The 4 Eras of Jeeps, Where does Jeff Mello fit? Episode 13

Jeff Mello is not just a rockcrawler, hear him tell his story, with some laughs along the way.  If you can get through it with out laughing, you deserve a prize.  Jeff shares some great stories and his philosophies on the four eras of Jeeps and which one we’re in now.  

4:20 – I don’t think Jeff really “remembers” this trip…

7:12  – The perfect second date, guys, don’t hand your girl the keys unless you mean it.

11:07 – “We would play, who can go furthest in two-wheel drive?”

14:32 – Spend $2200, make $40K – I’ll take that deal all day long

20:50 – how to keep up with all the different rule books, CalRocs, ProRock and UROC

25:07 – How creative do you gotta be to pass tech some times?

28.52 – You lied to me…

45:28 – the best co-dawg ever!  Keep listening, you’ll be laughing outloud (sorry Jason!)

56:34 – The Budget Rental
 
1:07:51 – The evolution of Jeeps – the four eras

It’s always so good to catch up with old friends, you’ve heard of Jeff Mello, get to know him better here.  Truly an original, and an OG as well.  Great Stories!

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

www.maxxis.com

www.4lowmagazine.com 

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

Big Rich Klein:  
Welcome to the Big Rich show. This podcast will focus on conversations with friends and acquaintances within the four-wheel drive industry. Many of the people that I will be interviewing you may know the name. You may know some of the history, but let's get in depth with these people and find out what truly makes them a 4wheel drive enthusiast. So now is the time to sit back, grab a cold one and enjoy our conversation. 

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Well everybody, thank you for joining us today on Conversations with Big Rich, we are interviewing Jeff Mello, one of the OG rock crawling competitors, did a lot of racing before that I believe. Tough truck and some other things and been a long-time off-road enthusiast. So welcome Jeff to Conversations with Big Rich. We want to find out about Jeff Mello and who you really are and how'd you get started So let's start there. Where did you grow up?

Jeff Mello: Well, thanks for having me on. I grew up within five miles of where I'm sitting right now. I was born in Alamo, California. My parents lived in Danville, California and I kind of live in Danville between those two properties right now. So I've, I really never moved more than about five miles away. 

Big Rich Klein: Excellent. Was your family into wheeling when you were growing up 

Jeff Mello: So that basically started out my dad's side of the family was big into race cars, midgets, Indianapolis, and always had a like a hot rod side to everything. they were very close. My dad, my uncles sprayed cars for the open Roadster show and stuff like that in the barn. And my grandfather's ranch and they, you know, they had stripers that incidentally, Jason Scherer  later moved into that striper shop on Front Street in Danville, you know, just by coincidence, but they were big into hot rods and my dad's sort I guess in sprint cars and sort of I guess, black sheep, he never was real competitive. So when my dad was nine years old, one of my grandfather's good friends that kind of had a neighboring ranch bought a 1946 CJ2, which is in my garage right now, the only vehicle kept inside the garage. Right 

Jeff Mello: The oldest one. Yeah. And so it was a very good friend of my grandfather's and both their sons are the same. So all the Hills and Dales and races and bitches and Mount dab, the state park, that little flat fender has been all over all those places. So that was his first taste of Jeeps. So my first Jeep trip was somewhere around what's spring, late summer, late summer to fall of 1966 and that was in a Willie's wagon that my dad had built up from the different ones and then come 1967 of May or February, 1967 he bought a brand new real Jeep. Right. His first real Jeep was a CJ5 president red that he bought from Butler Connie, still in my mom's side yard now. That was February of 67 and then a couple months later I was born and then my first trip was a couple weeks after that and they wheeled, geez, like twice a month for all of my growing up life. 

Big Rich Klein: Excellent. When was your first trip on the Rubicon?

Jeff Mello: I remember I was pretty young. I probably would have been like six, six weeks old, seven weeks old, something like that. Wow. so we're, if anybody doesn't know where Danville is, we're, you know, two and a half, three hours be the Rubicon. I'm about five hours North of Pismo Beach. We're a, you know, Fordyce right up there. So very, very NorCal oriented. Most of my wheeling in my early years. But we did go on. My dad was post office so we would go on these grands, three week long vacations, family of four with the dogs, sometimes, in a CJ5 going into frailer, right. We would go to Colorado. we went up as high as Calgary and Banff, Canada, in a CJ5 other Jeeps, tow and tent trailers. So we would do, you know, we did BlackBear road, we did Imogene Pass and all of the Silverton stuff. 

Jeff Mello: We ended up, when I did watch some competition stuff and screw around in Canada, long trips and in the meantime, you know, you're stopping at different places along the way. sand dunes in Nevada, you know, you’d camp there for a couple of nights and play and it was, they were awesome adventures. That's great. 

Big Rich Klein: So it was natural that you of course got into jeeping four wheel drive off road. What was your first vehicle?

Jeff Mello: My first vehicle was a 66 CJ5 That was nearly identical to my dad's CJ7 but my grandfather on my mom’s side now bought that Jeep in late 67 after my dad got his brand new. So it was about a year old. It's sitting out in my backyard, with some Mogg axles underneath. It has been there since, oh 20 years ago now they're all sentimental. Like I'm one of those guys that has instant sentimental value. 

Jeff Mello: I found this old commando racer on Craigslist, right. And I'm studying this thing I found in the seventies and eighties and Mint 400, Baja 500 and all this stuff and I'm like, it's still in the same trim and I have like instant sentimental value to it and I haven't touched it. I haven't turned one nut on it or you know anything. So I'm going to build that one up for VORRA or for NORRA I think. 

Big Rich Klein: Oh excellent. That's great. So when did you meet your wife, Julie?

Jeff Mello: I met my wife in like 90, late nineties, and she was roommates with real good friend of mine and my best man that had, that was one of the other guys in my life that had Jeep since we were 18 and Matt Kenny and he's a so yeah, well they were hanging out together and just, I ended up meeting my wife and our second date was a mud drag and barrel race up at Prairie City Sacramento and put on by California Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs. 

Jeff Mello: And I thought, you know, I got my open top 66 that we drove up there. I'm pretty sure we would trailer up my mud tires and swept them all there and then pull the top of the doors in the passenger seat, but tailgate and you know, all the, nothing. You had to unbolt, even windshield off. And I would go run a couple of it, a couple of different classes of mud drags. And then they had a barrel race, so everybody was running the barrel race in the mud, you know, and I think I won them all that year, you know, so I was pretty dialed in and I just, you know, you run individually. So I got out of the thing and I, I, you know, second date, you know, I said, well you know, do you want to try and drive it She never even sat in the driver's seat of the thing. And I'm like 13-14 seconds ahead of the fastest guy in his own truck. And what would you like to try it ? I didn’t think for any ways she was going to jump in the things, so anyway, we jumped into the thing and runs out there. She says she backpedaled cause she wanted a third date, but she was within like a second or two of my time. 

Jeff Mello: So yeah, she's, she's got the competitive spirit too. 

Big Rich Klein: That's great. That's great. So then the mud drags or the, the barrel racing there, was that the first competitions you got into or did you have a competitive spirit before that?

Jeff Mello:  I mean, when I was nine, I built a bike, cause some of the kids and in my neighborhood were into BMX. So I built up a bike and I went and raced that a couple of times and my dad was never competitive at all. We did all the recreational wheeling and everything. We went and watched a couple of competitions and you know, like all the racing and the other side of it, his family. But I definitely have the competitive bug and yeah. So the Sacramento Sand Champions originally started those mud drags and my very first mud drag, I can’t remember what year it was, I went up there and I trophy out of it. 

Jeff Mello: literally ran out of gas. This is pretty typical for me to on my parade lap back after my last heat to get my trophy. I didn't mean that started, you know, I still have that trophy and it still has the mud on it. 

Big Rich Klein: That's awesome. Yeah. So I would imagine if you, if you were competing in them and you grew up in, you were doing a lot of your own work. 

Jeff Mello: Yeah. Well, nobody else is going to do it. Exactly. Yeah. My dad was super handy. My dad taught me everything, automotive and everything, you know, construction and you know, remodel, which I did for many years. He's kind of a guy that never hired anything done. I think the only thing he ever hired out was somebody to do his roof in, you know, his whole life. And so he taught me all of that. 

Jeff Mello: He worked for the post office and then later, yeah. Laundromats, which we still have, but he, he taught me all that stuff and then a lot of it I was able to, you know, just Excel. I would bought tools and, and you know, space and had a barn to work in and you know, eventually and all that. So, yeah, it was a, I was always making my own stuff, but everybody was back then. You didn't, you couldn't buy any parts. But yeah. OEM replacement parts. Yeah. There was some guy named like Smitty building stuff. Yeah. Southern Cal. But you know, 

Big Rich Klein: Chrome bumpers. So what was your first experience Rock crawling?

Jeff Mello: Well, I mean it wasn't called rock crawling, right? 

Big Rich Klein: Well, no, I mean I know you were trail wheeling. 

Jeff Mello: We knew it was going to become competitive from back in the eighties. We'd sit on the trail and you know with open diffs and dumpster dive through cracked tires and you'd be, we would play who could go furthest in two wheel drive and you could make it to like middle sluice box in two wheel drive back in the day and then we’d have to lock in the hubs and finished the trail. But all of a sudden all these guys started coming up with me and they had lockers and you know, they're putting lockers in and stuff. So we knew it was getting really weird and competitive or like what are you doing We’re going to the same place you are, what are you spending all this money for? We didn't get it. When we talk about around the campfire, all somebody is going to put out some cones on Little Sluice and you know, have a scoring system and sure enough, Bob Hazel did that right in 1998. You had to really be somebody to be invited to that first ever Warn Nationals and I certainly wasn't. 

Jeff Mello: So I didn't hear anything about It, you know guys like Curries built the whole Jeep of competitive rock crawling TJ in 98, TJ’s didn’t come out since 1997 and they have this brand new Jeep that they had just constructed just for competitive rock crawling and there hadn't been a competitive rock crawl yet. I'm like geez, you know, and then guys like Yoder and he was just so bad ass. Everybody knew him just from running the trails up out of NorCal, you know, he, he got the invite so that, you know, I was like that, that's, that's still impresses me. That competed against guys like Currie. Right. So I petitioned pretty hard to be known I guess for the next year and it was 99 Warn Nationals and I mean it was growing so fast. I think there were other rock crawls in between, but this was the only second Warn Nationals. 

Jeff Mello: It was in Johnson Valley. So they have a list of requirements. You have to have a winch, you have to have 35” tires, you had to have lockers front and rear. I never had a winch before. I had never had 35 inch tires before. I had never done a limited slip before. Right. I had ran her thicker gear. Oil was about close as I could get. So my wife had bought her first, CJ7 and we had already like done a spring over on it. And I said, I want to go do that. So we got accepted and then I bought lockers and 35 and built my own Beadlocks and okay, on a winch they went out there. But you gotta remember the time, the era there was already, you know, 44” tire, rear wheel Steer, snipers and everything was named after a bug. 

Jeff Mello: And it was like killer bees and scorpions and you know, all this, all this stuff. I mean these guys were bad ass and here we are, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, you know, and I'd never even turned on a  locker before and driven a locker for one of the guys in my Jeep club towed me down there. He'd spotted for me, I think the first day we didn't see the same line at all. He probably had really good lines. I probably had really good lines. We ended up in the middle of him somewhere screwed up and the second day we counted it. We got it working out pretty well. And did you know from what we were driving, we did pretty well, but not enough to make the dirty dozen back then it was what you wanted to be yeah. And the go out for the third day. 

Big Rich Klein: Yes. Okay. I remember hearing back in the day or talking to you and you'd done some tough truck racing. Yeah. That was prior to the rock crawling competitions.

Jeff Mello: It was more concurrent than you realize. So yeah, like all the monster jam shows and all that stuff. We had televised and they all had Tough Trucks. They called them Pro Arena Trucks. You know, knuckles were three inches off the ground, but it was same thing. So they had a pretty good televise USA motor sports version of it. I'm sitting on my couch watching this going, man. That's cool. And it ended up being, a couple of guys that I had mud drag with were doing real well in it and stuff and they traveled all over the United States, this televised program. And I looked at him, I go, I betcha I could build something that would do that. Right. And that would be a blast. 

Jeff Mello: So a gal gave me a, no smog, full-size Cherokee and I basically chop that all up, move all the stock parts around and set a CJ5 body down on it. I went out for a Pro Arena Racing and that was in 88 that I finished building that it was $2,267. That Jeep, we eventually won over $40,000 in purse money with that $5,000 Jeep. Don't get me wrong, we didn't, you know, we added some parts here and there and my buddy, Matt Kenny still owns that Jeep and we still compete with it. Oh, I have another one similar to it. He's won a couple championships and won a trailer up at nor Cal rock racing in the pre-runner class. So yeah.

Big Rich Klein:  Yeah, I remember Matt, you guys came out all to the, to that first year that I put on CalRocs, there was quite a few of you guys from Diablo wheelers or what was the name of your club? 

Jeff Mello: So we’re ____Jeepers. And we’re a spinoff in 1966 of the Diable four wheelers, both local clubs. And so we at the time we were a spin off that, that wanted to do more hardcore trails, right So they, they are club didn't allow anything over a 90 inch wheelbase. It's a CJ7 when they came out, I remember the old guys when CJ7’s came out and I'm whatever, like nine years old going, Oh look at that huge thing that'll never fit on the trail. You know, and rightfully so. They, the Jeep had never grown that it's 40 years or 30 years or whatever of a Jeep and it only grown a couple inches and six in it. And people weren't lifting them and all that. So nine inches to add to already biggest Jeep out there was a huge step in eventually, naturally that Hey, right. But that's kinda, that's kind of defining era for like the very clear eras that I see. 

Jeff Mello: Anyway, from my perspective of how four wheeling came, there's like five very clear eras that brought us up to where we are. 

Big Rich Klein: You and Matt campaigned, the stadium truck, and then you got into the rock crawling as well. You came out, started competing at the CalRocs events and I remember the Jeep that you had. I think it was aluminum body. Correct?

Jeff Mello:  It wasn't yet at your first Amador, Lake Amador show. And that was good. That was a good event. I mean it was, it was fun. And it was all one class, if I remember right. We didn't have classes back then. So it was my wife's the same CJ7 and it was kind of a like a rusty red color. Okay. I remember Durham being there, not even realized at the time. Like, so these guys, have you read about the magazines and how he came from North Carolina to get to that show That was pretty awesome. 

Big Rich Klein: Yes. 

Jeff Mello: So and I, geez, I don't remember half the other guys that were there. But yeah, I mean that was back in the day where, so we're competing in the CJ7 that's still our trail Jeep, that's still our, you know, it's still totally street legal today. It's still totally street legal. And we had the race Jeep that we’re traveling all over the West, at least, doing both at the same time. In fact, during the early years there was a, there was an event, we trailered both of them down to Johnson Valley and we wheeled all day, it was a two day event, we wheeled all day came back, loaded up the CJ, we drove down to a Indio and unloaded them and race the race Jeep. Me and my spotter, both raced the race Jeep in the Pro Arena race, got first and second and then loaded back up and came back on Sunday and finished out the rock crawl. The second day, it was awesome weekend. That's crazy. We were hitting it pretty hard. We were doing like a, what we considered 75 days on dirt, you know, Jeep days on dirt. So somewhere some Jeep walked in. But if you brought two Jeeps to the same period that was two days worth, you know, two days worth of maintenance too. So that was kind of at the heyday involved. 

Big Rich Klein: That's pretty cool. So you, you had a lot of success in your career. You, you really participated for a long time in what we call the modified stock class and you had some innovative things that you were doing there, at least from things that I saw, you know, Frenching the Springs spring hangers in to get, you know, a smoother, smoother base on it. Talk about some of the things that you did back then that, that were kind of out of the box. 

Jeff Mello: Well, I never thought anything that we were doing was super out of the box, what we were fighting with the most. Like I was stoked when the stock modified class came, right Because I had three years of racing against everybody and they were all, the next year their Jeep would show up. Back-halvd with sixties and you know, all this stuff. And I'm like, wow, you know, I changed the air in the tires and that's about it. And so I was kinda like, I was like, eh, this isn't gonna last very long. It's fun. But, and then the stock modified came out and you know, we fit in like a mitten. It was, you know, it started out everybody had to show up with the windshield and you had to have like tight suspension and it changed back and forth throughout all the years. But the hardest part I think was keeping up with running your shows, right. 

Jeff Mello: So I'm running CalRocs, Pro Rock and UROC at one point in three different rule books and you had to make sure you were class legal in all three of those rule books and yet make sure you were still competitive, you know, to do all that was, it was difficult. I don't think we get super innovative. Yeah. We Frenched Leaf Springs, but they were off the shelf. leaf Springs, we we did some, you know, we ran propane for a while. I think for awhile there was a like motor that you had to run in one of the series, you had to run it. I think it was the same brand motor that came in the Jeep. So I was running the AMC three sixties and really nobody had a fuel injection for them. I'm sure if you're smart enough you could put one. 

Jeff Mello: But like what am I allowed to do here Propane. That works good upside down. And we ran that for a lot of years. And then the reason we took it out was because we took that same Jeep, in ‘08, we took it on Ultimate Adventure with Peterson four wheel and all that 5 States and 1500 miles on road. And you had to make it from gas station to gas station be able to get, gas, so we put it in the hallow fuel injection, but it was the same year that people were talking online about, Oh you can't compete anymore in CalRocs. In even in stock class. In a street Jeep. Well, I kinda think we can so we went out. So the same year we did five, five States and 1500 miles of this big, Jeep, we won CalRocs stock modified class. And that was the, okay. I really wanted to do that bad and it, and it worked out. 

Big Rich Klein: So we always, we always had an interesting relationship. You and I, it's always been friendly but also a little contentious at times. I can remember you'd always show up at the events like just minutes before the end of tech and you never wanted to unload the Jeep off of the off of the trailer so that I could tech it. I always had to climb up into the trailer and I looks like an enclosed. Yeah, well yeah, but still up onto a trailer. But it was always, you know, I was always like, Oh somebody would say Hey Mello's not here yet. And I'm like, Oh cause he's waiting until the end of tech so he doesn't have to unload the Jeep. And you'd come cruising in at like two minutes before the end of tech. 

Jeff Mello: And I, you probably thought I was doing that just to piss you off and I thought you were probably trying to make me take it off the trailer, but I did. You know, you think about it, you do it a thousand  times a year. And then when you have two car trailer and you're doing two Jeeps and it's like, Oh, what can you not see And you know, at this point I'm thinking we have a relationship. We've been doing this for a long time. You've never found anything wrong with my car on deck. And yet I, you know, so why do you even have to tech me And so yeah, we have the thing, but I mean, I would show up late because I was working, paying the bills and then jumpin’in the truck. Don't think of it as, as anything against you. 

Jeff Mello: Oh no, we're in California running CalRocss from one event we'll talk about later. I mean, I'm 18 hours away from Farmington, New Mexico. Right. We raced in Farmington, New Mexico six times. One year we competed. Wow. And we would show up. No, we wouldn't be here 18 hours and three minutes before tech closed that was it, you were working on the deep or you were working to pay the bills to even get to go do that We were pushing it so hard. So we didn't have the luxury of, you know, hanging out and all that stuff. We were pushing, 

Big Rich Klein: Let's, let's talk about some of the events and some of the stories from those. I don't know all the stories from the events because I was really busy with something and you know, dealing with something else. I get that Amador event during tech. I was in court in Jackson fighting a cease and desist order from the County. So that event could even go on. 

Jeff Mello: Yeah. The show that never almost never started before. One of the things about tech, before we forget about it. One of the contentious parts the created us that I think we both found out later, I don't think you personally were doing tech, but you had changed the rule in the, we bumped up and had a buggy Pro Mod class, which again it was called pro mod for you. And then it was UROC Legends that it was, you know, so we're trying to keep this thing car not only running but legal for all these different things. And you had a, Hey, three-dimensional body panel that popped up one year. And I'm like, what does this even mean It's a Jeep, it's two dimensional to begin with, you know, but there were I guess guys pushing too far trying to, you know, make say, Oh it's a, it's a car. It's not a for ProMod it's not a, so you wanted us to have like a roll top edge to the Jeep, like Jeep as in, and I didn't have it and I didn't have any time to do it. 

Jeff Mello: So we actually fabricated some pieces one time, but I think they got ripped off and you know, we went last minute teched to the last one and I didn't even have enough money to buy body panels, but years earlier we had ripped the old Doughboy pool off at my grandmother's house and I took the sides of the Doughboy pool, which were like a wood grain. And it was like corrugated about as much as you know, cardboard is corrugated. And it wasn't even me that took it to tech. But somebody says, we don't have 3D body panels. And one of the guys that was helping me at the time goes hell I don’t, that’s corrugated, that's three dimensional. 

Big Rich Klein: Oh I remember. 

Jeff Mello: And then so I heard about it and probably you heard about it months later. Yeah. That's funny. 

Big Rich Klein: It was. Yeah, those were, those were some fun times. 

Jeff Mello: and there was another one with steering that, I swear to God, somebody must've told you what it was I was building because I had really cool steering for the pro mod class because you required something like steering box on the frame linkage that would operate the wheels and somebody else required, I can't remember what it was that UROC or somebody required something similar but different. So I had a Ross box down at the bottom of the steering column, a full hydraulic system. And then I had a Ross box down at the steering column that ran up a drag Link went forward and went off the knuckles. So you went, it was like 99% all built and full hydraulic of the map, but it would satisfy the box on the frame. It was satisfying all of the rules. And if you turn the steering wheel very gingerly, it would turn the wheel. You weren't going anywhere on that system. Right. It satisfied the rule book and last minute like I'm ready for this. Right, and I'm going to kill CalRocs now because I've got this system set up in last minute you said,  Everybody can run full hydraulic  Ahh, you’re killing me Rich. 

Jeff Mello: And I don't even know if you ever knew about that, but I quizzed my guys, I’m like, who told?

Big Rich Klein: no, you know, I didn't. it was just getting to the point that, that the courses were demanding. We changed the rule there if we were going to keep people running, you know, and finishing courses. So yeah, it was, there was one time we were all up in a, I think it was a UROC,yeah, it was a UROC event up in Vernal. We were getting ready to go to Moab. Me and little rich and a couple of the guys you had said I could borrow your comp Jeep. It was for Easter Jeep Safari. So I was taking it from, from Vernal down to Easter Jeep. And then it was going to get back to you before before you had to be in a CalRocs event. Little Rich and I took it to Moab. We did some really cool stuff with it. It's this, this story leads into the only time you ever lied to me that I know of and you told me I was, I was kind of worried about it and about hurting the Jeep and you told me, Oh, don't worry about it. You, there's nothing you can do that can hurt this Jeep. So we took it out and we did Pritchetit. We did proving grounds, which is just five huge waterfalls. We did a Moab rim. Rich 

Big Rich Klein: Did a lot of driving. I did some driving. We got to proving grounds and we're with a Shaffer and Clifford, well Kathy crook was with us too, you know, so, so she had her, she had Jeep. So we go up there. We didn't do the very first obstacle of that because it was a, it was just some stupid, I mean it was so vertical that the short wheelbase vehicles weren't going to do it. We decided not to do that. We went around that one, but the rest were the waterfalls. I drove the first three waterfalls, those three waterfalls. I actually was in the crack line, turned into the one and it rolled back onto its cage, but you're in a, in a narrow V like this trying to climb one side and you had to turn into it and go up. I just kinda laid it back onto the cage and Shaffer's like here, let me put a winchline on. 

Big Rich Klein: I said, I think I got this and I put it into reverse, brought the front end down and then went ahead and drove the waterfall. We get up to the next one, which is one that I think at that time nobody had driven it unassisted. It was maybe Charlie  Kopsy was like the first one to ever do it and maybe he had done it already, but this thing's like 20 foot tall. I don't know how anybody ever drove that thing cause it was, it was sheer vertical but there was a crack in it. And so everybody winched it. So a little rich got into it. We winched up and over. I got started driving again and I had the guy riding with me that was from T max winches, the young guy. And he was on the trail ride with us at that time cause they'd come on as a, as a marketing partner for CalRocs 

Big Rich Klein: And so I was, you know, just showing him Moab and hanging out with everybody and stuff. And so we're driving out and it's pretty easy trail there. And then there's a series of three steps back into the parking lot where all the trailers and everything is at. We go to go down that and I've looked at that and I'm like, that’s pretty damn steep, you know, everybody in the buggies is just dropping right off. Right. So I look at the kid and I said, okay, this is what's going to happen. The front end is going to get really light and I'm going to hit the throttle and we're just going to drive out of it. And he goes, okay, great. So I'm on the cutting brake on the rear. I think I was in front wheel drive only, but we start to pull down to start to slide 

Big Rich Klein: We're sliding down the Hill, get to the bottom. It starts to stand up and I hit the gas. Well it was what I thought was the gas. We hit that ledge,Yeah, I was standing on the gas, I thought and nothing happened. Well I guess I was standing on the brake and so we went over and then we went over again because those three ledges. Then we went over again and twisted. And so I always tell everybody I did a two and a half with a McTwist at the bottom. We're on our side, we're under, you know, we're at the bottom of the Hill now. I'm like, Oh my God, what Just hit me. Well you had spare axles underneath the seat. Okay. And we had the propane tank in there cause you were running propane at the time and the spare propane tank, we had just ratchet strapped it in with two huge trailer ratchet straps so it wouldn't go anywhere. 

Big Rich Klein: I mean nobody could pull that thing up. Well the, the, the amount of forces from a rollover are much greater than any, any strong man is. And so I ended up getting hit the kid that was with me was fine, but I got hit like the back of the head, the front of the head plus smacking my head on the ground because the axles, the propane tank and my screw up,

Jeff Mello:  I probably shouldn't be smiling right now. 

Big Rich Klein: So I'm sitting there, we upright the vehicle, you know, I got blood coming down my face and everything and I'm like, Oh my God, I've just, I've just destroyed your Jeep. Right The front grill is pushed in, the hood is, is busted. I'm like, you know, the, the fan is into the radiator and I'm like, Oh my God, you know, now we gotta get, we've got to get this thing back on the trailer. 

Big Rich Klein: And then we got to get it fixed so that we can, you know, at least drivable. And then we got to get it back to Jeff right away. Not when we planned on coming back, but right away because now it needs to be fixed. So that's what we did. We got it. You know, we pulled the grill out, we did some work on the radiator. I don't remember if we replaced the radiator or if we just got it pinched off or whatever. I know I got a hood from Campbell, one of the fiberglass hoods from him and that they were producing. I called you up. I remember saying, Hey Jeff, you know, I didn't appreciate you lying to me. And you go, what do you mean I never lied to you And I said, yeah, you told me I couldn't hurt your Jeep and you went 

Jeff Mello:  I think the exact statement was “Rich, you can’t hurt it and it won’t hurt you” both were lies. 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah, it, I kicked its ass, but boy it kicked my ass too. And it was funny cause that was the same weekend. In fact, the same day that Ron Stobaugh had rolled, I, I think it was the superior or maybe it was the alloy Axel, Jeep that he had then off of the top of Potato Salad Hill. Oh yeah. And he'd rolled it there and got messed up. So he was, you know, concussion. I was concussion. We both had Jeeps that were, they were screwed up. At least he screwed up his Jeep instead of me. Screw it up yours. Yeah, it was okay. So I remember Bill Kreisel,, we made arrangements with Bill to take your Jeep back. 

Jeff Mello: Yeah. 

Big Rich Klein: You and I don't know how you guys met up and got that done, but I was always, I was really worried about that. You weren't going to make it to the next event. I was on my way to Disney, Oklahoma. So we had Kreisel’s car with us. 

Jeff Mello: So somebody else let you take their Jeep after that 

Big Rich Klein: I couldn't fit into the buggy anyway. You know, cause you know, old fat man 

Jeff Mello: Just went for a trailer ride

Big Rich Klein: It, went for a trailer ride and little rich drove it. Yeah. Yeah. And he, he, he used it to while we were messing around and stuff. And of course he didn't hurt it. But, I remember you, you sending me the bill for that and it was like 700 and some odd dollars and I'm like, this can't be right. It's gotta be more than that. When I called you up you said, no, no, that's all it's you just paid for the party. All the beer and steaks. 

Jeff Mello: Yeah. I think you'd already sent a radiator my way and the hood and you know, so then it was like we, I think we threw some tube in there to re-tube the cage. So the extension of that story is, yeah, yeah. You know, you did the right thing. You got it back to me in time to get this thing. But I mean the frame was bent but everything, I had another headstock CJ seven and I had twos goods, straight flat slabs. Right. So the Jeep was parked in the barn, one job, one vehicle chop and the other stock CJ seven is parked on the driveway. And I've got chalk marks and everything down on the ground in lines and I'm running back and forth taking tape measure measurements and I got this big I-beam that goes underneath the frame and then bottle jacks and chains the, tweak the frame back and do this and get it all edits. 

Jeff Mello: I think it's still a little bent, but and it had the Aqualu body on it, right So that was one of them. Geez, 70 times that Aqualu body's been rolled. And that was right after, I think our, at the end of our purple phase from the sponsor and I had already flipped that configuration with the purple roll cage. I was at super crawl, which didn't have stock class the first year in the legends class running an unlimited line bonus line with my spotter for extra points, brrrr, Lance Clifford’s, the one that said, Oh, just run right up that thing in second gear. Just keep your tire out of that hole. Well, I didn't keep my tire out of the hole. So we went backwards off the high dive and landed on that cage and the cage and only bond to the Aqualu body. 

Jeff Mello: The dashboard at that time. And that was the second, yours was the second crash that you know, I'm just happy you weren't more hurt at everything happened to your head. So pretty solid there and you know the, the Jeep can be fixed, right. So yeah, we, we got it back, got the frame straight and the whole caved out of it and built cage just in time to get to the last CalRocs event. This is what I was more pissed about. So I have this brand new cage didn't even get paint on it This Jeep that runs and here I am, I need to get to the last CalRocs event that I'm winning that year and I can pretty much show up to the last event and have enough points to win the championship. And I live in the middle of California. 

Jeff Mello: You can't take more than about six and a half hours to get to any point in California that I’m at and you had a CalRocs event in Beatty, Nevada,  I'm like, where is that other side of the mountains and no road to get there. It's like a 12 hour drive or something to get to this damn last CalRocs event. So me Yoder cruise out there, I remember we won the event that I remember, like it was the hardest in the world you were. And he would stack it, you could hear ring, it had so much iron in it and it was the heaviest rock in the world. like half the lines just had you go like this against the wall or in a v-crack that you can fall into or something like that. And I remember coming home, we'd won the thing and we'd won the championship and everything and my dad looks at the Jeep before it was ever even nothing off the Mmm trailer and we had fixed it all back up, new fenders, new hood, you know, all this new cage and all this stuff. And he looks at me. He goes, I thought you said you won. It looked like it got wrecked all over again. I said. 

Jeff Mello: We did. That was really hard. Brutal, 

Big Rich Klein: Hard rock out there. I remember everybody's cage was gouged. I mean when you can take caging like that and you just barely touch a rock and you're gouging. The rocks didn’t break.

Jeff Mello: You could throw a rock down here like you've sat down a tuning fork or something. We've, we broke a lot of axless. Yeah. Yeah. I broke an axle there. It was one of Jason Scherers that I borrowed. How many places did you take us that we never got to go back to for one reason or another. A lot of them. 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah. 

Jeff Mello: You find in places. 

Big Rich Klein: Some of that was, I didn't want to go back. You know, we, we would go there and it would just, it was either too hard to get spectators. It was too far too hard to get, you know, it was just too hard to work the area. 

Jeff Mello: One of them 

Big Rich Klein: Moon rocks was one of those that I loved. Yeah. You know the open area that's there outside of Reno, but I used it once. Ranch Pratt used it once and then they took it away from us. Yeah. BLM said, no, you can't use it anymore. And that's when I was running VORRA at the same time. And so we, we had that spot. We did Vernal. We didn’t go back there because dealing with the state of Utah was a, 

Jeff Mello: What was the Mexican border like I'm not even sure what side of the wall we were competing on. If there were one. 

Big Rich Klein: Oh yeah, that was, that was down in Boulevard up out of interstate eight coming out of San Diego. That has it. That was an interesting one because we had the border patrol and helicopters and everything show up when we were looking at the piece of property to try to find what area rocks we were going to use and I mean they swooped in on us with trucks and helicopters and stuff because we had triggered one of their, they're ground sensors. 

Jeff Mello: I remember Jody Everding being pretty nervous down there. He thought they were going to deport him.

Big Rich Klein: but we had people come through that were jumping the fence because there was really no fence there. The border, I mean there was railroad tracks up at the far end on the border of his property or came through the edge of his property and like 20 feet past the railroad tracks. 

Big Rich Klein: It was Mexico. Yeah. So there was all sorts of guys you could tell who they were because they were all carrying one gallon milk jugs full of water. Yeah. You know, and they stopped and bought food at the hot dog vendor and stuff like that. But you know, the property owner would come up and yell at them in Spanish to leave because he, he didn't even look, he wouldn't let the border patrol onto his property. He saw ‘em coming in. He, he'd shoot down from the house and tell him, no, you can't be on the property. There was signs out front, you know, border patrol, you're not allowed here. That kind of thing. He was really, really a private individual. But that was a really cool area too. 

Jeff Mello: It was neat. I thought digging tires, digging holes with the tires were gonna like get arrested for tunneling or something. 

Big Rich Klein: Yeah. Tell us about, After, after your rock crawling career there, competitive rock crawling you got, I know that you raced a couple of years I think with a Ultra4 or King of the hammers. 

Jeff Mello: Yes. Yeah. Dave invited me down for the first one and you know, the OG13 one and I just, I'm like, Hey Dave, I would love to, that's like eight hours and a bunch of dollars and I have other commitments with sponsors. At the time we were running the buggy and the, and the CJ. So we were doing, we were doing two classes. There was a whole bunch of events that it was super fun. I'd go to with two different spotters and two different buggies and unload them. And I had a group of great guys that were helping me to keep up with all this maintenance and stuff and working, you know, for a t-shirt and a hot meal and beers and we were running hard man. We would, we'd show up to these events and I would, some of them, I would never even see the courses. 

Jeff Mello: I'd run from the buggy over and jump in and belt into the, to the CJ. I'm going to spotter, come on up here like the guts waiting for us and get pissed and stuff. One of those was a, was it Calusa Coloma, whatever where gold was found up there at 108 degrees that day. Oh my God. We must have sweat out more money. And I would go and I would break one of them and I just run away from it and I go run the other one and you know, break it. And I, I met like two people because I've come back to my junk. And they were working on this into working on my stuff just to block me, be an idiot I guess. So we were hitting it pretty hard and heavy, so we didn't make the first King of the hammers, but we there, we were there in ‘08. 

Jeff Mello: I didn't want to camp at Johnson Valley in a tent, and I didn't have camper. So I call up a guy I knew that was the only guy that had an enclosed. And I said, Jason, do you want to go to King of the hammers with me and this is going to be awesome. And I had been doing the rock race and I had been doing the XRRA and some stuff around, in the buggies. We had a V eight in it by then and everything. So that must be fun. And he had tiny at the time, so he's all, no, you know, dude, I'm really just into the picking apart the puzzle and I love the crawling and dah, dah, dah and all this stuff. You know, I've known the kids since he was 18 and like I think you'll like it. Come on down. I really just want a place to stay. 

Jeff Mello: Turns out of course he's going to be the best co-dawg ever. Right So we go down there and we come out of there and he’s hooked, right. We broke his truck, on the dry, I can’t remember if it was that year the next, no, it was that year. We broke his truck, turn it around at Boone road. And stuck in the sand. We missed Boone road We had Brian Whitford, haul my flatbed trailer down empty and then haul Jason's, we hauled Jason's big trailer to Mustard dog's house and, and and can't think of his name right now. I live right next to the mustard dog. John James. John James. Thank you. And he he stored it while we loaded up Jason's truck and towed it backto Brian’s truck, only there was too many guys. There was five guys in Brian's truck, so me and Jason rode in Jason's truck on my trailer back from the Hammer’s. It's like eight hours. We have the windshield wipers going and the stereo and everything was funny. 

Big Rich Klein: That's kind of like the ultimate E ticket ride because even though you know you're sitting up higher than there than they are and you have like no control, you know, as a, as a co-driver, at least you can turn and you know, smack the driver if he's being stupid. But if you're sitting in on the trailer in the truck, 

Jeff Mello: I felt like I was in that movie Memphis Belle because Brian's truck and his big exhaust, you know, black smoke coming out every time he's on the gas in the board. Mike clatter, clatter, clatter this whole time. And I'm thinking, man, this doesn't feel right. 

Jeff Mello: It was what you did. Yeah. But Jason, you know Jason's on the phone ordering parts and he's hooked. He's going to be there next year for sure. So he's talking to Campbell and you know, getting transfer cases delivered. I think by the time we got home and he built that next pro mod car, which I told him not to do for the record. I said no, built a car just for one thing. Oh no, no. I think we can do both. No, I'm going to sell tiny. I'm going to, you know, so that lasted about two competitions. You went out from on rock crawling with it and it really wasn't set up that well for that. So then Shaffer, tore it all back apart for the next year. But yeah, that was fun. Cause we built Jay's first car in Lance came down pirate, right. So Lance time-lapse filmed a one week build at Campbell shop down there to build that car that they won in ‘09, that was fast. Still is a fast car. And then, you know, that was kind of the end of me being able to teach Jason Scherer anything. It's just like nowadays it's like Oh my God. 

Jeff Mello: So that's my claim to KOH fame is that co-dawg. Yeah, we broke but we had, you can chase on course. So we had a guy, Brad Thomas bring my backpack welder up there on a dirt bike. So the top of sledge and we welded the thing back together. Well I thought I ran over Jason cause he's, you know, there's no steering in the Ram and he'd say and move to lineup parts you say and move forward, move back, turn this way, turn that way. And I did something wrong and I hear this. Yeah, he jumps out of the way and I hear this POP and I'm like, Oh man, I just ran over his ankle or something. And he's laying down on the rocks. And I'm like, well, what, what you ran over my catheter when I jumped out lawyer. So he got the, the wrist rocket to the junk right up his pant leg. 

Jeff Mello: That's 20 minutes laughing. And then we fixed the Jeep and we made it in last. I think so. Yeah. So yeah, I lasted about two more years. Three more years going to actual King of the Hammers, again is before they changed classes or had multiple classes. And I'm like, this is, you know, it's awesome. It's fun. I wish I could do it all the time, but I, it just, it, bye. Way out of my budget to where, and I only want to go if I think I can be competitive, I don’t have to actually be, but I think I can.. Right. And then, and then when stock modified came around, or what he called stock modified class. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. I mean, it was before they all had numbers. Even he just had every man, I don't know. And I must've got a hundred calls, you know, from people. Oh, you have a stock modified class, you got to come out and run it. 

Jeff Mello: It's no, no. some blue chip company is going to get an LJ, but I looked at the rule book, right Some blue chip companies gonna get an LJ, put a stroke six in it and every well legal part you can. It's going to be a $50,000 car and they're going to win. I was wrong. It was two blue chip companies Savvy and Currie did it and had blew doors on that class for whatever, three or four years. Yeah. That wasn't in the cards for me. I’m out there on leaf Springs and bounce around for no reason, 

Big Rich Klein: so I kind of lost track of you there for a while because I moved out of California. Yeah, I met Shelly. We went on the road full time in 2011 and then living on the road. Just that Bedouin lifestyle, putting on rock crawls and the dirt riot races. I miss those days of sitting around at events with you.  It was tough to see that. And then I'm up in Washington doing, we'd already bought the magazine and we're doing an ambassador tour for the magazine for, 4low. Tim Lund goes, well, you know Jeff Mello lives up here and I'm like, what I guess you have a second house or a place up there, but you were there at the time. But we had a, we had laid on a time schedule and we were like there and then gone. 

Jeff Mello: So yeah, once I slowed down on the rock crawling and racing, there's money to buy a beach house. So yeah, we have a place on hood canal up there. Not too far from Tim and yeah, you're welcome anytime you're up there in the area. We used to go up for the month of July and enjoy it and it's, it's a neat property. The house next door has been in my mom's side of the family and her cousin owns it since the thirties. 

Jeff Mello: Wow. And the whole area is kind of Families that have been there that long. So truly neat. We lucked out. Yeah. 

Big Rich Klein: So after the time at K O H I know that you've, you've stayed in touch and, and working with, with Jason and in his racing, is from what I understand what, what else have been up to, 

Jeff Mello: well I don't work with Jay as much as I'd like to. Partly that is just schedules and stuff like that. And partly I kind of go over there and I feel like I don't know enough to help him anymore. I do any, you know, I do what I can, but he's taken everything so far to the next level and the next level that it's like for me, you know, I kind of don't get it. Where's the carburetor on this thing and there I remember, I remember one time, well, it was your event, it was a down in globe, Arizona. 

Jeff Mello: Yoder and I are out there in the little V6 in the buggy and work set in the well and he looks at me and he goes how many people that are national, raw, you know, national, any type of racing event. Right. How do you think are setting well, cause that was my out of my 66, my first Jeep. That was like what we had. So that's what went in it. Yeah. But so yeah, so I mean we did a little bit of toward the same era there. We did a Baja a few times with Team Pirate and Shaffer's, Jeep speed car. And you know, that was super fun cause we got to win, you know, and pistol Pete, rest his soul of, you know, said we couldn't and we did anyway and he was great guy. And then, I got the opportunity to be on a couple of TV shows in the last a few years when we stopped rock crawl competitively so much, I had a second Pro Arena Jeep. 

Jeff Mello: That was actually the reason I bought the double trailer because one of the early Farmington rock crawls, like I said, man, my wife Julie is awesome. She's a two time world national or not world national I guess, but national, rock crawl ladies women's rock crawl champion by the way. So, well, one of the early Farmington, New Mexico, a rock crawls. I'm out there with her Jeep and I can't remember what trailer we took out there, but I call her up and she had driven the Pro Arena truck, like powder puff and stuff like that a couple of times. And she kind of always beat the girls, but I didn't think much of it. I'm calling her on my 18 hour drive back and I said, well, how was your weekend honey And he goes, Oh, I'm going to come to Fresno. And I raced against all the guys that I normally raise against and all the West coast pros. 

Jeff Mello: Oh, that's nice honey. How'd you do And everything. Oh, I didn't beat Donnie Chesteer, I got second. I'm like, you got second over a three day show, you got second. Overall, she's like, yeah, you know, so we were winning like an average of $400 per weekend when we would, which was decent, you know, back then if the, if 400 is the average actually, right. So I don't remember how much she won.I'm like, well God, I gotta build you your own Jeep. We got this two Jeep trailer. Anyway, so that was actually pretty early on. And I started building her a Pro Arena Jeep, never finished it because we got so hot and heavy into the crawl. so when we slowed down, all my buddies were like, Hey, let's finish this Jeep and we'll go race it up. Prairie city in the short course stuff and that's what we've been doing. 

Jeff Mello: So when I finished it, Casey Scherer I think was the first driver because I had shoulder surgery. So I wasn't gonna bang my shoulder up driving it  yet and I kind of built it, you know, everything's on a budget and I wanted other people to be able to drive it. So we coined it the budget rental, I think it's had like 14 drivers. No over since I think we both finished in 2012 or 13, you know, several wins. So about an hour and about half the class in the, what they call now, they call it a pre-runner class. And we don't do the rocks. We just go, we're just short course race. About half the class, I think started out driving my Jeep and then went in build or buy my own. So that's kind of neat. Every now and then Rob, the announcer calls “ alright, we’ve got the Mello class coming out now” and I built a couple more and then sell them off. 

Jeff Mello: But I still have that original budget rental and it's getting an LS in it right now. So. Excellent. I know that you participated in Truck Night in America. Yeah. Yeah. That was the, were you in it the first year or the second year I was in the first season. and it was the, I was the third episode filmed in the second one. They showed they aired and yeah, that was the blast. That was a really cool experience. Got to hang out with Pistol Pete, got to hang out with Bender, got to meet Abe Wine and got to know Glenn Plake who turns out grew up right around this area. And obviously I had seen him in the old Warren Miller films and all that stuff back in the day, but didn't know really who he was. Then. The more you know about Glenn, the more you're impressed. 

Jeff Mello: You're like, wow, this guy is, it still hit at his age. He created it, you know, in the eighties and he's still here. That's, he’s cool.. So yeah, that was a good time. Again, brought the CJ out there, you know, pumped up the, the application for it to make it sound really, really good. Really glowing. They took us and went out there and somehow kept ahead of everybody else and at the end finished it. I was, I was the first one. They're actually finished their green mile course every year, the last two you know, did and every show and so they really didn't know whether it could be done yet. They were pretty sketchy about whether that last deal was even safe and some other stuff. And I'm like, well I'm the guy, right if I can get there I'll test it for you. And if something happens, it's already happened to me at some point probably. 

Jeff Mello: So it was fun. It was a good, it was a really good experience and see some of the behind the scenes, stuff like that. You don't even think about just being a Wheeler. It was really cool like how an actual television production goes. Yeah. 

Big Rich Klein: Right. So there was a, there was a scene in there and that show, cause I only watched even the second with the second season, there was probably only two or three of the shows I actually watched, cause we don't have TV. There was a scene in there where you looked over at the, the guy you were race, in a race line up against or something and he looked at you and I don't know, it looked like there was a little animosity going on there. 

Jeff Mello: That's all TV. Okay. So that was the first course they put us on. And because of Pistol Pete,, they let us walk that course beforehand. And I guess they had done the first two shows. They use that cource once and didn't let him walk it. And I mean you could really get hurt. And Pistol was like, I don't want to be a part of it cause you guys don’t let these people know what's coming ahead. So again, a whole TV thing. They lined us on whole some other old course that they never used in that episode. Had every camera ready and everybody ready and then they said no and they moved us over to that thing and it was the, I can't remember what they called it now. Bumps and jumps or something like that. Yeah, we walked it and there's six cars at that time. 

Jeff Mello: You go down this thing and it clearly narrows all on one side. The side that me and the two other guys, I guess there's only five cars, me and the two other guys we're going to be in and the guy to my right, the side that if we were all down there at the same time was going to get it. It was going to get narrow on us, but really nice truck and you know, so we all kind of made a mental note of that and I didn't have any idea I would be there, you know, it was pick a guy to beat it was my thing. So there's Mark and the rusty old Ford next to me. I'm like, you're the guy going to be, I want to finish fourth and just get onto the next thing. Right. Trying to be smart about it. 

Jeff Mello: Well Mark passes me about three quarter track and they want it. So I just laid into it and right about the same time I laid into it and bought into the bumps and we're all doing this. Mark's over here like up in my mirror and the orange truck is in my peripheral vision too. So I'm thinking, well you know, if we're gonna swap pink, it's going to be me and the rest of the old Ford. I want to give this guy as much room as I can. But they played it up like, you know, I said Oh it's narrowed down there. And they played it up like the guy was upset at me or whatever, but okay. That wasn't, that wasn't the way it was. There was enough room cause I was the whole, it was like 

Big Rich Klein: That's, that's not Jeff, that's not the Jeff I know, you know, tried to, to play that game. Yeah. And how television 

Jeff Mello: we were in the other one too. Me and Trevor and Jack and Ori this well, this one that I'm wearing the shirt for that is on YouTube right now. Mmm. The junkyard challenge. And they played in a whole bunch more drama into that one then it was, I get it. It's TV, you know, there's audiences that somehow are still watching survivor. So obviously there's people out there, it's just not me and you, right. We're watching it for the trucks and for the tech and the in whatever else. Correct. They gotta do their jobs. So we let them. 

Big Rich Klein: That's why, you know, everybody, w was always, you know, how come you never got it to TV How come you never got it to TV I wouldn't sell the sport out. We were approached by a lot of public, you know, a lot of, a lot of companies that said, you know, really early to, you know, American chopper days going, Oh, well, you know, it's big rich little rich. This is just like the Tuttles, you know, we can get some, some action going on between you guys and then with the competitors out on the, you know, we can make this into a great show. And I'm like, you know what, we're not selling out. We're not going to make our people look like idiots. We're not going to not gonna allow ourselves to be edited and look like idiots. I used to have a line that every time one of these companies would call me as I said, well, I'm not afraid to go to jail for my sport. And they were like, what do you mean 

Big Rich Klein: And I said, well, you know, if you make us look like idiots in, in editing, I'm going to walk into your office and I'm going to kick your ass. No. And they were like, yeah, really, you would do that And I said, yeah, I will. You know. And so I remember talking to the lady that, she had swamp people and ice road truckers, you know, and they're always doing stuff. And I told her that, and she goes, you'd come into the office and hit a woman And I said, no, but there's a man in your office, it's going to take one for the team. 

Big Rich Klein: We never got a call back on that. 

Jeff Mello: I don't know if there would have been something that could have been done. But yeah, I mean the crawling itself didn't really translate even to video. Well if you were there watchng and it was impressive, yes, it was slow and precise and even as soon as you put it on a screen or took a picture of it, it lost its depth and you couldn't really tell what it was. So you would of had to go broad audience, you would have had to put the drama and all that stuff into it that all those shows had that, that I watched. And if it was, you know, one of these chopper or whatever, I'm just 

Jeff Mello: Watching it still to this day. Just to bring in that one little, yeah, that somebody, I still remember something that, Jessie James did on monster garage. It was actually that old dude, that taught Jesse James. How to cut one of the flap discs to get inside of like a conicle to be able to sand in this. I think there were Frenching in an antenna, or something weird like that and I went out cool tip like that and that's whatever this place 15 years ago, I still remember that one because nobody else, you know, shows that stuff. And, and the challenge, I felt like we had some really cool tech stuff that I would have liked to seen included. You know, I'm not the guy that has to pay the bills for the TV show. So I, you know, they obviously know more about what the audience is than I do. 

Jeff Mello: But for guys like me and you, there was some neat stuff we did down there that I would have loved to have seen and maybe they can broaden it. Maybe they can bring some of the tech  from the show, you know, back out and put that on YouTube once they have people watching the show. But it was a good time too. We had, we had a blast doing it and met a bunch of really great guys. And, and we did pretty well on that one. Wow. 

Big Rich Klein: So is there anything that we haven't hit upon that you want to share with us?

Jeff Mello:  I don't know. I guess like, so I'm curious to see as you go through this history thing, because the older I can get, the more, you know, history more. I enjoy history and I really see like we talked a minute about the five eras 

Jeff Mello: So a four wheeling in general, not just rock crawling and not just competing, but the, I'm curious if there's another perspective from another part of the, world,I know the other day you and I talked about when we would read the magazine, she could tell if a Jeep was from the Pacific Northwest, right Or you can tell if the Jeep was from Tellico in that area basically just by looking at her. So Cal, you could, you can look at the picture and see that. So I know there's a whole bunch of different versions of what I notice from a NorCal point of view. And so I, I'd love to give my perspective on how it all went down in general and then be able to compare that to some other people. Maybe Durham, and whatever. But yeah, I saw it. I think the evolution of four wheel, it just follows the evolution to Jeeps. 

Jeff Mello: And obviously I'm a, I'm a Jeep centric guy, but you know, you got post-war so all those guys taken, you know, wanted a Jeep. So the out we'll make this civilian Jeep. Then you've got what I consider the old man era. And this is when I was growing up this, these were all old men that have this, have the flat fenders and were also the hot rod era. Right. Very, very similar story with hot rodders. Postwar guys are building stuff. So they, the old man era of flat fenders have, you know, the Chrome and the multiple, you know, musical horns and the Polish paint. And they were all in their building all themselves. They couldn't, you know, do anything if you wanted to Chrome part, you took it to the Cromer and got it Chrome. So they, they painstakingly built their Jeeps and they would, you know, build them up, power steering and a little bit of homemade lift and big tires. 

Jeff Mello: I remember my dad talking about tires, you know, the biggest tire you could get back in the sixties and early seventies was like, I don't know how big measured wise, but it was like a, an 1115 nine or 15 seven or something like that. So they would take a brand new tire, they would take their wheels and I still have some of these down to out the champion wheel and have them widened. They didn't have a band welded into them. Then they would take their tires to Bruce's recaps and Oakland and you take a brand new tire because she could get, and he could make it two inches wider and two inches taller by putting a fresh recap. And that was like whatever the pool recap was at the time. That was it, you know So that was like, I should have been my dad's age and that would have been my good era to be in. 

Jeff Mello: But I remember all those old guys in the club that, that did, that my dad was kind of one of them. So there was no reason for those guys to ever want to switch out of a flat fender. Cause they have their overdrive and they have their power steering. And the thing worked like a clock and he went and he did the Rubicon all perfect. And you never scratched it, right Or you might scratch it, but you weren't not driving the hard trails. And then you had it kind of in the middle of the old man era. They didn't go away. Yeah. Disco era. So that's the third one to me. And it was the monster trucks came out and everybody had the Chrome roll bars with fourteens and the crazy paint jobs and they were all lifted too high. And so I think out of that became the junk Jeep era, which is like a Rick Pewe,. 

Jeff Mello: Jimmy Niland, Ned Bacon around this area anyway, all those guys they hated Chrome. Well, Niland hated Chrome because for different reasons, but B, and I think it was because they thought chrome meant that you weren't running the hard lines and they did, they started running more hard lines and they were willing to scratch up their Jeeps and flip them on over and all this stuff. So they kind of were the start of the progression of when we started noticing it being competitive instead of just everybody getting through the trail and having a beer in camp. Right. So the junk era sorta led to like the buggy build era and people building custom vehicles just to off-road and no body panels anymore. And that was all right in there with the online era and the pirate four by four. And you know guys, you can be completely unscrupulous and build a company just because you figured out how to do online sales of of parts now. 

Jeff Mello: And this was a whole new thing, right about the same time the TJ came around. So the TJ was a huge turning point as you think about it. All those old dudes, they were going to buy a YJ for the previous 10 years with square headlights. God knows there was no reason for him to buy any of the CJ's when they came out or the fives and sevens, you know, they were too big for the trail and all that in that era and now of the trails had changed a little bit and the TJ was comfortable on road and you could make it really quick off-road capable and you didn't have to flat tow your Jeep up to the Rubicon anymore. And they went, huh. And they have the money. So that was the first year or first Jeep they bought after building a flat fenders from 30 and 40 years earlier. 

Jeff Mello: And interestingly enough that TJ was also the first vehicle in history that you could buy aftermarket parts for before you could go to your dealer and get that Jeep right. Because Mark, they sent them all out companies like Skyjacker and everybody and they would build lifts and, and, and parts and stuff for them before and you could buy it. And then because of the whole online presence would pirate four by four and everything, everybody was sharing ideas. So if you came up is when he adds it, somebody else built it, you know, and pumped it out in mass production, which gave me, gave route to the online sales, you know, guys. So now you can just click, click, click, click, click and order all these parts and have somebody else build your TJ. And it was, it was badass vehicle. And then I think the only other era on beyond that that we've seen is like the, the my face and instant grams and haul this stuff where it just seems like the wallet jobs, the JKS and the JLs and they go straight to the dealer down to $80,000 worth of upgrades. 

Jeff Mello: And, but I think those guys have lost a lot of the, like there's, there's guys out there that are doing that and you see them on the trail and you think they invented it last week, you know, and so many of those, if they have, if they didn't, if they never drove a TJ or a CJ, they, they really don't have the background skills, right. Vehicle without lockers and without big tires and drive through the trail. And it's just not even just the driving skills. When something breaks, what do you do And, and when you need a, complex extraction, what do you do And who do you call and everything. If they can't call AAA, you know, and I'm not saying all of them, but there's so many of them now, it's just exploded. It's, you know, I really think what you're doing is pretty important. So hopefully these guys will spend a minute and realize there's more depth to it. And in understand the, the history of it all and how important it is and that should get them also interested in conservation and keeping these trails open and fighting. What we've been fighting for as long as we've been fighting it, you know 

Big Rich Klein: True. Well, I want to, I want to thank you for, for coming on board and, and having this conversation with me and sharing your history and your perspectives and, and everything that, that you've done through the years. And especially, I want to thank you personally for the things that, that you've done for me. I mean, just a, just being there, being at the events, being a sounding board, telling me, rich, that rule is stupid, you know, do this, do that. You know, sending me only a hundred, a $700 bill when that, that bill probably should have been closer to three or four grand. I appreciate your friendship over the years, you know, thank you so much for spending the time and, and sharing your history. 

Jeff Mello: Well, likewise, and I appreciate you and all you did that I don't even know about as far as putting together all these things that I can show up to with three minutes left in tech. And, you know, and I can't even fathom some of the stuff you had to chase down and, and invent Oh, along the way. And yeah, it's been, it's been fun. It's been really great. Good times. And that's another thing that I kind of would like to talk about. What I guess is you mentioned the campfires and having a beer after all these events and everything and it went when it kind of grew out of that, 

Jeff Mello: It wasn't as much fun for me anymore and it had to be fun or I'm not doing it. I couldn't justify. It would have always been as much as I wanted to and climb the ladder. Yeah. But I always had to make it justifiable and that was really important to me. And balance everything else out with it. And you know, just, yeah. Being, being friends with you and watching your family grow in little rich and everything he's done now. It's been awesome. It's been week. We really got the heyday, I feel like, and we're going to keep going. 

Big Rich Klein: I, I believe so. I mean, everybody goes, Oh, those were the good old days. And I keep telling everybody it's still good. it's still good for me. I understand that people transition in and every, luckily I trans did so much transitioning before I started putting on the rock crawls that this was my final transition until I decided to retire and not put on events anymore. But that's, you know, that's the reason we're doing this, the podcast and that's why we're doing the magazine is, you know, those are my retirement plans, you know. of course probably now is, is got me to where I'm going to have to do a couple of more years longer than what I expected. But you know, being 62 now, and I've been doing this for 20 years, you do the math, you know, I'm not going to do it when I'm 82 at least. At least climbing around on the rocks. 

Jeff Mello: Okay. 

Big Rich Klein: Carrying cones and delineator basis and all that kind of stuff. You know, if I can figure out a way to have a crew with me, it'd be a different story. I'd do this until the day they start shoveling dirt in my face. But 

Jeff Mello: Little Rich is doing and all his cool stuff with trail here on everything. It's another evolution of it. And to be able to see what's going on with King of the hammers and you know, who knows what comes up next. But it's been a ride. I mean, I wouldn't trade a minute of it for anything. We had such a great time and, and learn so much, Did so much, but you know, I've already lived a whole life and a half and as far as doing all this stuff and they say the regrets are only the things that you never did do. Well, I don't have a whole list of those things that we didn't get to do and I'm still looking forward to new stuff. So yeah, it's going to be awesome. 

Big Rich Klein: I appreciate your friendship. I appreciate your time here today and I can't wait to get this one edited and up there. I'll let you know when that happens so you can share it among your family and friends. And again, Jeff, thank you so much. All right. Thank you, rich. 

Jeff Mello: Have a good one. Next time we'll have this interview grandpa's garage with a beer and a fire 

Big Rich Klein: Campfire. We'll we'll make sure that happens at the next Easter Jeep Safari. If you enjoy these podcasts, please give us a rating, share some feedback with us via Facebook or Instagram, and share our link among your friends who might be likeminded. Well, that brings this episode to an end book. Hope You enjoyed it. We'll catch you next week with Conversations with Big Rich. Thank you very much.