It’s real satisfying. Jim Halsey or Randy Weath-
erford or Charles Carpenter or even Chris Rini
– all those guys, I grew up watching them race and
run at the highest levels when I was playing ball.
It’s still like a dream to me to be able to go out
there and run with these guys and compete with
them and run at the level we run at. Rewarding
maybe isn’t the word for it – it is rewarding, but
man, it makes me feel real happy. It’s a pride thing.
It makes me feel good. Anything you do in life, you
try to do it to the best of your ability. You want
to be the best or be right there at the top, and to
take on a cast like that, it’s tough. With only four
or five years of experience, it’s really, really tough.
Racing isn’t a full-time gig for you, though
you certainly dedicate a ton of time and effort
to the operation. What do you do when you’re
not focused on the race car?
We own a 24-hour wrecker service. We run
wreckers 24 hours, seven days a week. Not nec-
essarily me or my father, because we have some
really good employees who’ve been with us a long
time, but we always keep at least one wrecker
driver, whether it’s me or another guy, on call
24 hours. We have heavy wreckers, medium duty
wreckers and small wreckers. That’s one of our
businesses. The other one is a fully functional
mechanics’ shop with four mechanics in it. It’s
a really good business. It’s a local business, fam-
ily-owned and we get a lot of local people and
repeat customers because my dad’s been there so
August 2019
That consistency of having
the same guys there every time
and the guy that’s willing to
work and go the extra mile,
that’s what makes me have a lot
of the success that I’ve had.”
long. My dad started the business 40 years ago.
We’re real fortunate because we have a good
group of people that allows us to get away and
go racing. Mr. Dennis Strickland kind of runs the
main part of the shop for us, then we have Lloyd
Artrip. Dennis has been with us around 25 years
and Lloyd’s been with us about 15 years. It’s easy
for us to get away because we trust them and they
do such a good job running the shop.
You share a tight bond with your father.
Were you always going out on calls with him
when you were growing up?
Oh yeah, I grew up in the tow truck with my
dad or around the shop. I always wanted to learn
how things worked and take them apart and ex-
plore. I was always into cars or something of that
nature. Not necessarily race cars, but I was always
real fond of working on something or figuring out
how it works. That’s kind of like racing. Racing
ain’t nothing but a big problem. You’re always
trying to solve a problem: how to go down this
racetrack, how to tune it for this air.
You’ll post pictures of your kids riding
around in the truck with you or hanging out
at the shop. How special is it to now share those
same memories with your own kids?
Man, you think about stuff differently after
you have a kid. I just always thought it was so
cool that my dad, when I was 3, 4, 5, 6 years old,
would let me ride in a tow truck with him. He’d
teach me how to hook a car up and get it out of
the ditch. I always thought it was so cool. I was
like, “Man, this is the coolest thing ever. Nobody
gets to learn how to do this.” Then when I had
my kids, you don’t really know how they’re going
to be. I thought, “Man, I had so much fun riding
around with my dad. I hope my kids will want to
ride around with me and let ‘em teach ‘em.” It’s
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