Ep 244 | From Reality TV To Deadly Rescue Missions | Diesel Brothers | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 27 minutes
Words per Minute
205.8893
Summary
The Diesel brothers, Heavy D and Diesel Dave, talk about what it means to be an entrepreneur in the trucking industry and how they got their start in the rescue and recovery industry. They also talk about how they started their company, JACE Medical, and what it takes to do what they do.
Transcript
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The Biden administration tried to push electric vehicles down all of our throats when, honestly, we don't even have the infrastructure to go fully electric, at least not yet.
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I know at least two men who are probably pretty happy with drill, baby, drill because their career runs on oil.
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Here's one of them jumping a monster truck over an airplane.
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They're here to talk to me today about trucks, Trump, the unbelievable rescue work, what it means to be an entrepreneur, what it means to be an American.
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These guys are great from the hit television show, Diesel Brothers, Heavy D, and Diesel Dave.
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In the past, I've talked a lot about JACE Medical, J-A-S-E.
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But if you want a refresher, JACE provides different cases of full emergency medication, so you have them at home and on hand the second you need them.
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But I don't want you to take just my word for it.
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Let me tell you about Heather, who got a JACE case and immediately knew this was something she'd been missing in life.
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All it takes to get a JACE case is to fill out a simple form online.
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Now, for her lifestyle, having one is essential.
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So in her mind, it wasn't a question of, you know, if I'm going to need, you know, the JACE case, but when I'm going to need it.
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The JACE case is a personalized emergency kit that contains essential antibiotics and medications that treat the most common and deadly bacterial infections.
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Five life-saving antibiotics for emergency use.
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They have ivermectin as an add-on if you want it.
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I want to get into, because all of your rescue stuff lately, I mean, you guys are really burning it up and doing, I don't know, there's a change, I think, that's happening with a lot of people.
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But for anybody who doesn't know you, how would you describe what you do?
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My kids have the same problem at school when their friends ask them what it's going to do.
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We started as the truck guys, and then we've evolved into, essentially, we do what we love.
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And that kind of encompasses all sorts of different things, with an emphasis on being able to solve problems.
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It's kind of like our main core kind of ethos, is we like to be able to solve problems.
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We like to be able to do things that other people can't do.
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And that started in the world of building custom crazy trucks that were over the top and crazy.
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And we had our TV show on Discovery Channel, and it's evolved into, you know, life-saving missions and recovery missions and, you know, basically going places and doing things that other people can't or won't do.
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So, Diesel Brothers, you're not actually brothers.
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We actually met at a singles ward for young LDS people.
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Yeah, so in Utah, as you know, LDS culture is huge, and they've got these singles wards all over the place.
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And you go to a singles ward after your mission or, you know, age.
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Wait, weren't you guys supposed to meet a girl?
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Well, I picked him up first in 2008, and in 2009, I met my wife at the same ward.
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But we met at church, and we kind of came from two different communities nearby, rival high schools, actually.
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And so we didn't know each other in high school, and our high schools were always fighting against each other.
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And so when I first kind of got introduced to his group of friends, he was a little skeptical of, who's this Dave guy?
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I'm the Dave guy, and, you know, we're both Dave.
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And, you know, there was a little bit of, like, who is this guy?
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And then as soon as we met and spent time together, it was like, where have you been my whole life?
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We're brothers, and that's why they call us brothers.
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And you, I mean, there's a lot of people who are in the media and do what kind of, what you guys do, and they don't last long sometimes.
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To last long, to last as long as you guys have with fame and success is really unique.
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At the end of the day, it's, we were bros before this started.
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Yeah, that's kind of how the TV show, when we went into it, we were very skeptical.
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You know, we understand the world of reality TV.
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Especially, you know, late 2000s, early 2010s, reality TV was just getting to the point where it wasn't about people's lives anymore.
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It was about how nasty could you make a situation on TV and get away with it.
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And so we knew that that was going to potentially be the case and they would, you know, try to stir up drama.
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So we had this kind of, at first, unspoken agreement when we started the TV show that we all kind of said, hey, the day this becomes not fun or the day that this becomes something that kind of tears us apart, we're done.
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That day came and we all just politely stepped out.
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About five years into filming, I'd say year two, I was pretty burnt out because I don't like to be kept in a box.
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And it just felt like we were doing the same thing over and over and over again.
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He picks up the slack because he's able to go in and put on a real authentic smile in those moments when on TV you have to do the pickups and retakes and retake and retake.
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So he kind of filled in the gaps on creating the production value of what the TV show needed.
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And I was kind of more the spearheading what was next.
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And it just got to the point where they wouldn't let us do anything new.
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It was just the same old thing, truck after truck, after truck, after truck.
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And, you know, blessing in disguise for us because that shut down production completely.
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But we have all these producers from New York and California and all over the place.
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So that was a good opportunity for us to say, hey, you know what?
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Like this is a good kind of area to kind of part ways.
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And we wanted to leave on good terms with Discovery.
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We didn't want to be some big, ugly, nasty, blow-up reality TV show where we part ways
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and one guy has his own show and he's talking bad about this guy.
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We all just determined that we like what we do and we like doing it together.
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So let's just figure out a way to do that together without the requirement of staying
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Once you get to be known as someone, because I'm like you, I'm all over the place.
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They have to be able to, I'm the political guy.
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When that's only just a little sliver of who I am.
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But man, you get with these giant corporations and they just, no, that's all you are.
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Being kept in a box and not being able to exercise that creative, you know, I got a lot
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of creativity inside of me and so does Dave and to not be able to exercise it, not be
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able to like put it in front of the world in a way that was meaningful and instead have
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to say, how can you build a truck or a vehicle different, but the same?
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And it's like, we just can't like, oh, maybe we could.
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And to be honest with you, we would have, if we would have stuck with it, Discovery
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Channel probably would have kept our show on the air for another 10 years until the
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point where nobody was watching like they like to do.
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They just like to run shows, you know, squeeze every last ounce of juice out of them.
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And so it was, it was a, it was a really cool move when we were able to step away and my
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whole team, cause this is only part of us, you know, there was two other main guys on
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the show with us, um, red beard and the muscle.
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And again, we started as just friends and we are still friends.
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We were all together last weekend and, um, continue to keep this friendship alive.
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No, no, it's how, you know, it's a real friendship, right?
00:09:09.600
It's, it's based off of like core values and principles.
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And again, a lot of the stuff has just kind of been unspoken.
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We haven't had to have a ton of meetings where it's like, Hey, are we still on the same page?
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It's just, we had true friendships before the show started and we wanted to ride that,
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So I, I, I'm convinced fame and fortune, battery acid to the soul.
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Just, I mean, that you could not introduce two things that are worse than that.
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It's the most empty, hollow, depressing world for me.
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You know, going to these premieres and different things and seeing, you've seen it.
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You go to these political events or whatever it is.
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And the way I like to explain it is nobody's looking down.
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Nobody's looking backwards at who's potentially below them.
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They're all looking for who's that next contact that's going to take them to the next level.
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And so for me, all the relationships are very inauthentic.
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All the contacts that you make are just like, what can you do for me?
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It's what can we do for you and how can we work together?
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I think that is part of the success because I hate transactional relationships.
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I mean, I don't connect with people, you know, we've met before, but I'm not, you know, calling
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And so I kind of, I'm on this little island by myself and it bothers me when you meet these
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transactional people that you know they're only calling because they can help you and
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And then they expect you to eventually say, well, I'm going to, I hate that.
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I mean, if somebody's in trouble or somebody needs something, I'm there, I'm there, but
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I, I, the most like, just the worst example of it that I ever saw was we went to a movie
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premiere of the Sound of Freedom at Bedminster with Trump.
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And, uh, last year we were out there, I think it was 2023 and we went to the, this country
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club and you know, the who's who of, of everybody was out there and watching the way that grown
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people, I'm talking like a mom and dad from the Hamptons, these 50, 60 year old people
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would wait to see where president Trump, you know, not president at the time was at.
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And they would kind of follow him around as this entourage and he would leave a room and
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they would all pile in the room, almost as if they were in there to like absorb his aura
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And, you know, I had seen a lot going into that, but that was the point where I thought
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I don't ever want to be in this world in a way that I'm doing anything like that.
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Cause, uh, I don't know if I've ever noticed that we've been in the room with president
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The thing about you, and this is why I actually was so excited to come to the show is president
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Trump has an authentic, like admiration of you, the way that he talks to you, the way
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It's like, like you said, he almost has you on an Island.
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He treats you a little bit differently than he treated everybody else, because I think
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And I think people know that you're legit because you're not the one that's following
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him around looking for the clout, looking for the acknowledgement, looking for the,
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You're not out there raising that flag and using that to open doors and to have relationships.
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So there's very few people that I've seen that have that relationship with the president
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and you can tell, I mean, he's, he, he can spot authenticity a mile away.
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And he treated you as such, which was really cool to watch.
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It shows me you've earned his respect in a big way.
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He's actually, what's the word I'm looking for?
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I think shooting, getting shot in the head might help you.
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It wouldn't have that same effect on everybody.
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Some people would potentially even have more of a God complex.
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And you would think that Trump of all people would probably go that direction.
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He was, yeah, it's been, it's been wild to watch the evolution.
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I think it clarifies you on, uh, I mean, have you guys ever had real death threats?
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We've had, we've been in all sorts of different situations as far as death threats for being
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So I've been in a situation where, you know, guns are pulled and it's, it's terrifying.
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You walk away going, I'm not, I'm willing to die for some things.
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And so, and I think that might be what happened to him was, cause his, his whole language changed.
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And, and I think, I think that's maybe what happened.
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I mean, this, this second presidency is a whole different ball game.
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I mean, from the way they dress, even Melania at the inauguration, they are just stone cold,
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They're not there to win this person to that person.
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They spent the last four years getting just absolutely destroyed by everything and everyone.
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And now it's their chance to actually get in and do what they've wanted to do.
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So far, you guys have to be thrilled with EPA crap.
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I mean, the EPA has been such an interesting, um, story for us because when the TV show
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launched, you know, they showed footage of us building trucks and modifying trucks.
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But the problem is they also showed a bunch of footage of other trucks that we'd never
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had anything to do with just other rednecks out having fun with their trucks in the kind
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And so you would see other trucks doing crazy stuff and people would just automatically assume
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Well, it wasn't, I would say 10% of that footage was us.
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So the EPA contacted us after the first season aired pretty quickly and said, Hey, what are
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You know, kind of went through what we were doing.
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They realized like, oh, these guys are not doing what it looks like they're doing.
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However, there was a group in Utah of private doctors called the UPHE acronym that kind of
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sounds like the EPA sounds like an official state organization.
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It's the hardest, I have a hard time, not just absolutely wanting to gut these people
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because what they've done to us has been absolutely atrocious.
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They came after us because we're a great headline.
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And every time they would release a press release, it would get picked up all over the country.
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And it wasn't like, we complied with all of their requests like day one.
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And we were done doing like, we had already kind of outgrown that phase of our business.
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Anyways, those were like our early YouTube days.
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So roll coal is essentially something when you take a diesel truck and you basically cut the
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muffler or the DPF, the filter off the exhaust and the truck blows smoke.
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Up until 2007, trucks didn't have these big DPF filters on them.
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EPA came out with rules where basically all diesel engines had to have these massive filters on them.
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And, you know, it filters the exhaust, which in theory is a good idea.
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I actually have never been like a, I've never been a fan of a truck blowing a lot of smoke.
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So, but we did use that in the early days where trucks would blow smoke for maybe, it's actually
00:16:55.300
We, we did a prank on YouTube where we took a truck that blew a bunch of smoke, hooked a
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hose to the, uh, to the exhaust pipe and ran it into a bathroom where a friend was at,
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at a, at a, the building kind of a few doors down from ours, gave the truck gas.
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But it was funny and it was like this prank and it was, it was, it was, it was a funny
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Jay Leno saw it and he thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
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So he had us down on his TV show and on a segment called prank you very much.
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And he just thought it was the greatest thing in the world.
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So Dave went on the show and we showed the clip and it was, it was great.
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And they said, these guys are great personalities.
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So that one little moment kind of turned into obviously the TV show, but rolling coal is something
00:17:44.200
Um, it's, it's the equivalent of taking your classic car back in the day and revving the
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engine really loud and doing burnouts type of stuff.
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Um, diesel trucks have this unique feature where they, they blow smoke and people kind
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Like we're the Kings of rolling coal, even though that was like maybe a one year to 18 month
00:18:04.020
When we first got into the business, we were trying to figure out what to do with this.
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All of a sudden, all the trucks that we were building, we were a truck dealership.
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That's where we were just custom trucks, buying, selling, building.
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So what do you do when you're a media company and, and your media is all trucks when you
00:18:23.940
We stopped that before the show ever aired before the lawsuit ever came, but then the
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lawsuit came knocking and they just took that and ran with it.
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UPHE loves their press releases that they get against us, right?
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Every time they file a new motion or whatever, they put a press release out.
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We found out about our lawsuit from a press release that they put out.
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It was the most ass backwards thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
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So they love the recognition and the press that they get from suing the Diesel Brothers.
00:18:55.780
We begin the, you know, the, the lawsuit with them in 2016, immediately tried to start
00:19:02.120
settling, figuring out, Hey, how do we, you know, we're done.
00:19:09.840
And so they continue to file motion after motion after motion.
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And we finally ended up, we had a judge in Salt Lake city.
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And he pretty much just ruled in their favor on everything.
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Didn't really give us a chance to defend ourselves very well.
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And again, we were still trying to film the TV show.
00:19:30.020
We were literally tiger by the tail, full speed ahead while trying to defend ourselves in
00:19:36.020
So long story short, we get a ruling against us in like 2019, basically a judgment says,
00:19:44.620
It could have been, if you followed the statutory requirement, it would have been like $300 million
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But the fines we got hit with were still pretty excessive.
00:19:54.960
But the problem with that was we had been, the judgment included a bunch of stuff that
00:20:00.960
So we filed an appeal, the appeal went through and we won 95% of the appeal, which meant to
00:20:07.820
say that out of the 350, 400 violations that they accused us of only 20 of them took place
00:20:17.380
in the state of Utah, where this UPHE has the right to, you know, to take private action.
00:20:25.540
And the claims were buying a truck at the auction and selling it to somebody without
00:20:31.440
But if the truck didn't have a, you know, the proper emission system on it, we were
00:20:37.000
Well, this is what every dealership in the country does.
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They buy vehicles and they turn around and sell them.
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Whether the emissions work or don't work, it doesn't matter.
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So every dealership in the country was doing this.
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We were just kind of the poster child for take advantage of these guys.
00:20:47.860
So the crazy part was on the appeal, the judge didn't really do anything for us.
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He didn't like the fact that we appealed it and he barely adjusted our judgment like at
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And so we've been fighting with them continuously for the last almost 10 years now, trying to
00:21:02.820
get them to become more reasonable on what they're after, what they're going after.
00:21:07.380
We haven't touched a deleted truck in eight, nine years.
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We haven't touched a performance part in eight or nine years.
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Like we are so done with that world, but there's a group of doctors, they love the press
00:21:20.200
and they're going to continue to write it out as long as possible.
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We've been trying to settle this thing for so long.
00:21:25.020
We've offered as part of settlement agreements to basically create a fund for the state of
00:21:31.300
Utah, where anybody who has a vehicle that won't pass emissions, single mom, car
00:21:39.340
We offered to create a fund that would fix anybody's vehicle, any problems with smog or
00:21:47.260
And instead they just demanded that $800,000 be sent to the treasury.
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Not staying in Utah to help anybody or do anything for the healthy environment that they're trying
00:21:57.720
And no amount of the judgment, nothing ever went to Utah, nothing ever went to fix the
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environment that they were claiming they were defending.
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It all just was going to go to the treasury and then a ridiculous amount of attorney's fees.
00:22:13.200
I mean, we, we are living in a time and it is an amazing time to live, uh, both positive
00:22:19.100
and negative, um, the, the garbage that goes on now is just ridiculous.
00:22:26.980
And one of the things I like about you guys is I, and I, uh, when we were pulling out
00:22:36.500
of Afghanistan, I just felt this was an embarrassment and all these people were trapped.
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And so I thought, well, if they're not going to do anything, we'll do it.
00:22:46.640
And I'm standing, you know, over in the middle East and we're flying planes out.
00:22:53.080
We, we rescued, I don't even know, like 20,000 people out of Afghanistan.
00:23:04.880
But it is, it is one of the coolest things to be able to have a position, have some money,
00:23:11.840
have some, you know, listeners, viewers for you guys, and you just go do it.
00:23:18.140
I mean, it, it's really taking back the essence, I think, of who Americans have always been.
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That's honestly our, that's the way we approach everything.
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We have become the last call that people make when nobody else can, can solve a problem.
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They started, I would say that our humanitarian efforts, they've been ongoing, you know, forever,
00:23:42.660
ever since we started business together in 2011, but they really ramped up.
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Was that a pact or just something that you both are?
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When you're LDS, you go mow the neighbor's lawn, you go do service projects.
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In Utah, you're very, you're very focused on making sure that your neighbor's taken care
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And so it just, our capabilities kept on growing.
00:24:03.100
So 2017 hurricane Harvey hits Texas and we saw the chaos and everything on the news.
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Dave and I were in New York for a press tour for our TV show at the time.
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I put up a video when we were in New York and said, Hey, we see that, you know, things are
00:24:19.720
We don't care what we're going to do or how we're going to get there or what's going
00:24:23.440
But if you want to help support this mission, come to our shop, drop off whatever supplies
00:24:28.000
And, um, in a couple of days, we're going to be on the road to Texas and I'll take my
00:24:31.200
helicopter down and we'll perform rescue missions.
00:24:34.160
So we get back from New York, our shop, there's a line of vehicles sitting outside, pulling
00:24:40.940
Next thing you know, we've got eight semi loads worth of stuff, high water rescue vehicles
00:24:48.620
So we send the guys down the road in the trucks.
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Keep in mind at this time, I'm still a student pilot.
00:24:55.660
Uh, I, I didn't, I, a student pilot with a black, at the time I didn't have the black
00:25:01.020
I had, I had a, I had a pretty advanced helicopter.
00:25:04.680
Um, you've ever seen the, the Red Bull helicopter that does flicks and stuff.
00:25:08.240
Um, but I didn't, I had been flying for about two years.
00:25:13.340
Um, so I took another pilot with me just to be safe and kosher and make sure we were
00:25:18.080
Next thing you know, I'm doing, um, airy vac missions of dead people.
00:25:29.780
He comes to life on the way back to the helicopter, to the hospital.
00:25:32.900
We land on the pad, they get him out and he's alive and probably saved the dude's life.
00:25:38.100
And meanwhile, all my guys were back at a church.
00:25:40.580
We use an LDS church as basically a hub, um, for all of our equipment and everything.
00:25:44.540
And we had probably the best five days of our lives sleeping on church pews and just running
00:25:51.420
nonstop, rescuing people, delivering food and just performing like essential life saving
00:25:58.260
And that was the moment where we were like, we want to double down on this.
00:26:01.180
Like anything, anytime something happens, we want to get involved.
00:26:05.120
And so the moment was when you parked next to the sheriff's helicopter and you said, this
00:26:09.380
And he came over and just ripped off his sheriff patch and stuck it on your arm.
00:26:16.460
And the only aircraft that were allowed in there were Blackhawks, Chinooks, all the military
00:26:20.620
guys and all the Texas Department of Public Safety.
00:26:23.560
And then there's these guys in a fiery red custom painted helicopter.
00:26:28.800
And we're just kind of just a bunch of young guys hanging around.
00:26:34.000
Actually, one cop came up to us and said, hey, you have to stay here.
00:26:37.240
And he was the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the head honcho.
00:26:47.680
And he storms over, pulls his patch off and says, this is for you.
00:26:51.360
And that's when we were like, well, there could be a collaboration here between us and authorities.
00:26:55.980
Because at this time, remember, we're the guys that were in the news for being the roll
00:27:01.200
So on one hand, people were terrified to touch us.
00:27:04.100
On the other hand, they saw like, wow, these guys are not afraid of anything.
00:27:07.040
They'll go into literally, whether they're stupid or really brave, they'll go into situations
00:27:12.200
other people won't do and they'll try to solve problems.
00:27:14.420
And so that evolution of us working with federal, state, local agencies to provide these life
00:27:21.420
saving missions has evolved into like what we just got home from doing yesterday in Nevada,
00:27:27.400
So January 2nd, a guy named Michael Martin leaves Las Vegas in his little plane.
00:27:32.980
His wife and he and his wife had had like a little dispute the night before.
00:27:37.580
They believe he left to maybe go blow off some steam.
00:27:39.740
Well, he didn't tell the family where he was going.
00:27:41.840
He didn't tell them that he was going even for a flight.
00:27:43.520
They didn't know until the 4th or 5th of January when they found the plane missing.
00:27:47.960
From then, they started tracking the flight and the transponder and his iPad and his watch
00:27:52.100
and everything and his last known location was around Mount Jefferson, which is basically
00:27:55.780
central Nevada, just a little bit north of Tonopah, very rugged, very desolate terrain.
00:28:01.280
The mountain, about 12,000 foot elevation, big, crazy mountain.
00:28:05.100
And so they thought, well, he's got to be around here.
00:28:14.800
And anytime somebody goes missing or something happens, our phone starts ringing or even my inbox
00:28:22.100
Well, we were off-grid filming some other winter content series for the last couple
00:28:26.140
weeks, so we didn't have the ability to jump into the search.
00:28:29.180
Around January 18th, a fish and game warden that was determined, awesome kid, awesome kid.
00:28:35.840
He was bound and determined to figure out what happened to this plane.
00:28:38.200
He hikes four hours into the most treacherous backcountry you can see and doesn't make it
00:28:42.180
all the way to the top, but he's able to get to the base of a cliff and with binoculars,
00:28:45.840
glasses the whole hillside, and he finds the plane crash.
00:28:48.240
So at that point, there's no way he could have gotten to the wreck site.
00:28:53.320
It was another 3,000-foot elevation through four feet of drifted snow.
00:29:01.540
Every state agency that had a helicopter or an aircraft got in the air.
00:29:05.060
They started searching, and it got to the point where they just said,
00:29:08.480
we cannot access this crash site, it's not safe, we don't know what to do.
00:29:12.960
Meanwhile, the family thinks that there's a chance that dad, husband, maybe still is alive.
00:29:19.000
The footage or the pictures they got of the wreckage were pretty rough, so it didn't look
00:29:24.720
So there's a lot of drama between local law enforcement, state authorities, the family,
00:29:30.680
because the family's like, hey, go rescue our dad.
00:29:38.180
Nobody is willing or capable to do this job because our resources are limited.
00:29:44.600
The National Guard said, nope, we can't do it, can't touch it.
00:29:50.380
So finally, that's when our emails, we probably received 1,000 emails at that point.
00:29:57.780
I called the family and said, hey, I understand what you're up against.
00:30:09.340
Nobody was going to be able to solve this problem for us.
00:30:17.420
So after that, I asked for the contact information for whoever was in charge of the case.
00:30:22.720
Chief Scott Lewis of Nye County Emergency Management out in Nevada.
00:30:26.860
Called him up, said who I was, what I wanted to do.
00:30:31.900
Like, this is way out of your, you know, range.
00:30:38.860
And I thought, there's a chance this guy doesn't quite understand who we are and what we do.
00:30:44.680
And he said, look, if anything changes, I'll give you a call back.
00:30:55.820
They did a little bit of research on who we are.
00:30:59.080
Very similar aircraft recoveries that we've done.
00:31:03.680
At that time, he sent me pictures of the wreckage.
00:31:08.560
I've got an extreme amount of confidence in myself and my crew.
00:31:17.300
Regardless of what the terrain was, I didn't care what people were saying.
00:31:19.580
I knew that we could figure out a way to do it, whether it was via air or whether we had horses up there tugging that airplane off the mountain.
00:31:27.060
Get the pictures, look at it, thought, it's pretty rough.
00:31:31.960
So we get our crew together, which we have one of the most incredible crews in the entire world.
00:31:35.480
I honestly feel like if I told my guys that I wanted to build a rocket ship to the moon, they could figure it out.
00:31:44.280
So we put together this mission, flew out there.
00:31:50.160
I'd like to talk to you about that in a minute.
00:31:52.400
It's one of the most incredible aircraft in the entire world.
00:31:55.480
Now we understand why the military loves them so much because we've had an opportunity to really use that thing.
00:32:01.760
All of my flying experience is in high mountains, rugged terrain.
00:32:06.140
It's the type of flying that not a lot of pilots get.
00:32:08.420
And I get to fly with a lot of experienced pilots too, a lot of special forces guys.
00:32:11.820
So I've kind of been trained by some really great pilots, and I've gotten to the point where I'm a very capable pilot.
00:32:18.120
So I was pilot in command of the mission, jumped in the Blackhawk, had my second in command, Ryan, who was a Chinook pilot in the Army.
00:32:26.580
But he's actually not rated in the Blackhawk yet.
00:32:28.860
I'm the only one that's actually licensed by the FAA to fly it.
00:32:31.400
But the Blackhawk that we own is kind of a thorn in the side to the FAA because they don't know what to do with us.
00:32:38.280
We're like the only privately owned Blackhawk who's out there using it for fun and for videos, but also for life-saving missions.
00:32:44.660
So it's like this – falls in this weird category of who are these guys and how do we know they're not going to kill themselves?
00:32:49.680
So we're starting to build more and more confidence with them.
00:32:55.020
And they're finally – we've actually – my relationship with the FAA started off very tumultuous.
00:32:59.780
It's improved every single day since Hurricane Harvey essentially.
00:33:04.460
So we head out to Nevada with our group, and the only way to access the crash site was basically to rappel in because it's on the side of this cliff.
00:33:13.860
You can put it in the podcast if you want, but it shows kind of just how gnarly this terrain was.
00:33:17.980
The plane essentially just pile-drived into the side of a cliff and just tumbled down the cliff in parts and pieces.
00:33:28.120
And so to be able to access the crash site, we thought based off the pictures and the terrain maps and everything we saw that we would have to rappel in.
00:33:34.440
We got into the crash site, had our rappelling crew ready to go, essentially just jumping out the door of the Blackhawk, right, and just rappelling down our road to access the site.
00:33:43.080
I've been in helicopters with people that do that, and I think, you're out of your mind.
00:33:47.700
Now try it at 11,300 feet with wind swirling all over the place and pure whiteout because rotor wash from the blades.
00:33:54.960
Luckily, when we got to the crash site, we realized that we could land right above the crash and drop our ground crew and have them hike down.
00:34:00.860
Anytime you can minimize your risk, you're going to do it.
00:34:03.800
So there was no sense in taking the risk of holding a hover while I sat there for 10 minutes and let guys pile out of the helicopter, plus all of our rescue equipment, which was probably 500 pounds worth of tools and rigging and all kinds of stuff.
00:34:18.660
We took all of our equipment and hooked it to the belly of the Blackhawk.
00:34:21.080
I picked up, hovered over the cliff, dropped the gear right by them, which I was super proud of.
00:34:26.800
Hanging a line from the bottom of a Blackhawk or any helicopter and putting it in a precise spot is very difficult.
00:34:31.780
Especially on a flat field at sea level is hard.
00:34:47.600
And when a plane hits a mountain that hard, bodies don't fare well.
00:34:52.520
Fortunately, the freezing temperatures had preserved whatever remains.
00:34:55.780
So with the body bag, we gathered the body parts, set them aside, and then the guy started to rig up the aircraft and basically tie everything together with different hooks and lines and everything so that it was one big bundle of a package.
00:35:10.120
And then once we got the call, they said, come in and grab it.
00:35:13.760
We hooked the body bag at the highest point on the hook where it was essentially separate from the wreckage and safe.
00:35:18.480
And then the wreckage all below that, and I held the hover there above that cliff for three or four minutes while they hooked up the hook.
00:35:26.420
And then once they gave us the green light, we picked up, and you could see just parts and pieces of this aircraft being pulled off this mountain until they finally just kind of came together in one lump mass.
00:35:36.840
And then we flew down 10 miles west of there to a little airstrip called Hadley where all the emergency management was sitting there waiting, law enforcement, coroner, everybody.
00:35:45.080
And when we flew in with that load, you would have thought that, I mean, to them, it looked like the second coming.
00:35:51.300
It was the most unexpected thing because, again, a lot of these guys don't know who we are or didn't know our capabilities or thought that we maybe bit off more than we could chew.
00:36:00.560
And so when we pull in with this aircraft wreckage that not even the National Guard would touch, it was such a gratifying moment for all of us because, you know,
00:36:08.580
the chief who originally told me, like, stand down, came up and gave me a full hug, like a very emotional hug.
00:36:15.540
And it was a cool moment because we actually had the family there at a separate site, you know, half a mile away because we didn't want them to be there exposed to any of the sensitive stuff.
00:36:24.540
And for us, seeing the family's reaction and seeing how we brought closure to something that, I mean, when something bad happens, you always think that law enforcement can handle it.
00:36:37.360
You always think that somebody somewhere is going to be able to solve this problem for you, especially when it comes to the loss of a loved one.
00:36:43.000
So when you get told no and you get told we're out of options, we cannot do this, it's a very desperate feeling.
00:36:49.560
And the family was feeling that very, like, desperation.
00:36:52.900
And so being able to take the family from not knowing the status of Michael, the pilot, thinking maybe he was alive, maybe he wasn't,
00:37:00.680
to finally getting answers, all the way down to finding his watch and his wallet and all the stuff that had scattered all over the mountainside.
00:37:07.100
And you go from 8 o'clock that morning having no answers and the family just distraught to 2 o'clock that afternoon, closure.
00:37:20.540
I mean, it's still a tragic situation, but not knowing is significantly more tragic than being able to see what happened, understand it, and start to process the fact that, you know, he's not on that mountain anymore.
00:37:34.720
And that's not the first time we've actually had almost the exact same situation that happened to us a few different times where a pilot will crash into a remote site.
00:37:42.460
Nobody can get to it, either the family doesn't have the funds to contract a private company, or the state won't allow a private company to come in.
00:37:49.960
And the email I got from the state emergency manager yesterday was probably the best part about all this, because he was the most skeptical, the most reluctant, because you got a bunch of YouTubers with a Black Hawk helicopter saying,
00:38:02.440
we're going to come and do what you guys can't, that's a tough pill to swallow for some of these guys.
00:38:10.260
The email basically said, hey, like, obviously, hats off to you guys.
00:38:16.220
But even more so, he said, would you be willing to come train all the Nevada search and rescue pilots on what you did and how you did it and what your techniques and procedures were?
00:38:26.900
It's not about, for us, the acknowledgement of, yo, you did a good job.
00:38:32.780
But for us, it's being able to take the family from the worst day of their life.
00:38:40.200
And that's honestly what fuels all of our missions.
00:38:42.180
And we just keep on taking on bigger and crazier stuff.
00:38:46.320
And now, like I said, it's gotten to the point where we do stuff that nobody else can do.
00:38:56.420
I mean, you know, we've got two weeks under our belt.
00:39:02.600
They were just the people who, I mean, just crossing the ocean was insane.
00:39:08.120
Crossing, I have to tell you, I think if I were a pioneer,
00:39:11.480
I would have stopped, I think, at the Missouri River.
00:39:16.340
You know, I definitely would have stopped in Denver.
00:39:20.560
And then if I would have gone on, I would have killed the scout about halfway over those mountains.
00:39:26.360
You know, you get over and then you're like, what?
00:39:38.800
You went straight from Washington State to D.C.?
00:39:40.340
Washington State to Salt Lake City for about six months to Washington, D.C.
00:39:57.440
But the radio career took you from, were you on KSL News Radio in Salt Lake?
00:40:07.260
And I was on a big station in Seattle, went and did nights in Salt Lake for about six months.
00:40:15.520
And then they, the company transferred me to Washington, D.C., which was, I mean, I had never.
00:40:22.340
Living out by my own from a family that didn't have anything.
00:40:47.260
I'm so curious about this, though, because it's been, Utah loves you, as you know.
00:40:54.320
And that was actually a really cool moment, seeing, like, you got Utah by the, from the 90-year-olds
00:41:00.800
all the way down to, like, the younger demographic.
00:41:03.520
And I've been trying to wrap my head around, like, how does a talk radio guy evolve in this
00:41:09.060
Like, you've learned how to take your DJ, then talk radio career, and evolve it into the
00:41:16.900
podcasts and all the actual, like, digital environment.
00:41:27.800
Know the odds of, you know, win or lose before you put the money on the table, but roll the
00:41:35.360
Sometimes you just got to go like this when you see the odds and you don't like them.
00:41:48.340
There are times when you are walking away from things that people would give their right
00:41:58.940
It also takes an extreme amount of confidence in your capabilities.
00:42:02.020
But that's what, you know, one of the things I love about you guys is you're entrepreneurs.
00:42:18.340
Uh, a very obvious one is, is such a sore subject for me.
00:42:24.940
2016, we're rocking and rolling in the truck world, TV shows, killing it.
00:42:28.840
We've got this huge media empire on social media of all these trucks.
00:42:39.520
So we set out on this ambitious journey to make, um, specialty tires for diesel pickups
00:42:46.080
that lasted longer than, you know, what we were buying.
00:42:48.680
It was, it was kind of like a need that we had, right?
00:42:50.540
We want to fix this problem that we have and we want to obviously make some money while
00:42:54.140
So we built this tire brand and the whole goal was to always have this American made tire
00:42:58.480
Well, you can't just start making tires in America day one.
00:43:04.680
It was really, really difficult to make anything in America, especially something that has
00:43:15.260
Finally, federal tire in Taiwan responded and said, yeah, we'll do it.
00:43:22.080
It's one step like above starting in China, which is what most, most people have to start
00:43:33.220
Well, keep in mind, we're young entrepreneurs that are trying to juggle a TV show, a lawsuit.
00:43:37.680
Um, all of our kids being born at the same time.
00:43:40.760
We've got like new newborn children all over the place.
00:43:47.300
We were able to kind of show the evolution of Patriot tires on the discovery show, diesel
00:43:52.120
We even had the chairman of the federal tire, this old Chinese guy.
00:43:57.820
Actually, there was a bunch of old Chinese guys that didn't speak much English, but they
00:44:02.320
And they came and jumped in one of our monster trucks with us.
00:44:04.320
And there's an episode of them screaming in the backseat of the truck as we're driving
00:44:07.700
them through the rocks and the mud, having the best time ever.
00:44:10.460
And that launched our tire company and it just took off to the moon.
00:44:15.800
Like we were so pumped selling tires like crazy.
00:44:19.640
Um, we were trying a different tire model where we tried to start by not going to distribution.
00:44:25.420
We wanted to go direct to consumers because we figured, Hey, if somebody wants a set of
00:44:29.000
tires, let's buy from us and we'll just ship it to their house on a pallet and they can
00:44:33.360
That's how we ordered tires and it was working and we were killing it and we were having the
00:44:38.160
And about, it was probably like a month before or after we got served the lawsuit for the
00:44:44.280
clean air stuff, we received a cease and desist from some company in Singapore that owned
00:44:52.980
Well, we thought we had done some research, but I didn't.
00:44:56.180
I just told somebody like, Hey, will you look this up?
00:44:59.100
I was, I was running a gun and trying to get this tire deal going.
00:45:03.560
We didn't, um, this company, uh, Omni tire had had it and they basically said, not so
00:45:18.320
And so we said, well, there's gotta be something we can do.
00:45:25.460
They just took Patriot tires from us and, uh, it's still a very successful tire brand.
00:45:33.260
It was a great, it would have, it would have been probably today.
00:45:36.380
It probably would have been a hundred million dollar business.
00:45:39.260
And we tried to get again, once we learned our lesson the hard way, we tried to launch it
00:45:43.780
And we, in fact, were able to make tires in the U S Cooper tire, saw our success with
00:45:49.540
So we started a new company, but the problem was I didn't love the brand from day one.
00:45:57.960
And I know the passion just basically fizzled out and that company didn't last a year.
00:46:03.220
Anybody who's doing podcast, YouTube, whatever, that is the secret.
00:46:07.720
But so many people perform and, uh, if it's not genuine, if you're not passionate about
00:46:17.920
And I think with you guys, it's not going to, it's not going to work.
00:46:21.900
I mean, we've had really good ideas that I'm like, okay, well, let's try that never works.
00:46:27.220
But if it's something, even if it's a bad idea, but it's something that I'm passionate
00:46:33.640
I mean, people are just, they like you because you're you, my, you know, our whole business
00:46:39.040
group, ecosystem, employees, everybody knows that I'm not super passionate about it, but
00:46:46.040
Nobody should even put too much effort into it.
00:46:49.200
And, um, you know, that that's proved itself over and over and over again throughout what
00:46:53.520
But on the flip side of that, if they seem excited about something, they've learned to
00:46:56.540
double down because whatever it is, cause it's going to work.
00:47:01.100
I'm the guy that's really good at going out and like saying, Hey, here's a fruit tree.
00:47:07.040
Pick the first piece, show everybody, taste it.
00:47:13.380
And, but I got to leave people there to harvest this one and run it and manage it.
00:47:16.720
So it's, but dude, when you're young, you don't know how to learn that about yourself.
00:47:22.020
Especially when you come from a background like us, neither one of us came from real business
00:47:27.420
My dad died when I was 21 and I was left with my mom to figure out how to take care
00:47:39.460
Um, this is a, this is such a funny story back in 2008, 2009, I was trying to get started.
00:47:47.200
Well, you remember 2008, 2009, nobody was giving loans, let alone like small business loans
00:48:08.100
You got to go to all these different banks on the same day and apply for a car loan.
00:48:12.340
And then we'll get you approved for your car loans.
00:48:14.420
And then what you do is you'll go to the auction or go to a dealership and you'll talk
00:48:18.440
them way down on a car, but you'll be able to borrow the full amount because you know,
00:48:21.680
books out of that and then the excess, you'll be able to just keep and use this business
00:48:26.280
And so we did, I went out and got like eight car loans and my credit was like seven 50.
00:48:31.600
And then all of a sudden all those things hit on the same day.
00:48:33.960
But luckily the loans had already closed and it went down to like 400.
00:48:37.320
But somehow I ended up with like $19,000 in equity that I had way over borrowed on all
00:48:43.460
And that's what I took and used and started the business.
00:48:45.960
But then I had a bunch of cars that I had to figure out what to do with.
00:48:50.440
I'll just lease these cars to other people and they'll make my payments for me.
00:48:52.880
And they'll basically pay for all my business, you know, capital.
00:48:56.900
Have you ever tried to lease or rent cars to people that, that have to lease or rent a
00:49:03.580
It usually means they've, they've come from a rough background.
00:49:10.640
We were, it was an absolute nightmare, but without it, I wouldn't have been able to get my
00:49:14.060
start because in 2008, nobody had any money to do anything.
00:49:17.020
And I would have probably had to wait three or four years.
00:49:22.960
FBI called me in 2011 and said, Hey, tell us what you know about wonder financial.
00:49:33.580
And you know, they, they dug into them and obviously it was, uh, I didn't do anything
00:49:37.140
Um, turns out the way they were doing business wasn't necessarily wonder financial.
00:49:43.760
They didn't, they, they're not around anymore, which is surprising.
00:49:46.860
Uh, but it was, you know, it's always been about figuring it out.
00:49:50.380
It's always been about, man, it goes back to the way too much confidence in myself.
00:49:56.200
You know, it is really, it's, it's, again, I think as long as it doesn't get out of control,
00:50:06.640
That's why I just think everything that's happened in the last 20 years is so evil because
00:50:10.160
it's, it's, it's telling everybody you can't do it.
00:50:17.480
That's so evil because when, when you actually believe now I'll figure that out.
00:50:22.480
Well, don't you think it's when confidence turns into ego?
00:50:24.520
I think that's, that's the tipping point because confidence, when confidence turns
00:50:30.600
And I think that happened to our country in many different ways because, you know, the
00:50:35.540
world war II generation, those guys were confident.
00:50:38.260
They just knew that the American spirit could do it and we could figure it out, which is
00:50:43.780
Well, once you get really good at something for so long and you keep doing it, you get
00:50:46.680
to the point where you just assume you're good at everything.
00:50:52.880
We've been like the last, when do you think things got really bad in the U S I
00:50:56.700
mean, they've been getting bad, but it, it kind of like that seed kind of sprouted
00:51:02.900
I think it was probably, yeah, maybe around 2000.
00:51:07.720
I think our height of our, the arrogance of the nineties and the.com and all of that
00:51:16.380
stuff, but I think in, I don't know when our arrogance stopped.
00:51:23.760
I was going to say maybe it was right before the, the, uh, financial crash, but I think
00:51:29.620
we went right back to being arrogant after nine 11, after 2008, I think we just started
00:51:38.320
I hope we don't go back to, well, it's all fixed now.
00:51:43.460
But how cool has that been to see this transition of, I mean, dude, the whole country just swung
00:51:49.120
complete opposite direction from where we were.
00:51:57.760
You, you were demonized for the last several years.
00:52:03.420
I was, I was voted the third most admired man in the world.
00:52:16.560
Um, and that's in 2008 when I was at CNN, when I moved to Fox within a year, I was hated.
00:52:27.760
It was just, have you always said you're spoken your mind the same way on each show
00:52:32.660
Uh, after I got baptized, uh, cause I really needed, I really needed forgiveness.
00:52:49.860
You were a convert to the church in the nineties?
00:53:01.320
And then when I was redeemed and I have a fresh start and it's real, um, I was for probably
00:53:10.740
first five years, I was just afraid to do anything wrong.
00:53:13.580
Cause I didn't want all that stuff to come back.
00:53:15.540
And then you grow in it and you're like, oh, oh, I don't want to do anything bad.
00:53:21.940
But if you, if you, if you actually make a covenant and say, I will be honest in my business
00:53:33.680
You know what my, my proudest moment was when I left Fox after all the cover of time magazine,
00:53:39.840
all the success, everything else, you know what I was most proud of?
00:53:42.620
I never compromised once on what I believe to be true.
00:53:48.160
And the compromise, the, the, the, the push to compromise on what you actually believe
00:53:56.100
And I had, um, uh, something that was on my desk at Fox the entire run.
00:54:02.360
And one of the guys said, we're just going to throw this away.
00:54:08.560
I was, I'm walking out of my studio the last time I take it in my hands and I take about
00:54:12.920
And I said, actually, you'll have to throw it away.
00:54:26.960
And I walked out and I closed the door closed behind me and I'm like, that's the first thing
00:54:36.660
I believe that's where true peace and power comes from is being able to just trust yourself
00:54:41.340
and, and when you are in line with God, everything becomes so easy, right?
00:54:50.820
And when somebody accuses you of doing something wrong, you're like, yeah, you know, accuse
00:55:00.240
And people become terrified of you because they're all hiding stuff.
00:55:05.500
And when you walk into a room, they know, A, they think, I think these people can see
00:55:17.800
They, you know, I, I've, I've, I was taught really young when you negotiate, don't ever bluff.
00:55:33.700
And, and so when, when you look at people and they're negotiating and you're like, no,
00:55:59.500
I've always wondered why people love you so much.
00:56:04.680
But as we've gotten to know you a little bit better, this side of it is starting to show.
00:56:08.220
And that's one thing that I came into this show feeling and knowing is you're a guy who
00:56:14.220
And, but you know that like deep down inside, you're not bluffing that.
00:56:18.620
And that's why you, you look very comfortable in your own skin and people pick up on that and
00:56:24.960
You just have to get past, you have to believe that you're a decent human being.
00:56:33.060
And then you have to believe, you know, I have something unique.
00:56:36.920
I mean, honestly, it's intimidating sitting with you guys because you're like man's man.
00:56:51.440
The only skill I have, I could tell a good story.
00:56:56.620
I'll tell you stories, but eventually I'm going to be eaten.
00:57:13.820
I might, but you know, one of the things that, you know, you just have to know who you are,
00:57:23.700
But the thing I like about you guys is the, the idea of just figuring it out.
00:57:47.600
Um, and that you, and that you guys can fix things.
00:57:54.240
I can create things here, but I can't create anything.
00:58:09.000
I couldn't tell you the first thing about them other than I like this one because of this
00:58:18.800
We're actually supposed to look at one of your cars down here.
00:58:20.620
It's got a wobble at around 50 miles an hour or something.
00:58:26.920
And it's, I can't find anybody to fix the spokes.
00:58:37.260
And you can't drive it because I'm just afraid it just.
00:58:42.260
You know, going back to the, you don't need a title.
00:58:44.000
It goes back to the email that I got yesterday from the state emergency manager going from
00:58:48.860
thinking like these guys are not fit for the job.
00:58:52.300
Again, a bunch of YouTubers with a helicopter, with a Blackhawk to then the, he closed out
00:58:56.420
the email by saying, I just want to let you know that you've changed a lot of minds here
00:59:00.720
on the local and state level on how we plan to approach working with private groups like
00:59:07.260
this in the future, because they've always just said, no team, I don't have a title, right?
00:59:11.540
And you know, it's really cool about the type of content that we're doing.
00:59:13.720
If you go watch our channel, most of it is, well, I won't say most of it, but a good
00:59:18.040
chunk of it is feel good stories where we're going out to solve problems for people.
00:59:22.040
Like we didn't charge the family for this recovery.
00:59:26.060
I mean, if you factor in flight time and everything about 70 grand.
00:59:33.740
I mean, we didn't even think twice and we don't about any of these things.
00:59:38.000
I don't, I don't think about the failure option.
00:59:42.360
I don't think about anything other than this is a problem that I really want to solve.
00:59:47.960
See, this is so, I'm so, all I'm thinking is I'm so frustrated because I, I can be the guy.
00:59:54.660
I, I come to people like you and go, Hey, can we work on some?
00:59:58.280
I can't actually, I would be great to be able to go.
01:00:04.220
The guy who has the idea is a crucial part of the team.
01:00:06.460
You can find a team that can do it, but the guy that comes and says this is the problem.
01:00:11.500
We've got the team that makes it happen for us.
01:00:13.360
We, uh, without our team, I mean, we would be, dude, you know how hard it is to build
01:00:17.940
I'm sure you got a massive operation here and to be able to get people that actually understand
01:00:24.300
Because we're not always good at explaining our vision to everybody.
01:00:28.580
And then finding people that can first get it and then execute it.
01:00:31.100
And then the hardest part is staying consistent.
01:00:34.120
Having somebody to continue to do what they're supposed to do.
01:00:37.600
That's why, that's why I think Facebook fame, Twitter fame, all of this bogus fame is so fleeting.
01:00:53.040
It is impossible to hold that for a decade or two.
01:00:59.040
It's, it's the, the odds of that success become almost zero in the world of fame and fortune.
01:01:07.100
I found the power came in not wanting to hold the fame and not caring about that.
01:01:15.880
When you realize all the bogus things in life have zero value, how it's so easy to have those things.
01:01:27.000
Because it's, because you look at it like, well, of course it's a by-product.
01:01:35.300
Go out to change people's lives and the money will just be there.
01:01:39.960
Well, dude, what you don't, what people don't realize is this is a common theme throughout life.
01:01:43.520
In high school, you see a girl, you want that girl, you try so freaking hard.
01:01:49.580
The day that you just don't care anymore is the day where all of a sudden girls are just all over you.
01:01:57.320
I was going to say, apply that to other things because that's never happened to me.
01:02:00.380
I cannot care about girls and they're never all over me.
01:02:03.260
It's when you release attachment from the outcome and focus on the process and get really good at the process and enjoy the process.
01:02:13.740
And dude, it happens on every level, all the way from girls in high school, all the way up to pulling bodies off the mountains in a helicopter that I have no business owning.
01:02:22.260
I mean, if you look at where I came from and who I am and what I've done, I have no business doing the things that I'm doing.
01:02:26.900
Dave has no business doing the things that he's doing with us.
01:02:36.600
I mean, you are just, I mean, first of all, pipe down a little bit.
01:02:56.340
We took a flight from Salt Lake City to Cedar City once.
01:02:58.740
And any time we get on, put on a flight and Dave gets put next to somebody, he knows our whole life story pretty quickly.
01:03:06.800
Before we even landed in Cedar, he had this middle-aged woman sobbing on his shoulder.
01:03:12.280
Just, I'm talking full-blown, like, letting it all out.
01:03:19.800
She got into her life problems because it's just this warm, safe place for people to just feel it.
01:03:24.760
To feel like somebody actually cares because he actually cares.
01:03:27.860
The difference between him and somebody else is Dave actually genuinely still thinks about that lady.
01:03:39.780
So there's a good yin and a yang here because I care, but I also have a really wild ADD.
01:03:44.840
And so I can only care until I see the next squirrel.
01:03:47.280
And then it's like on to the next, on to the next.
01:03:48.900
So, like I said, I go find the fruit tree, Dave, make sure that it's not true.
01:03:56.160
And becoming famous, right, in the world of TV.
01:04:01.440
And I'm like, my social battery gets drained really quick, really quickly.
01:04:07.780
So I'm like, hello, thank you, see you later, goodbye.
01:04:09.800
I look back and we're always like, Dave, come on, dude.
01:04:14.700
Because he's back there getting to know everybody's life story.
01:04:18.320
It's different, though, because I hate small talk.
01:04:22.460
But when you get into a crowd that know you and you get the first opportunity to get to
01:04:30.000
know them, because they have you at a disadvantage.
01:04:38.100
And so they'll open up and tell you real things that small talk never happened.
01:04:43.900
But when they start telling you real things, I'm the same way.
01:04:55.420
But you put me in a room with people, my listeners, or, you know.
01:05:07.100
I love hearing people's story, where they came from, how they got there, and then what
01:05:12.960
But I think it's because they know you, they'll get past all that small talk fast.
01:05:18.800
You ever noticed when you're having a conversation with somebody who's starstruck, and you're
01:05:23.320
talking to them, and you feel like it's just going straight through them?
01:05:27.860
You ask them a question or say something to them, and they just go on to tell you something
01:05:31.620
they love about what you did in the past, or I was a big fan of this, a big fan of that.
01:05:37.460
And it's taken me, I'm still working on getting through that.
01:05:42.200
For people who just want the selfie, because everybody wants a selfie.
01:05:47.600
Because I'm like, we could have spent that time connecting.
01:05:51.860
And I feel bad for the people who are starstruck, because I can guarantee you, they walk away
01:06:01.400
And it's just a natural thing sometimes to get that.
01:06:05.160
I love to just grab those people and be like, just breathe.
01:06:09.300
Yeah, he could break them down in seconds, where I can't get through to those people.
01:06:14.940
But he'll hug them both physically and emotionally.
01:06:18.000
They just feel safe with him, and it's a gift, man.
01:06:22.100
I mean, he's the guy you want to be with at the end of the world.
01:06:30.460
I am a, I collect watches, I collect cars, and I collect, I collect them, I collect mechanical
01:06:39.780
I like things that have been made by hand and are mechanical.
01:06:49.080
And because it says something about the human spirit, it says something about somebody who
01:06:56.580
is just taking two years to make that, you know what I mean?
01:07:05.320
Where do you guys stand on the whole, I know you own an electric truck company.
01:07:16.980
And I'm currently going through my EV conversion slash baptism by fire, I guess, because obviously
01:07:26.500
the Diesel Brothers got no business playing with EVs, right?
01:07:29.260
And then all of a sudden I'm promoting an EV company, who legally I can't say the name
01:07:37.180
But I own a bunch of EV assets, including a truck called the Badger, and an electric wave
01:07:41.640
runner program, and an electric power source program.
01:07:43.700
And the reason why is because I truly believed in the founder of this company.
01:07:48.180
You know, he used to advertise, he used to advertise U-Pillar, Trevor Milton.
01:07:52.280
So, Trevor's a good friend of mine, just great, great, like one of the best people I know.
01:07:59.380
He got absolutely railroaded by the Southern District of New York.
01:08:10.640
He was running this big company, took it public in 2020.
01:08:13.580
And they came after him with this, the Hindenburg Research Group, the short selling firm, came
01:08:19.840
after him with these wild claims, many of which weren't true.
01:08:23.340
And literally, I watched as the government and these private organizations that saw billions
01:08:30.640
of dollars we had, just completely destroyed his life.
01:08:35.180
And, but now, can't speak too soon, but there's some vindication coming.
01:08:41.080
But yeah, Trevor actually wanted me to say hello, because back in his U-pillar days of
01:08:44.940
when he used to advertise with you, had that great relationship.
01:08:48.240
But I got into EV through him because I believed in him.
01:08:51.320
I've never really been too fascinated by EV in general.
01:08:53.760
But once I got into it, I started learning about it and understanding there's a lot of
01:08:58.940
I would own a Tesla, but because I believe in Elon Musk.
01:09:07.080
We kind of put our electric business on the, just kind of back burner for now, just because
01:09:14.980
There was no reason for us to, dude, when we launched this electric truck, the Badger,
01:09:18.780
we sold $450 million worth of trucks in our presale in like two months based off of a rendering.
01:09:28.060
And so I wanted to like experience an EV, try it out, see what it was all about.
01:09:33.320
I literally thought Elon was trolling us for about a year.
01:09:38.200
Eventually he's going to come out with the actual design and we're going to see what it
01:09:42.160
And so I was like, I'm going to buy one of those and beat the crap out of it and create
01:09:50.500
Drove it home and I was like, I kind of like this thing.
01:09:52.700
This is really nice because I go from a world of driving big trucks all the time.
01:09:56.820
You get in the Tesla Cybertruck and it's silent.
01:10:05.120
I know when you take it and you get people in it for the first time, my kids still love
01:10:08.760
It's probably the longest I've owned a truck and I bought it in April.
01:10:13.460
So I'm coming up on a year here and I'd planned on owning it for about a month.
01:10:18.300
Well, I fell in love with driving it because it's just easy, just easy.
01:10:22.740
But, you know, I thought I'll keep this truck forever.
01:10:27.480
It's like it was designed by a kid in Minecraft.
01:10:30.080
It's the vehicle that we all drew when we were little kids.
01:10:39.680
But I actually caught myself a couple months ago driving home just kind of annoyed.
01:10:43.980
And I didn't know why I was because I'd had a great day.
01:10:50.020
I don't feel like a man, I guess you could say.
01:10:52.680
And then I realized that the truck I was driving sounded like a vacuum cleaner.
01:10:56.900
And I really, at that moment, thought, I need some horsepower.
01:11:01.500
I need a mechanical thing in front of me that I can kind of tweak and modulate and have fun with.
01:11:07.500
Is that when you came home with a 12-valve the next day?
01:11:08.960
Yeah, literally, I took it home and I parked it and I thought, I need to get back in a truck.
01:11:16.220
And we own 300 vehicles, all the way from heavy rescue equipment to bulldozers to all kinds of different trucks, classic cars, you name it.
01:11:25.900
And I just realized that day that I was like, I don't want to daily drive this anymore because I need, I don't want easy all the time.
01:11:34.540
And so I went out and bought a 1995 Dodge Cummins old farm truck and started daily driving it.
01:11:40.360
And instantly, I caught myself driving home the next day just like smiling.
01:11:44.200
And the windows barely worked and the dash was cracked and I was shifting gears and I was having real time of my life, man.
01:11:53.160
And I'm really big on making sure that my kids know how to do everything by the time it's time for them to do stuff.
01:11:58.700
So I started teaching my daughter how to drive and I thought, you know what, what better vehicle to teach her how to drive?
01:12:04.520
Because most people don't know how to drive stick shift anymore.
01:12:09.740
How many people you know that don't drive a stick, right?
01:12:11.840
So I put my daughter in this five-speed 12-valve Cummins and I've always tried to teach people that when you drive a standard, you got to, it's like a teeter-totter.
01:12:19.760
You release the clutch, push the gash at the same time.
01:12:24.540
I'm telling my daughter how to drive and I don't give her that example yet.
01:12:26.880
And she goes, oh, dad, it's kind of like, it's kind of like this, right?
01:12:29.540
And I was like, oh, and then she lets the clutch out first try.
01:12:49.560
And he's like, okay, you're going to have to hold this thing in compression.
01:13:01.900
I learned how to drive a semi truck on the hills of San Francisco.
01:13:04.940
My friend's supercross race team was stuck there.
01:13:10.600
And he's like, hey, we got to get this truck out of here.
01:13:12.980
Well, I'd never driven a semi, but I told him that I had.
01:13:15.360
So I get in this semi, full big rig with a race trailer, like the biggest truck you can get.
01:13:19.680
And there I go up and down the hills of San Francisco, just fake it till you make it figured
01:13:25.680
But man, sometimes, sometimes it's best to just get thrown like way in the deep end, as
01:13:30.500
long as you can do it in a way that like, you know, you can manage it.
01:13:33.740
But if you have the mentality that I do, which is failure, maybe failure is an option, but
01:13:44.340
I just learn from it, learn from it and then move on.
01:13:46.780
I don't give it more than a couple of seconds of acknowledgement.
01:13:49.340
And that's, that's honestly kind of how we've approached everything.
01:13:51.960
Just failure may happen, but I'm not going to think about it.
01:13:54.920
And if it does happen, just, you know, it is what it is, but here's what I really want.
01:13:58.800
I'm going to do whatever it takes to get to this solution.
01:14:01.020
And so it's a long way of saying EVs are cool, but I don't think they've got, they've got
01:14:06.840
If they want to go to San Francisco, jump in a way home.
01:14:08.080
I think people are going to get really pissed off in the years to come when, because you
01:14:16.980
When, when that thing comes down and you can't fix it, nobody can fix it.
01:14:20.940
And when you don't have, when you have to replace the batteries, people are going to
01:14:32.460
I don't know what to do with, I'm not going to go put a new battery in them.
01:14:39.880
It's a big sealed unit that you can't really touch.
01:14:45.740
I don't know what's going to happen with that world.
01:14:50.060
And the bubble that was building kind of had to pop eventually.
01:14:53.540
But man, at the end of the day, there's no replacement for displacement, which is the
01:15:00.460
The more you have available and the more you just feel it.
01:15:03.440
And I mean, that's kind of how we do everything.
01:15:09.200
Usually we're always looking for the bigger, better thing in a sustainable way.
01:15:13.760
You can't always be chasing, chasing, chasing, because then you find yourself not gratified.
01:15:18.340
I think from my mid thirties, I had a moment where I was like, I should start enjoying
01:15:29.040
When you start to actually just slow down and, and, and there's a lot of moments where
01:15:33.020
we have really cool things that we do together and we stop and we're like, dude, this is
01:15:38.200
Like we drove monster trucks for a living for three or four years and like going to stadium
01:15:42.240
And I set a world record on live TV, jumping over a flying airplane.
01:15:45.600
The problem is people get in that mode where there's like more, more, more, more, more.
01:15:50.140
If you don't stop and smell the roses, which sounds so cliche, but man, there's really
01:15:54.560
I think people could find a lot of happiness in just stopping and enjoying the moment.
01:15:59.040
I had a good friend, John Huntsman senior, and, uh, we were walking on, and on his mountain.
01:16:07.400
Uh, and, uh, he said to me, you know, he was on the, you know, most, the richest people
01:16:24.460
And he said, what's the number that you'll go, that's enough.
01:16:32.360
You might make more over it, but what's that number?
01:16:38.600
And he said, find it or you will never be satisfied.
01:16:47.120
And I have found that I can do way more and be way happier and feel way more fulfilled
01:16:53.520
doing a lot more with less than trying to constantly be in that pursuit of more, more,
01:16:59.860
Because if you do, like you said, if you don't have that number, fame and fortune is, is the
01:17:05.700
There's, it's the most disgusting cancer that people want to catch.
01:17:11.540
People think that when, if you're rich, your problems go away.
01:17:21.080
And that's the, that's more money, more problems.
01:17:22.880
I mean, that's when I heard that one was a little.
01:17:24.500
I mean, nobody feels bad for you, but, but it's true.
01:17:28.600
Nobody has any sympathy on you because I, he's just a dumb rich guy that you figure it
01:17:38.280
You learn a lot and if you actually take a second to the, to internalize those lessons
01:17:43.660
and look back where you came from, there's a lot of power in that.
01:17:48.560
And to realize in some ways you also win the lottery.
01:17:52.180
You know, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of skill, a lot of things you have to
01:18:05.160
But I feel like luck is made by those who are pursuing something, pursuing something
01:18:13.760
I've always told people that I'm too dumb to calculate risk.
01:18:16.380
I don't think I'm dumb, but I like to tell myself that I'm too dumb to calculate risk
01:18:19.940
because then that, that puts me in a world where I don't ever look at failure as like
01:18:25.320
I was going back to the, you know, the failure concept for me, it's always been my worst case
01:18:39.860
If you're the type of person that can figure it out and not hang your hat on the final achievement,
01:18:47.160
There is no amount of money that, that is going to click.
01:18:50.500
It's going to become about fulfillment experiences.
01:19:04.920
And every day, you know, I had a, they thought I had a blood clot about three weeks ago.
01:19:12.340
And so when that happens and you're trying to be cool for everybody else who's like, he's got a blood clot.
01:19:20.500
But then when you're there in the hospital by yourself, you realize I could, I could stroke out in the next minute.
01:19:38.440
And just really, I had a really hard time for, for a while after it.
01:19:52.460
Nobody ever says, I wish I would have done more work, more this, had more even experiences in different places.
01:20:03.280
All you want and all you regret are the time that you had or didn't make for your kids and family.
01:20:13.560
And I'm at a place in my life to where I'm, I just, I don't have to do it anymore.
01:20:24.000
And I don't, I don't necessarily think it's necessary to do anymore.
01:20:30.840
But I know that I cannot waste another second with my kids.
01:20:38.340
You can't waste another second with your kids, but you also can't waste another second using your platform and what you have to help other people.
01:20:49.920
You know, we were talking with you guys during the hurricane and understanding kind of your reach and what you guys are doing.
01:20:53.900
You've taken it to such a large scale and you guys are doing like such incredible missions.
01:21:03.440
Oh, um, between when I meet listeners and I hear the impact on real things, not like, Hey, I understand what's happening with Donald Trump.
01:21:13.640
But the real things that have impacted their life when I know, because I'm not, all I'm doing is saying, Hey, we should do this.
01:21:26.720
You know, we have raised and given away over a quarter of a billion dollars in the last 10 years.
01:21:45.220
And to see that and to see what comes of that, that's probably the most important and least known part of my work.
01:21:53.840
That's probably the most, it is the most satisfying and the most important part.
01:22:00.220
And you guys, I'm sure feel that way about what you guys do.
01:22:03.340
We're lucky because the genre of doing good for people has finally become a content genre that people like and embrace and want more of.
01:22:11.220
And so the more good we do, the more traction we get.
01:22:16.220
So it's like this, I almost feel selfish sometimes.
01:22:19.400
Because you're out helping so many people and it's like, man, it just keeps on coming back tenfold.
01:22:25.820
Because, you know, in our faith, you know, you're supposed to care about everybody and blah, blah, blah.
01:22:30.180
And I got to go check my neighbors, you know, all that.
01:22:34.860
I'm not built to where I want to go over and, you know, see how everybody's doing.
01:22:45.440
But no, I'm not the, I just, but every time I do it, every time I serve, every time, I always drive places going, and I drive home going, why don't I do that all the time?
01:23:06.780
But for some reason, we have this weird thing in us.
01:23:13.880
The ego is constantly, I mean, once you understand what your ego is and how to manage it, life becomes much easier.
01:23:20.580
Because you realize that it makes a lot of decisions for you just on autopilot.
01:23:24.060
Your subconscious is constantly worrying about you, you, you, you, you.
01:23:27.020
But the more you worry about them, them, them, them, them, all of a sudden, like we're going back to what we said earlier, just life becomes more of a flow state.
01:23:35.180
You're less forced and more just abundance everywhere you look.
01:23:40.140
And that's kind of the way that we, we approach everything is we do the right thing.
01:23:45.880
We worry about other people other than ourselves.
01:23:48.800
We don't have to look way down the road of what this is going to bring to us.
01:23:55.060
I think that's, I think that's the real definition of faith.
01:23:59.920
Because even when you're in the struggles, you're, you're asking, what am I supposed to learn from this?
01:24:09.580
I don't need to know where exactly, but where I know this is going to come, become very valuable to me someplace down the road.
01:24:17.900
So even when you're struggling, you have that faith of, there is no bad.
01:24:26.200
And, you know, I did this and it didn't work out.
01:24:40.100
So there's not a single cut that he cannot use.
01:24:46.880
There's, you know, I go in and I'm cutting everything wrong and I have to throw that away.
01:24:58.660
Because the moves that he's making that you're experiencing right now, you don't understand how that's going to benefit you a year, two, five down the road.
01:25:05.560
And then all of a sudden you look back and it's like, man, that blood clot opened my eyes.
01:25:09.000
And look at the time I spent with my kids, boom, boom, boom, all these different experiences.
01:25:13.280
Like, I just feel like you can find good in everything.
01:25:20.480
It's just where you're looking and what you're focusing on.
01:25:23.540
Guys, I have to cut this off because you are exhausting me all the, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:25:33.240
If you could have dinner with one person living or alive, or living or dead, who would it be?
01:25:53.340
I mean, it might be, it might be somebody like Billy Graham, who I had dinner with.
01:26:11.720
And I got to know him probably the last eight years of his life, where he was preparing to go to the other side.
01:26:20.840
And so he's just this font of wisdom and absolutely no fear and knew what he was responsible for and knew what God was responsible for.
01:26:40.120
I think I'd like to have dinner with him again.
01:26:43.380
Because he was one of the people who actually was who he claimed to be or appeared to be.
01:26:54.740
Only because of fear, people just are afraid to be themselves.