Boats, Baja, and Bolstering the Rebelle Rally with Brian Busby in Episode 298

Big Rich sits down with Brian Busby, the SoCal gearhead who turned a love of speed into a life in racing—and became “the fuel guy” for some of off-road’s biggest events.

From San Clemente surf breaks near Nixon’s Western White House to wrenching through ROP, Brian shares how a 16-year-old with a Baja Bug ended up racing everything from Class 8 to Trophy Truck and Class 1 (including a 2019 championship). Hear about his first official race—the 1987 Baja 500 that lasted two miles—his drag boat days piloting “Bad Idea” hydros, and the heart-stopping moments riding with Dale Dondel and surviving a 110-mph roll with Brandon Arthur.

Brian also dives into his 17-year Mercedes-Benz career as a specialty engineer (including authoring a global TSB), his pivot to racing fuels, and scaling a small shop into a West Coast powerhouse supplying F&L, VP, and Sunoco—before landing at Merritt Oil and helping launch Fuel Factory across the Western states and Mexico.

Don’t miss the backstory of the Rebelle Rally: the cold, chaotic first year, how fueling 50 teams turned into fueling an entire city-on-wheels, and the now-legendary Busby Games—born from “Busbyland” and officially part of Rebelle lore.

Transcript

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[00:00:05.100] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road 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 off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.

[00:00:46.400] - 

Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis 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.

[00:01:12.880] - Big Rich Klein

From Baja Bugs to becoming I'm the Fuel Guy. My next guest is none other than Brian Busby. Brian Busby, it is so good to have you on the podcast. I've been looking forward to this since meeting you and becoming friends like 10 10 years ago.

[00:01:31.120] - Brian Busby

Yeah. Yeah, it was about 10 years. It's been fun.

[00:01:33.580] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. So it's going to be good to do this conversation. So welcome aboard.

[00:01:38.140] - Brian Busby

Well, thanks for having me.

[00:01:39.960] - Big Rich Klein

So let's get started right away with the very first question that I ask everybody, where were you born and raised?

[00:01:49.620] - Brian Busby

Born and raised in Southern California. So specifically, San Clemente, California.

[00:01:54.860] - Big Rich Klein

Really? As you were growing up, did you ever see Richard Nixon out on the beach with his- No.

[00:02:02.180] - Brian Busby

Unfortunately not. He was a little bit before my time. Okay. Yeah.

[00:02:07.120] - Big Rich Klein

I figured- We did surf out in front of his house at Cotton Point.

[00:02:11.780] - Brian Busby

So it's a great break out there.

[00:02:13.830] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, perfect. Yeah, I heard he used to walk around with his metal detector, going doy doy doy.

[00:02:20.080] - Brian Busby

Yeah, and the Secret Service used to kick all the older surfers out. We always heard those stories. So it's cool to just be able to have the Western Whitehouse in Saint Clemente. It's part of our history.

[00:02:28.700] - Big Rich Klein

There you go. So let's talk about that. What was your family? How did they get to Southern California? Were they always from there, or did they move in? What's that?

[00:02:42.400] - Brian Busby

My mom was born and raised in Oklahoma, and in the '60s, her parents moved her out here. They wanted to have a career in Hollywood. She did her whole life, she grew up with jazz, tap, and ballet lessons, and came out and actually was in a bunch of beauty pageants and stuff. And they actually, my grandparents, owned a restaurant in Farmer's Market in Los Angeles called Pat's Country Kitchen. So that's how they came out there. They owned a country club in Oklahoma before they came out. So they were always in the hospitality restaurant type business. And then my father, he was born and raised in Culver City. I'm sorry, that was Santa Monica. We moved to Culver City. And after they divorced, we moved down to Orange County and ended up in Saint Clemente. Okay. So that's how that all worked out.

[00:03:36.020] - Big Rich Klein

And how old were you when they divorced?

[00:03:39.040] - Brian Busby

I was seven at the time.

[00:03:40.900] - Big Rich Klein

Seven, okay.

[00:03:41.840] - Brian Busby

Yeah. So pretty much my whole life that I remember, is in South Orange County.

[00:03:46.580] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, so let's talk about those years. What was school like for you?

[00:03:51.460] - Brian Busby

School was fun. So moved back and forth. Mostly it was San Clemente, but my parents had a house that they rented out in Mission Viejo, so we I dropped back over there a couple of times, so I switched in junior high, but my high school years were all San Clemente. But it was fun. South Orange County in the '80s and '90s was totally different than it is today. So I mean, the '80s growing up down there, it was fun. We had a blast. So there was a tight knit group of kids that ran around together. Most of us are all still friends to this day.

[00:04:24.440] - Big Rich Klein

I know that a lot of Orange County kids ended up working some point or had friends that worked at Disneyland?

[00:04:33.460] - Brian Busby

My sister actually did, yes. So she worked there for years. And yes, a lot of our friends ended up working up at Disneyland. She did the retail side of it and was in all the stores and moved around doing cashier and stocking and so on and so forth. It was fun going into Disneyland. She could sneak us in. What's not known about Disneyland is it's actually three or four stories deep below at that point. It might even be deeper at that point. That's how they transport all the food and supplies around the park is underground. That's how she would get us in through the employee entrance. So walk us in. We had to do the honking wave at the security guard, act like we belonged there. So it was fun.

[00:05:14.660] - Big Rich Klein

While I was going to college in Southern California, or Santa Barbara, a lot of the Southern California people that I went to school with had worked there. Excuse me, yeah. And they always, every one of them called it the Tragic Kingdom.

[00:05:30.420] - Brian Busby

Yes. There's a lot of drama and a lot of craziness as far as relationships go. It's just interesting watching her grow up through that. But she was there probably five, eight years, something like that. Wow. So, yeah.

[00:05:42.760] - Big Rich Klein

How about yourself? What did you do?

[00:05:46.760] - Brian Busby

I went through ROP in high school and actually worked as a mechanic and stuff with Mercedes Benz, and then actually went to college and got my engineering degree and ended up working for Mercedes Benz USA. Traveled around the country, but was doing that for quite a while. And as far as Houston, Texas, Baton Rouge, Austin, Texas, back to Southern California. So I moved up through the ranks and was with them for quite a while. And yeah, that's what my history is on work-wise. Okay.

[00:06:22.520] - Big Rich Klein

Early years in school and stuff, besides surfing, what other interests did you have? Did you know Oh, gosh. Sports at all?

[00:06:31.240] - Brian Busby

Anything? Racing, racing, racing, and boats and boats. Got my first car at 16, Baha Bug, took it down to Mexico way too many times, entered in a couple of local races, and that's when it got me into the racing world, started, and then ended up Drag Boat Racing for quite a long time, got involved with the National Jet Boat Association as board member, race director, president, vice president. I had pretty much all the positions over a 15, 20 year period of time. Wow, okay. That was my passion. It's always been cars. I'm like Ricky Bobby. I just wanted to go fast.

[00:07:12.240] - Big Rich Klein

Why jet boats instead of prop boats?

[00:07:17.060] - Brian Busby

I actually ended up with a alcohol hydro, which was 190 mile an hour boat, which was a prop boat. But jet boats were, when you're early on in your 20s, they were the easiest and cheapest ones to get involved with. That's why I gave it in one of those, and then slowly but surely move up to faster and faster. What people don't understand is with the positive displacement of water, it doesn't compress. They accelerate a lot harder. The jet boats do. So while the prop boats will be going faster, top speed, the jet boats are quicker. They take off harder. So they both have their benefits to drag boat racing or just boating in general.

[00:07:59.400] - Big Rich Klein

We We found that when I was younger, we had a flat bottom. It was an old woodhaul Glennell missile, and we had about a 500 horsepower, 327 in it, four deuces to two FI heads, all that. And a big speed prop. And what we found is we also ran with a guy that had a blower boat that was a pickle hole, and he was really fast. Our boat would just top out a little over 100 miles an hour. It was closer to 130 or 40. And I'm talking back in the '60s, in late '60s, '70s. I can remember the jet boats, and our boat, because of the hole design or the cavitation plates, I'm not sure what it was, but our boat would just jump out of the Right.

[00:09:01.300] - Brian Busby

They will. The flat bottoms will, for sure.

[00:09:04.310] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, and it would just launch just crazy, where the jet boats were always like, Oh, yeah, we can beat you, and never came across any that did, whether it was Barriessa or any of the lakes in Northern California where all the boats hung out. But we always laughed at the jet boats.

[00:09:25.960] - Brian Busby

We always got that, too. Going out to Parker and stuff like that, stuff like that, Colorado River, Havasu, they'd be like, Oh, yeah, sure. It's 100 miles. Everybody had 100-mile-an-hour boat. But in reality, they're all 55, 60-mile-an-hour boats. But it took quite a while for the jet boats nowadays. They're crazy fast. I mean, they've got twin turbos, they've got superchargers, they've got all billet aluminum pumps and stuff. I mean, way different than before. But it took quite a while for the jet boats to actually catch up to the V-bottoms or the V-drives and the flat bottoms.

[00:09:58.280] - Big Rich Klein

Right. So they got to get that The jets are only allowing so much water.

[00:10:03.680] - Brian Busby

Exactly. The intake. And then now they have loaders, and they've got the technologies there now to actually see and see parts and stuff. Back in the day, it was just welding up angle iron to try to load your pump. But the faster guys were always typically the V-bottom, or the V-Drive, I should say, V-bottom, and Pickle Fork hydro guys.

[00:10:24.120] - Big Rich Klein

Fun times.

[00:10:25.800] - Brian Busby

They were, for sure.

[00:10:27.360] - Big Rich Klein

So, boats and drag races, Racing, or off-road racing, not drag racing. It was boats, were drag.

[00:10:35.880] - Brian Busby

Boats and off-road racing. Those were my two. And dabbled in some drag racing, but that wasn't really where my passion was. Passion actually came along with the off-road racing. That's my biggest passion that I have as far as racing is.

[00:10:50.840] - Big Rich Klein

How did that bite? When did that hit?

[00:10:54.300] - Brian Busby

When I got my first Baha bug at 16. Okay. So that was it. Yeah. Because Cameron Steele had a bug that ran around 5, 1,600 car that was called Stars and Stripes. And his dad, Big Daddy, we all called him, brought in all the rug rats of the neighborhood and stuff. So we grew up around that whole era. And there was a ton of the Scalzo brothers. I mean, San Clemente is a hotspot for off-road racing because we're so close to the Baja border. And you had Johnny Campbell was from San Clemente, so the Campbell brothers. We had the Tomato fields, which were right by Shorecliffs Junior High School, so we ride dirt bikes out in those tomago fields. So all of us were just at the beach surfing, dirt bike riding, stealing gas out of our parents' lawn more gas cans. Just think about a bunch of Little Rascals, but in the '80s in San Clemente. That's what we were. We're all just running around together having fun. But that's where that bit for the off-road racing for me. That's where it started it.

[00:11:54.980] - Big Rich Klein

You grew up with Campbells in And Cameron Spiel?

[00:12:01.320] - Brian Busby

Yes. We ran in different little circles, but within the same big circle. Yes. So we all went. Cameron and I actually graduated high school the same year. Okay. Johnny, he had two years before us, I believe. Okay.

[00:12:14.040] - Big Rich Klein

And what was your first official off-road race?

[00:12:21.320] - Brian Busby

The 1987 Baha 500.

[00:12:24.200] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, really? Okay.

[00:12:25.720] - Brian Busby

Yeah, so that was official one. Entered the Baha bug. I had a Baha, too. I made it two miles before it blew up. So that was my initial deal. Parents didn't even know. I was not even supposed to take the bug off anywhere out of San Clemente. I was telling I was at a friend's house, and we all went down there and borrowed money and parts and stuff. Back then, it was not that hard to get tech through. Nowadays, it's like insane. But yeah, it was just taken off. I went down there and first turn, blew the transaxle. My race is over. But I had a blast doing it. I I was hooked.

[00:13:01.600] - Big Rich Klein

Only two miles.

[00:13:03.040] - Brian Busby

Only two miles. Baja, two. Yes, exactly. So that was quite a few years ago.

[00:13:07.900] - Big Rich Klein

And what was the first race that you completed?

[00:13:13.000] - Brian Busby

Parker 400, I want to say 1991. So I was co-driving. I was one of the co-driving, one of three. And we ran in a Class VII. Back then, it was a different class. I don't remember if it was 7S. It was a I had a mini truck, Nissan truck, the King Cab. We ended up racing and won. And that was exciting. But I was still young at that point. I was still dabbling in the boat racing, and they just threw me in the truck. But yeah, that was an awesome experience. And then from there through the '90s, moved up to Class 8, raced with Duke, McRay Glass, a lot of good big names in the Class 8, and then I moved on to trophy trucks, and I've rid, raced, I don't know how many teams with trophy trucks, but been doing it ever since. So Class I, we had the Class I Championship in 2019. I raced about just about everything, a 1,600 car. I bought my son a 1,600 car. When he turned 16, I thought he would get the bug like me or the bite for racing. And he's like, I'd rather go to Barnes & Noble and play on PlayStation.

[00:14:25.470] - Brian Busby

I was like, But it's a Class XVI car. You're 16. This is awesome. And then he's Yeah, no, thanks. I got with a guy named Tim Morton, who's a bike guy, and he and I took it out for a couple of races and had fun in it, just the sportsman class, getting our feet wet in it because I was still racing Class 8 at that time with the location racing team. But we had a blast doing that and ended up eventually selling it to a team in Vegas. I see them every now and then. They come buy fuel from me. So we were in the nes.

[00:14:58.200] - Big Rich Klein

What What student were you? I mean, just you explaining things. I would imagine you probably spent a lot more time working towards schooling before you got your year before '16. After '16, you were more feral?

[00:15:20.000] - Brian Busby

Yeah, a lot more feral. I was a good student. I was an AD student, so all the way through high school and stuff. But then I was taking summer school classes because my mom was just keeping us busy because we were starting to get feral. And then halfway through my sophomore year, they're like, well, what do you want to do next semester? Because I had already taken all the academic stuff, the Capital Valley Unified School district required of us. And they said, do you want to just do electives from now on? And I said, what do you mean? And they're like, well, you've done everything. So I had already done it all the way through the senior year, and that backfired on my mom. And I'm like, well, do I have to do electives? And I'm like, No, you've completed those as well. So they actually had... I could test out at that point. You could use to be able to test out if you could pass the test and you can graduate. So I graduated in my sophomore year, so from high school. But then it was, Well, if you're going to do that, you need to go straight to college.

[00:16:16.100] - Brian Busby

So then it was off to Saddleback College to Junior College because I was already ROP and they had an automotive side of it. But then I just focused on mechanical engineering. Like I said, I was more into how to make the internal combustion engine work better, go faster, all the geometry of suspension and whatnot to try to figure it out. That's where the mechanical automotive engineering side of the degree came from. I just kept running with that. Just wanted to go faster, build it better type thing. So that's basically the student I was.

[00:16:49.740] - Big Rich Klein

So does that mean that you did not have a grad night party?

[00:16:54.780] - Brian Busby

Oh, I had grad night parties, but they just weren't my grad night party.

[00:16:58.080] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. You still got Did you have a great experience at proms?

[00:17:01.800] - Brian Busby

Oh, yeah, I did proms and all that stuff. The girlfriend was still in high school. All my buddies were still there. I didn't leave type thing. I was still there. It was just I didn't have to go to school. I could go surf more, play more. So I mean, that's It was like my mom was very shocked. So at that point in time. But my stepfather, who I called my dad, they got married in 1980. He was a speech pathologist, a doctor. So he was pretty strict, ex Air Force guy. So he was like, you need to hunk her down and get her done type thing. So you can't just mess around, do things half-ass. You got to do everything right. So that's what groom me, let's say, the whole thing, into who I am today.

[00:17:47.280] - Big Rich Klein

All right. Perfect. And so let's talk about some of the rate. Well, let's talk about your work career. You were working for Mercedes? Yes. And what job did you hold with them?

[00:18:05.580] - Brian Busby

I was a specialty engineer. I would go to the dealerships where they had problems with the cars. Okay. And they couldn't figure out and work with shop. Well, a technician all the way up through that. Started off just changing oil and all joints and breaks, stuff like that early on. But then as I was graduating through my classes through college, they have job codes that you can actually move up and you have to get this... Just the same thing as a teacher would have. They get years in service and education. Then you can move to the next level. And then I just applied. And the first one that I got was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a specialty engineer. And then so they moved me out there. They didn't have... Southern California was the prime area, so it was hard to get out here. You had to wait until somebody retired or quit before you could make it back out. So I slowly moved back over Baton Rouge, back to Houston, Austin, bigger Metropolitan areas. And then finally, they had one out here on the Western region. So that's when I got to come in over here.

[00:19:06.640] - Brian Busby

I worked for dealerships like Fletcher Jones, and I did work at the dealerships of Fletcher Jones, Mercedes Bins, Laguna Gal, Beverly Hills, Mercedes Bins, going in and helping shop foremen and service managers diagnose problems on vehicles.

[00:19:22.060] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. That's cool.

[00:19:24.680] - Brian Busby

Yeah, it was cool. Did that for almost 17 years.

[00:19:27.920] - Big Rich Klein

That's a lot better than just working out of the same bay every day.

[00:19:32.820] - Brian Busby

Exactly. It was cool because I really loved it because I figured it out. That's the person that I am, the figured out guy. In working there, there's one I remember that was in Newport Beach that we fought for probably 6-10 months. This lady said, Every time I go up this hill, turn on Bayside Drive. It was literally right across from the dealership with a quarter tank of gas, the car will stall. It was a brand new car. We're like, No way. We went up there and kept happening, kept trying to diagnose it. It turns out inside the fuel cell or the gas tank, there's a spiral port that's in there that actually is where the pickup is for the fuel pump. It keeps it from sloshing around and keeps the fuel in an even flow going into the fuel pump. In that, it was all made out of a polyurethane plastic. There was a little slag of plastic that at that level would roll around and plug off the deal and would kill the fuel pressure and car would die. She wasn't lying. But that was the one that I'll never forget. It's just like, never give up.

[00:20:46.370] - Brian Busby

You will figure it out. And we figured it out. And then that actually became a technical service bulletin internationally for Mercedes-Benz, and I got to author of that. So that was cool.

[00:20:57.720] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty cool. I would have just told her, Don't go below a quarter tank.

[00:21:04.540] - Brian Busby

There you go, exactly. It's like a doctor that says, It hurts when I put my arm like this. Well, don't put your arm like that.

[00:21:09.180] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. Yeah.

[00:21:12.360] - Brian Busby

But yeah, so that was cool. But that was a limit law car, but we still wanted to figure out what the problem was because if it was happening here, it's probably happening somewhere else. And that's what those TSBs are for, is to actually say, Hey, if you're experiencing this, do this, and give them the part numbers and what they need to do, because we had replaced almost everything Everything in the fuel injection system, trying to figure the thing out. And it was just crazy. But, yeah, Mercedes did a lot of fun.

[00:21:38.980] - Big Rich Klein

So then you're working for Mercedes back in Southern California, and you're racing. Correct. So that's why the gap between '87 Baja 500 and '91, Parker 400? Or did you have a lot of races in between?

[00:21:59.080] - Brian Busby

There were races. Oh, quite a few in between, but just not as frequent, because I was actually focused more on school and getting my... I had kids at that point. So it was trying... Oh, no, it was '92 was when Quiana was born. But that was what was going on, as I was actually focusing on school and starting up my career and getting moving on. Yeah.

[00:22:18.940] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. And how did you manage racing while you were in Louisiana, or Houston, or Austin?

[00:22:28.020] - Brian Busby

Just that's when I dabbled in the drag stuff. So it couldn't be the boat racing stuff. So we would go to the drag strip. Had a front engine altered, like a 32 Willies fiber glass body. Ended up with the alcohol dragster, ran comp eliminator. I mean, there was a whole drag racing phase that I went through, but it wasn't really, like I say, my deep passion. When I got back to California, I ended up working with a few alcohol funny car teams that doing bottom-end work, and was just doing engine work because I loved it. And I did the divisional races here in the Southwest, or Southeast. Southwest, sorry. But Southeast was more of me racing over there.

[00:23:14.120] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Of all the racing that you've done, say, boat, car, and off-road, I'm going to say probably off-road is your favorite.

[00:23:24.760] - Brian Busby

Off-road is definitely my favorite. So the capsule boat, the alcohol hydro, was It was fun, but my drag boats were named Bad Idea because they were a bad idea. That's the first thing that my mom said when she found out I got it, she's like, Oh, Brian, that's such a bad idea. I'm like, There's the boat name. So then I ended up on alcohol hydro with Bad Idea number seven because I crashed quite a few. It was stupid but fun. But once the kids started getting older, it's very dangerous. I mean, you crash in water, you're going underwater type thing. You have a oxygen mask on and stuff like that, and hope rescue comes gets to you. But when you hit water at 200 miles an hour, all of a sudden, that's like hitting a concrete wall. It's not forgiving. At that point, I was already off-road racing as well, just part-time, and started saying, You know what? I'm done with the drag boat. And so ended up teaming up with other teams. And at this point, I had left Mercy Sadies Benz and my father, he was an executive for IBM. He was the one that divorced my mom.

[00:24:36.420] - Brian Busby

Well, he retired in 2005 from IBM. And then he moved to Brazil. He was living in Rio de Janeiro in São Paulo. But he had a house in New Port Beach. He came back and said, Hey, I need some passive income. What do you think? And so there was an automotive repair chain called Orange County Auto that was for sale, and they had six facilities. I said, Well, I could run these. They already have managers, and you can be down there, and we'll split the profits. So we bought them, and they sold racing fuel. I found out really quick that it was a lot easier to make money to sell Drummer Racing Field than it was to have a guy doing a water pump. I'd make a lot more money at doing that. So slowly but surely, racks were coming out of the stalls, and then more race fuel was showing up, and it just snowballed. And we ended up closing five of the facilities, kept one of them, and then that one was in Mission Viejo, and created an off-road FAB shop at that place. And then we half FAB shop and then half race fuel.

[00:25:46.270] - Brian Busby

And then I just said, You know what? This is what I'm going to do. So that's when I left Mercedes Benz.

[00:25:52.400] - Big Rich Klein

Interesting. Yeah.

[00:25:53.400] - Brian Busby

And the rest is history.

[00:25:54.820] - Big Rich Klein

So that's how you became the fuel guy?

[00:25:58.040] - Brian Busby

Yes. There was some family that dabbled in fuels and oils and stuff like that. But that's how I became the Race fuel guy. That's all I do now is Race fuel. And then that was 20 years ago. More than 20, 23 years now. And then, yeah, it just snowballed. And then I got to working with Deon and Sons. It got too big for me, and I didn't have the capital to actually grow it into the next level. I got with them and they said, who is one of my suppliers of one of the brands F&L. And I went to them and I said, hey, I just can't keep moving on at this pace. And they said, why don't you just come run the race field division? So I ended up selling off Orange County Auto. And that was 2005 or 2003. I'm sorry. 2005 was when I became the general manager. I came on as a business development director and then grew into general manager in '05. So that was 20 years ago. And yeah, we ran F&L, Snoco, Veepee. Those are the brands that we carried for the longest time. Matt owned the F&L brand, so that was nice having a house brand here on the West Coast.

[00:27:12.230] - Brian Busby

Veepee, we were over the Western five states. It was California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, and Baja, California, which was great for me with the off-road racing because for work, I got to go race. Exactly. And all the other I mean, the Mint 400, all the best in the desert, Snore more, all the local off-road races as well. We had teams that would go out and actually with the truck and trailers. I grew that from being a two-person operation up to having about 75 in the racing division. Ultimately, Matt, in 2019, sold the business, and it ended up getting bought by Chevron. Chevron didn't want to do leaded race deals anymore, so they eliminated my division, and I transferred to where I'm at now with Marriott Oil. Two executives from Veepee Racing Fuels left Veepee and created their own brand called Fuel Factory. When they jump ship, that's when I'm going with you guys because it was all the same time frame. That's where I'm at now. And still, now I'm doing the Western seven states, including Alaska and Hawaii and Mexico as well.

[00:28:25.560] - Big Rich Klein

Cool.

[00:28:26.580] - Brian Busby

Yeah. That's how I became the fuel guy. License plate actually says fuel guy on it. Half the people don't... The people, either they know me or I'm the fuel guy. I was like, Hey, fuel guy, type thing when you're walking through the Vegas pits. I'm like, Yeah, what's going on?

[00:28:42.660] - Big Rich Klein

So you're racing. Talk about some of the teams that you've raced with.

[00:28:51.980] - Brian Busby

I have to be in my office, and I'll have to send a picture over so you can actually show it to everybody. I've got stacks of plaques and trophies and pictures. Cops Racing Team with the Langley Brothers. I raced with the Donahos in the Stockfold class. I raced with the Parkhouses with Class One, Dale Dondal with a trophy truck, Brandon Arthur in his trophy truck, McCrae Glass in his Class 8 truck. Yeah, the list goes on and on. Then I'm looking at another area that's all That's another crazy section. But yeah, I tried to go through and compile, and it just got to be overwhelming as far as all of the stuff that I've done over 35 years of this. And it's just like it's a lot to go through. And I have a spreadsheet somewhere that I can pull up to add to. But I'm still racing, so it's hard because we're still going down. Right now, I'm with the Gump brothers in their two-wheel drive trophy truck. So that racing this season. So there's a lot. So the guys are brothers. So I mean, there's been a lot. So I've done a lot with those guys.

[00:30:11.380] - Brian Busby

But yeah, Class 10. Yeah, quite a bit.

[00:30:19.400] - Big Rich Klein

Who has been... Let me see how I can put this so that you can answer it. Who's been the scariest that you've driven with?

[00:30:31.180] - Brian Busby

Scariest? Definitely Dale Dondal, being his navigator. So Dale is fast, and I've talked to him about this. Dale is good, very good. But Dale doesn't listen all the time. So there have been times where I'm calling out, Hey, we're doing 130 down a pole line road. And I'm like, Hard 90 left, coming up in a half mile, quarter mile, eighth mile. Yep, that was the hard left. I have to tap him on the head. It's like, Are you listening to me? What am I doing over here? That thing. But it was when he was in the zone and trying to think about 10 steps ahead. But he's also driving, and he drives with a sequential, and he's just one hand on the steering wheel, the other one on the shifter. It's like he could have a cool light in his other hand on the one on the wheel. It's just he's so calm in the truck. But man, is he fast? But yeah, I raced with him for four or five years. He was fun. So that was not scary, but probably I was on most edge with him. Let's put it that way.

[00:31:33.920] - Big Rich Klein

Right. So at one time I was putting on, I used to own Vora, okay? And I was out in the Hawthorn area, And I was running along a pole line road that is not really like a long, straight pole line road, at least in this one section, because it goes up over some rocks and you got to... There's all these switch switchbacks and things like that. And I was at the top and I was looking down over the side where the road switched back down below. And I noticed there was scrape marks on the top of all these big boulders. I'm talking like six and eight foot size boulders.

[00:32:16.760] - Brian Busby

Oh, wow.

[00:32:17.400] - Big Rich Klein

And it was just like somebody had been running that pole line in Vegas to Reno and just didn't make the first switch back, and then just skipped off the rocks And I actually walked down to see if I could see any parts.

[00:32:38.260] - Brian Busby

Parts or damaged. Yeah, exactly.

[00:32:39.960] - Big Rich Klein

And all I found was skip marks off the rocks.

[00:32:43.300] - Brian Busby

Well, that must have been good clean up then. Yeah, that's nuts. That is a fast section out there when you get to Top Gun and Rawhide and all those areas. Yes. And you really get into it. There was one year where Dale and I were racing, and we were tossing it up with Jesse Jones, and we got to that the Top Gun area where the big rollers are. And we're just... He was in front, we got in front, he was in front. We're just literally door to door. And we hit one of the rollers at the same time off that when we both were in the air and the trucks just came together and barely tapped. And I'm like, We're going over, and everything like that. But we both landed down and pulled it off. And we were yelling like little girls in the truck. We were so stoked that we didn't wreck. But that was when we got over to Mina and they just had to give us a splash. And we were running in the first place, and six gallons, one of those little small dump cans. And we're like, They're taking forever.

[00:33:36.540] - Brian Busby

And Dale's raving the truck, I do one of those things. And then finally, they're like, Go, go, go. So we left. I don't I don't remember who won that race. But anyhow, we come pulling in and we get up onto the stage and we were being interviewed and all that stuff, and it was all done. George was there. And once we were done, it went to start the truck up, wouldn't start, ran out of gas. So he pushed us off. I'm like, Oh, man, aren't we lucky? Coming down that hill and everything. Got it onto the trailer and everything else. I look over and that dump can is still full. Well, the guy who was supposed to put the vent on the other redhead didn't put it on there so it wouldn't dump because there was nowhere for the fuel to go with pressure. They just said, Well, we figured you guys would be fine. I'm like, What if we weren't fine? And then I was like, And not only that, the fuel guy would have been out of gas. I mean, that would have been horrible. That's funny when Parkhouse had all these four That's when we were in it in San Felipe, when I was racing with them, they came along.

[00:34:34.240] - Brian Busby

He's like, I'm never going to hear the end of it. Parkhouse tire, tire guy just had all four flat. So I'm like, Yeah, we're not going to finish here. Those are the things you don't want to do.

[00:34:43.400] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:34:44.780] - Brian Busby

Yeah.

[00:34:45.640] - Big Rich Klein

Pretty funny. Out in that area one time, had a race, and it was between the Top Gun area. I think we were racing out of Top Gun, possibly. It may have been out of Hawthorn, but there was this long stretch of big rollers, high speed, like the roads on the Rebell, where that first year. And these two cars, I'm just sitting out there in my suburban. I'm watching these guys come down this road, and it's two class one or class 10 cars, and two buggies. And all of a sudden, one guy is just trying to bump the other one, And then all of a sudden, they hooked bumpers, front to back.

[00:35:34.720] - Brian Busby

So they're locked up?

[00:35:36.170] - Big Rich Klein

Locked up. And of course, that didn't go well really quick. And so I see them just start tumbling. They're still hooked together. Finally, In the last roll of five or six, they separated, but they were right next to each other. And there was still dust in the air. And I pull up in the suburban jumping out, Hey, you guys okay? And they're like, How in the hell did How did you get here so quick? Because they wouldn't have seen me. I was probably 100 yards off the course on a high spot, but they had no clue that I was in that area. And they wreck. And here I am already there, up riding, getting them ready, going. And they were just like, I can't believe that you were there.

[00:36:22.500] - Brian Busby

Yeah. It's funny. I had a not so good event, but we had a by happenstance, slanting in front of somebody I was in Brandon Arthur's truck, and it's on YouTube. You can see Brandon Arthur crash if anybody wants to go look it up. And we were racing a Lucerne race a while back, and we lost the steering servo and went over at about 110 miles an hour. It was a bad wreck. So rolled like six times. And my head was hitting outside through the net. Every time the truck was landing, it was landing on my side. So I was knocked. Well, I don't remember anything, but what was in the video. But apparently, I was moaning and my arms were flailing around once we stopped rolling. Where we landed was we landed in front of three off-duty Navy paramedics just happened to be camping out there, not for the race. But we were landed right in front of their pits. So you see in the live video, you'll see the guy's like, We need help. So they ended up getting me out of there. I got over to the cops team because they were about half a mile to two mile down from us where they were racing a Class I and Trophy truck at that race.

[00:37:34.580] - Brian Busby

They got me with their paramedic, got me out of there, got me to the hospital and everything else. But it was a... How lucky were we to just happen to crash at that moment in time? So I think that somebody upstairs was definitely watching over us at that day. So then again, mom chimes in, Bad idea, Brian. And she has this saying that I don't like too much. She's like, You know I made you from scratch. I'm like, You know that's gross. But we It's funny that she says that. She's like, Everything you do. So of course, she's like, So you're done racing? I'm like, Oh, heck no. I'm going to get better and we're going to go back. And four months later, I was back in a truck again. So it's getting back on the horse. But that was quite a few years ago. I think that was 2014-ish. But yeah, talk about being in the right place at the right time. You were there, and those Navy paramedics were there. So thank God for them.

[00:38:25.660] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it's amazing that things like that can happen. We had a kid with a... We first started racing, letting quads race with us, and the quads would run out on one of the desert courses early and then finish before I let the cars go out. And we'd call it, and we'd pull them off the race course at road crossings and stuff and make sure everybody was off before we started the cars and trucks. But there was one- Which is a smart way to do it.

[00:38:57.600] - Brian Busby

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:58.540] - Big Rich Klein

And so because we gave him a timeline. Okay, you got to be at this finish line by this time, or else we're pulling you off the course. There is no finish.

[00:39:06.700] - Brian Busby

You're not going to take all day. And that's where I think best in the desert was wrong, and a lot of the stuff that they did, let it keep going. But it was a different time. But yeah, that's the proper way to do it. And I think score should follow suit as well.

[00:39:16.860] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. And so what we did is there was a kid out there that it was one of the, I want to say it was one of the raptor type quads when they first came out or something like that. And it was just The kid was a big kid for being like a 12 or 14 year old. But this bike that he was on was just huge. I mean, it was whatever the biggest thing was available that had just come out. And of course, dad bought it for him. And when I saw it in tech and I'm like, you're really going to let your son drive? Oh, yeah, he's big enough. He can throw it around. I'm like, yeah, but I don't think he's ready for something like this. And I was told during pre-runs that the kid would just go scream and pass people on the straight aways and then lose it in all the corners, get blown off the course. And so dad and I talked about it. And then he's like, no, it'll be okay. It'll be okay. And it was like halfway around the lap and we were out in Winnamucca area, not Love Lock area, excuse me, Love Lock.

[00:40:24.660] - Big Rich Klein

And we ended up having to lifelight that kid out, broken pelvis and That's a shame. Some broken bones and some ribs and stuff like that. But what did he do? He just went off the course, blown a corner.

[00:40:38.400] - Brian Busby

Yeah. And that's the problem. They might think that they're doing really good when they're out in the desert camps and stuff like that. But then when you get into racing, your adrenaline starts pumping, and that's a heavy... Raptors, those are big quads. And you need a more lightweight quad with a wider stance. It'll actually be faster. But you can only tell people until you're blue in the face, and they're going to do what they're to do. But that's unfortunate that he went through that. But he learned a valuable lesson. So check up before the turn.

[00:41:06.140] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. So let's talk about some of the other things that you have done, besides as the fuel guy, you get to not only do off-road races, but do you do other kinds of racing for him?

[00:41:20.180] - Brian Busby

Oh, yes. We sell in all types of racing, road racing, drag racing. I mean, we have track dealers that go out on site that have pumping systems on it, so we can actually feel like. Cory Mac, the VW Drag Car guy, he had his world finals at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last December. We did that for him. We do rounding around dirt tracks all over the place. They blow through a ton of 110 in bulk. So I love those guys. I've done everything, even down to at the Ventura Fairgrounds one year, they had ice chest races where they put Briggs and Stratons in them, and they were seats on them and little wheels on those things, and they race those things around. I'm like, You guys are crazy. But yeah, you'd be surprised. If it has an engine in it, I'm selling. The Skado guys up there in Washington and Oregon, they have the snowmobile races. So there's all kinds. There's racing everywhere. So I get to go out to Thermal Club, which is out by Palm Springs with all the expensive BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini. They do the 100 octane for those. Yeah. So there's a lot of racing that goes on out there.

[00:42:35.100] - Brian Busby

Mostly, though, off-road moto, drag racing. That's the majority of what our core business is. But there are definitely little areas out there that have their own little niches that they race, one being the Rebell. That's where you and I met. Correct. That was an interesting adventure, and it has been an adventure. Great one, by the way.

[00:43:00.680] - Big Rich Klein

So let's talk about the Rebell, about how that all came about since... I've heard the story, but others need to hear the story.

[00:43:13.180] - Brian Busby

So it was like king of the hammers, I think it was years back, 12 years ago, because this was the 10th year. I kept hearing, You need to talk to Emily Miller. You need to talk to Emily Miller. Who the heck is Emily Miller? And everybody kept telling her because she was like, She's doing a rally. I'm like, Okay, rally racing. That's cool. I've done rally races. And then they kept telling Emily the same thing, You need to talk to Brian Busby. Brian Busby. So then she's like, Who's Brian Busby? So finally we met up, and I think it was Erica Sacks that put us together, if not Dave Cole, one of the two. I can't remember that one too well, but she called me and she's like, yeah, I'm going to be doing this rally. It's an all-female navigational deal where we take all their electronics away from them and give them topographical maps with no road, anything on it. And there's obviously no gas stations. And I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm like, How many cars? She's like, We're going to start at 50, I think. I'm like, Okay, 50 vehicles. She's like, Yeah, every night we're going to have a base camp and we need somebody to fuel these cars.

[00:44:09.820] - Brian Busby

I'm like, Oh, so pump gas, not race gas. She's like, Yeah. I'm like, Well, we do that, too. I could probably make something happen. So we went back and forth for quite a while. She was trying to figure it all out, and then she finally said, Okay, we're doing it. And she told me that we're going to go out to the Fallon area, and that was where the first pit was going to be. I think it was rawhide. I got out there, and what we did was we just did it like we were going to do an off-road race. I figured, 50 cars? No problem. I loaded my tractor trailer up with 100 drums in '91, or no, maybe 80 drums of 91 and 20 drums of diesel because they had staff vehicle on diesels, and showed up out there. Well, that turned out to be a mess because I didn't realize that, A, there weren't just 50 cars. There were like 40 media staff vehicles that were there as well that needed to be fueled. I'm like, I didn't bring fuel for all those people. You didn't tell me about that. She's like, Oh, I didn't think about it.

[00:45:08.320] - Brian Busby

You asked me how many competitors there were going to be. I'm like, Okay, regroup. I got to figure this out. So number one. Number two, I don't know if you remember, but how cold it was up there. Oh, yeah. It got crazy cold and the wind was blowing and it was like 20 degrees, so our pumps were freezing up. We were trying to hand pump it into five-gallon cans and get it into We didn't understand. We were all winging it the first year. Everybody, the mechanics, the mechanics, the staff, Emily. I mean, everybody. We're just like, We got to figure this out. We're all out there and we're doing it. This is it. I had to leave there, which turned into another adventure. But we had to restock fuel along the way a lot more than I had anticipated because we had gone out to locations like Tonopal and we stored gas at like Rebel Oil Company. We got in their yard and put drums in there. Then we went to the Ridgecrest area and we stayed fuel there. Then we went down by Blice and we put fuel down there because we knew where we were going.

[00:46:15.130] - Brian Busby

But all of a sudden, we needed twice that much fuel. I was really scrambling, trying to figure that year out. That was quite fun. It lasted. Now we've done our 10 years. I'm glad to say I love it because I just love the event, and I'm one of the 100, 100s, and I believe you are as well. Correct. Where we've been 100% of the days of the rally, and we've been at 100% of the... Oh, 100% of the rallies, and then 100 % of the days on the rally. So I've never missed a day at the rally yet. And we've had quite the great stories and great fun. Yeah. And some drama along the way as well. So we won't go into those.

[00:47:00.400] - Big Rich Klein

Well, with any... I don't know how you would describe it, but it's almost like a military operation.

[00:47:11.020] - Brian Busby

A military operation or a carnival.

[00:47:13.220] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, no, it's more like a carnival, probably. Although the precision is getting better. So we can probably call it an operation now.

[00:47:22.100] - Brian Busby

It's a military operation that has carnival qualities.

[00:47:25.370] - Big Rich Klein

There you go. There you go.

[00:47:27.300] - Brian Busby

Like the Busby games. We're having to execute. We have to execute. And the fun part about it is when they come in. I love it when you come in because you're the last mount, you're the sweep. So when I see Big Rich coming in, I am so happy because that means I am done. Because it takes usually about five hours to get them all the stragglers coming in and everything else. So at the beginning, though, they didn't have a cut off. They just got there when they got there. And sometimes we'd be up until like 1: 00 in the morning. We finally had to sit down, everybody, the staff, too, and say, okay, we got to cut this short. We have to have cut off times. And It worked out for the better. But yeah, so it's crazy when they come through the arch, they check in, and then they come straight to us. So we don't know, are they happy? Are they sad? It's like pulling a jackpot. What's going on? And they might love each other. They might hate each other. Do they miss their husbands or wives or kids? So we just try to have a smile on our face.

[00:48:24.740] - Brian Busby

And I usually ask a couple of questions, just like you're asking now, give me your top two highlights and lowlights for the day. And that starts the conversation off. And you hear some pretty interesting stories.

[00:48:38.500] - Big Rich Klein

You get to hear them and I get to witness them.

[00:48:42.080] - Brian Busby

Yes, exactly. I remember there's one year, and we're not going to name names, but the two competitors decided that they didn't like each other. So one got left, and I had to end up help getting her back to the ride to go back to Vegas to fly home. And then the other one just took off with her vehicle and went home. So it was like, that was one, and then it was another one. There has just been some interesting stories that we, as staff, get to see and we don't really talk about. But it's like, oh, my gosh. And then there's also just great people that just make you belly laugh. So some of these ladies are just amazing friends now. Emily has really done a great job on putting the right team together, the right competitors together. I think that it's turned into an amazing, amazing event, and I'm glad that we're part of it.

[00:49:28.200] - Big Rich Klein

I would agree. I'm not sure what it is about the event that... I mean, my son does a big off-road event at the same time called Trail Hero, out in Southern, Southwestern Utah, and Hurricane area. And I got to the point where I couldn't do both because there was only like, one would finish on Sunday, and then we had to be starting on the Monday, as the staff that we do. So it was like, there's no way I could be gone that long, especially now that we're taking care of my mom. So it was like, all right. So I told Rich, I said, I'm running out of time. I can't do this. And he goes, you're going to pick the rebel, aren't you? I said, yes, I am.

[00:50:14.780] - Brian Busby

Yeah.

[00:50:15.260] - Big Rich Klein

And he goes, what's so special about it? And I go, you know what? It's just one of those things. And I don't know if it's because it's almost like we're out there camping along with them. But I mean, we are. But it's just such an adventure because you don't know from hour to hour what's going to happen.

[00:50:40.560] - Brian Busby

You don't. You really don't. And we have to call audibles all the time. It's just like, okay, what are we going to do now? And Emily comes to me because I'm not part of your staff. I'm actually an independent vendor. So I don't really fall under a lot of the same guidelines and stuff. But she touts on me saying, I can call Busby. Just get Busby. He'll make, he'll figure it out. And we do. But it's just there are things that we have to change. She'll say, what do you think about putting a splash here? Because I want to change the course. And I'm like, let me think about that for a minute. And then we, Okay, yeah, I think we could do that. I can get this pulled together. So there's been times where the chef had his reefer truck broke down. And I knew a guy, because of the fact that do Vegas to Reno so much, and I have pulled so many years of permits and contacts and stuff like that. It's been really helpful because I'm like, Oh, I got a guy. I know this guy over here. We can call him.

[00:51:41.720] - Brian Busby

He'll have that. Or we had an engine I got a blow up. Was that this year, wasn't it? No. Last year. When we got last year, the Toyota. I got on Facebook and I just posted up, I've got 5,000 racers out there. There was an engine in Havasu, so I had some boat racer guys grabbing the engine, getting it to a person in Vegas to bring it all the way up to us. That was up north of Tonopaw, wasn't it? At that Ranch. Right. Yeah. So in the middle of nowhere. And then this year we had that transmission that was in like a land cruiser.

[00:52:17.720] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, and it was a one year. A one year only. Yeah.

[00:52:21.420] - Brian Busby

One year only with this options on it. I was a checker for our off-road racing team for a long time. I knew Joe who owns Sierra Auto Recycling in Ridgecrest. And I called him and I'm like, Hey, I need this. And he's like, so he went into his database because all the wrecking yards nationwide all are on the same system now. So for insurance companies and whatnot. So he pulled up that year and he asked me all the right questions. He goes, does it have analog breaks on the whatever it was, the questions that he was asking. And I got him the serial number. So he called me back and he's like, I'm shooting you an email right now. And I got it over to nick and the boys, and they ended up getting one brought down from the Stockton area to us. So it was like we're always working together to try to figure stuff out. When my stuff breaks down, I go over to nick. I'm like, nick, you're MacGyver. Nick Guyver. Come on over here. Help me out. Help us rebuild whatever we got to do. But It's just a family affair.

[00:53:16.380] - Brian Busby

And everybody that Emily's picked is really the best of the best of what we do. And I think that that's why we enjoy getting out there, because it's like we have our own rally behind the rally, going from base camp to base camp, and picking up the thing, packing it up, and making it look like it was super easy when they come in. But that's what I think. I like the adrenaline. I like the figured out portion, and I like the people.

[00:53:42.220] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I agree 100 %. The The staff is amazing. She really has done a good job on putting together a team. There's been years where some people have come and gone, but for the most part, it's Oh, the core staff is awesome.

[00:54:01.840] - Brian Busby

Yeah. Like you say, there's people that are flash in the pan, and they were great at the time for whatever they did, but they weren't as serious as we all are, the core teams. I think all the leads, myself yourself, yourself, Chris, Wu, can go down the line. We all know that we've got your back, you got our back type thing, so we're going to figure this out. Because we're in the middle of nowhere. People don't realize They see it online on the live. But if they really knew where we were, they'd be like, How do you guys make that happen? Renewable innovations, the solar panels and all that stuff. It's just like they can't understand it because it's just so intricate. They just think, Oh, you guys are just out there having a tent, or the showers, or the water trucks, or whatever it is. Yeah, we got to make it happen.

[00:54:56.880] - Big Rich Klein

I think it's because we're all a bunch. It's come down to that we're all a bunch of problem solvers. Right. We're used to having to shoot from the hip, figure it out, and get it done. And it just works well. And it doesn't matter who it is.

[00:55:14.880] - Brian Busby

And we stay in our own lanes. Truthfully, that's the best part about it. It's like, I'm not trying to get into whatever you guys are doing. You're not to get into what I'm doing. We just say, Hey, this is what I need. Okay, we'll do that. And we respect each other, and I think that that's great. But that's in life. You get your groups of friends get smaller and tighter. You just start deciding on who do I want to surround myself with? I want positivity. I want fun. If you're not part of that, I don't need you.

[00:55:46.040] - Big Rich Klein

Can we talk about Busby Games?

[00:55:49.620] - Brian Busby

Busby Games. So, yeah, Busby Games wasn't really Busby Games at the beginning. So what it was at the rally. So it turned into there was no alcohol for the competitors at first. They were allowed on the thing until the end. Well, I'm not really a vendor. And these ladies are coming in. It was cold. It was horrible. One of the teams came in and said, Can you get me a bottle of wine? Sneak me a bottle of wine. Slip me a 20. So I was like, Yeah, I could probably make that happen. Emily didn't tell me about the no alcohol rule. I didn't know about that year one. So by day three or so, they had let other people know, Hey, if you want something, talk to Buzzby, because he's going to be going by a circle K or 711 or something in between pace camps. I ended up just being the speakey. They'd come and give me the wink and the nod, and I'd hand him a couple white claws or a bottle of wine or something like that. And then slowly but surely, they would come over after dinner, and I just leave the ice chest outside because they'd go off to their tent, have one, go to sleep, get up in the morning, do the next thing, be the following day.

[00:56:58.720] - Brian Busby

Well, we finally got to the end where we just clicked. So it was like, whatever happened... Emily had this thing, whatever happened in Busbyland, it stays in Busbyland. I don't want to know. And that's because I'm in the fuel pit, so I am literally 100 yards away from everybody. I have my tractor trailer and RV sitting way over there. So just for fire department, in case things explode, we got to have it over there. So that turned into Busby land. Well, when we started going to Glamis, they would come over and we'd have, with the RV, we'd have either corn hole or... I didn't even have those old lawn darts, illegal. Oh, nice. We have the paddle ball boards and stuff like that, the smash balls and stuff like that, just camping games type thing. Well, one year somebody came along and they're like, you should have a competition over here, and everything like that. I'm like, we could do that? So it was unofficial. So then it was like I made a obstacle course, and then we did the eggs and whatever we had that we could put together because it was last minute.

[00:58:09.500] - Brian Busby

I had the mixing spoon with eggs around the cones, my fire cones for the trailer. Made up a little thing that had to run through, and then I had to hand it off to the partner, the first person that dropped the eggs, loses, the next one moves on to the next round. Well, that turned into being bigger than we ever thought it was going to be because everybody was having fun there was wearing glamor, there's alcohol, sun, music, the whole thing was going on over there.

[00:58:35.080] - Big Rich Klein

The event was over.

[00:58:36.960] - Brian Busby

The event was over, but what was happening was that was before the gala, and Emily would have things set up for the ladies to do during the daytime, like the masseuses, I should say, like getting massages in the main tent, or they'd have a run that was going to go through the dunes and they're going to meet up at the swing set. I don't know, because I wasn't involved in all that. I was doing the Busby games. Well, more and more people started coming over and they would miss their event of whatever they were going to go do. And then so Emily found out and finally came over and said, okay, I know I say whatever happens in Busbyland stays in Busbyland, but these Busby games are starting to tap in. And then Wu is also doing an obstacle course. That was another thing with the vehicles in reverse or whatever. He had his own little thing going on. So we both were being Jack Gasses over there, having fun, yeah, feral, still. And so then Emily came to both of us and said, okay, I guess we have to officially put this on the on the roster.

[00:59:41.720] - Brian Busby

So give you a specific time to have these games and woo your challenge. So now we have the woo challenge and Busby games. So that's where that originated. So it's turned out to be great fun. And this year was probably the best, the 10 year anniversary. I had a ton of people, and the video that came out that they put out for it was awesome. So it was very, very fun. And it always has been.

[01:00:06.580] - Big Rich Klein

Cool. And how long do you plan on doing it?

[01:00:11.720] - Brian Busby

Until I can't. So I guess, I've probably got another... I turned 56. Oh, you're young. Yeah. So I've got another 10 years in me or so, 15 years. But I don't know that I'm going to do 100, 100 because my business is growing so much more. That's getting busier and busier. So I might have to start bringing along a 30-year-old Brian Busby to migrate him over. And I'll just come dip in and hit up the highlights. So I don't know how much longer it'll be. It'll be 100, 100. But there's no plan for me to dip out quite yet. So Yoshi, my guy that's there now, he's really good. I like him. He's new to this this year. No, this year and last year. Right. And so he's, I I think he's a keeper, and I think he will probably be the lead. He'll be the new me, and then we'll probably get a junior driver that will be under him. But that's probably another year out, before year or two out. But I don't see me ever leaving the rebel. It's just, you get older, you start having to slow it down a little bit.

[01:01:19.500] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah. I keep telling Emily, I asked her, I said, So do you want me back next year? And she just goes, Oh, shut up. Exactly. You always have to make sure. That's the way I look at it.

[01:01:32.300] - Brian Busby

Well, she always calls me before and she's like, Please, please, please, please, please tell me you're not going to not come. I'm like, No, I'm coming. It was questionable when Chevron let me go. I mean, that was 20 years over there. I was like, Holy mackrel. How am I going to figure this out? Because I can't just go into another company. I signed up with Marriott Oil and they're an ESOP, which is an employee-owned stock options company. Coming on board, I had to talk to the other department heads and say, This is what I do, and this is what... They understood the racing field part of it because they sold racing field. They just didn't have a division. Creating the division they liked because there's profit there. But then the rally, that dips into another side. That goes into our commercial side because we're having to take a commercial driver and either a Bob tail truck with the tank on it, or like this year, a tractor trailer out of the system. So there's all that hidden money that we're not making that that driver would normally be generating revenue on. So luckily, the first year, they were very hesitant when they came back and they saw what it was.

[01:02:42.200] - Brian Busby

They wanted to be all in. So they're like, Okay, how can we have Marriott being all over the place? And I'm like, The truck and trailer is right in the middle of everything, and I get a lot of shots of me. And we can use those backdrop ones and advertise online that we are the official fuel provider for the Rebell Rally. And that's It worked out pretty well. We've gotten some business off of that. The other directors are pretty excited about that. They wanted to come out to the gala. I'm like, Sorry, that's for us. You can't just dip in like that. I said, That's for your staff and the competitors and official providers for the event. So not just to come hang out.

[01:03:23.120] - Big Rich Klein

Right. They'll have to get the checkbook out for that.

[01:03:27.600] - Brian Busby

Oh, yeah, exactly. Well, and then how it is. You have so many spots for dinner and all that stuff. It's not like you can just come. It's not like it's an HRA where you can just buy tickets and come in. So this is the award ceremony. But, yeah.

[01:03:41.980] - Big Rich Klein

I know I'm going to be around as long as Shelley wants to do it, because I'm her driver.

[01:03:46.620] - Brian Busby

She does such an amazing job as well. So I mean, as far as organizing all the paperwork and keeping us all in line and making sure we're turning everything in we need to turn in. Yeah.

[01:03:56.270] - Big Rich Klein

Getting tech call lined out.

[01:03:59.000] - Brian Busby

Oh, yeah. I mean, she has so many hats that she wears. I don't even know everything that she does. I just know that she's like, Busby, I need my paperwork. I'm like, oh, shit. Pardon my friends, but she's really good. But then if I have anything, if I need anything, I'm like, hey, I don't have this. Can you print some of these up for me? And she's like, got you. So she's amazing. So you got lucky with that one.

[01:04:19.260] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It was...

[01:04:24.600] - Brian Busby

She's definitely a keeper.

[01:04:25.590] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. I don't know why she keeps me, but I knew where that was going. I'm not going to argue with her.

[01:04:33.720] - Brian Busby

That's true. Do you still have your Cherokee?

[01:04:36.260] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I do. I do, but it's relegated to just trail use. It doesn't get out on the highway much anymore. In fact, all I've got is green sticker on it now. It doesn't even have license points.

[01:04:51.180] - Brian Busby

So it's more rock-crawler-y type thing.

[01:04:53.400] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. After that year, I blew the engine, and the next year, we showed up with the Raptor. The raptor is so much better for the event.

[01:05:03.880] - Brian Busby

Oh, yeah. And I appreciate it because you use a lot more fuel.

[01:05:07.860] - Big Rich Klein

Actually, the raptor gets better fuel mileage than the Cherokee does.

[01:05:16.840] - Brian Busby

Yeah, but I think you're doing traveling more miles than you were in Cherokee. Yes, that's true. So you're actually traversing a lot more. So you'll be like, Yeah, I can make that happen. Whereas in the Cherokee, you would be like, no, you got to call somebody else.

[01:05:27.370] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. And the nice thing about the raptor is when the girls get lost and they speed up, which they seem to do. I can actually chase them down. The Cherokee couldn't chase down its shadow.

[01:05:44.020] - Brian Busby

Well, it's funny because whatever that is, the time trial thing that they do with the miles or kilometers and minutes and time, that stuff, they have to slow it down. When they get in trouble for actually speeding in certain areas, because it's so easy on those dry Lake beds to just not even notice how fast you're going. So you have to set... A lot of them said they had to set the alarms in the cars, which is crazy. Cars have alarms for that now. It says, Hey, you're going over 55. You need to bring it down. But yeah, they could ease Usually hit a wash out. At being an off-road racer, myself and yourself, you totally get it. When it's noon, there's no shadows, you don't know that that rain rate's coming up. So if you're going too fast, you're not going to be able to stop. And a lot of them have experienced I've never experienced that, and nick has not liked that.

[01:06:32.050] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:06:33.080] - Brian Busby

So it's funny when they're being brought in on the hook, it's like, oh, man.

[01:06:36.500] - Big Rich Klein

I had an experience. We were going across to dry Lake bed, and it was running down the edge, and all of a sudden I see A drone out of the corner of my eye. And one of the film crews is out there with a drone just pacing me off of the driver's side. And I was like, oh, I'm going to give him something to see. So I just buried the throttle on the dry Lake bed. And all of a sudden I see the track turned to the right. And so I throw it into a slide, turning to the right to stay on the track. And so I'm not going to end up way off course. And I see, like you said, a washout. And I went, oh, shit. And I was going way too fast. So I did the whole, hit the break and then throttle, get the front end to come down and then lift it back up real quick.

[01:07:31.980] - Brian Busby

Get back up and fling it back up. Yeah.

[01:07:33.780] - Big Rich Klein

And I hit that wash. It was the year, Shelley wasn't with me. Everything in the truck, lift it up.

[01:07:41.260] - Brian Busby

Airborne, yeah.

[01:07:42.340] - Big Rich Klein

Back down, except for the stuff in the back seat. For some reason, that all came forward, and everything off the dash, that thing. And I just thought, I hope they cut that part from the video.

[01:07:54.590] - Brian Busby

From the highlights, exactly.

[01:07:56.190] - Big Rich Klein

But I get back to camp that night, and they're like, Dude, that was so Yeah, don't show it to Emily.

[01:08:04.860] - Brian Busby

Yeah, so it was funny. We got with Wu on one of those things, and we were in the wash at Dumont Dunes. And you know how we can't tell him. I was like, Where are these girls at? He's like, They're right over there. Because he was coming in to fuel up and he goes, They shouldn't be gone for a while. So we were watching them on the tracker and stuff. And he's like, Oh, man. And he goes, They're going up the wash, not down the wash. They're going the opposite direction. And he starts to truck I'm like, I'm following you. So I followed them over there because I wanted them to see me knowing that it was probably 11: 30 at night or something. I mean, it was like dinner was over. Everything's done. We all want to go to bed. I've been up since 5: 00 AM. So when I pull up on this hill and he walks down into the wash, and there was three of them. They had all their maps out on their hoods and stuff like that with flashlights. And he walks up and say, you guys are all right?

[01:08:56.880] - Brian Busby

I'm like, yeah, we're doing pretty good. He's like, okay, just checking. And then he stood there and he walked about halfway back up to the truck, and I walked down and was standing there with him. And he's like, okay, let's do this. And they were getting in a truck about to go up the wash. They're all getting loaded back up. And he goes, Let's just get back in our truck and just start idling that way, down wash. So we did about five yards or whatever and turned our truck sideways. And then you could see a couple of them looking over at us. And then Chris inched forward about another two yards, and then I inched forward another two yards, and they got the hint. We didn't tell them that they were going in the wrong way, but they deducted. Then I just took off, and he's like, We got to go on the radio. He goes, They can't see where we're going. But within about 20 minutes, they come rolling in. They're like, We are so sorry. I'm like, That's okay. I just want to make sure you're okay out there. But those are the type things that are fun that we can do on the side that we remember and laugh about.

[01:09:56.760] - Brian Busby

It's like, Oh, man, herding cats. I don't know how you do you do. But that was not my only experience being on course type thing. That's one of the only few ones that I've been able to do.

[01:10:09.940] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it's pretty fun out there. I can't imagine doing any of the other jobs. Oh, I bet. Maybe a media driver. But I tell Emily all the time. I said, Don't look at my speed logs. Don't look at my speed logs.

[01:10:28.880] - Brian Busby

Don't even think I got that. When I tell her, she called me because we left after this year, after Ridgecrest. It was so rainy and muddy, the Mudfest 2000 type thing. It was just awful. Well, I had my motor home, and then we had the big tractor trailer. This is a show trailer. It's chromed out and polished and stuff. We were just so muddy. So we drove to Barstow to Little Sister's Truck Wash, and we were supposed to be going to the final base camp, which was needles. And so they're watching us on the yellow brick trackers, and I get a phone call, and she's like, Where are you? I'm like, Barstow? She's like, Aren't you on the road? I'm like, It's fine. I got this. And she's like, What are you doing? I'm like, Nothing. And she's like, I'm not Busby. God gets off the phone with me. So when we pulled to the the campsite there at Pirate's Cove, the trucks were all blinged out and everything else. And she's like, Busby, you're so bougey. She goes, What's that? What's you? And I'm like, I couldn't handle the dirt. She's like, We live in the dirt for 20 days, basically.

[01:11:30.720] - Brian Busby

I'm like, I know. But it was like it just got to me. It was just too much mud. But it was funny. It was comical. I'm like, Why are you watching me? I'm like, You know I'm going to be there. And she's like, Yeah, you just worry. It's a good time. She was there since that first year with Drew, with the tractor trailer getting stuck in the middle of the desert. That's why she worries. But we always show up.

[01:11:52.860] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely. It's amazing.

[01:11:54.940] - Brian Busby

Yes, it is.

[01:11:56.720] - Big Rich Klein

Well, Brian, I want to say thank you so much for spending the time and being a guest on the podcast, it's been great. Hey, not a problem.

[01:12:02.920] - Brian Busby

I appreciate you having me.

[01:12:04.540] - Big Rich Klein

I really look forward to year 11.

[01:12:08.720] - Brian Busby

Yeah, that'd be awesome. It's going to be your fascinating note. My grandma had a great saying that I didn't quite understand until I got older. She said, Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The older you get, the faster it goes. And it's so true. When you're a kid and you have summer vacation, three months is a long time. But when you're an adult, at our time in life, 3-6 to 10 months goes by in a flash. It sure does. So we'll be back in Mammoth or wherever we're going to kick it off next year. It's before we know it. Yep.

[01:12:40.380] - Big Rich Klein

All right. Well, you take care. Thank you so much. Send me Send me a photo.

[01:12:46.800] - Brian Busby

All right. I'll talk to you soon.

[01:12:47.930] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Take care. Bye-bye. 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 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 gusto you can. Thank you.