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The Talent Tank
The Talent Tank
EP 21 Jesse Haines
A play on the triumph and losses in performance and life. The Talent Tank podcast will navigate the inner workings of lifestyle, lives, family, teams, careers, programs, and technology in and around the offroad motorsports industry. What breeds success with your Talent Tank on full, failures when its on empty. From the journey to the Starting Line to take that Green Flag, on to exploring trials and tribulations on and off the track in pursuit of victorious achievement and the Checkered Flag.
From winning crawling competitions on numerous continents, to hitting the comp crawling world with a defibrillator and some aggressive CPR, recently beating COVID-19 and our current ULTRA4 Racing @ultra4racing King of the Hammers 4600 Class Champion Jesse Haines @jesse_haines_fabrication. Very few individuals have been as prolific or sustained the staying power to continue to be a pillar of rock sports, and continue to push the limits of whats possible for as long as Jesse has. Be prepared for this dive into Jesse's head, a ton of nuggets, and some hilarity that ensues while pinned out at 53mph on the way to a King of the Hammers podium.
After the Checkered Flag-
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Let's drop the green flag on this episode of the talent tank podcast. With your host Wyatt Pemberton bringing you the best, fastest, most knowledgeable personalities and ultra before and off road racing.
Wyatt Pemberton :This episode of the talent tank brought to you by three amazing partners, custom splice offered recovery equipment, bringing motor sports custom machine and magnitude performance a mass Motorsports company. Enjoy another installment of the talent tank with us today. Jesse Haynes. Jesse How are you?
Jesse Haines :Pretty good. How are you?
Wyatt Pemberton :Man? Well, better than you I mean, you you actually have some wins in your recent history and some losses in your recent history wins being your the current 4600 king of hammers champion Congrats.
Jesse Haines :Thank you. It's a good way to start off here.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, no, absolutely. And then between there and where we're at today. You caught a flying case of the COVID. Yeah. And so you're kind of you're kind of in recovery.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, trying to. It's weird. It's a while the world in general is a little weird right now and
Wyatt Pemberton :flying weird flipping
Jesse Haines :Oh, right as this all was getting crazy. I got sick. It's weird. Like, it's hard to say how long it lasted because I still have
Wyatt Pemberton :some. You're still coughing you're still
Jesse Haines :breathing a little heavy too. Yeah. coughing and then I have like a wake up and my mouth is super dry. That is just, you know, something that out of the ordinary that Yeah, you know, it's nothing that I'm struggling with or anything like that. But it's stuff that you notice that you know, you're not totally back to normal.
Wyatt Pemberton :Right? Well, so we had planned this interview and I'd sent you in an interview case and then you got sick and so we delayed a little bit and I fit in, you know, Ian Johnson in front of you in front Have your interview slid him in to give you a little bit more time because you were actually having trouble in conversation just holding even your breath going?
Jesse Haines :Well, it's more more of the coughing I would I had a couple people call and want to talk and I talked to him for 20 minutes. And then I just start coughing really bad. And it's like, I probably shouldn't spend spent a couple hours having conversations.
Wyatt Pemberton :For a lot of fun offered you were kind of the first one we you kind of were the first person to make it real. For at least definitely for me, you were the first person to make it real. You're the first person that it hit close to home because we were talking or texting on a somewhat regular basis kind of setting this up. And then you came out with Hey, I've got it. I was like, What is it up to that point? It felt like it was you know, it was on other continents. It wasn't an American problem. And now it really is an American problem. A lot of naysayers, right?
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And you know, one of the things that probably the most interesting thing that came out of posting about it on Facebook was How many people said that they think they already had it? Without a doubt. I mean that there was a lot of people that flew to King of the hammers traveled there, and you get people from all over the world coming to that event and people even talking about possibly getting it at SEMA, which it's hard, hard to say if it knows when it really started. But uh, yeah, there was definitely quite a few people saying they think they had it in December or January. And I mean, I think it's a realistic possibility that that was the case.
Wyatt Pemberton :You and I talked, but did you figure out where you kind of think you got it from? You'd said you thought maybe your ophthalmologist, you'd gone in for some eye test or something? Is that kind of where you're still on?
Jesse Haines :Yeah, potentially. I really didn't. I never contacted them to really, like, look into it. But I had laser eye surgery and I was there three times that week, basically the week before I got sick. And you know, each time you're putting your face in the eye exam machine, and you've got your face in there for maybe five minutes. Whatever they say it can last on surfaces for up to three days. And so who knows? I didn't know they wipe that off. But you know,
Wyatt Pemberton :that stuff's apparently really resilient to that.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, yeah. guarantee they're not wiping it off well enough that they would want to stick their face in there if they thought someone was contagious.
Wyatt Pemberton :Right and not now. I mean, the world is changing. I mean, that was you know, just three weeks ago or four weeks ago now how radically different The world is today.
Jesse Haines :So yeah, what was crazy about that was the week I got sick. I think it was the day that I really got sick. I had another eye doctor appointment and they had little masks up at the front desk and it said, if you're coughing make sure you wear a mask and I I just started kind of coughing and I was like, I'm gonna I guess I'll put one on in the guy. There was like Alfie, it's what it's not really a big deal. I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to, and I thought I probably should I, you know, seemed like a responsible thing to do. And you No, that was the day that I actually got sick. So things have changed a lot in general, people are taking it more seriously now.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, I went to the grocery store today. And I came home from that and talking to my wife about how crazy it was. You know, we've been to the grocery store multi time since this has gone on but the whole how much everything's changed in the past. If you walked into a grocery store and you know, I'm I'm in Texas, so I actually do have concealed carry a firearm, almost all the time. You know, you have a one a sidearm on, but then two, I have a bandana on, you know, like, I'm gonna, like rob a stagecoach here, right? They have policemen at the front door and the exit door. They've made the grocery store to be like one in one out, you know, they've made one side an entrance on one side and exit, you enter on the produce side and you exit on the pharmacy side, which kind of makes sense anyway, but they've made it now into a flow. And I'm telling my wife, I'm like, yeah, you know, a month ago if you'd walked into anywhere With a bandana over your face, and they would definitely pull you aside, you get frizzy. They'd be like, Why do you have this gun? You know?
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And I mean, it's hard to say where we're going. I mean, it was like, a month ago, not even that a friend of mine said he was wearing a mask at the grocery store and some woman started bitching them out. He said, I'd even stick around long enough to figure out what she was saying. But, you know, it was out of the ordinary somewhat to actually be wearing a mask in public and like, are we headed to the point where if you're not wearing a mask in public, someone's gonna come up to you and tell you sponsible and
Wyatt Pemberton :yeah, it's my trip to the grocery store today was that there was people there that did not have mask on but they were definitely the minority.
Jesse Haines :I was at Home Depot and it was there weren't that many people with masks but there was definitely a handful and, you know, we look back, you know, if you travel internationally or anytime you're on an airplane, you See the Asian people that have masks on? And I'm willing to bet most of us thought it always thought this was silly.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yes, yes, I'm with you.
Jesse Haines :Now you're like, maybe it wasn't that silly, but I don't know. I mean, who knows
Wyatt Pemberton :chaos? Crazy times we're living in Well, hey, let's jump into this interview. Like I said, You You just came off a when you won 40 4600 class. You were like about, I want to say you finished 20th in the AMC, but that was first in 4600. Like so. Yeah, that you're the owner, the sole proprietor of Jesse Haynes fabrication going strong. You're coming up on a decade there, right. Eight years, eight years. Supergirl promoter. I don't know if I want to call you the Godfather crawling. But you've you've certainly reinvigorated it over the last few years years. You've single handedly brought crawling back in vogue.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, I mean, I've heard people say that and I don't know. I don't try to take too much credit for it because it's obviously a big effort between I mean, a lot of people,
Wyatt Pemberton :but it takes that one person just being a catalyst that the the glue, so to speak to kind of kind of get all the right players in the right place and doing the right things and you've kind of done a good job about herding cats there.
Jesse Haines :I can tell you about that. When I lived on the East Coast, rock Ron was big at that time. 2003 to seven, basically, rock crawling was still going pretty strong in 2007. Man, we had a lot of good times. There was so many good competitors back then on the east coast. I mean, when I say that there was tons of good competitors. I don't just mean like good for the East Coast. I mean, the guys on the East Coast were as good as anyone in the country. It depended on kind of the terrain we were competing on. Like some of the guys on the East Coast if they went out west didn't do as well. The events were just a little different. The courses were different the terrain was different, but you know, we had a couple times the Supergirl champions or east coast guys like Randy torbett and Ken issue. So I would talk to some of the guys like Matt Dee's was one that I remember, in particular, I don't know if you know, Matt at all, but Matt was a great competitor, you know, we'd have conversations about, man, those were awesome times and What a bummer it is that it's, you know, dying off and it's not like that anymore and doesn't seem like it's ever going to be like that again. And you kind of get to the point where it's like, okay, we can talk about how much it sucks that it's over, or try and do something about about changing that. And so that was like 1314 was when I kind of told myself like, you know what, for me, it wasn't just about, well, we had some good times, and I want to keep doing it, because, you know, it was fun. It was also this is kind of what I do for a living, building rock crawling stuff, if it dies off, you know, it's,
Wyatt Pemberton :it's kind of my career self defeating, right?
Jesse Haines :Yeah. So I just said, you know, we got to try and bring this back and make this happen again. And there was definitely a lot of factors that came into play, you know, the economy started getting better. And there was even things like I met Kevin Carroll and 2015 from Red Dot engineering.
Wyatt Pemberton :It's sad to lose him this past year. Yeah, I mean, terrible. I
Jesse Haines :think it was last June. Is it I know.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, that plane crash outside of my lab.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. That was crazy to hear about but yeah, he'd say it but a lot of the guys that knew Kevin weren't shocked that something like that happened because he's so crazy. Like as far as pushing the limits of everything he did me it doesn't take away from how tragic it was. But a lot of guys were like, Well, yeah, I can. I can see that happen because if you saw the way the guy Rob crawled or, or anything I mean He was nuts. Like
Wyatt Pemberton :it was full throttle all the way. Yeah.
Jesse Haines :And you know, I mean, I like to think that I, I like going out there and doing doing crazy stuff too. But some of the stuff that he was willing to do, it's like, Man, this is cool driving off this huge drop off over here, like, Hey, I don't really need to do that. He's like, Oh, come on, and you're like, maybe I'll drive up some crazy stuff or whatever, but I don't need to just for the heck of it. Go off some insane drop off, but he was pretty awesome. As far as that goes, like, no one was more fun to try to ride with because he was he loved it. He loved the extreme stuff.
Wyatt Pemberton :He definitely put together a lot of really badass cars.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And that's where I was getting at. It was Kevin. I mean, I almost feel like single handedly. He kind of started something that definitely helped move the sport forward. It was like well I think it was 15 he invited a handful people to come do this trail run at Black Flag area bfv crawl magazine, everything was there. He invited me and Tracy Jordan. Some people kind of think it was a bit of a setup. Those guys were out there basically practicing the trail before this trail run. And me and Tracy got our asses handed to us that day. You know, a big part of it was our cars couldn't hang on that trail. Yeah, I never made it. I ended up having some canticle issues. I think Tracy Brooks I'm earlier in the day and then he had to went a couple times and but what it showed was, you know that their cars were an evolution of the sport in a way because they were going places that are regular comp buggy couldn't go It changed my thinking for sure as far as building cars and it was like the start of the external trail wheeling which before it was like, you know, you had most trail wheelers had a two seat buggy no rear steer and you know that was hardcore, then all of a sudden it was like you needed 40 twos and rear steer and you know, a lot of people started going that direction of more extreme stuff and finding more extreme trails and you can even say, you know, stuff like the startup trail hero and trail breaker also help progress that kind of extreme trail Whelan.
Wyatt Pemberton :What car was a Tracy Jordan was either his rock bug.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, so he had already sold it, but he borrowed it back from the guy that owned it. So I was driving pokey, my promo code buggy on 40 inch tires. And yeah, it's tough. I mean, I have rear steer all those guys had rear steer. At that point. I was like, Yeah, I gotta build another car with rear steer.
Wyatt Pemberton :So you're also involved with laser net racing. With Cody Wagner. You guys have done a couple crawlers together you did pretty penny Yeah. Which we all know that car as having the the copper wheels, right saying and just Cody's insane. And then now have you built some twins to that car or variations are kinda Let's finish what we were talking about with with with Cova then we're going to go into you and then we'll lump all this, the build and the tech side stuff in the comp stuff, actually into the real sections. I love tangents. And I got off on one and I got you off on one. Sorry listeners, you guys were along for the ride. You know, that's how we roll here. So while you were sick and down, your shop is at your house and you've got at least one employee you have to something like that. And then you've kind of had to shut down here in the in the interim. How's that kind of affecting timelines and timetables and timeframes and your family and their family?
Jesse Haines :As you can imagine? It's I mean, it's hard to say that there's ever like great timing to get sick for 10 days but wasn't the best timing Well, in some ways. It could have been worse, but we're getting ready to move. We just built a house about an hour away. And we're getting ready to move there in a week or 10 days now. And so there was stuff I wanted to work on in try and get done before I moved that. You know, it's kind of screwed up that the timing for all that. Yeah, I do have some employees that are part time or full time. No one has a set schedule. But yeah, no one really came in for about a week or so. So yeah, not a lot got done. And also it's it's tough for people right now because some of them their kids aren't in school and they got to stay home and it's Yeah, hasn't been a lot of progress happening in the last couple weeks.
Wyatt Pemberton :Have you noticed any drop off in any year like part deliveries in any of your, you know, your suppliers, not
Jesse Haines :necessarily rcbs closed and that hasn't been a real big issue. I did have one guy that was ready to order some stuff and they're close. But yeah, I think for the most part, everyone else I deal with is still open. And so I mean that helps us keep going for sure.
Wyatt Pemberton :So you yourself, you're from Michigan. I know you went to work at the Badlands for a little while. And then you ended up in Reno where you're at today or you're outside of Reno. Yeah, sparks in the first time I remember you I remember top truck challenge. And when they sent it out right back in the magazine era, right, we would get our our four wheeler or Peterson's four wheel drive, and it would have all the competitors in there. And you had this huge, huge. Were they on 44 swampers bloggers. Yeah, bloggers, bloggers, bright orange Toyota. That was my first kind of recollection of you and back kind of knew you have just been on pirate everyone was on pirate in that era. And then I bought my first buggy came from Mike Koval, who was a Michigan guy and you knew him some form or fashion. And when he went to sell me that buggy, he needed tires. It so he runs to you and got some 37 inch trips for it. They're probably three eighths to half us they there wasn't a whole lot left. So he like regrouped them in between the lugs with Yeah. And then that's what I ended up with. And I've been they were really good. That was a really good hooking up tire, and then I'm stupid. I've got 39 inch reds and then that was all downhill from there on that car. That car should have never had 30 nines on it. But um, yeah, man. So that was really my first interaction with the Jesse Haynes was I know, this buggy that had your tires on it. Yeah. And then we didn't actually officially meet until I met you in 2009. At a pit stop on the Vegas Strip. Best in the desert. Yeah, but Vegas arena. That's right. And I can't remember it was one of the last pit stops like Hawthorne, maybe. And we were standing. We were all kind of standing in a circle discussing on where our car was because it was Jeff Knoll and RJ Brown, we're in it. And we're waiting and waiting turned out. They were on the back side of a mountain ridge. They'd broken down. They go through that. Yeah, yeah. And the only thing that broke up our conversation was best in the desert came over the radio and asked for the, you know, the picture of the 4471. And basically gave us a GPS coordinate on where our car was. And to get there it was like, well, as the crow flies, they were like five miles away. But as far as getting to them, it was like an hour drive south and an hour drive back north. And I think we finally got him back to that night. Stop it. Oh, God, it was like two in the morning or something. It was kind of crazy. But that was the first time and I do think just randomly.
Jesse Haines :I think it was Hawthorne. Because we spent the night in Hawthorne. I didn't originally go down to that race. I stayed at the shop and then basically said if you guys need anything, let me know. And that was like this. Read a race or something. Yeah, it was actually a really cool format. But yeah, I can't remember at some point I ended up driving down and helping out. I can't remember what the deal was. It was something about someone wrecked the torch mate truck.
Wyatt Pemberton :Oh, yeah, yeah,
Jesse Haines :yeah. And I ended up staying up all night. Me and maybe Nick's OSHA stayed up all night fixing the truck, which I didn't have anything to do the next day. So it wasn't a huge deal. You know, it's easy for the crew guys to stay up all night versus a guy that's got drive or something you know, so
Wyatt Pemberton :well, it was like the a pillar was folded in on it right when that was or the driver's bar was folded way down and to drive it you had to like you could drive but you had to your head was cocked over totally not safe. And you guys I think fixed it that night. So back in Michigan when you're growing up, at what point did I mean were you want to sports as a kid, I think you told me and this is where I start getting in trouble when I'm doing interviews. Because the way it's going, I've got so many kind of going in an order it and all sudden I get you confused and I feel like you are also in the ice hockey, like Eric Miller was is that right?
Jesse Haines :Yeah and we've talked about like, Eric and I have talked about that a little bit before like we're aware of the fact that we both played hockey I don't know how seriously involved Eric was in it. I know he played a decent amount are on a but yeah, when I was a kid, I started at six and which is who's kind of like the standard age where most kids start because that's like when the organized hockey start to get six or whatever. So yeah, I started then. And I mean, I played until basically played organized hockey until I was like, 24. Yeah, it was definitely a big part of my life. When I was growing up. I was a little, little different as far as how most most kids are grown up, I guess like in high school. I mean, I never went to parties or drank or, you know, hung out with my friends All the time or whatever. I mean, I was like, so focused on playing hockey that that was my big thing for sure.
Wyatt Pemberton :What's your story? How did you get into wheeling and all when you were so focused on ice hockey,
Jesse Haines :so I'd always been into playing with cars and building stuff and playing with Legos when I was a little kid. And I remember, I don't know how old I was. But you know, when I was really young, all of our Legos and stuff from the basement and I would just go down there by myself and play. I bet there was times where I would go down there for you know, a couple hours, two or three hours and my mom would have to come down there like, Is everything okay? You know, he's still down here. Because, you know, I was just so focused on what I was doing and the stuff I was playing with and in it, you know, eventually as you get older, you start getting remote control cars and actual RC kits and building cars and you know, super excited That stuff too and even started racing RC cars. There's a couple times where we went to races that were a couple hours from my house and it was a good hobby for me as a kid. Did you come back from stuff like that? And they're like, Okay, this is what I need to do to make my RC car faster or better recut and stuff off of it or adding stuff to it. Oh, yeah, they're I remember they had these indoor races at a it was like a gym by my house like at a elementary school. And it was a carpeted gym. I'm sure you remember like carpeted gyms where like the basketball court was all carpeted but it was like that super low profile stuff.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, like a couple I remember there were churches.
Jesse Haines :It was a church Yeah. Oh, they're connected that So anyway, they would they would set up like PVC pipe. That was the the borderline of the course you don't I mean, yeah, like, sometimes it's just an oval. And so I bought like I got for Christmas. This camera was called like, at Stampede or something? Oh, tracks a sledge hammer. So I got this thing. It's like a monster truck. And I get it. And I mean, it was really cool. And I took it there to race it. And it was horrible
Wyatt Pemberton :because they were like fast little cars. And this thing is like a monster truck like,
Jesse Haines :right. And it wasn't so much the fact that it was slow, but I mean, it was just way too tall, the center of gravity and everything was way too high. The tires were too big. And I remember like, I changed so much stuff on it, like lowered it a ton got these super low profile tires, and just totally converted it and basically into a race truck and actually did all that stuff and want to race and it was like looking back that was kind of the hook. Right? The start of me getting into that kind of stuff because you know, the average kid would probably have just drove his truck around and not done well. And you know, I don't know I just looked at it and tried to figure out a way to make it better. What I had
Wyatt Pemberton :None of that is surprising to me. And then to find out you know that you ended up going to you went to college, you went to Ferris State, but to find out that you have a BS in automotive engineering technology makes complete sense to me like, like, you're one of the guys who I know who they had an idea they went to college for exactly one thing and then they still use it and utilize it today. You know, some people don't even use their degree immediately on day one out of college and it seems like you have continuously built step by step by step into where your business is today. Is that about right?
Jesse Haines :Some of this stuff? I don't know why it took me so long to get get involved in it. But when I was a senior in high school, I signed up for an AutoCAD class, Computer Aided drafting class. I think all we use was AutoCAD at the time, but I loved it. Like you know, back then they don't if you're in high school, they don't really care too much about the curriculum. They just want you to like get familiar with the program and I would just sit there and draw like trucks and raced cars and all kinds of stuff. And AutoCAD night. I thought it was really cool thought maybe it was a career I wanted to go into. So I went to community college for a little bit, taking Computer Aided drafting stuff, technical drafting. Some of it was on, you know, actual drawing on the on the board, drafting board. And then I went to Ferris State. And at Ferris State, I was signed up for the tech drafting in tool design program. One of my roommates was in the automotive program, and where I would park every day, I would walk through the automotive building, and every day I'd walk through there and I'm like, Man, this stuff is super cool. This looks way more interesting than what I'm doing. So I started like thinking maybe, maybe I want to do that, right. And I remember towards the end of my school year, with the tech drafting program, we went on a field trip and basically, you know, this field trips, trying to show you, you know, this is the kind of job you're gonna get when you graduate you this. This is the kind of stuff you're gonna Doing. And I looked at this and I'm like, this sucks. I want to do this because I liked the drawing aspect of it just from designing cars and whatnot. I didn't want to, I didn't want to just sit at a desk and you know, someone hand you something and say, draw this. So
Wyatt Pemberton :you wouldn't be out there making it right. Put your hands on it front to back. Yeah,
Jesse Haines :at that point. I said, Yep. No, I'm changing majors, which, you know, that that year, it was very valuable stuff that I learned still, even though it seemed like a waste of time. There was a lot of cool stuff that I learned. And so when I was in college, I actually took some welding classes, I took some machining classes. So I took a machining processes class that was using a mill and using a lathe, and I really liked it. And then when I was a senior, I found out that our assistant hockey coach was a one of the lab instructors from a machining class. He told me he's like, if you want to take This machining class, you know, you can just sign up to be a lab assistant. And you can just come in and basically just use the use the shop during the lab. I'm like, really? And so I don't know what it was like two credits or something I signed up and I mean, I was literally going in there. sounds bad. I was going in there using shop materials. And I was doing stuff like machining, steering arms and stuff and I was even selling them like advertising them and selling them the stuff that I was making in shop class, but it was good experience. Learn how to do that stuff.
Intro/Outro :Stay tuned. Your talent tank is in full gamut.
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Intro/Outro :Now, back to this
Jesse Haines :When I went from college and a couple months later started at the Badlands just coincidentally I mean, worked out awesome that I went to work this shop that had, you know, a full machine shop we had, I mean, we had to lathes two Mills vertical mill horizontal mill like we had everything there.
Wyatt Pemberton :That was Troy Meyer shop there. Badlands is like well it's Badlands off road park but Badlands machine shop was a thing and then out of Indiana, a lot a lot of competitors and definitely rec winners have been there on some form or fashion some time my life but how did you go from Ferris down to Attica Indiana.
Jesse Haines :Basically, when I was a senior in college, I had decided that I wanted to work in an off road shop, obviously like having some type of engineering degree doesn't necessarily translate over into working at an off road shop, but I knew it was what I wanted to do. So I remember going through like four wheeler and four wheeler off road magazines and looking through the back of the magazine and looking online. And I was trying to find contacts for literally, like any off road shop in the country, especially like places that were advertising magazines, places like avalanche engineering, or whoever else, you know, contacting all those places trying to get a job somewhere. And I remember I had contacted the Badlands and Troy wrote me back and said, because this was a few months before I graduated, and he said, when you're getting closer to when you're graduating, hit me up again and I'll see if see what we can do. Well,
Wyatt Pemberton :had you met Troy before then?
Jesse Haines :No, I'd never been down there. So you know, I didn't wasn't holding my breath as far as that goes. Because I mean, who knows if I was going to actually work out but I graduated, went back home, went to work as a mechanic for a while. While I was looking for a job? And then it was probably Well, yeah, it was. Sometime in June, Troy contacted me. I think he left a message on my answering machine and said, Hey, if you're still interested, give me a call. Maybe we can meet up and see if it worked out. And I remember calling I'd be like I can I can start next weekend. I can. I can be down there this weekend. And I can start now. And he's like, Well, yeah, I mean, how about you just come down here and you know me. Let's meet and see if this is going to work out. What I ended up doing is part of why I got the job. So I took my Willie's back then my my tow rig was like a junky 83 long box, one ton Chevy truck with a with a 454 in it. And I mean, driving it six hours was like, you know, probably iffy,
Wyatt Pemberton :but in just a few cost to the fuel cost alone, right?
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And so I loaded up my Willys which I had basically just rebuilt at that time. I mean, looking back, I mean is wasn't that great and probably didn't work very well either. But I took that down there, you know, took it down to the Badlands, met up with them, even when I will, in a little bit, saw what they had going on at the shop and they offered me a job talking to Troy about it later. The fact that I brought my rig down there was you know, a big factor in why they hired me because they could look at my work and see, well look, this guy did this and even though this isn't, this isn't the best maybe this quality is not up to par. It shows a start it does in like a lot of guys that are interested in getting into this stuff. I don't think they understand that. There's tons of guys that start these projects reduce you know, a little bit Bit of a project and put rock sliders on this rig or whatever. But regardless of the mean to some extent, regardless of the quality, if you can start from scratch and put something together and actually finish it, it definitely shows that you've got, you know, the passion and the motivation because so many people start projects and get overwhelmed and realize it's way harder than it. They thought it was gonna be way more work than they thought it was gonna be. And they just give up so
Wyatt Pemberton :Oh, absolutely, like you hit finish. That's the key word like finish. I have a shop full of projects. I haven't finished shop. But I've done Have you have also cranked out a ton of projects. Because there was that like that passion stayed there or that were with all for that individual item slipped through the course of it, and then some stuff I'll start because it seemed like a good idea. And then I'm like, you know, a few weeks in or a few weekends and I'm like, Ah, it's crap, lose motivation. You walk away from it. And then
Jesse Haines :Yeah, I mean, we saw it. You know, when I worked at the Badlands for four and a half years, you'd see guys come in, apply and want to work there. And you know, a lot most of them didn't work out. And the thing is like the thought of going to a shop and building rock crawling buggies all the time, or ultra for cars or whatever, that sounds so cool,
Wyatt Pemberton :sounds sexy as can be.
Jesse Haines :Right? I mean, it sounds like you'd be going to work every day thinking, Man, this is awesome. And it's not always awesome. I mean, it's work. And I will say when I started the Badlands, I mean, I loved every day of work, you know, for quite a while, and I moved there. I didn't have any friends. I didn't know anyone. And basically, the only thing I did is I went to work. And I went rock crawling by myself a lot of times after work because I don't know I'm not that social of a person that I can move somewhere. Just make a bunch of friends and hang out with them. So I was only making I think it started at like 1250 an hour or something, you know, with your four year engineering degree and you start at 1215 hour I didn't care. I was like, I don't whatever, I'll make it work and
Wyatt Pemberton :but some of that going out after working, you know, going and crawling around around the Badlands solo that helps you work out a lot of things in your head. Oh, yeah. Problem Solving about your day how your day went? So there's some reflecting there's there's a lot of personal care that happens. Solo like that.
Jesse Haines :There was definitely something you describe it. It was definitely a peaceful thing to you know, it's a 600 acre park and just have the whole place to yourself. It was cool. It was kept me content for quite a while being there
Wyatt Pemberton :through 2007 right. Yeah, you came down to spring Texas for we rock nationals rock nationals. They're just outside Houston. And that was for me. That was the first rock Carlin event. Seen real life in person. So you came to that, but then from there you went straight to Reno.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, Carson City is where shaffers off road was in basically.
Wyatt Pemberton :Was he in Mountain House
Jesse Haines :yet? No, just down the road. I mean, that's like, whatever is like, yeah, five miles away or something that's not
Wyatt Pemberton :I don't want to I don't want to get too far ahead. You built a bunch of cool stuff there with Troy. And you know, we lost Troy. Did we lose him last year to two years ago? It seems it seems really recent.
Jesse Haines :Yes. It's been two years. Yeah.
Wyatt Pemberton :Either. There's something in the water or we're getting old. That's
Jesse Haines :right, right. Yeah, that's for sure.
Wyatt Pemberton :But yeah, I don't want to get too far ahead. But I know before you you were in you were in a mud runs. You were a mud Walker. That's when we talk about your toy. You had boggers on it, right? Is that just something like? I feels like there's two different kinds of people out of Michigan. They're either in the sand dunes and going to the silver lights or like yeah, Or they're in a mud Walton.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. Well, you don't have a lot of options. I tell people, you know, because on the on the west coast, you don't you don't realize what it's like on the east coast. So by the way, when I was like 17, I think got a ticket from they call the DNR in Michigan Department natural resources, which is like the BLM, most places in the country. And we're out wheelin climbing on the sand hills, we don't know where we're at or where we're going or whatever. We'd been driving all over, we get pulled over, you know, I'm freaking out, like, basically like police lights. And they told us they're like, you guys are under arrest for operating a motor vehicle in a restricted area or something. I was like, Am I going to jail? Like, no, no, you know, I'm like, I was scared out of my mind. But yeah, you know, we didn't even know we were in a restricted area, but you Anyway, the rules in Michigan, where basically unless a trail is marked open, it's considered closed. And the whole time I live there, I only saw signs that said marked open trail a handful of times. I mean, everything's closed. And unless you're like on a dirt road, and you know, being teenagers, I mean, we
Wyatt Pemberton :were at a slough. Yeah, absolutely. And we do teenage stuff, right.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. I mean, we would look for like, if it rained, we were like, super excited, because we go find mud somewhere, you know what I mean? And sometimes it would be, oh, we know these dirt roads that will flood when, when it rains, and you'd go out on these dirt roads that were potentially someone's road to get to their house and you're just like, mud in the hell out of it. tearing it up, but we didn't have a lot of options. There weren't like hills. There weren't there wasn't anything so I mean in northern Michigan like for Whelan was for the most part it was going mutton. Right.
Wyatt Pemberton :So when you were at the Badlands Oh, my recollection of some chassis that you guys had you guys made the wasp competed against a bunch of wasp chassis in x Ra. Yeah. But the one that sticks out in my head and you had to correct the name for me in the notes I sent you. I called the thing. A Tomahawk, but you could use it and it was Indian something it was the Apache. Yeah, and that thing was so damn ugly. And the proportions were so terrible. Yeah, but the thing that struck me and that was really where I remember you and they've called me like why I don't remember. I don't know how you keep up with these terrible innate little beef facts that you remember gray but that thing you had you had launched Tooley mounted a transmit an engine. I don't remember what it was maybe a V tech I feel like it was a Saturn though.
Jesse Haines :No, it was a it was LS one
Wyatt Pemberton :seriously, and then you have great LS one and then The transmission was like a power glide to a nine inch center section. And then the nine inch section was the transfer case.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. So this stuff, there was this guy. He's still around. His name's Jerry back. We built a buggy forum, one of the original wasp buggies with a for bt, because he was into truck pollen into diesel stuff. He's got a, like a construction business on some heavy equipment, you know, the typical, like, diesel guy, right? So I started getting to know Jerry, and we went to an event and he saw this guy in Pennsylvania had a transaxle, buddy. And so Jerry saw that that was pretty cool. And we're driving home from Pennsylvania 12 hour drive, and we start talking about it. I don't remember what we're talking about talking about that. transaxle buggy. Well, the next day he calls me and me he came up with all this stuff. So most people would never have heard of this before, but he's telling me about this transmission. Man I think it's called a
Wyatt Pemberton :turbo Hydra for 25 or 25 yeah out of Cadillac Eldorado. torna
Jesse Haines :Yeah, those are out on or not Oh, that's right. About this transaxle and I'm like, what he's like I'll bring one in and show you it had a had a diff in it. Those things are crazy like in headaches so what they put them in motorhomes
Wyatt Pemberton :in there really, I mean they were set up they were behind, you know, either a 472 or a 500 cubic inch motor. So they were set up for torque,
Jesse Haines :right like it had a diff on it that had a ring and pinion that was like Dana 60 size
Wyatt Pemberton :and weighed 300 pounds. It was a it was basically a turbo Hydra 400 with a integral diff hanging off the back of it.
Jesse Haines :Your chain drive. Yes that from the converter to the I mean the thing is super cool. So he had an idea to use one of those. And I thought, No way. And then he brought it in, I looked at it, I'm like, okay, and one thing led to another and next thing you know, he's like, sending a crate, LS one to the shop. And, you know, we're building this thing in. I mean, it was such a cool project. It was one that I was almost did 100% myself. And what some people don't remember don't know about Badlands is when I was working there. I get a lot of credit for the stuff that was built there. But when I started, there was a guy named Rob Brown, that it was Troy's nephew. And that guy designed most of those chasse ease so it you know, it's kind of weird. There was times where, and I'll be honest, he didn't work very well with others. So a lot of the times that we were there, there was projects that it was like either Rob was 100% doing the whole car himself and maybe in the other Besides shop I was doing a car 100% myself so and that Apache was something that I was working on myself.
Wyatt Pemberton :It kind of had the configuration of a like one of those ikana line pickups like the little van like like you sat right like, like the driver seat
Jesse Haines :was in front of over the front axle.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, you your butt was over the top of the front diff and then the motor was left to right behind you. The motor didn't sit lengthwise on the chassis it sideways side to side and it had offset diffs offset to the driver side. Yeah, I remember this thing. Yeah, it was crazy. The tech on it, but God it was ugly. Did it ever end up being wheeled did it climb worth of shit. I mean,
Jesse Haines :Jerry is one of those guys that seems to lose interest and stuff pretty quick. And it debuted and he had never competed before and he went to a you rock event that you know there's quite a few good guys that are I don't remember how many teams or were at the event but man, I think He got like fifth or something. I mean, he did really well. And he only ever competed in like, three or four events. And I don't know, he just lost interest and me it's kind of a shame like the car got sold and then it got parted out and then partially parted out and then it got sold again and parted out even more. And then it's and then I like saw the chassis just by itself for sale a few years ago. And it's like, what's someone gonna do with just the chassis? It had like the most unconventional drive train ever but that car, I mean, I don't know how much you know how things have gone with pirate like, I mean, it's hard to go back and look at a thread on pirate, the pictures
Wyatt Pemberton :were all gone and the links are all gone.
Jesse Haines :There might be some pictures still there, but not many. You can find a handful of pictures of it and whether you think the car's ugly or whether it worked or not like most people can Appreciate like, there was some really cool stuff. So instead of using the factory diff, because if we use the factory diff, you would just basically have to weld the spider gears and then it would be locked in four wheel drive all the time we put, we built an A rb, or we build a Ford nine inch with a RB in it and use that so adapted the back of the transmission to the input of the nine inch. use that as an A rb,
Wyatt Pemberton :so that way you could disconnect the front like when you went to open diff, then
Jesse Haines :it was genius. It works surprisingly well like we had to put these crazy long handles on the cutting brakes to get it to actually, you know lock up the rear or lock up the front, but it worked really well and it was cool that you could leave it in technically like all wheel drive. You know what I mean? Like where you could leave that diff open and you could be going in all wheel drive and then just pull the cutting brake and then in front dig without having to flip it on or off. It was a cool car. It was something that I'm still proud of because
Wyatt Pemberton :oh, you should be. Absolutely. There's
Jesse Haines :so much work and something that people, you know, don't know about how the Badlands operated. I joke that it was a nonprofit organization like the shop was. I'm sure there's some stuff we did that made money. But the park made so much money that Troy's tax guy was probably like, Is there any way you can lose a bunch of money? Somehow, and, like, I think that's why we had the shop because, I mean, I was the loser, right? That car because that guy was, you know, a friend of Troy's to. I can't remember what we charged them for labor, but had to be close to what I was getting paid. You know what I mean? But like, we're not making money on any of that stuff. So
Wyatt Pemberton :how did you first get involved in crawling Who asked you to start spotting for them How did you make that for you A into traveling around the country on the traveling circus of Rocky rock?
Jesse Haines :It was pretty crazy how it happened because it happened really fast from the time that I got to the Badlands, basically, they had told me that there was a iraq but then this is the This was 2003 was the last year of Iraq. There was an Iraq event coming up at the Badlands. And you know, I was super excited to go watch. Well, I went downtown for where they were doing the tech and registration. And there was this guy, not many people would remember him but someone out there does. There's this guy named Mike hope that ran the concession stand in the lower parking lot at the Badlands for quite a while. They called him hot dog Mike and hot dog Mike and built his own buggy and he was kind of he was kind of nuts, but hot dog Mike was at the tech and registration and I had maybe talked to the guy once. I don't Been in the Badlands a week? And he says, Hey, man, you want a spot for me this weekend? Cuz my dad normally spots for me, he's not gonna make it. So I'm like, dude, I don't know anything about this. I've never even seen an event. And he's like, Well, I know. But I had some other guys gonna do and he doesn't know anything about anything. So you'd be better than him. I thought.
Wyatt Pemberton :Oh, man.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, I was hesitant. But anyway, I was blown away. Like I went to the event. And it was funny because I remember the first time my mom went to an event was, I think, the next year and she went to the top truck challenge with me, right? So she sees the first rock Kron event and says, This makes the top truck challenge look stupid. And I said, Yeah, it sounds like because I don't know if you've ever realized but like the top truck challenge. You see it in the magazine and they made it look like it was the World Championship of four wheel right? Right. That was their job to make it look like this was a huge deal. And, you know, as a kid grown up, you see it in the magazines and it was like, the baddest that these guys were like heroes, right? I mean, I went out there in my truck was a piece of crap. I mean, it's a piece of junk and obviously like the year I was there Jr. was one in his first Bronco. I mean, I think was amazing, right, but, you know, the top truck challenge was far from any type of like World Championship, you know, it's just a guy that got voted in because he had a cool picture of his rig. But yeah, rock round competitions was it was definitely another level as far as how extreme this stuff was. So anyway, yeah, I went to the next event. That same guy asked me about my head crazy story like just total coincidence that I got to go to this spotted format this first event, right? Well, the next event was in jellico 10 See, and I was gonna ride down there with him. And his dad was gonna spot for him and his dad. He didn't get hurt or anything but his dad got in a car accident on his way to Mike's house. The day we're leaving to go down to, to jellico. And he's like, Mike looks at me. He gets off phone. He's like, well, you want a spot for me? I said, Yeah, let's go and so I ended up spot and for him then Supercross was coming up, and
Wyatt Pemberton :we're super proud that year.
Jesse Haines :It was in St. George. That was the second one. You know, I was super excited to go I was gonna go no matter what Troy was competing against Mike Smyth. You remember Space Ghost Mike Smyth vaguely vaguely on pirate Yeah, he was one of those guys that was big into it for a while and you know, he totally got out and I don't know what year oh five or something maybe but so anyway, Mike Smith needed a guy to spout for him and I so I went to St. George and spotted for Mike Smyth and then the next year, there was A couple of events at the Badlands and I competed in my Willies. And at the time I Willie's he was on like 37 inch stickies and Dana 60s and had rear steer, had like a 92 inch wheelbase. And it was far from a super badass, buggy, but he was a cool rig. A lot of people still love that thing. But you know, because I had rear steer, and it didn't meet the rules for any other class. I ran in the unlimited class and at the time, I mean, I was I was certainly pretty fearless with it and drove the hell out of it, but wasn't competitive. Right?
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah. What was the first you know, ground up build that you did for yourself? Did that happen once you got out to Nevada? Did you compete in your Willis until Oh, seven?
Jesse Haines :No. So basically what happened was I can't remember that. That first event I think there was 28 guys my class 25 guys my class I got like 21st right. Then the next event, I think there was like 30 guys and I got 27th or something. And both of these events, I rolled, who knows a couple times two or three times each event, broke stuff, each event, missed courses because I broke stuff. And at the end of the second event, there was a, I rolled down this big hill like two times down this big hill and broke my rig and crowd was going crazy. Thought it was nuts. I remember the next day at work, the guy that ended up spotting for me for like four years good friend of mine, Brian Howard, that I worked with at the Badlands. He tells me Monday morning He's like, I think you're gonna need to build a buggy or or hang it up. I said, Why is that? He's like, well, people are starting to talk. What do you mean? He's like, sitting there watching? Yeah, and people are like, I don't even know why those guys out here. There's no way he can he can hang with these guys. That was like that. Yeah, you're probably right. And so I mean, I don't think it was long after that, that I started building the chassis and a guy that I'd mentioned earlier Rob brown I'd never built a chassis before I'd done some tube bending and whatnot not a ton. And Troy was cool enough to let me use let me use the shop all the time and basically tie up the chassis table for a while while I was building my first chassis. I remember the first day I'm asking Rob I'm like after work you know, like well how do you know how to do this? What angles this and how Why is this? Rob helped me for like 10 minutes He's like, well seems like he got it handled. So good luck with everything. And so yeah, I was just figuring it out along the way. And yeah, built my part it out my will is basically to build my first rig first buggy, that thing it took me most of summer, bad timing, really suicide to do it like middle of the summer that I decided to part My by only rig you know, didn't really start competing with the new buggy until till the next year.
Wyatt Pemberton :So this roughly 2006 ish 2005 2006
Jesse Haines :Oh yeah, that was so that was 2004
Wyatt Pemberton :Oh, wow, okay, wow. Yeah. Okay, so you really did only make it like two events with the Willis and you're like I'm done. All right.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, pretty much
Wyatt Pemberton :how did you do those next couple years in that car
Jesse Haines :2005 was it was the first year we rock first year we rock it all there was cow rocks before that big rich was running cow rocks and then from cow rocks you know things were going well I guess for cow rocks and I decided to make a national series which we're all thankful that he did. So we rock was, you know had for East Coast events or whatever that year. And so I decided I'm gonna run we rock and run all these events. I can't remember what all events I think I ran like two different series. We rock in new rock that year, which was kind of, you know, out of Pennsylvania. Aragon was for half the new rock events were so 2005 We rock, the first event of the year was at the Badlands coincidentally. And I was all ready to go. I was super excited about competing for real and and full blown buggy and everything. And I remember being so nervous on the first course, like, I could not make it up this climb, broke my car and broke it bad enough that we missed the whole first day. Oh, shit. So then the second day, you know, you go out there and you have nothing to lose, you're like, well, we're, we're not gonna win, we're not even going to do well. So we might as well go have fun and get some practice in. And second day. We did good. I remember looking at comparing our scores at the end of the event going man, our scores on the second day. I mean, we would have been pretty close to the competitive at least,
Wyatt Pemberton :and that's a relief, right? That's somewhat rewarding.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, makes you feel good. And you know, I totally get it. It's just like it if you do that King of a hammer if you're looking at the split times and you go from this point to this point where as fast as so and so and you kind of have to take those little victories sometimes just to
Wyatt Pemberton :absolutely take the edge off this thing right to go
Jesse Haines :he you know, we could have done well you know you broke or whatever, but you got to use it as motivation to keep you going sometimes.
Wyatt Pemberton :Oh absolutely. You need to you need to dig down deep and find the silver linings. That's Yeah, I mean, the people that sit back and just only look at the doom and gloom from each situation that makes for a hard anxiety filled life, but it's for sure.
Jesse Haines :So before that first event of 2005 I bought brand new 39 inch tires for my car and the next event was five weeks later,
Wyatt Pemberton :you've always been known as a max us guy where they maxes them.
Jesse Haines :No because max us didn't even have a max as heavy as a non sticky 37 that a few guys were running, but not you know, no one was taken that too seriously. So some promo code guys running and that was it. Okay, so I was running 39 inch bfgs before the second event of the season five weeks later. And keep in mind this is, you know, I'm making 14 bucks an hour at this point. Before the second event of the season, I had to buy new tires because I went out wheeling every day. From the time I got off of work until the time the sun was going down by myself pretty much every day practicing. So I was like going out setting up cones driving my buggy all the time.
Wyatt Pemberton :And that's what it takes that serious and now that you're looking back, how many how many World Championships do you have now?
Jesse Haines :Well, so saying World Championship as well. Right championships I'm sure. I mean, because there was many years ago 2006 We rock had a event that was called the world team. Right? Yeah. But other than that, they'd never had one that was technically the World Championship, right? But
Wyatt Pemberton :you've got a handful though. Correct. Yeah, no, you absolutely do. And I love how you like pregnant pause that but Yeah, you do. But that's what it took, like it took all that time of continuingly to go out and practice is the people that show up and they just want to wreck wheel. You know, maybe they're regulars that wreck wheel five, six times a year Max and then they want to go compete, and then they're disappointed in their performance. Because that's the only time they're in their car is during the competition.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, and I'm sure the same thing happens with ultra for racing. But I remember back that and literally it does. There's tons of guys that they would go to this event and there was times where like, they would go to an event and there was something wrong with their car, and they would show up at the next event with the same thing wrong with their car. They haven't worked on it between the events, they haven't drove it and it's like, how can you expect to get better, or you know, to have better results when you aren't taking it to you know, I mean, don't expect everyone to take it seriously like it's their main purpose. Already, but obviously, to improve you got to put some time into it. Yeah, absolutely.
Intro/Outro :Stay tuned. Your talent tank is in full yet.
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Intro/Outro :now back to the show.
Wyatt Pemberton :So what made you go to shaffers? What made you move out west? What was the catalyst to leave because you're a Midwest guy, Michigan, right. That's a leap and I remember when you did it like you You were a large enough name be a pirate that it was like a big deal to go out. You know, Shaffer Mike Shaffer head recruited you out there. How did how did that go down?
Jesse Haines :I won't get too much into some of it, but Troy started losing the interest in rock crawling in like 2005. And at the end of 2005, he sold his car. He didn't compete again, for 2006 or seven. He never competed again after 2005. And without a doubt, the reason that they had that shop at the Badlands was because Troy wanted to have guys there that could build a car for or maintain his car, or build some other projects or whatever, you know what I'm saying. And so once Troy started losing the interest, I mean, like I said, the shop wasn't there to make money. The shop was like a hobby for him. And so once he started losing interest, it was like, well, what's the point in having this shop? So I think it was like spring 2007 Troy sat us down and said, Well, I think I'm gonna close the shop. You guys can stay as long as you want till you find something else. I'm not gonna just shut it up and kick you out. But you know, start looking for something else. Well, yeah, I started looking for another job and I ended up they asked me if I wanted to stay longer. ended up staying at the Badlands. Well, the whole summer that year, there was another shop that was actually pursuing me and interested in me coming to work for them. And I went down to visit that shop. And we were going back and forth talking about I won't say who it was, but they made promises and just I ended up telling them to screw it. I don't know, I'm not interested anymore, basically. And it was frustrating because I was ready to move ready to go there and they just dragged me along. And so I said, screw it. Well, coincidentally, I was pretty good friends still am with a little rich Klein. He knew what was going on. And he was talking to Mike Schaffer one day I'm at Jeepers, jam Murray or something. And Mike said, I'll give him a job. I'd love to have him out here. And so there you go. One thing led to another it was kinda crazy sequence of events. I almost had to talk about Mike said he wanted to have me there, I almost had to talk him into letting me come out there. Because now, as a shop owner, I totally understand where I get people all the time that are like, Hey, I'm in Nebraska, but I'd love to come work for you and all this and it's like, yeah, the, the problem is now I feel like this obligation of it's got to work out, you know, and I mean,
Wyatt Pemberton :yeah, if you move all the way, halfway across the country,
Jesse Haines :yeah, yeah. And so Mike was steel on that too. And I had to like, talk me into it like Mike, I don't care. Like I'll make it work. It's not the kind of thing where if it doesn't work out, I'm probably gonna stay out there. Regardless,
Wyatt Pemberton :you show up at shaffers there for a little bit and then then you end up at torch mate?
Jesse Haines :Yeah, well, there was a step in between there what linked the two together. One of the big reasons Mike wanted me to come there was because someone that knew someone guy that worked at towards me, talk to bill the owner of torch me broken into building a rocket. crawling buggy. Okay. So you know, they're only shapers off road was only 45 minutes from towards me. Well, they worked out some type of deal where Shavers was going to build a buggy for, for towards me, and towards me gave them a plasma table and all this stuff. And coincidentally, all of my years of computer aided drafting, after literally not using this stuff for like five years was, yeah, five, six years. Now all of a sudden, like, it's pretty critical because I've got to use computer aided drafting to draw this stuff on towards my machine. So yeah, next, you know, I'm, I'm there and I'm building the buggy for the for torch, mate. And when we got that done, Bill, he asked me if I'd be interested in coming to work for him. I don't know. I mean, at the time, I'd been in the offroad industry for five years or whatever. And it was, it was a good opportunity. I'm sure. I was hesitant about you know, Getting away from off road stuff. But basically what Bill wanted me to come do was at the time, they didn't produce anything in house, they built aluminum extrusion tables, or they had, they're having some shop and Kentucky or something, build some bigger tables for them and they wanted to start doing that in house. So that was a big thing for me. They hired me there to start the shop, basically and figure out how to build this.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, I have my torch. My table is one of the aluminum extrusion tables. Yeah, it's still good. I mean, it's what yours is. 20 I mean, it's coming on not it's nine, nine or 10 years old now. It's still still work, right?
Jesse Haines :Yeah, I have one that I definitely don't. I use quite a bit and I don't do much to maintain it. I fix it when it breaks. That's about it. Yeah,
Wyatt Pemberton :just chug along.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, I mean, really, it's been pretty trouble free.
Wyatt Pemberton :So How cool was it when Bill and company decided to build that TTB car and tasked us up on that.
Jesse Haines :My time it towards me it was interesting because there was times where all I did was work on just work on plasma tape because I mean, that was most of it. I think it was the first year I was there, I decided to build a car for King of the hammers. And Bill was like, super supportive. And he also saw that the stuff that I was doing, was really promoting his product pretty well. So I built a car for myself in 2000 2009 Kinga hammers basically towards the end, I think it was like the last month or Yeah, at least the last month, Bill basically told me that I could just work on my own car full time, which is pretty crazy. Yeah, I mean, he paid me to come in every day and work on my own car to get my car done. You know, it was doing a lot to promote towards me and stuff because I was specifically trying to cut out some pretty elaborate stuff on that car. that showed off what the machines could do. But yeah, it was. After that, for the most part, I was just back to building tables and designing some products and whatnot,
Wyatt Pemberton :your experience there in the EU for right in those early years old for you didn't have a lot of success in the go fast stuff.
Jesse Haines :The big one was king of the hammers that 2009 was kind of a joke showed up. Last minute, typical, typical stuff for a lot of people. I remember 2009 showing up to the race, and it was so new, and there's so many people with no experience doing that and new cars. And I remember it was like Thursday, I specifically remember like Jason Paulie and I were both like, buying race radios and stuff, and we had no idea what we were doing and hooking this stuff up like, you know, the night before the race basically,
Wyatt Pemberton :and that used to be pretty common, like PCI would be there and like, you would order you would have ordered your GPS like maybe the week before. So they'd have it on the truck to bring it but you'd be installing race radios and in GPS and a low Rance in your car, like, on the layout, and
Jesse Haines :I'm sure those first few years they probably sold out of stuff like GPS, because I'm sure they're guys like, you have GPS. I probably get one. I'm racing tomorrow. I have no idea what I'm doing. And
Wyatt Pemberton :I'll never forget the Clint Ellis story. Clint Ella, I believe it was 2009 it might have been 10. But somewhere in there Clint leading the race and like leading the race by like a lot like he had driven away from from the crowd. Like he was gone. But he didn't have GPS. He gets lost. He gets lost so bad. Like he never even refound the course. He just came right back to hammer town. They're like what happened to you? You are way off front by like a 30 minute lead. It's like, right, I got lost. I didn't I didn't know where the course was. So
Jesse Haines :ya know that the early days of King hammers where it's pretty crazy to look back and see what a disaster It was for a lot of people and you know those guys like the tin bender guys that were really familiar with the area they didn't even have to have fast cars they could just go out there and you realize then it's like it's crazy to look back at like rock crawling buggies where you're like my car has to make it 10 minutes even if it like your fan quits working in the middle of that 10 minutes you're like, Well, I think we can finish without an overheating right and going from that to having to race for like eight to 14 hours or whatever. And not
Unknown Speaker :it's hard our
Jesse Haines :were the guys that were trail wheeling a ton in trail willing at the hammers. You know, they were used to it. They had to go out for the whole weekend and drive you know, put 70 miles on their car during the weekend or it was a whole new world for a lot of rock crawler guys and probably East Coast guys too. Because most of the East Coast guys you're going to an off road Park and you might put like eight miles On your car the whole weekend, the trailer still close. Right? So yeah, it was a whole new world for a lot of us that started racing at the hammers.
Wyatt Pemberton :And then as we kind of progress, you had some success. You had at least one podium, you podium didn't Utah back in like 11. Yeah. And then you kind of just kind of didn't, you didn't hang it up, but you start really focusing on yourself and what you did towards me, you end up hanging your own shingle out, somewhere right in there was about 2011 2012 is when you started just seeing fab.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, basically was December 2011. At that point, I had worked at torch made for almost four and a half years. And so getting back to the TTB car
Wyatt Pemberton :store, yeah, we started it and then bailed on
Jesse Haines :it. You know, like I was talking about getting away from being at the offer in the off road industry and working at towards me, it's weird to look back because being a business owner, now you feel like you're never really off the clock in a way, you know, you're always available to work to some extent, whether it's answering emails or working in the shop or driving to go get parts. You know, there was times where I was working at torch mate where we were just welding tables and you're just doing production welding. And you could kind of sit there. And it was like, I could just sit there and weld, and I had no obligations once the, you know, you punch out at 430 You don't have to think about work anymore. And I mean, I look back and think, yeah, that was pretty nice to see.
Wyatt Pemberton :There's some luxury and comfort there, right?
Jesse Haines :The big thing is just being able to clock out and not have to think about work until you get there the next day, you know, where I started building cars and chassis as well at home while I was still working a torch made because, you know, I had the time I had the time to do it. We worked 40 hours a week at torch mate. And then I guarantee there was times where I was working 40 hours a week at towards me and working 40 hours a week at home to make stuff happen. And then Lincoln bought towards me in 2011. And I will say that in some ways that kind of pushed me out the door as far as people had been telling me, you should open your own shop for years, but I was just, you know, hesitant to do it afraid to basically, I don't know, I just was getting less and less happy working there. And then we start working 50 hours a week and although 50 hours a week, most people will say or a lot of people will say that's, oh, that's nothing. Well, I was also trying to work at home as much as possible, you know, doing stuff for customers. So it was a it just got to where it was overwhelming. They basically told us 50 hours a week, your standard schedule now. And I just started to hate it and couldn't do it anymore. And one day, I just said this is it. I'm undone and I had a few jobs lost. lined up to do you know if I did start my own business? So I just said now's the time. That was December 2011. And so yeah, that was one thing started 2012 essentially
Wyatt Pemberton :and then so here we are, right. Caught No, no I joke it's, you know, eight years, right? Eight years of grinding it out. But, man, you've had a ton of successes. One we talked about you touched on earlier, bringing rock crawling back. That's one thing, but your recent, you know, success at kingler hammers. That's pretty awesome with with a rock sore. I'm not even going to cut when you roll that thing out. Over a year ago. I just started laughing. I was like, No way is somebody gonna build a rock sore. And then you showed up at kale wait with it a year ago, but I didn't even did you DNF with it in 2019.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. So it was, you know, in some ways, it was kind of embarrassing because last year was the worst worst hammered race for me. Since 2009, like it was the least prepared I've been since the first year I raced, which I've learned a ton since the first year I've raced. So for me to be back at that level of, you know, half assing it together at the last minute, it sucked. But I really underestimated how long it was going to take to build that thing. When you look at it on paper, you go, Okay, well, I'm building something for the stock class, it runs and drives are read, I don't have to do anything to the motor not doing anything to the tranny. I ended up doing a bunch to the transfer case, like clocking the transfer case and whatever. But it sounds easy on paper. I mean, it really doesn't sound that complicated. And I thought, you know, maybe like a six week build or something. And there's not much doubt in my mind that I could have built a pretty legit 4800 class car in the same amount of time. Me titled The rock star, I'm still not done with the build of the rocks or like there's still stuff that I'm like, well, this is stuff that I originally planned to do, and I still don't have it done. But obviously the cars together and in working,
Wyatt Pemberton :how did that Genesis happen? How did Mahindra end up delivering you? A rock sort of begin with? What's that story?
Jesse Haines :So I remember whatever, I guess it almost two years ago, close to two years ago in June 2018, I guess was I started seeing those things advertised and thinking, Man, that's, that's pretty cool. Like those things are pretty cool. It would be neat to have one, but I don't know, you know, I didn't think too much of it. And then one day, I just thought, you know, I wonder if you could get in touch with the right person. If they would be interested in racing on it king of the hammers, you know, one thing led to another and I basically talked to the right person and What happened? Well, I'll say this. Tim Lund is the guy that, you know, connected Point A to Point B there, he had been working with them and I contacted him, so I knew him and right. Yeah, and, and I think the only reason it actually happened was because these companies end up with cars that they either need to scrap or sell them, give them away, whatever. So my original deal with them was you have to have this car in a booth at SEMA. You have to have a, you know, set up and ready to go and at SEMA and we had like, a month to build it to get it ready for SEMA. Just getting ready for Sema was completely ridiculous and it was half assed done for Sema, which How surprising is that? Sema half assed Sema bill. So the stereotypical right, but even at that point, a month into it, which this is like, um, Solid months of, you know, me and another guy working on it, like half the time, quite a few hours went into it. And at that point, I'm like, well, we, you know, we're probably 75% of the way done now. And so take another at the most it'll take another month to, to finish it up. No, right? No way. And so the tough thing was, I try and schedule my stuff well in advance, like, if I want to build a buggy for myself, I don't just go well, I'm gonna build a buggy for myself next month. It's like, I have to plan it out, you know, at least a year in advance usually. So I like the scheduling works out where I can take some time off to build a car. So since I underestimated how much time it would take to build this rocks, or I still had customers stuff to do, I still had to build a car for a customer in the middle of that build. And so next thing you know, I mean, I'm like, out of time and under estimating at every step of the way, as far as how much work it's going to be. And we showed up it's like bed. I mean, I knew how half ass in far behind I was.
Wyatt Pemberton :That's half the battle though, right? I mean, recognizing how underprepared yours, maybe even more than half the battle. Right?
Jesse Haines :Yeah, that's for sure. So one of the things that was the biggest headaches still, to this day, the biggest headache on the car is dealing with leaf springs, and just how much how much the suspension can move sideways, how much it's gonna wrap and how much it's gonna figure that stuff out is way more complicated than doing links. Just because links are 100% predictable, you always know where the suspensions gonna cycle. And so we've run into issues with the rocks or like I broke the crank pulley a few times because the crank pulley hits axle housing when you cycle it like in the show. You say it's fine. No reason. It's not that yeah, it's not gonna hit. And I think we finally got that sorted out a few other issues that we finally got sorted out too. But that first year, it was so bad. We showed up at Tech the day before the race or night before the race. And I've told JT about the story. I've been told Dave, but we're going through tech, the guy that was doing the tech on my car was pretty disrespectful. Like he, he basically was looking at my car and he says, Are you guys actually like here to legitimately race? Are you just here to make a showing? Uh, we're, I'm here to race. He's like, okay, and he's looking at stuff on the car and he just shaking his head. And he says, you know that you'll see what it's like when you get out there. I'm like, I've raced before here. Like the last time I raced. I finished 29 In the 4400 class, and he's like, oh, oh, yeah, well, it was I don't know. I mean it was still embarrassing for me the fact that we were that poorly prepared for the race, you know what I mean? But
Wyatt Pemberton :but then you put it together this year and came back and put it on the box.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the well nationals allowed for nationals last year. We had some time in the car we had like put some miles on it and done some tuning and some some testing and I was only planning on doing king of the hammers in me old for nationals is an awesome race. And it's 15 minutes from my house. So how do you how do you skip out on
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, you'd be remissed to skip that
Jesse Haines :right to me. It's it's crazier to think that I was second at old for nationals than it is to think that I won king of the hammers, because old for nationals is a short course race. I mean, there's a bunch of sprints in the race. Yeah. I think I can pretty confidently say that if we lined all the cars up in this 4600 class that were racing at Ulta for nationals, there's no doubt mine is the slowest from point A to point B, on that short course. So like, how did I, you know, how did I beat everyone except one guy, but as a matter of getting through the rocks and keeping the car together, and
Wyatt Pemberton :it's all of it, right? I mean, to win, you must first finish. So
Jesse Haines :yeah, but yeah, Kinga hammers this year, I can't say I felt extremely prepared for the race. There's always more that you want to get done and, you know, more improvements on tuning that you wish you would have had time to do. But you know, we were we're going out there and I'm thinking, Well, you know, I will tell you this that the original conversation that I had with Dave Cole, I called them and there's always conspiracy theories about how why my UTV is legal in 4600 class and I don't know how if you read some of the stuff the first year that you know, when I debuted at SEMA and everyone,
Wyatt Pemberton :it's on leaf springs. Come on, guys. Like if you're gonna complain about, if we're gonna complain about a UTV, they'll mean.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And so I can tell you that the conversation went when I called Dave, I said, I'm thinking about racing a rock sore in the 4600 class, but I just want to make sure it would be legal. And Dave says, uh, what I said Mahindra rocks or he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I said, it's basically like a Jeep with leaf springs, but it's got 163 horsepower diesel engine. He's like, Yeah, he said, is it got an automotive engine? And I said, Yeah, he said automotive training. I said, Yeah, mode transfer case and said, yeah, it's been 44 hours in it and everything he said, yeah. erase it. I mean, it's not like you're gonna when you
Wyatt Pemberton :can picture and anyone listening to this can picture they've seen the race have been like you're gonna win.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. Which I haven't had a chance to remind them of that conversation. I don't know if he remembers that or not. But yeah, I mean, I didn't go into this king of the hammers thinking we would win. I mean, I thought, yeah, there's a there's always a chance because I remember when Dave told me you're not going to win. I said, Dave, I don't know if you realize this. There's some years that there's only been like three people that finish. He's like, Well, yeah, like, you could finish on the podium if he just finished the race. Anyway. Yeah, we start the race this year. I mean, we just kept going. I mean, that's, that was the big thing. I mean,
Wyatt Pemberton :at what point did you realize that you were leading the class, or did you No,
Jesse Haines :never. Never. I felt like we were doing pretty good. I mean, one thing that was super cool was Our fuel efficiency, we had a decent idea of our fuel efficiency, but we have actual gauge in the car, it runs factory to factory gauges that has two eight gallon tanks. So, you know, I know how much fuel we have in the car, as opposed to most people that have to just guess, you know, we went well past the first lap back to pit one before we did our first fuel stop. And just the fact that we kept going without issues. It was like, yeah, we pass quite a few guys who pass quite a few people in the class into the first lap. Well, as we started the second lap, we ended up getting out of the car because we heard this horrible banging that sounded like we're on our way to, you know, driving over the front axle or something. We looked at the car for like five minutes trying to figure it out. We got passed by two guys. And it was Justin Reese and Dawson Ellington. Then we finally realized it was the hi lift jack handle that was banging around and like oh yeah, well Never heard the, you know, strap the handle down better and never heard the noise again. So
Wyatt Pemberton :now those two the past you did, did they ultimately end up taking each other out?
Jesse Haines :Yeah, yeah, that's
Wyatt Pemberton :I don't I've only heard the rumors and speculation. I've heard the secondhand stories that Yeah, Justin was on a sand hill sideways and he, as Dawson was making the run up the sand hill, Reese pulled out and they hit he t boned him or jumping around him and took them both out. Or maybe Justin continued. I don't
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And you know, if you're racing, you know how that stuff happens. It's like, you think someone's paying attention, but they're not. But you assume they were and so they did something you didn't expect? Oh, yeah. I'm sure no one intentionally did.
Wyatt Pemberton :No, no, I didn't mean anything by him the very nature. Yeah, when you have all your safety gear on when your hands is on, you can't turn your head, you know, for 30 degrees to the left to look out the window. And if you're interim back to the racecourse at a certain angle, your ears don't even show down course. So
Jesse Haines :no. Who knows where Dustin would ended up? But But I will say I think they were both. I think they're both behind me at that point. But yeah, we just kept going. And I remember telling my co driver, we have a couple conversations that we had one telling him. Yeah, you know, I don't think there's any chance this is probably this was actually before we got to the rock trails saying, Yeah, I don't think there's any chance we're gonna win at this point. But, you know, maybe we maybe still could finish on the podium. Then a little while later. We're going up some rough trails, I think but after aftershock, and he's like, this sucks. Yeah, Yeah, it does. I said, Did you think it was gonna be fun? He's like, I don't know. I didn't think would be this bad. I'm like, No, this race sucks. Like it's nothing about it. Fun, like it. It's crazy. Because every year you raced, you're there and you're going, I remember thinking to myself, like, you're driving, and you're driving through the desert and it's beating the crap out of you and you're like, God, this part sucks. And then you get to the rocks and you're trying to drive through the rocks fast as beating the crap out here. Like, this part sucks to the parts between the rock trails where it's just, you know, medium size rocks. Yeah, you're like, salt stocks. And the only part of the race that's like, can be somewhat enjoyable is driving across the lake bed. Like, this part doesn't suck. But so anyway,
Wyatt Pemberton :you guys are dialed in. I mean, Matt how calls embracing the suck? Honestly, that's perfect words for it. It's uh, yeah, it's it's terrible, but we keep coming back for more.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And the funny thing is like, you know, you're fresh at the beginning of the race. I think there's a part like, halfway through where you're sitting there thinking to yourself, this really sucks. And this is not fun. But then, you know, as you get later and later in the race, you get like, second wind, you get a second wind probably from, you know, adrenaline of the fact that you're like, We're going, man, we're getting there. Like, we're gonna get to the finish. And then all of a sudden you forget, you don't realize how much it sucks anymore. You
Wyatt Pemberton :know, Bossa unit. Second place was like, almost an hour behind you, though. That's also you put some time on.
Jesse Haines :I don't know, we had a friend that was at jackhammer, I think. And when we drove through, he was he had a radio and you ready to us and said, I think you guys are in second place right now. And, yeah, as we drove away, I was telling my coder, I was like, I don't think that's right. I said, The funny thing was, I'm drawing a blank, I think, john Shaffer. So last year, john Schaefer was really fast. He's got the old savvy Jeep. Well, I kept thinking we haven't seen JOHN Schaefer all day. And so john shaffers got to be in front of us. And I didn't realize until after the race that john painted his cheap orange instead of the Falcon colors, and then was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember passing him he was broke down. But so, yeah, the whole time we kept even after we took the lead. I kept thinking
Wyatt Pemberton :you're in second in
Jesse Haines :Yeah, we haven't seen john Shaffer. All day. We at least he's in front of us for sure. So yeah, there was the crazy traffic jam that some people saw on video at chocolate Thunder where we pulled up and the Falcon Cherokee was stuck blocking the the easiest line to get through there and we tried to pass them and flopped on its side trying to try to get around them, which was the big rock that you saw a ton of people go up and pivot around well, instead of being able to pivot around like I had Drive side Hill an extra like 15 feet to be able to get past the nose of this car and rolled in the process of doing it. And then it was, you know, Justin Reese came in there and he rolled at the same time it was we didn't know at the time, but it was first, second. And third. We're almost touching each other for like, 10 minutes. So then, yeah, I ended up flipping the car back over with high lift jack and getting out of there. And at that point, I knew that those guys were going to be a little ways behind us. So you know, we took it easy, to some extent, just like Well, I think if we keep up this pace, we're going to stay ahead of those guys and just get to the finish line. Man, it paid off,
Wyatt Pemberton :that's for sure.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, and, you know, typical racer fashion like after the race instead of thinking about how awesome it was that I won. I was thinking about, man, we could have been a lot faster. There's so much like we could have made up time here. We could I've done this differently. We need to make these changes to make the car faster.
Wyatt Pemberton :So who broke it to you? Who broke it to you that you were the first one in
Jesse Haines :a Dave? Hey, so they were at the finish line and I pulled in, and everyone seems excited. And I'm like, okay, they're excited I'd finished or something I don't know. So then Dave said something like, you know, Are you finished? Right? I said, No, he's like, you want. I'm like, what, what? And there's like a, there's a picture of it. Basically, when Dave tells me and I'm like, no way. But yeah, it was. It was a shock. We, this is typical for me, as far as not being prepared for the race very well, the day before the race. We're, you know, trying to get everything planned out. As far as logistics. We didn't bring any of our race radios. The only thing we had was handheld radios because I left them all at home. I'm like, okay, so we really didn't have much communication. Like basically we had communication when we pitted the one time. But that was, you know, relatively early in the race. And then when one of our buddies told us that we're in second jackhammer, as the last time we communicated with anyone, we're just out there driving, you know,
Wyatt Pemberton :hey, whatever works, man. Make sure you know, forget the radios next year, too.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, well, sometimes I feel like, I feel like that, that works. You know, he just drive. It's something that I've, I become good at going to the race and just driving and I think it was our key to success this year was drive your race. There was times where people, people passed us or whatever, and you just go, he's going faster than I think we can drive and get this car to the finish line. It's a little different than 4400 like 4400 you know, maybe the fast guys are pushing it. As fast as they feel comfortable without wrecking the car, you know, in a lot of sections of the course, where I'm basically pushing as fast as I can without breaking the car, because it's not like it works awesome. You could try and drive it like 63 It doesn't even go 60 Well, you get to drive this 50 through this section of the course but like you're gonna wreck it you know, you're gonna break it and so you just got to feel out what the car is telling you as far as what's gonna get you to the finish line, you know,
Wyatt Pemberton :well, congrats on your your win. I know you're gonna be going after it again hard and 21
Intro/Outro :Stay tuned. Your talent tank is in full gear.
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Intro/Outro :Now back to the show.
Wyatt Pemberton :let's shift gears. Let's talk about Jessie Hanes fabrication. Right. So you're, you're about eight years in. I know nothing happens overnight. That's so eight years is crazy. It feels almost like it feels like yesterday, from my perspective, and yeah, exactly from yours too. But your passion for innovation, your passion for crawling your passion to move the ball forward on technology, everything that I've seen you do everything from this, actually some recent stuff. You taken a 1.4 liter Ecotec. I mean, the oiling system. I mean, it was designed by, you know, Ford engineers, GM to oil, certainly discharge engineers. And you said, you know, that's not good enough. I want to not make this thing three inches shorter. And so I'm going to completely redesign the oiling system for this thing. It's not good enough. It's that type of innovation that you've continued to push the limits on. We talked about it earlier with that turbo hydro for 25. In that Tomahawk buggy, or I'm sorry, the Apache buggy Part One calling in the Apache buggy. But you've continued that through so many other chasse ease and and so many different platforms and and you always have like funny names for your cars. But you've you've had some that kind of look like a Willie's right or Jeep like you put together a recent one I think it was. I will say it's 2018. You and I talked in hammer town. You had a white Jeep there that I mean, I was just ogling over how simple it was. I mean, it was so simple on in every facet, like everything had its place. And it was it was gorgeous. And then and then you go the other route. You've got your single seat moon buggies that are so purpose built for winning championships.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different strategies that fabricators have as far as what they like doing as far as what they're passionate about. And I don't know just throwing something out there like look at like wide open design, like they build some really cool looking cars and they build these cars. With complicated, cool interiors, those cars, you know, they weren't good. But a lot of it is building a car. That looks awesome.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah. Oh, yeah, Adam Woodley, he's got one, he's got an eye for aesthetics. And his cars are known for aesthetics. And there's certain there's other cars out there that are built almost fully aesthetics. I mean, I mean, you know, they work but right, because they work better where versus yours, or you are, for the most part, like 99%, utilitarian, 1% aesthetic. Now, I'm not saying they're ugly. When you say I'm going to accomplish x, and these are the parts I need to accomplish x. Let me package them in the most sexy package possible. But under that under those constraints of what you're trying to do,
Jesse Haines :yeah. And some people would look at and be like, you know, would look cooler if this tube went like this. I'm like, that's Yeah, that's not really it's specific. there because it needs to do this, like, I'm not gonna change it because it looks neat, and not accomplishing its goal. The thing that I'm passionate about is building just the most capable rigs, which I really enjoy. So I really enjoy building single seat cars. Because once you put the second seat in there, in a way, it's like you've already like, made all these compromises.
Wyatt Pemberton :That's the right word that no, you threw the word out there. If you didn't say it, I was going to everything is a compromise. And it's like, you want the compromises to be as minimal as possible. And when you when you go to that route, you're like, well, we're just we're gonna give up on everything.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And so basically, over the last year, I've kind of gotten to the point where I've said, How do you evolve this stuff more? How do you how do you improve things more than what you've already got? The limiting factor that we have is your starting With a motor, regardless of what motor it is, it was not designed to do what you're trying to do. And I don't just mean like the performance of the motor, I just mean the packaging of the motor, or the packaging of the transmission or the transfer case, like all this stuff. It's not designed to do what you need it to do specifically, that makes sense. I mean, for what we're doing, obviously, it's more convenient to have a two speed transfer case. But I've gotten to the point where I was looking into the idea of designing my own transfer case that only does what I need it to do you know what I mean? So that's something I've thought about a lot over the last year, instead of saying, well, we're limited by this, like you're talking about with the oil pan, the oil system on this motor. I mean, most builders are going to look at the motor and go, Well, there's the motor, and we just set it in there and that's how it goes. And you know, I'm trying to look at it more like well There's a couple things like the adapter plate that I made. It clocks the motor, like 21 degrees. And the reason it clocks the motor is because you're basically leaning the head of the motor and everything and trying to get it more behind the driver's seat. So you can look over your right shoulder and the view is not obstructed by head. Yeah. Right. And so it's just little things like that. That instead of just saying this is what we have to work with saying, Well, how can we make that better?
Wyatt Pemberton :And you're looking at it from a perspective of not sitting necessarily, on a flat horizontal chassis table, you're thinking about if I have it in the field, and I'm sitting in the driver's seat, I look over my shoulder. What am I seeing? What's my field of view? Can I see that cone?
Jesse Haines :Yeah, and this guy, john Nelson is the guy that built the scrapper, buggy and tiny and many like trophy trucks and other successful offroad vehicles. That guy years ago, Rusty Bray, were building the car for rusty Bray, and he went to a West Coast event and he took pictures of all of these moon buggies. Because essentially what there was at the time was there was tiny that john Nelson built, there was scrapper that john Nelson built. And there was, I mean, this is the reality of it. There was a bunch of guys that copied what john Nelson did. So I still have these pictures to this day, like they're eight by 11 pictures that he he took and just those cars from all different angles, and there was pictures of other cars to other cars that basically people had copied, you know, john Nelson's car. I threw all those pictures away because once I looked at him enough, I realized, man this is it doesn't make any sense with these other guys did. They tried to copy it, but they didn't know why. It That's exactly right. They didn't know what they were copying. There's so many things on the car that he did that people didn't understand. Why he did. So, looking at those pictures, I've realized why he did so many of the things that he did. And one of them was a picture of the car from the front, you'd look at the picture of the car from the front. And the copies of john Nelson's cars, you could only see maybe like 30% of the driver seat because just the driver's seat alone, when you're looking at from the front was obstructed by the winch and the steering column in some tube work and the pedals and all this stuff. And then you look at john Nelson's car and you look at it from the front, and you can see like 90% of the seat because he intentionally mounted everything in a way where it's not blocking the driver's view, especially like when I started building Cody's car or any of these moon buggies. A lot of thought goes into to the visibility in the chassis design. There's a certain reason and I'm sure a lot of people, some people understand it. A lot of people don't like the dash bars really high. And people told me Oh looks kind of funny with the dash bar being that high. Well, basically the tube, the front crossmember, between the shocks kind of has to be at a certain height, there's not much you can do about it, it has to be basically at a certain height where where the shocks are gonna mount and then the dash bar when you sit in the driver's seat, if you drew a line from the front crossmember between the shocks from your eyes to that tube, the dash bar is in line with that tube. So when you're sitting in the driver's seat, you see the dash bar, and you can't even see the front crossmember because it's behind the dash bar.
Wyatt Pemberton :So you created an eclipse, right?
Jesse Haines :Yeah, right. And there's other tube work in the front end that it's the same way like trying to get the shocks the same angle as some of the tube work because you have to block your vision with some of this stuff. So like doubling it up where I have it all
Wyatt Pemberton :behind the same item,
Jesse Haines :right? So there's just all A lot of thought that goes into that stuff that you know, at the end of the day, people look at the car and they don't see that stuff for or realize it, but then they could sit in the car and go, holy crap. You can see everything out of this. It's like, yeah, and you know, mounting stuff like the cutting breaks, the cutting breaks are mounted, you know, they block your line of sight of the back of the tire, which is, why do you need to see the backside of the top of the tire? It's insignificant, really.
Wyatt Pemberton :And I've heard that from people that have driven Cody 30 Wagner, Cody will let anybody Yeah, jump in this car. Cody is so far. I mean, he's just not one of the nicest guys in the world. And yeah, jump in there. And that's exactly the feedback be like, I can see everything. He's like, Well, I mean, what are you gonna do to it? You're not gonna get in trouble you you're going point two miles per hour at max. Yeah, right.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, it's different. Like, it's easy to let someone drive your rock crawler like it's not that big of a deal for most of you know, obviously, the Depending on where they drive it, but most stuff, it's like yeah, don't drive it all over. You're not gonna break it. Where obviously you're not gonna have someone hop in your 800 horsepower ultra Ford car and go, yeah, just go drive around a little bit. You can screw that up pretty quick.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah. In 100 feet even some people. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you've been you're just on the innovative front of changing stuff and always driving to that next that next level to move. I don't know the right words, but move the ball forward on innovation in the in the crawling space. And like you said, I knew you put together some prefab chassis that you were that you were selling. Yeah. And that was that was that roughly the same chassis that I saw you with in 2018?
Jesse Haines :It was Yeah. And you know, what's crazy about that is so that kit chassis is it's based off of my Willies. Like in 2003. I rebuilt my Willies with the frame rails. This was when I was in college, like I think this was even I don't even know if it was MiG welded some of it I think was stick welded at the time, but two by three bucks to the whole frame was then you know, expanded at some point and then in 2010 I built a refreshed replica of my Willies, which was a car I only had for eight months but was a super awesome looking like Willie's buggy.
Wyatt Pemberton :And you had it and that was the one that was all in green. And
Jesse Haines :yeah, did it go to Europe? No, that other cars go to Europe. But that one, it's changed hands a handful of times. Went to Georgia or something originally, guy just wrote me on pirate I was thinking about selling it because I wanted to get back to competing in the unlimited class. And he said, How much would you sell that car for? And I said 35 grand? And he said I'll send you a check and I was like done never listed it for sale or anything. And I mean 35 I don't know the market on for buggies is it So up and down, like I mean 35 at the time seemed pretty good I didn't have 35 into it so you got to take your money and be happy about it.
Wyatt Pemberton :Right right. And then you started I mean you've always had some level of chassis that is you know, a Jesse's fabrication chassis some level of it but currently you're kind of pushing the the ones that are and I think you even have one currently on the table for sale now unless it unless it sold already since I saw it posted.
Jesse Haines :Well that was the old so that was an old picture well not super old but like a picture of a car that built for someone so as right now I'm taking orders for some production moon buggies we sold quite a few of these production moon buggies I think include Cody's and a couple others that were slightly different. I think we've sold like 12 of them.
Wyatt Pemberton :Oh, wow. That's a killer. Well done.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. Now it's it's quite a few. And I don't remember how many of them have been finished so far. But I mean, there's quite a few of them that are finished too.
Wyatt Pemberton :You were offering if I remember, right, you were offering like, tab packages and everything. So motor mounts, Link mounts everything. It wasn't just to it was right. It's easy to build a chassis and send it out the door and say good luck with this. Yeah, that's the easiest part, right? The bid in the tube. It's everything after that.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. And so, I mean, when I'm selling a chassis, I want to be able to sell something that is easy and realistic for the customer to build. I've had a lot of people like, in 2016, I built prickle this front engine, single seat car, and I had a bunch of people that wanted to buy one of those, but the problem was, I couldn't sell it to me. I basically told everyone No, I'm not gonna build you one because it was so specific to the motor and transmission in everything that I used, that you couldn't put any other motor or trainee in it. It was just not gonna work. You know. So for me sell something I want to be able to sell stuff that you know a guy with decent fab skills is going to be able to build So yeah, that's our moon buggies a pretty good kit that we offer a lot of parts and tabs for no that's
Wyatt Pemberton :that's killer I mean, I've gotten a lot of people to ask me this question in they've asked me in various forms or fashions but one was about hey, if you could build one thing right now what would it be and then I'm like well in my recent East Coast or recent west coast in this you know, I asked Eric Miller this because I would say if I if I'm racing east coast and King hammers is on part of it, then I'm absolutely building a solid axle you know, the front front and rear solid axle that's how it's gonna be. But you know, if I've got a racist thing kid wage plus I want to do some best in the desert, maybe some baja Yeah, then it absolutely has to be I Fs but if I were in a situation and this is a conversation where my friend Derek Stewart, who's up in the Dallas Fort Worth area he bought he bought a really well known Rock Crawler that belong to, you know, a good friend of ours that passed away years ago then this thing went into storage. He picked it up this past year and kind of got back into the rock crawling game. Hmm. It was Jim Alexander's. sunray. buggy. Yeah, that had the huge the huge knuckles and I won't say they're 1550 you joined? Yeah, it's in its early car. And it was so, you know, when Lance Gilbert and sunray built that thing. Gosh, man, it took us seven or six. It's like a 15 year old power and it's still technologically
Unknown Speaker :Oh, five ish, maybe. I mean,
Wyatt Pemberton :it's still so far out there and then our other friend blaze Melanson blaze has built you know, a handful of cars and he's he likes the the single seat buggies. And so we're always having this conversation and they're like, they we should just all get you know, Jesse Hanes cars like that would be Lily, you go to Jessie you get your single seat, you know, comp chassis that you guys are pushing with. All of the the tubes plus the tabs in your ready made like you you've slapped it together you pull out the MiG. And you're probably up and running on weekends. Weekends if you aren't focused, you could have the car ready in six or eight months. Yeah, yeah. unfocused. Right now if you're super focused, yeah, and you'll work nights and weekends. Yeah, you probably be on the trail. Two months, maybe less.
Jesse Haines :A few of the cars maybe three or so maybe more four have gone to sand hollow off road Steve Nance that own sand hollow off roads, put a few of them together. And so we work with him and like he's familiar with him. So he's been able to build them pretty quick for for a few customers. And yeah, I mean, that helps get them on the road for sure.
Wyatt Pemberton :Well, it helps in not recreating the wheel and taking the guesswork out of it Louis a guy can the guy can come to you he's gonna have you know the right geometry. You've you figured out the recipe so to speak and Make It Happen versus, hey, they built it. We've built it. We've now I'm gonna I go, we'll this weekend I realized, well, that broke that sucked. That didn't work the way I thought it would. Why does Jesse do it the way he does it? Well, you know, I could have saved myself all this hassle. And when it comes to the point of our vacation time and rec time and what it costs to go out on the weekend, and, you know, just diesel fuel and a hotel or an RV, or whatever it is, if you're camping, that starts getting to be a pretty large number to go out and break your junk and then sit on the trailer and turn around after an hour, whatever that is. It's we used to do that don't be wrong, and that I mean, that was like, if you didn't break it was like then you weren't wheeling hard enough. Right. But I think times have changed on that.
Jesse Haines :I remember when I was at the Badlands. The guys from Brandon keys to come down there and we'll stand and well, Stan his son and Brandon. Yeah, and Roscoe. Oh, man.
Wyatt Pemberton :Roscoe Yeah, that's that's another guy that went way way too soon.
Jesse Haines :But those threes come down and go We'll in for the weekend all the time and basically what you're talking about people coming down you know breaking their stuff and I remember times where those three would come down in like we'd be out we're on Friday evening. And like two of the three are broken like already Yeah, and I mean, but yeah, those guys were there a blast to go wheeling with which you know, it's like something that kind of happened with ultra for racing is a lot of us have gotten involved in ultra for racing that used to go trail wheeling and now it's like, you don't even have a car you can go trail with trail wheeling with anymore. You know what I mean? Because it's if anyone does, it tends to be a UTV if they do. If they do. Yeah, and it's funny how altra for evolved It was originally you know, like 2009 2010 Ultra for was like, I've got this car that I can raise King of the hammers then on the weekends, I can go trail alone with my buddies. And now it's a dream.
Wyatt Pemberton :Such a pipe dream.
Jesse Haines :Well, you could but yeah, you know, it ain't like that. Now,
Wyatt Pemberton :now that cars two cars together and in one piece on race day only right. Other than that it's a part
Jesse Haines :that was one of the biggest differences between ultra for racing in rock crawling. Competitive rock crawling is when you get good at rock crawling, and you're going out and competing. You don't typically break stuff on your car. You hardly roll them in. There's just not much work that is required to keep you going throughout the season. And ironically, the better you get in rock crawling, the cheaper it right, and then also for racing, that is not true at all.
Wyatt Pemberton :has an exponential ramp rate to it
Jesse Haines :right. And the other thing too is like the better you get in raw The less you have to work on your car in an aisle for racing. It's kind of like the better you get, the more you better be working on your car. Right? To stay at the top. We skipped a piece
Wyatt Pemberton :about one of the products that you have that really I know for what I see come out of your shop it Lou, you probably must have a guide dedicated to it solely and maybe even you which means you have your third job. The Jessie Haynes portals. Your portal axle Yes.
Jesse Haines :What's going on there. That's something you know, I wouldn't have wouldn't have anticipated that it's blown up the way it has. So going to Australia and competing. I think 2015 I think is the first year that I went to Australia to compete. There's a ton of guys there that are running portals and understandably like the courses that they run at some of the events. portals are a huge advantage where I feel like a lot of the places As we go here, it's not a huge advantage to have portals it's always an advantage but portals never really caught on really big in the United States because I think it was just the fact that you know, the commonly available stuff like a humalog axle, it's just not that practical to throw in a car like the diff offset and the pinion length and how big and heavy they are. And then on top of that, they're not crazy strong right out of the box in so I don't know portals kind of got a bad name especially like in the early days of rock crawling. People couldn't package Yuna mog axles very well. And then people started using these Volvo axles, Volvo 303 portals, which are really cool. In some ways. They're like a Toyota type housing and diff, but they don't turn very sharp and they're light to Yeah, but they didn't hold up very well. People were breaking, breaking the gears and breaking the portal cases and it didn't it took only a couple years. years before everyone said NES screw that we're not running those. And so, you know, it was for like from 2004 until 2016 portals or just not really a thing for competitive comp buggies.
Wyatt Pemberton :But so you got in the business strapping the Hmm, WV military Humvee cases on the end of a standard axle versus on a Humvee there. You know there is IRS. Yeah.
Jesse Haines :Yeah. So although, you know, humalog axles aren't super easy to locate in the United States, the Hummer stuff is a little easier to find. You just got to find the right source to get the stuff but many years ago, probably like oh, three stairs works and a couple other places, tried to build a Hummer portal stuff and at the time, no one made an aftermarket CV and people didn't know how to Build the shafts correctly. And there's a few other things that I don't think they ever sold that many sets and they didn't really work out great because there wasn't a lot of time that went into, you know, r&d and in making the stuff work. You know if you guys in Australia started using hammer portals in so I don't know I just came up with came up with something that would work and it was practical, you know, over the past 15 years, everyone 15 years ago was using axles that were junkyard stuff for the most part, Dana 60s or, or whatever. And now I mean, it's extremely common for people to buy stuff like spider tracks, outers and build their own housings and our trail gear, Knuckles and for me, I was able to basically build an outer assembly where someone can buy the portal with the steering arm and the brakes and everything on it and then an inner see that you can just put on a three and a half inch To housing, and we've sold a ton of them. And it's been, you know, four years basically of selling them, they've changed. they've evolved, there's hardly a part that we started with that hasn't changed a little bit since the first set, you know, it's and it's all those little refinements that have made it a really good product, you know, for a guy that maybe got a set of the stuff the first year versus the stuff that we have now. I mean, although it might look the same, there's just small changes that are a drastic difference in the reliability and the quality of everything.
Wyatt Pemberton :That was one of the things that you came out with it. You know, we talked about it even in passing a little bit because I've messed around with government hammers on a regular basis. I've got I still have a something of a stockpile of full trucks myself. And you have asking, you know, if I had a line on on hubs, and, man, I don't and so I'm really impressed with your ability to even be able to find them I'm sitting here kind of somewhat in that business on the side and I don't come across them at all and what you're doing with them is is pretty awesome so that the fact that that's been you're able to tool that up and what that's done for offroad crawling and packaging and making it easier for the consumer to fit portals portals loader dependable underneath their cars is as impressive
Jesse Haines :Yeah, well racing them at King of the hammers is obviously there's a good test I mean, we've got them in the rocks or in its I mean it's only on 35 inch tires but it's not like mean it's you know, race ready with a couple people in it. I don't know you're looking at like 4800 pounds or something probably it's race ready. It's just just under 40 for like legitimate race ready not like cheating the rules race ready, but so I mean, it's a it's a heavy rig to go beat the crap out of for whatever the race is 150 miles and felt pretty good. I mean, looking at the thing when you're done I mean they're zero issues and no issues with the polls. Nothing leaking.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, that's badass.
Jesse Haines :It's a reliable setup and the thing that I don't like about for racing is having to work on your car all the time and do a ton of work to it and really like since we put since we put the rear axle shafts in before king of the hammers the first year like the rear hubs have not come apart once like I haven't, I probably won't even pull it apart before king of the hammers next year. I think it's reliable enough that I'm not worried about it. And same with you know, the front end like I don't have to work on that stuff and I think it's solid so
Wyatt Pemberton :well what's next? you're fixing the move in the next two weeks. You guys are moving in you're gonna move shops move digs all that so Yeah, a little bit of time to get move, get reset up, get back in production. What's next after that?
Jesse Haines :Well, I can tell you that I'm not very excited about moving. This is like the first time moving as a real adult. I bought my house that I'm in now 10 years ago, and the amount of stuff that I've accumulated since then as
Wyatt Pemberton :and we didn't even talk about. Yeah, I mean, in that time you've gotten married. You've got a three year old daughter, a one year old son. Yeah. Growing up adult adulting
Jesse Haines :Yeah, I mean, it happens pretty quick. For many years, I was just, I don't know, you know, I was so focused on my career that anything like that just, it was on the back burner wasn't a priority, that's for sure. Then it all, you know, it all happens at once. Find the right girl and, and it happens
Wyatt Pemberton :fast. Right. And
Jesse Haines :yeah, so yeah, and then get married and have some kids and it's, you know, it's a bit of a change, for sure. But, you know, it's hard to understand what it's like having kids until you have kids. And everyone tells you, man, it's awesome having kids, you're like, I don't know. It doesn't look that awesome. But then you then you have them. You go. Yeah, no, it's cool.
Wyatt Pemberton :Yeah, pretty cool. Well, Jesse, congratulations on your 4600 win here at the hammers, man. Congratulations on the success of your business. Congratulations on overcoming COVID being on the backside of it, you were the first person that I personally knew that came forward and said, you know, the doctor, everything i that is wrong with me. The doctors all say that I that I have it and that you've recovered from it. And thank you for supporting the town. Thank thanks for coming on. Thanks for spending much time with me tonight.
Jesse Haines :Yeah, no problem. It's fun, hopefully. Hopefully people like listening to it. I know it's, you know, the episodes. I still need to get caught up on a couple of them. But it's fun. Listen to them. You know some people you want to hear their interviews a little more in Others. Oh yeah, for sure. Absolutely. So hopefully, hopefully people want to listen to all this.
Wyatt Pemberton :A lot of people have asked for me to have you on. Absolutely. So hopefully they can glean some nuggets from it, you know little tidbits of information, like how you how you've been successful how your stuff works, or if they want to know how to really be successful come by chassis from you.
Jesse Haines :Right? Well, we're right now I'm working on working on developing a two seat production chassis, you know, what I'm trying to do is develop more of like an extreme, extreme trail Wieland rig, something that's designed to fit portals and designed for rear steer and everything and it'll be a couple months, probably before it's, I'll look forward to it.
Wyatt Pemberton :vailable but I man Well, we'll catch you later, Jesse. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thank you. All right. We are out. I hope you guys really liked this episode. It was a really fun one to make. As usual. I really have to thank my my three partners on this custom splice, those guys. If you do anything for offroad recovery or even on road recovery or any projects please hit Todd and his crew up at a custom splice.com give them a call machining whoa my gosh branding machines Stan and Brandon those guys over there in Fort Wayne Indiana they do it all if they can't make it I don't know who can if if you need it made they will do it hit those guys up. They are a big supporter of the talent tank and I value their involvement. And then last but not least, magnitude performance Jason Yoda and company their neck officious Texas and everything that they've done for for the talent tank and getting behind and supporting this, this venture and this project and everything. Give them give them a call for your suspension needs. These guys do magic with springs and then the parent company mass motor sports engines and they have they have engines on lock handbill, lots of horsepower. There your guys. Thanks, guys. We'll catch you next week.
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