biggest machine, the highest paid guy in it.
[00:20:02.760] - Big Rich Klein
Wow. Very good.
[00:20:03.570] - Curt Leduc
It was crazy.
[00:20:04.660] - Big Rich Klein
It was crazy. But you were a go-getter?
[00:20:08.180] - Curt Leduc
I just had no fear. It's like, I can run that. If somebody else can run it, I can learn how to run it. So yeah, everything had to be Mike. And yeah. I was like, Okay, conquered that. Now what? I had a tubing bender and a Lincoln Buzzbox, and the whole Jeep thing was taken off, racing against the clocks back in New England. And so everybody that wanted to race needed a roll cage. And so I started building and I built some fixtures. Jeeps did come with roll bars. So there was some four-wheel drive shops in Massachusetts, and I would just bend tubing and stick weld it together, paint it, deliver them. And then when Jeeps came out with roll bars, everybody said, Oh, you're going to go out of business. They were wrong.
[00:20:58.450] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, those weren't really roll bars.
[00:21:01.790] - Curt Leduc
Well, they were. There was something because before that they had nothing. Yeah, true.
[00:21:06.500] - Big Rich Klein
It was better than nothing, but barely better than nothing.
[00:21:09.900] - Curt Leduc
Yeah. So anyway, then I started building them for trucks and I sold that Jeep and I bought a Dodge power wagon with a plow, just figured out the business side of it. And then eventually got to the point where we were like a four-wheel parts store with retail, fabrication. I built race cars. We did service. We put clutches in, lift kits. I bought enough of those bushwhacker, fender flares for the early Broncos that you're not supposed to cut the fenders off of anymore and to buy a new car. Back then, they weren't that expensive, but I would buy them. I'd come out to the score show out west here, and I met Perry from Mastercraft, became a dealer and and center line wheels and just started buying stuff and shipping it to my shop and selling it to everybody back east. I was just an entrepreneur.
[00:22:10.380] - Big Rich Klein
And that was still in Springfield?
[00:22:12.750] - Curt Leduc
Yeah, Springfield, Mass.
[00:22:15.320] - Big Rich Klein
Awesome. How long did you stay there and run that business?
[00:22:24.180] - Curt Leduc
By the time I was 30, I was done with retail. I don't know. Some of my customers, I built a lot of stuff and had a sticker on their car or whatever, but none of them are really that good. So everybody wanted $2,500 for a CJ, but I bought an old Commando for $500 with the V6 in it and built an obstacle course runner. I went to the sand drags, got my butt kicked, went to the hill climb, got my butt kicked. And then when it was an obstacle course against the clock, I beat every car there. And I'd go to Pennsylvania and Ohio and New York and Connecticut, wherever I went. There was a bounty on my head, like what Kyle did. Anyway, I would just... And then I would have a display with my kids and roll bars and cage kits and I'd sign up dealers and just grew my business and went to Canada, Florida, Carolinas. Just, it was... I could win races and built a couple of different race cars. One of them I still have. The second car I built for myself. But anyway, so it was just a learning raise a family.
[00:23:43.540] - Curt Leduc
If we needed a new washer machine at home, I'd go in a race and bring home a check. It was that simple.
[00:23:51.700] - Big Rich Klein
So your first marriage, when you say it all happened during that time when you were still in mass and racing, how old were you when you got married?
[00:24:06.680] - Curt Leduc
I got married, I don't know, 20.
[00:24:09.680] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:24:10.800] - Curt Leduc
Yeah, probably 20, 21. I don't remember. A long time ago. But she was very supportive, Nancy. And we got some great kids and can't change the past. Right. Back then, I would leave my shop, I would drive 1,000 miles to Crandon with my open trailer, with my Jeep on the back, race Crandon, win, drive 2,000 miles to Riverside, race, win, and then drive home 3,000 miles. No cell phones, no credit cards, no AAA, just deal with whatever came up. Here's the deal. So you're going to ask me. I'll say I had no fear. So we're up at Moab with Skyjacker on a trail, and I was trying to climb this thing and the Jeep started to bounce and there were some guys in there, distributors, and we're talking about racing and stories. So finally, we get off this hill and I break the rear dry shaft and I'm driving in the front end and I get off the mountain. You've been to Moab many times. Anyways, and the guy says, What scares you? I had to think about it. On the way back in the town, I said, You know what? The only thing that scares me is failure.
[00:25:42.600] - Curt Leduc
I don't want to fail as a dad, as a husband, as a businessman, as a brand ambassador, as a racer. That's what I'm afraid of is failing. I will do anything in my power to not fail. And so if there's a credo for me, that's it.
[00:26:05.000] - Big Rich Klein
Failure is not an option.
[00:26:06.750] - Curt Leduc
Right. It's an option, but it's just like that's what drove me, and I never thought about it until he asked me at that moment. We could have flipped it over. I had a cage in it. I didn't care. It wasn't my Jeep. Skyjacker would have been upset. But it was just like, okay. So whether you're driving a trophy truck at 135 miles an hour at night and you're out driving your lights, but you know the road and your co-drivers telling you to check up, I just don't want to fail. I don't want to fail. So It's true.
[00:26:45.780] - Big Rich Klein
That's an important aspect in a racer.
[00:26:50.490] - Curt Leduc
I think it's a theme you can get from almost anybody in this sport. True. Whether it's Parnellie Jones or Brad Lovall just got inducted. A rock guy, Shannon Campbell. They don't want to fail. They'll build equipment, they'll find the money, they'll spend the money. They don't want to fail. They've chosen a path and they don't want to fail.
[00:27:14.470] - Big Rich Klein
So your first outing at racing were more short course than... Obstacle course and short course.
[00:27:21.830] - Curt Leduc
Yeah. Back then you couldn't race wheel to wheel back in the early days. And you could actually go to the Jeep dealer in town, which we did, your club, and they would give you a racing kit. So it would come with a banner that said start and a banner that said finish. It came with some rule books, some safety outlines, and it was a whole box of how to do it. And it was in New England, all around the United States. If all the club had to do, I was part of New England four-wheelers, all the club had to do was ask. And the dealer would order one in and give it to you because they wanted to sell parts, and they did. Used to blow up those T14s. Yeah. It was different. The lawyers nowadays would never let you do it. Right. Oh, yeah. Back then.
[00:28:19.060] - Big Rich Klein
So at what point did you go from short course to, I would imagine that the next step was to desert?
[00:28:29.210] - Curt Leduc
Well, It.
[00:28:30.310] - Big Rich Klein
There was a- Or something in between.
[00:28:32.850] - Curt Leduc
No, I still lived in New England, but there was a race in Zore, New York, upstate New York, out by Buffalo, and JD Brand from California brought a bunch of Class VIII trucks. I think Glenn Harris brought a buggy. Anyways, and they had a score race back there, a short course race, natural elevation changes. I brought my Jeep, which was all independent. I call it my first pro four and made all the magazines. It would have been 1979. Anyways, Walker won the Class VIII. I won the four-wheel drive Jeep class or four-wheel drive class. That's where I met Walker and all the guys from JD Brand and Brad Roydhouse and Sal, I have a picture with him from that day. Anyways, I said I want to come out with race out west. Walker's like, Well, you should probably go to the Mint. That'll be the easiest. So I went home, sold a car, built a V8 car to go race to the Mint and Shortcourse. And went out to the Mint 400 and towed it out with my pickup in an open trailer, stayed in a campground. I didn't have money for a hotel. And yeah, it was just like, let's go race the Mint.
[00:30:00.670] - Curt Leduc
That year, I think 501 cars started the Mint 400. We only made two laps and on the third lap, the car wouldn't start. We were done. It was late, but it was a great learning experience. But Walker invited me. I helped work out of his pit at the speedway there, the old road course. Anyways, he said, Hey, the thousand is coming up. It's going to a pause. We could use some people if you want to come out. He's like, You buy a plane ticket and we'll take you down and back. I said, Okay. That's what we did. Came out in November. Walker did make it. I went down to La Parma. Then on the way home, everything broke. The van I was driving, the carrier bearing went bad. We put it on Walker's trailer and the wheel studs all broke off. So we got it off the trailer. I found studs and mule hay, got it going, got all the way up to San Rosalia. The water pump started leaking. So we took the water pump off on the side of the road, went into San Rosalia, bought a water pump and fixed everything, got everybody home.
[00:31:13.510] - Curt Leduc
And from that day forward, Walker always invited me out to the thousand. And it was only every three years, but anyways, the second time he won and I got to go to La Paz and he said, Hey, we're going to go to this place for three or four days and hang out if you want to go. I'm like, All right, what's the call? He's like, Cabo. Okay. So we went there, he won. The team was all there. And one night at dinner, Dick Landfield was with Walker saying, I'm looking for fabricators. You want to come out and work for us? I'm like, I'm ready. I said, Let me call my wife. Landfield was going to build the stadium cars for the answers for the Chrysler. I called my wife and I said, hey, from one of those phones in Mexico, you call Colect, you put a coin in. Remember those rip offs? $30 phone calls?
[00:32:11.240] - Curt Leduc
Anyway, I go, hey, there's two ways I'm going to do this. I can come out here and get an apartment for six months and then see if I like it. My brother worked in my shop, my mom did the accounting, and I said, Or just start putting stuff in boxes. We'll just move. When I got home from Cabo, that trip, everything in my house was in a box.
[00:32:35.430] - Big Rich Klein
She was ready to leave.
[00:32:36.730] - Curt Leduc
She was ready. We had talked about it. She was ready. Three kids. I rented the biggest rider truck I could get. I built a car trailer in the shop out of stuff I had there already and loaded my little shop, Ford Ranger, on the trailer and headed west. I never sold anything. Eventually, I sold the business, but never the property. I just thought if it doesn't work, I told Nancy at the time, I said, If it doesn't work out, if I don't have a factory ride in five years, we're going to Australia. She's like, Okay.
[00:33:12.850] - Big Rich Klein
Excellent.
[00:33:13.910] - Curt Leduc
And it took me three years to get hooked up with Mike Leslie and built those Cherokees, the straight axel Jeeps that finished top 10 overall and four wheel drives. Anyway, I never looked back. Eventually, I would go home and it takes an entrepreneur to run a business. My brother wasn't an entrepreneur, but he did a good job for me. Anyway, so that was it. I was 100 % committed. But what I learned when I moved to California is this lesson is give Kurt an impossible task and stand back and watch it happen. I don't care from the very first shop working for Landfield, whether it was for Mike Leslie, working for myself, working for John Swift. All those people gave me a chance to fail. I mean, I started a second shift to get the answers... Stadium car is done because there was no way you could... We had eight people, but you can't all be working on the same car at the same time. You know what I mean? So I said, Let's start a second shift.
[00:34:28.510] - Big Rich Klein
I.
[00:34:29.210] - Curt Leduc
Want this guy. Evan Evans was one of the fabricators there. He was a great welder. I said, These are the guys I want to work with me. And so I just started the second shift and we got the cars done. They were loaded in the semi, and that was it. I was fired that day because I was going to go racing. I went to Ford to race with John Swift. So it wasn't like I got fired. That was the opportunity that was next, which led to the next one and led to the next one.
[00:34:59.660] - Big Rich Klein
And who is your reaching back? Who is the one sponsor or I like to call them marketing partners, but racers, sponsors. What's the oldest one you have that's been continuous or still with you? Maybe not continuous, but still with you.
[00:35:24.400] - Curt Leduc
A couple of different scenarios on sponsorship. I would go and borrow a typewriter, and I would type sponsorship letters and mail them. So for the 50th anniversary of KNN, I got a call and said from Tony. I said, he's like, Hey, what was the first year we sponsored you? I said, Let me get back to you. So I have two folders with all the letters that I sent out to people, all the rejections and all the positive responses. So I take up with my phone, I take a picture of the letter from 1984, thanking KNN, Tom, from KNN, sent me a letter, typed back by hand, thanking me for a great season and looking forward to building this relationship. And so Tony Yorkman walks into his boss's office, prints the picture and says this is why he's still our brand ambassador. We started sponsoring him, we had three employees. He helped build this brand that your investors bought into. So to me, it was same thing. It's like, how do those things line up? My first contract with Ford was... I have letters from Lee Morris from 1984. So In ten years after graduating from high school, I was chipping away at building relationships.
[00:37:11.460] - Curt Leduc
One tire deal led to the next tire deal to the next wheel deal. Once I moved to California, I had no backup plan. If you want to be an actor in Hollywood, you can't be a plumber and then go for a few auditions. You got to be 100 % committed. And that's what I was. When I moved out west, it was like do or die. We're going to make this work. I'm not going to go work for somebody else or be a machinist or I was just going to make it work. And I'm just able to pull it off. Just crazy. Crazy.
[00:37:52.710] - Big Rich Klein
So the first time you raced Baha, because the first time you went down with Walker, you weren't racing, you were part of the crew?
[00:38:02.500] - Curt Leduc
Yeah, I was just a chase guy.
[00:38:04.950] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. And what was the first ride that you raced in Baha?
[00:38:12.090] - Curt Leduc
That would have been with John Swift. John Swift, I built him a 7.4 by 4 and with a V6. That would have been our first four year into Baha to go down and pre-run. I took my little shop, two-wheel drive Ford Ranger, and I converted it with some parts that Ford let me have some used stuff from the race car, and I was able to build it into a fully caged, pre-runner, four-wheel drive. I started the pre-run way before GPS, way before sat phones, and just started to learn it. I still had a Massachusettsjust a license plate on it. I remember one time up in the pine forest, it's dark and I come pulling up to this place I want to mark a pit and there's a buggy sitting there. So I get out, take a bunch of ribbon out of my truck, walk over, tie off a spot where I want my chase crew. And this guy gets out of his buggy, walks over to me. He goes, Do you know where you are? Yeah. Well, how do we get back to Encinada? I said, Well, the race course is like 40 miles. But if you turn left right here, it's like eight miles to the highway, and then it's 15 miles back to town.
[00:39:40.940] - Curt Leduc
He's like, You have Massachusetts license. Are you from Massachusetts? Yeah. I said, I know how to get here without a map. And I got in my truck and left. The two guys sitting in standing there looking at each other like I don't know who they are, but who they were. Ir they were trying to make a life decision, and I was just trying to get back to town before it was midnight. Yeah, fearless.
[00:40:08.970] - Big Rich Klein
That's awesome. Fearless. There you go. Let's jump into to car. Tell me about going to to car.
[00:40:22.180] - Curt Leduc
Well, I never thought I'd get a chance to go to that car. I've watched a little bit on... There was some VHS tapes you could to watch a little bit of it. But I was building a lot of cars. I was racing trophy trucks. A guy from Budapest, Hungary, comes out to the Bono 1,000, and he was going to ride in a three-seat seven-truck, and for some reason that score wouldn't allow it back then. Pistor Pete got that changed, I think. Anyways, so we all stayed at the big high rise of Villa Marina. I'm walking out of the after the race, and Sal says, Hey, Kurt, I want to introduce you to this guy, Balazs. He's from Budapest, Hungary, and you should talk to him. Sal just leaves us and walks away. He speaks English. Sal said to him, he's like, Right now this guy is the best offroad racer in America. He's our trophy truck champion. He's got the most experience about anybody I would send over to Dachau. He gives me his phone number, and we took call and back and forth and they built a car in Texas. I thought it was a real test.
[00:41:42.840] - Curt Leduc
This is what that car is like. I have enough flyer miles from flying back and forth for short course. He goes, All right, fly into Dallas. Go to this rental car place. It's like rental wreck, but you got to be there because they close at 11:00. Okay, I get in at 9:30 or whatever. So I get a taxi over to the rental wreck. He's like, Here's the address. And the key for the house is in the back door. So go in the backyard and park out front and go inside. And there's nobody going to be there, but just go to sleep. We'll see you in the morning. It's like, Okay, this is a real test. So sure enough, in the morning, they show up and he doesn't. But there's a lot of Europeans there because that's where they train all the fighter pilots with the work of the US military from around the world, our allies. So anyways, this guy, Frank Papp, built this Chevy S10 Blazer. So I went and looked at it, looked okay. I said, Okay, let's do it. Okay. All right, now you've got to jump through all these hoops. Everybody says, Oh, I want to go to Dekar.
[00:43:05.690] - Curt Leduc
Well, you've got to get yellow fever. That's testing for yellow fever. You've got to take malaria medication. You've got to have tetanus. Different shots up to date. It's just this whole medical thing you have to get. You have to carry a medical card. You got to be tested for hepatitis. There was like, Oh, yeah, let's just go to Dekar. Yeah, well, good luck. I have to get an FIA rally license. And so I have to write a letter to ask because I don't have a rally license. I have no license for offroad. But because of my resume, they grant me a FIA rally license so I can use it. So we're going to go. So contingency and everything is in Paris. And that's where the start is right there at the Eiffel Tower. So theydid tech inspection is at the Palace of Versailles. Crazy. So my first time to Europe, I had a passport for flying in and out of Mexico. Anyways, so I go to Paris, same thing. I'm like, Well, if I'm going to go, it's got a Chevy V6. I call Russell Bleedis. I'm going to name drop all those through this.
[00:44:29.960] - Curt Leduc
But all these people have helped me, just like Walker helped me, just like everybody's helped me. I said, Yeah, what do you got for a Chevy V6? And I tell him what I'm doing. He goes, I'll send you some parts. I got some motor stuff here. I'll just take some off something and send you. So this box shows up and it's like a plastic intake manifold and a bunch of sensors and oxygen sensor, just electronic stuff that could fail. I'm like, I can't take this on an airplane, this intake manifold. I pull the plastic part off the aluminum and pull out this big orange gasket and I take some silicone and a few things. Anyways, so same thing. Fly into Paris, take a bus to Versailles and check into a hotel. There's nobody there. They're coming. They're like they're supposed to already be there. They don't... Frank and Balaj don't show up the next day. Finally, the third day, they show up and they said, The car, we can't race. I'm like, Why? They said, The car won't run. Something's wrong with the motor. It just keeps dying and then we think it's going to blow up.
[00:45:48.670] - Curt Leduc
I said, Well, let's look at it. I go outside and I'm listening to it and I'm like, Let's pull this plastic intake off. He's like, What? I go, So I just get my little tool bag out that I brought with me and I pulled the plastic piece off and somebody had worked on it and they had torn that orange gasket between the aluminum intake manifold and the plastic intake. And so I go over to my backpack and I pull one out. And they look at me like, How does this happen? We both together, driving around perfect. The next morning, we go for inspection, run the gauntlet. And he said, I want you to teach me how to race. He says, We'll drive every other day. I'll drive one day, you drive the next. We got to switch. Perfect. So we go and we qualify and we're driving across Europe. It's all good. We're just a V6, stock V6. Anyways, we get put it on a ferry, get to Morocco, go through Morocco, and they have to mine sweep the road to the border from Morocco to Mauritania. And there's a bunch of cars stuck the first day in the dunes.
[00:47:09.240] - Curt Leduc
And there's a lot of mountains, the Atlas Mountains, just like Baha, the same latitude and there was that longitude. Anyways, so the car starts to break, the ARM breaks and the front ARM. And so I take a ratchet strap and put a stock and extension in there and ratchet strap it, get it to our pit that night. And I asked the guy for some welding rods in the big service truck. And so he takes out one welding rod and gives it to me. All right. It moves five boxes to get to one to give me one welding rod. And I'm going to need 10 to fix it and reinforce it. I start welding and he opens it up. I start welding, opens it. Third thing, he opens it up. Then I go back for the fourth one. He said, No, the rest of these are for the guys that are going to finish. He was like he doomed me. But it was so true. You only have so much supplies, but there's other teams. Anyways, and Raglin was on the rally that year with a pro truck. Larry had a FIA license and I had one.
[00:48:35.290] - Curt Leduc
And Darren Skilled went as a journalist to learn the rally himself, who now puts on the Sonorean rally, an FIA approved event, which congratulations, Darren. So anyway, he comes to me one night, he goes, Kurt, I got a problem. I go, What? My tailbone is so bruised from this pro truck and the seat has no cushion. He goes, I need a square about this big, like six by six inches. I said, Raglin, I'll give you one the whole size of the bottom. Ever since that day, Reglan and I have been pretty good friends. But he put it in the truck and then two days later, he was gone. I never saw him again. He broke. Two days later, we broke. We started and the other side broke the AR that I hadn't reinforced. We go back and it was like 065 upper AR. There's no way it belonged on the car. It was all built in coilovers and whatever, but talking too much story here. But anyways, we only went seven days and then I managed to fix the car, get it to Senegal so that it could be shipped back. And he raced it for about five years after that without me.
[00:50:01.160] - Curt Leduc
It did okay, but it just wasn't ready to go to Dacar. It was brand new, out of the box.
[00:50:10.620] - Big Rich Klein
Right. You're always going to find things that aren't going to work, right?
[00:50:14.180] - Curt Leduc
Yeah. But I started making a list, and in California, I built 54 race cars, pre-runners race cars, parts of teams out of my shop, short course cars, Pikes Peak, all that stuff that built a lot of cars. I had great people. Troy Johnson was one of my fabricators, Donnie Fair, Daniel Llewellyn. I've had some incredible people that I've worked with that taught me a lot too, for sure.
[00:50:59.060] - Big Rich Klein
So you're a jump into rock crawling. This is where I met you. It was in the back east at Paragon adventure park. Yep. And it was the first event that they were putting on. Me and Bob Rogey came out there to help them put on the event. That's when I was running Calrox. You were teamed up with Matt Burquette in the AGR Jeep. You wanted to give… I don't know how you ended up in that seat and in that vehicle with… I always imagined that Matt was spotting for you. Was that the case?
[00:51:43.900] - Curt Leduc
We go back to Skyjacker, going to Moab, and on one of the trail rides, this girl would jump out of this Jeep with a Prybar, and she would pop the shackles back. When they'd articulate, they'd go the wrong way. So, of course, I thought, well, that's an interesting setup. Matt from AGR Steering at the time, it was his Jeep and it was his wife and she was doing what she had to do, which I can appreciate. We met and then eventually he said, Hey, you want to go do a rock crawling event? I'm like, Sure. He's like, Yeah, I'll take my grandpa and we'll trailer the Jeep from Texas to Pennsylvania and we'll do this rock crawling event. You just fly in and we'll pick you up. I'm like, Okay, deal. And first day, I ripped the rear brake calipers off, I think. So he had some fabricated stock cars ones for GM calipers, which are junk. I went to the local wrecking yard that afternoon and on a four-wheel drive Chevy Blazer, the six bolts that hold the spinel on also holds the caliper bracket. I took one of those caliper brackets that are heavy duty GM, and I cut it all up and stick welded it with the generator on his Jeep to the rear axel housing.
[00:53:26.430] - Curt Leduc
That breaks for the next day. It was interesting. I've watched a few events but never participated. But at the last day, the last gate, I got a -27. I think I got a thank you, Rich. I am still undefeated in my rock crawling career.
[00:53:46.040] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, we've talked about this a number of times, and I keep saying back then it was like, Well, when are you coming back out? Why? I know you had a Campbell chassis there for, I think, for a while. Yes, I did. And you never built it because you were one and zero. You were perfect.
[00:54:05.100] - Curt Leduc
No, that wasn't the reason. But I wanted it unlimited. And Lonnie McCurry, who owned Skyjacker, wanted it to be more of a Jeep. He didn't sell parts for a Moon Bucky. And you know how people name Jeeps? Right. I don't know. I called mine Paul.
[00:54:27.400] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:54:28.450] - Curt Leduc
So in a sponsorship meeting, they said, What are you doing with the rockwraller? I said, Well, I call it Paul because I'm stealing from Peter to build Paul. I would much rather see Paul go away. They all agreed. My budget was never increased, but I could spend money where I needed to, short course. That's why we were running the Class VIII truck in the desert, winning races and championships. I know it's only a Class VIII, but we beat most of the trophy trucks pretty regularly. My son, Todd, and I.
[00:55:06.280] - Big Rich Klein
And is Skyjacker, you've been with those guys for quite a while. Were they one of the sponsors that have been with you for... How long have they been with you?
[00:55:20.070] - Curt Leduc
Well, I used to buy front coils from them back in the day, but as the core season was evolving, they looked at it as a way to grow their warehouse. The Sky Jacker went from direct jobbers to a three-tier. They would put stuff in warehouses. Whether it was Jags or Keystone, but they went to three-tier distribution and used the TV package with Core and my race cars and Kyle's race cars and Scott Taylor's to open up these warehouses. Right in '07, when everything started to go down, they were in a great position because they went from job or distribution to warehouses. And so it allowed them to survive. It's almost like they had a crystal ball. We had a great relationship because I came from the same areas as Lonnie McCurry, understanding the Jeeps and the Brackets and what customers wanted. We just had a good understanding. Same thing. I had some frequent flyer miles. They said, We're interested in the sport. Could you send us a proposal? I said, I'd rather get on an airplane and go, Oh, we don't want to pay for an airplane. I'm like, Well, I'll fly for free. I have frequent flyer miles from the season, so let's just set up a meeting.
[00:57:05.670] - Curt Leduc
They said, Okay, somebody will pick you up at the airport. I get to the airport, somebody picks me up in a Chevy pickup truck. We drive around. We go back into R&D and we're talking about my history and what do I do? Anyways, we go into the R&D and there's a table with a bunch of brackets and Uni-balls. We're just talking and all of a sudden the phone rings and, All right, they're ready for your meeting. So we get up, go into the boardroom and there's a big table and I sit down and the guy who picked me up at the airport sat at the head of the table. Owner, operator, decision-maker, Lonnie McCurry. Senior? And senior. They said if the ride to the shop didn't go good, he would have just turned around and brought you back to the airport. But I don't know, it was just an opportunity, and I thought I could make the most out of it maybe in person at that time. Precision gear, Tom Ryder out of Detroit. He same thing. He sold a lot of gears and he was a great sponsor for all those years. That was a sit-down meeting.
[00:58:29.800] - Curt Leduc
He pulled out a filing cabinet full of sponsorship packages. On his desk was three people that he wanted to talk to. One of it was because number one, I never had an agent who gets his 20 %. Number two, if he gave me money, I was going to spend it racing. I didn't have a boat, I didn't have a river house, I didn't have a beach house, I didn't have a ski lodge. He knew I wanted to go win the Borg Warner Cup. He knew I wanted to go win the Baha 1,000. Vegas to Renos is going on right now. And first time I entered it, let it from downtown Vegas all the way out to Sloane, let it all the way to win it overall, the very first time I entered. With Precision gear and Tom Ryder on the race car, and he sold a lot of gears. So long relationships we built over time. Everybody's looking for half a million bucks, and that's a real number. That's what it takes to do anything. But people don't say yes to the $5,000 deal or the $1,000 deal. I got to tell you, so many things that happened for me.
[00:59:50.790] - Curt Leduc
If I had people where they were interested and they were talking with other people, first thing I would say in a meeting was I'll do a deal with you guys for absolutely no money. I want to leave here with your consent to be on my race car, and we'll figure the rest out if I can deliver. And it just takes the shield down. It drops the shield. So now they want to listen. Well, then they go, Well, we want you to do these displays and we want to do this event. And okay, so we'll give you some money for that. But it all stops because the shields went down and they're going to give me an opportunity to fail, but I don't like to fail. And you can't say that in a meeting just because you can't. So it builds that relationship. That little deal, free ball joints for a Ford traction beam led to my Napa deal for precision ball joints over time. It just started as a simple product and did some R&D for them, won some races, led to a contract, led to a great run with Dana Corporation. So just overdeliver.
[01:01:12.450] - Curt Leduc
I always say to people, Overdeliver. Easy to say, hard to do.
[01:01:17.230] - Big Rich Klein
True. And the other thing is stick to your word.
[01:01:22.700] - Curt Leduc
Yes. And so same thing. When I started with my boys' racing, they had to go to every sponsorship meeting, whether it was a tire company, a light company, whatever, because I wanted them to hear what the people wanted. I didn't want to be just dad saying, Hey, they're going to open up a Valvoline Oil Change Center here in Irvine. We have to go there on Saturday. There was no argument. It was just like, okay. And I knew to teach them that part of the trade. I taught them how to weld. I taught them how to use a tubing bender, how to set up gears. That was all skills. There were some guys in the shop that took them to the next level as far as welding, the tig welding and the prep work, and drilling bolts for safety wire. They learned every piece of it. When you talk about somebody who worked in the mail-room and worked his way up to president of the corporation, he's always going to do a better job than somebody that didn't. I always felt that way, and I got a lot of grief about it over time. But now as my kids are older, they all understand why I did things, and they're in a good place.
[01:02:37.390] - Big Rich Klein
Because of it. Yep, absolutely. Let's talk about something I know that you really like, and that's the swap meat. How did that come about?
[01:02:50.180] - Curt Leduc
I don't really like the swap meat, but it's part of my legacy. Okay. It didn't start that way. How it started was we just had a shop phone back then, right? Everybody had a shop phone. And people would call me, Hey, you got any old seats or you got any old tires, you got any old wheels? Not racers, but just regular people. My phone number was in the phone book just like we all were. California Pre-Fund was my company. So I thought, well, growing up as a kid in New England, there was always swap meets at the local stock art tracks in the spring or in the fall, whatever. I would always go and buy stuff, tools, parts, whatever. I go to Donovie, who had the dealership, and he had just expanded to a second dealership in Placenta, which was the main KIA store. Anyways, I said, Hey, I want to put on the swap meet. You don't need all these. You got a lot of extra space right now. I said, Okay. He's like, Well, let me think about it. He calls me back. He says, Well, I'd have to pay somebody to move all the cars over and if somebody hits one, and then he says, Because there's going to be all these oily parts are going to have to pressure wash the parking lot.
[01:04:15.310] - Curt Leduc
He just convinced me not to. I thought, Well, it's going to be on a Sunday afternoon. We could put 500 people at your dealership. Maybe somebody will buy a car. He's like, Nope. I went to R&D Auto Sales in Fontana. He raced the class eight. And I said, Hey, I want to do the swap meet. You have this extra space in the back? He's like, Yep. And dang it if he didn't sell a car every time we had a swap meet. Perfect. It used to be free to get in for a buyer. And I thought I could make money with the vendors, but it never did cover it. So I had to start charging to get in. And then the Rialto Raceway, Jen and Greg had their little track out there. We moved it to the airport in Rialto. And I gave half the gate to them to help put their series so these young kids could go. But I've moved it around. I like casinos because security and ATMs. Anyways, it gave a life. And that every time I'd see a kid walk out carrying two shocks and his buddy be carrying a seat, you know they were going to put him in his Ranger or his Tacoma and go out to Barstow and go beat on it.
[01:05:44.470] - Curt Leduc
They were the future. So it morphed and I'm proud of it. And it's still a battle to put it on timing wise. But the people that come out, whether it's the race teams that need to get rid of stuff, I don't care. The Herps bring trucks and trailers, Brenthal. It just has a life. And the people come from Mexico to buy to get great deals, perfect. It's turned into two a year. And even during COVID, we managed with Cody from Laser Town. We were able to continue with it and had some great events. We had some bad weather. It's rain or shine. The guys from Desert Ranger used to put a thing about it's canceled. That was not good. But anyways. So yeah, it continues. It'll be part of my legacy, and hopefully it'll continue for a long.
[01:06:46.820] - Big Rich Klein
Long time. They put a thing up. I got to ask about that. They posted that it was canceled and it wasn't. They just assumed because it was raining or were they trying to mess.
[01:07:00.690] - Curt Leduc
With you? No, they were just... It was their running joke that because if it was canceled, if people thought it was canceled, they could go there and buy stuff cheaper because the crowds would be smaller. So it got pretty bad there finally. And it stopped for a while. Then all of a sudden, it popped up again. And so then my phone lights up and the Internet lights up, is it canceled? I found out who had posted it, and I called them on the phone. I said, This is Kurt LeDuke. You have 15 minutes to take your post down about the swap being canceled, or some guys are going to pull up to your house. Here's your address. They're waiting for me to say go or no go. It was gone. It was taken right down, and that was the last I've heard of it.
[01:07:58.960] - Big Rich Klein
That's the way to deal with it, though. The old pirate days were... You got a lot of stuff. I mean, people got a lot of stuff done. The power of the masses. Yeah.
[01:08:12.260] - Curt Leduc
Yeah. And he got inducted into the Hall of Fame. Yes.
[01:08:18.340] - Big Rich Klein
Lance.
[01:08:18.660] - Curt Leduc
Yes. Yeah, Lance did. Yeah, I agree. Anyways, I do it for all the right reasons. I'm sorry I have to charge for it, but with insurance and the casinos and they see the crowds and you guys don't want to know what Port-au-Jones cost and fencing.
[01:08:41.720] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, I understand.
[01:08:44.030] - Curt Leduc
You know, Rich. Yes.
[01:08:45.990] - Big Rich Klein
But it's- All those things that nobody thinks about.
[01:08:49.510] - Curt Leduc
Oh, yeah. We have dumpster, big roll-off dumpsters and scrap metal piles. It's funny, we have a trailer for scrap because I paid by the pound for the dumpster, right? Which people don't know that. So everybody goes to leave, they take all their scrap metal and we make sure it doesn't go in the dumpster. We put it on a trailer. Well, then when the people from Baha come, they go to leave and there's all these UTV roll cages sitting on their trailer. They start loading everything because it's a piece of tubing to them. They can use it, cut it up, make a bumper or whatever. People would be like to put three coil springs there, all different numbers, and then they would go to Baha. I'm like, Great, because now it has a... I should set up a camera someday because it's pretty amazing what goes on as people exit.
[01:09:40.860] - Big Rich Klein
Right. Because everybody comes with stuff and they hope they go home with nothing.
[01:09:45.750] - Curt Leduc
Right. And the herbs actually do. They tell everybody. We were told bring nothing back and they just move their shop. They had a bunch of stuff. Oh, my gosh. And it was just like a feeding frenzy. But I tell people half a million dollars in cash changes hands in 24 hours easily.
[01:10:10.700] - Curt Leduc
And even PCI comes and rugged radio comes and King comes and they sell apparel. And there's not a downside to it, whether it's abrasives. And a guy needs a new intercom or he needs a new race radio, he's got some wheels or junk that's been sitting up in his garage or shed. He comes and sells them, walks right over to PCI or rugged and buys what he needs. It wasn't money out of his pocket, but that money just moves around, around and around.
[01:10:45.570] - Big Rich Klein
It.
[01:10:46.750] - Curt Leduc
Makes me smile. But it's funny because I don't sell anything. I don't have time. I'm just trying to keep the fires out.
[01:10:56.470] - Big Rich Klein
Exactly. That's the part of the event promotion that people don't understand it. I get all these things, where Oh, you should do this. You should add this. You should do that. My son who puts on Trail Hero event, anybody comes up to him now and says, You should do this and add this to your event. And he goes, Great idea. I will give you the opportunity to run with it. All you need to do is this, this, and this, and let's do it. But he turns it right back on them so that he doesn't have another thing on his plate. He just has to provide the space for it. So it works out well.
[01:11:36.700] - Curt Leduc
Let's.
[01:11:39.170] - Big Rich Klein
Talk about your Baha Legends tours.
[01:11:45.140] - Curt Leduc
Yeah, Baha Legends tours started because I got to go on Cameron's Trail of missions trip with Ray Curry and Casey Curry. I realized there's a need for something like that. Not on his scale, not a TV show. This is before UTVs got popular. And so I said, I'm going to do these little four-day trips. And I was up in Moab and I started working on it. And I gave a copy to your wife who immediately corrected all my spelling.
[01:12:19.240] - Big Rich Klein
I wasn't going to bring that up.
[01:12:22.270] - Curt Leduc
But I said I was a good, solid C student, okay. Anyways, it was just... And we started it. My vision was to take a set of a date and have 10 Jeeps or 10 Raptors or whatever go on little four-day trips. But you can't get 10 people that agree to do anything unless it's a huge event like Moab or rock crawling, your events. Anyway, it turned more into companies saying, Okay, we're going to bring some dealers. We're going to bring some of our best customers. Set it all up. And Gerald Lee from Savvy Off Road, his wife, Emmy, doesn't like offroading, loves my trips. It includes going to wine country, Coast to Coast, mountains, cattle ranches, Melling, things. Now we do whale trips. We go to Gueronegro in March, February, March, and we do camping on the lagoon for two days. It's two days down, two days at whale camp. Then we cross over and come back up the Gulf side, Bay of LA. We stay at Chenowis. It's just turned into a great event. We've gone all the way to Cabo. We've done some bigger trips. But every trip is different depending on the weather.
[01:13:57.850] - Curt Leduc
People want me to do UTV ones, but those guys all want to race. I don't want to race. I just want people to take care of their Jeeps or their Raptors and enjoy some of the sights of Baha.
[01:14:11.470] - Big Rich Klein
Right. That's one of the things I love about there down there is the ability to absorb the history and the culture because the people of Baha, especially when you get out of the border zone, the people are so genuine. Absolutely. It's just phenomenal. I can't wait to get back. It's been a while. We're taking care of my parents right now, so we're homebound, you might say, but we're trying to get out more often and see what we can do that way. But I'd like to get back down there because every time I've been to Baha, it's been chasing a race or working for somebody down there. And then we try to take the trip back where we do the few miles camp, few miles camp, few miles camp, and make a trip of it back instead of rush right back.
[01:15:14.440] - Curt Leduc
Yeah. It's hard. It's definitely hard, but very worthwhile. With Cameron, I was hired as a mechanic in Southbrook to deal with it. We'd drive by like Mom Espinosis, and nobody would say anything on the radio. I would start talking about the history. I thought I'd get in trouble. I thought to take my mic away, which I've seen him do. Anyways, but no, it was good. He's worried about trying to get to lunch on time and get to dinner and make sure everything's going smooth. Cameron is. I want those long pavement stretches, I can break it up and get a good conversation going. So there's a lot of team building on these events. And you do four days in Baha, you've made friends for life. They don't just shake your hand. You go to the Offroad Expo, they give you hugs. You know what I mean? And it's just their safety in numbers. And my job is to get us and keep us in safe places and feed everybody right so nobody gets sick. It's just been very rewarding. And so you talk about the Hall of Fame and getting inducted, they always ask, have you given back?
[01:16:38.690] - Curt Leduc
That's one of the main things that the board... So people that like to get somebody inducted always ask those questions and what did they get back. True. That's in the desert. Casey and I talked and I said, Hey, if you're interested, I'd like to do a meeting, be part of the meeting. And he's like, Well, why don't you do a rookie meeting? Casey and I got along good. I said, Yeah, let's start it. It's the beginning of the season, a bunch of new people. Let's start it. And so that was something like he didn't ask anybody else. He thought I could do the job. So it's... That, the swap meet is a way to give back and stay involved in the sport. So many people come into a sport and get burned out and go disappear and they don't stick around. I just've not done. I've got a lot more stuff on my plate. I'm doing a lot with Ford, with the new Broncos and electric vehicles and all off road up in Johnson Valley and being part of the Nore, Bronco team. I just never thought there'd be all this opportunity to share the knowledge that's in my hard drive with people that need it right now.
[01:17:57.040] - Curt Leduc
So it's just been amazing. And I've been very blessed and I'm happy to be where I'm at.
[01:18:05.100] - Big Rich Klein
That's perfect. Let's talk, if you don't mind, about Kyle, your son, and what he's going through. I know that you're doing some things to try to help with that. Let's talk about that a little bit, if you would.
[01:18:24.430] - Curt Leduc
Yeah, Kyle has a very rare form of cancer. It's mostly in children, and they have some treatments for it. It was stage 4 by the time they figured it out. He's been doing a lot of chemo and he wanted to keep it private, which we all respected, deal with it on his own term. He has great insurance. His wife, Amber, did a great job of making sure he had good medical all these years racing. Anyway, so he went through his first round of chemo and they thought he was good. They rang the bell. They thought he was going to go racing. And then they looked deeper and found that it has gone into his bone marrow. And so it could just knock the wind out of everybody. And so when the season was going to start, he had to say something. And a lot of people that were cancer survivors were talking with Kyle that knew privately to help him with what was going to go on, including the Gnassys, which is driving the extremes over in Europe with Sarah. Anyway, so he's got a couple more rounds to go. I actually, Kim and I flew back there, stayed away from him, stayed outside, social distance, wore masks on the airplanes.
[01:19:59.110] - Curt Leduc
His immune system is down, but his spirits are up. So I had to go back there. He didn't want to go fund me. He didn't want to be that guy. He's like, I can sell my race car. I can sell stuff. And I go, Yeah, but fans don't want to just buy a T-shirt. They want to see you come back to the track. They don't care if it's for one race or one year or 10 years. They just want to help. Nobody's maxing out their credit card to help you get a cancer treatment. In person, I was able to convince them to use USAC, which he's a member of. All the short course guys are king of the hammers. I did do a lot of sanctioning, a lot of sprint cars, all kinds of racing. But they have a thing called Race Aid, and you can donate the money in Kyle's name. It sits in that account until Kyle decides what to do with it. I told Kyle if he doesn't need it, and if he's going to go to Mexico or do some experimental stuff or just to fly to Baha, like private, it's just expensive.
[01:21:11.480] - Curt Leduc
He allowed me to start it with USAC. You can buy shirts on his website. You can, Kyle LeDuke-Stron, you can buy shirts from me out here on the West Coast. Julie Boyer had a poker run up at Johnson Valley, and we sold a bunch of shirts and had about 50 people, cars show up, and camped and did a trail ride and raised some money there. That was the very first thing. We're probably going to do something at Glenn Helen. There's a couple of families in our sport that are matching dollar for dollar in the donations. That part has been really amazing and it opened Kyle's eyes and I think it's helping him deal with stuff. He's posting more. He's on social media. He's out in the shop on his good days and working on the new pro four and working with Reed. He's just fighting. He's not out of the fight yet, so he's still fighting. Excellent. We're going to... We're going to go drive to Alabama from Alabama to Crandon and Crandon home starting next week. We'll be at Crandon and saw some shirts out of his pit spot and talking with fans andYeah.
[01:22:46.240] - Curt Leduc
That's the plan for us.
[01:22:47.890] - Big Rich Klein
So if people want to help, they can go through USAC in their race aid program and make a donation.
[01:22:53.640] - Curt Leduc
Yes, you can just click on Yusak, go to race aid, and you can donate with a credit card and just put it in Kyle, the Duke's name. But I can admit if Kyle doesn't need this money, there's some other racers that can't raise the funds that will need it and he can donate it to them. Or he can let it sit there until his kids go to college. I'm just saying, just as a dad, I thought we should start. I don't want to be late to the game. And so he's talked to doctors in Mexico. We have personal connections down there with Herado Novelo for stem cell and some other treatments that aren't allowed in the US. So he's going to ride out the US treatments and then see what he has to do. So everybody that's donated and been part of it has been amazing.
[01:23:56.190] - Big Rich Klein
Well, that's great. That's awesome. And I wish Kyle and his immediate family and everybody, brothers and sisters, the whole family, I wish you guys all the best. And I hope that they are able to get this taken care of and that Kyle's got a long life ahead of him. I really do.
[01:24:26.810] - Curt Leduc
Yeah. I mean, you look at examples like John Marking who got cancer as a young man, and he had, he kept coming back and he kept fighting and kept fighting. And you just never know. I mean, everybody has a cancer story, whether it's your parents, your friends, family, family. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but it's just it's in God's hands. Yes, it is.
[01:24:57.190] - Big Rich Klein
Well, I want to say, Kurt, thank you so much for spending the time answering my phone call and coming on the podcast. Congratulations on your 2015 induction into the Offroad Motor Sports Hall of Fame. I hope to see you in September at the Gala in Vegas this year. Maybe we can tip one back and reminisce some more.
[01:25:30.250] - Curt Leduc
Yeah, there's a lot of history. It's a great sport and some great families in it. And the young kids are always going to be faster, smarter, even if they just sit there and look at their phones. Their brains are working. True.
[01:25:49.800] - Big Rich Klein
Very true.
[01:25:50.710] - Curt Leduc
All right, Rich, thank you very much. Look forward to seeing you up there at the Hall of Fame and.
[01:25:58.110] - Big Rich Klein
See.
[01:25:58.340] - Curt Leduc
What the future holds.
[01:25:59.640] - Big Rich Klein
Absolutely. It was great talking to you. Thank you.
[01:26:02.230] - Curt Leduc
Okay, bye. Bye.
[01:26:04.620] - Big Rich Klein
Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you would think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gust of you can. Thank you.