Knowing what you want to do from first grade. Priceless. Meet Scott Trimarco, the pump guy. Scott is the man when it comes to hydraulic steering pumps – high flow applications is where his product thrives. Listen in to hear how all that came about. Scott’s Custom Offroad.
www.scottscustomoffroad.com
10:28 – I want to design cars
15:18 – she’d make shirts with the pocket upside down…
23:03 – oh, yeah, I lived on Pirate
32:03 – you get one free day
36:25 – I borrowed garages for forever
40:36 – I never made a square Toyota driveshaft
49:10 – the fire department got there before we could evacuate
54:56 – I’m done with these pumps, I can come up with something better
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
Knowing what you want to do from first grade. Priceless. Meet Scott Trimarco, the pump guy. Scott is the man when it comes to hydraulic steering pumps – high flow applications is where his product thrives. Listen in to hear how all that came about. Scott’s Custom Offroad.
www.scottscustomoffroad.com
10:28 – I want to design cars
15:18 – she’d make shirts with the pocket upside down…
23:03 – oh, yeah, I lived on Pirate
32:03 – you get one free day
36:25 – I borrowed garages for forever
40:36 – I never made a square Toyota driveshaft
49:10 – the fire department got there before we could evacuate
54:56 – I’m done with these pumps, I can come up with something better
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
[00:00:01.150] - Speaker 1
Welcome to the Big Rich Show. This podcast will focus on conversations with friends and acquaintances within the fourwheel drive industry. Many of the people that I will be interviewing, you may know the name, you may know some of the history, but let's get in depth with these people and find out what truly makes them a four wheel drive enthusiast. So now is the time to sit back, grab a cold one and enjoy our conversation.
[00:00:29.430] - Speaker 2
Whether you're crawling the red rock of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels or two, Maxxis tires are the choice of Champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver. Choose Maxxis Tread victoriously.
[00:00:55.990] - Speaker 3
Why should you read 4Low Magazine? Because 4Low Magazine is about your lifestyle. The four wheel drive adventure lifestyle that we all enjoy. Rock crawling, trail riding, event coverage, vehicle builds, and do it yourself tech all in a beautifully presented package. You won't find 4low on the Newstand rack. So subscribe today and have it delivered to you.
[00:01:20.290] - Big Rich Klein
On today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich, we have Scott Trimarco. Scott is the owner of Scott's Custom Offroad. He's also an engineer. He's the pump guy and he's one of our rock crawling competitors at We Rock and other places in the Northeast. He's from Altona, Pennsylvania. Scott, so good to have you on board today. Hope everything's going good.
[00:01:48.070] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah, Rich, it's great. I'm excited to talk to you. I'm privileged to be on this show with all the other people that have been on it so far. When you asked, I said that would be fun.
[00:02:01.600] - Big Rich Klein
Absolutely. It's always fun. People will, even friends of yours that you're around a lot will hopefully learn some things today that they didn't know. That's what typically happens. So we'll see how this goes. So let's ask the first question, which is always, where were you born and raised?
[00:02:24.970] - Scott Trimarco
I was born and raised in actually Holidaysburg, Pennsylvania, which is only 3 miles from where I live here. Now it's in Dunkinsville, which is just sort of a suburb of Altoona, and born in Altoona Hospital. So this is where I was born and raised and I still live here. Basically. I moved away for three months for a job one time, but I moved right back.
[00:02:52.630] - Big Rich Klein
You must really like the area.
[00:02:55.030] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah, you could say that.
[00:02:57.260] - Big Rich Klein
Excellent. So let's talk about those early years. School, bicycles, motorcycles. What was your thing?
[00:03:11.810] - Scott Trimarco
I guess sports was my first thing. I played baseball all the way from pee wee up to high school ball and I quit playing around 11th grade or so and politics got involved a little bit. I think I just didn't really care for it anymore. And then I played golf and my dad was a big golfer and so I learned how to golf when I was around twelve and he took me golfing a lot, and I actually went with my grandmother a lot, too. She golfed a lot. So I learned how to golf. I was decent. I played on the high school team, played a couple of matches and stuff. I could shoot in maybe the 80s, but somewhere in maybe like late grade school or junior high, we had a new neighbor move in, and he gave me an RC monster truck Tamiya. I think it was a Bigfoot or something. And it was like I hit the jackpot. And I remember it was wintertime and I drove the thing in the snow and it was just a blast. And it was hobby grade type of thing. And I was really into Legos before that.
[00:04:27.770] - Scott Trimarco
So this was like the next level, putting things together and seeing how they work and stuff. So I continue with that. I was like really into RC stuff while I was doing the sports things. And so I cut grass up and saved money for more RC cars and airplanes. I got an airplane for Christmas and like a five foot wing span trainer model that I never learned how to fly, but I put it together.
[00:05:02.990] - Big Rich Klein
Was it completely remote or did it have like, the wires attached?
[00:05:06.910] - Scott Trimarco
Well, backing up a little bit. I did have first with the wires attached.
[00:05:12.780] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:05:14.130] - Scott Trimarco
I remember my dad used to have to start it for me, and I would fly around, spin around the circle, and I used the heck out of that thing. And then I think that's what drove getting one for Christmas of the real RC plane.
[00:05:28.560] - Big Rich Klein
Wow.
[00:05:29.110] - Scott Trimarco
So I got one of those and I put it together in the wintertime after Christmas and springtime came around, and my dad was like, well, let's take it out to the field and we'll try to fly. Well, he said, let's just drive it around. You can maybe taxi it around, make sure everything works. And we made a mistake. We left the wings on it and we shouldn't have done that. And he's like, this make it hop up in the air a little bit? Well, I did and it just went straight up in the air and he's yelling, what are you doing? And I'm just saying, I don't know. It came crashing down and just smashed into a bunch of pieces. And it was balsa wood. But I rebuilt the whole thing and got it looking like it originally did and never flew it again until I was in College. And there was a local airport, a little RC airport around here that I took it there and a guy flew it for me, took it off, and I flew it around. We had like a connection between our remotes and anyway, I got to fly it briefly, but he landed it and stuff.
[00:06:44.910] - Big Rich Klein
When I was a kid, I had one of those spin around in a circle. I flew it for a total of maybe 15 seconds, and it totally destroyed it. I don't ever remember flying it again or getting another thing like that.
[00:07:07.100] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah, well, I think maybe there was a difference. Mine was plastic, so it took a beating that's been around one. It was a Corsair, I remember, and it was a little 49 Cox engine and it got crashed a lot, but it just kept going.
[00:07:26.130] - Big Rich Klein
So when you played baseball, what position did you play?
[00:07:30.690] - Scott Trimarco
I was a pitcher up until about 8th grade, and most pitcher and center field were my main positions. But in 8th grade, I hurt my rotator cuff and it was like real cold out and it didn't warm up enough or something. And I just remember from that day on, I had tons of pain in my shoulder. So I got scans and all kinds of different doctors looked at it and things, and I never had anything done with it. They just said, well, it's probably bruised, but we're not going to do any kind of surgery because you're young and you heal. I'm left handed, so I ended up learning how to throw right handed. Wow. And I couldn't ever be quite as accurate with my right hand, but I could do it. And I used my dad's Mitt because he was right handed. And I remember multiple times there were some instances where I was in center field then because I couldn't pitch and. But I could catch really well and run down the ball. So I would take my mid off and throw sidearm with my left arm to be of any accuracy. And I remember doing it and throwing a kid out of first base.
[00:08:56.100] - Scott Trimarco
And I was, like, excited about it, but it hurt real bad.
[00:09:02.130] - Big Rich Klein
I can imagine shoulder injuries are tough, but is it something that still bothers you?
[00:09:07.950] - Scott Trimarco
No, it doesn't. It went away over the years, mainly that year, and then it just got okay. And I never pitched again. But I played center field in the outfield in high school, but never had an issue with it after that. There wasn't a definite diagnosis of you, like, tore it or something, and it was just mainly all, I think you produced it okay.
[00:09:35.790] - Big Rich Klein
And so when you were in school, were you studious?
[00:09:42.630] - Scott Trimarco
For the most part, I was never one to like. I guess I tried to follow the rules as much as possible, but I never really cared to be there. My mind was always on RC cars or planes or something to do with that. Mostly even when I was playing baseball or golf, and I was probably thinking more of how can I build something for something more in the engineering lines of things?
[00:10:17.350] - Big Rich Klein
How did your basis in engineering come about? Was it just something that happened or was it something you have a family member that was involved in it?
[00:10:28.510] - Scott Trimarco
No, I don't. In fact, I remember this specifically in first grade when they ask you, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said an engineer. And I said, I want to design cars, and I always remember that, but I don't know where I got that from. I don't know if my parents had said, like, jokingly or just, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up or something? And had said that. So I didn't have any real close relatives that were engineers or anything and certainly not designing cars.
[00:11:03.680] - Big Rich Klein
Right.
[00:11:05.770] - Scott Trimarco
So I just headed in that direction in my head, even though, like, through everything else, I always like to draw vehicles and stuff like that and then building with my hands and Legos and RC, then that was just kind of the natural tendency. And then in high school, the guidance counselor was helping kids pick what they wanted to do and if they wanted to go to trade school or College or find a job or whatever. And the engineering stuff was what interested me the most interesting.
[00:11:41.770] - Big Rich Klein
So in those high school years, did your school have electives or was it core classes? So did you get a chance to do auto shop or anything like that?
[00:11:58.270] - Scott Trimarco
They had a few. I think the best one that I had was drafting, okay. And I had three years of drafting, and at that time, I graduated now, too. And AutoCAD was sort of new. And we had AutoCAD 2000. I think that was my second year. So my first year, we had, like, hand drafting still. So we learned how to do that on board a table and how to do hand drafting. And that was like everybody that wants to become an engineer or thinks they want to do anything with that should do that actually draw stuff with their hands. That taught me the basics of all the basic engineering stuff and how you design parts and how you would build or draw a print to build the actual parts.
[00:12:51.990]
Right.
[00:12:52.520] - Scott Trimarco
So that class was amazing. I had a great teacher. Larry Gallow was his name, and he used to take all the kids in our class on a canoe trip every year, which was like the highlight of school. So we'd go on this big canoe trip. But he was our Drafting teacher, so that was probably the best elective I had. I had one that was another class that you had to do, like an internship between 11th and 12th grade. And I had one at my internship was at PennDOT, which our Department of Transportation. And it was pretty worthless as far as engineering goes. We paid well.
[00:13:35.530] - Big Rich Klein
Did you have to hold, like, shovels up or something?
[00:13:38.950] - Scott Trimarco
No. We drove around in a car and measured the road width. I remember we called it the Road with Verification Survey. That was my summer project.
[00:13:51.250] - Big Rich Klein
Tape measure or electronically?
[00:13:54.550] - Scott Trimarco
It was me, and it was a College student that I was with, and he and I drove around on these back roads, state roads, and we would get out every couple of tenths of a mile, and we had a meter in her car and get out with a tape measure and measure the width of the road. And we had a way to record everything which road we were on and which state route it was. It was a really interesting job. We saw a lot. I got to drive a lot and see a lot of our area around here within the couple county area. I really enjoyed that part of it. It just wasn't engineering, right. Kind of silly.
[00:14:34.220] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah. One of the jokes that I had, having grown up in California, was that the Caltrans trucks at that time were Orange. And so whenever we were working on it used to be a landscape contractor, and we'd go to lunch and pull up into a convenience store or something. And if there was a Caltrans truck there, it was like, hey, what's big and Orange and sleep for be a Caltrans truck, because there would always be guys in the truck sound asleep or the other one is Caltrans just laid off 50,000 employees. Really? What happened? The Japanese invented a shovel. It stands up by itself.
[00:15:18.910] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah. My grandmother is a seamstress. She's still around. She still does the seamstress work. And they used to joke all the time about she made shirts with pockets upside down so they didn't have to hold onto the shovel. They just stick the head to end of the shovel in the pocket.
[00:15:37.580] - Big Rich Klein
That's awesome. Oh, God. So then from high school, you ended up at Penn State, is that correct?
[00:15:52.190] - Scott Trimarco
Yes, that's correct. There's a branch near me. It's in Altuna on the other side of Altoona. From where I live. It's only about 10 miles, but it takes like a half an hour to drive there and went there all four years. The main Penn State campus is only about 45 minutes from me north of here. But this program that I think my guidance counselor is the one to help point me in that direction was more of a technical engineering degree. And at the time, it was called a two plus two program. So you took either two years of electrical engineering technology or two years of mechanical engineering technology. And being more of a mechanical mind, I was like, I remember a buddy of mine and I in the same we took the class together and we were like, let's get the electrical part out of the way first and get it over with. And then maybe it'll be better, easier after that. Well, it wasn't really that case. Still pretty hard. And I had to study really hard to get through it. But like I said, all four years there at the Pennsylvania campus and saved a lot of money.
[00:17:12.010] - Scott Trimarco
I didn't have to live off campus, still lived at home. I wasn't too much of a partier. But in College, I mostly worked on my truck, my Toyota, my 4Runner. Okay. And when I should have been studying more.
[00:17:28.250] - Big Rich Klein
All right. Was that your first vehicle?
[00:17:31.230] - Scott Trimarco
That was my first vehicle. I guess you could call my own. My dad got it for me for a graduation present. Call it that for my birthday. My birthday is in March. So before we got graduated around my birthday he got me. It was a 1988 Toyota Four Runner. It was the first year with the V Six in it and it was five speed. It was like a sports car type of thing to me. It was like electric windows and locks and has sun roof and you name it. And it was the first manual I drove too. But before that I must have drove 30 cars in high school. How's that? I know you asked questions about what cars you drive and things, so probably jumping the gun.
[00:18:28.780] - Big Rich Klein
Alright, there is no order.
[00:18:33.610] - Scott Trimarco
Well, so my dad used to buy and sell cars for fun or just to make some extra money. And I think mainly he was always into that sort of thing. His dad had to use car lot but he had passed away long ago when I was little. So my dad kind of did that when I was growing up and helped the family make some extra money and he would buy a car. And the funny thing is he didn't really do any of the work to them. He knew all the people though, that did that stuff because of his dad. So he would take them and get the body work done or get the engine fixed or this and that and then he would do the salesman part and that's what he liked to deal with the people. When I got my license we always had an extra car, the one that he was selling. So I would drive that to school and then he'd sell it and then he'd buy another one. I'd drive that to school and it was just always something different. Out of all those adventure.
[00:19:45.150] - Big Rich Klein
Out of all those cars, what was the coolest one you got to drive?
[00:19:53.010] - Scott Trimarco
Probably. It wasn't until my Forerunner he was more into the big boat type of cars. So it was a lot of old mobiles and not Cadillac, but old mobile Buicks. I had a pretty cool Buick though. It was a Buick Regal. It was a. 3800 V Six. Still had a carburetor. It was a 1986, I think it was like Maroon with a white vinyl top on it and it was automatic but it was fast. And I was probably in 11th or 12th grade or something when I had that. And he said to me one day he's like, oh my, something happened to his car. He said I need to borrow that car to drive to work. So I had to ride the bus and I was like oh man, this is terrible. And later that day we get home, and he's like, I got pulled over driving your car because it was too fast. I don't know if he wasn't used to it or what, but he was going too fast in a 35 miles an hour there and got pulled over in a notoriously bad spot for cops. So I rock. Yeah, exactly. Turn the bar to Carl's driving.
[00:21:11.870] - Big Rich Klein
There you go. So you're doing the engineering program, the local Penn State there in Altuna, and you go through and it was a two year, you said.
[00:21:29.830] - Scott Trimarco
Right. How long? You did two years of electrical or mechanical. So I did the electrical two years, and then you got an associate's degree, but then you start again in the electro mechanical part of it. And the program, it was actually called electromechanical engineering technology. Okay, so you got a bachelor's degree at the end. So I really had two degrees, but it was all put together all right. Yeah. So I did all four of those years here and took some summer classes. It was challenging. I didn't have it easy. I wasn't like, I don't know, top of the class or anything. And it was definitely tough, especially when I wanted to go four wheeling and work on my forerunner. Instead, it was distracting me from what I should have been doing.
[00:22:22.720] - Big Rich Klein
Were there any other distractions at that time?
[00:22:26.590] - Scott Trimarco
No, I was pretty nerdy as far as, like, four wheel. I mean, I don't know. I was getting into it back then. And even though I was pretty much the only one of my friends that had a four wheel drive, so I was working on it, and I'd research on the Internet about what people were doing out west, and I wanted to do the same thing, but, yeah, that was my main distraction.
[00:22:57.010] - Big Rich Klein
So when you say you were researching, tell me that it was Pirate.
[00:23:03.250] - Scott Trimarco
Oh, yeah. I lived on Pirate, probably. That was the main site that would go to. And the first thing I wanted to do was solid axle swap this thing because it had independent front suspension. If you wanted to be rock crawling, you had to have solid axle. So really, I researched what to do, but I had no money, so I couldn't do this. And the other thing in the way, the other problem was my parents would have never let me modify my vehicle, so I had to figure out a way to do that without them knowing. Yeah.
[00:23:52.530] - Big Rich Klein
That'S how I had a motorcycle.
[00:23:55.770] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah, that was the thing. My dad probably would have let me have a motorcycle or dirt bike thrown enough. But my mom was an RN at the hospital, and she was there for 40 years and finally retired recently. But because of her, she would see kids in there with broken arms and legs and all kinds of problems from doing that stuff. I was never allowed that right.
[00:24:24.310] - Big Rich Klein
So then you get your degree and got a bachelor's in electromechanical engineering.
[00:24:35.420] - Scott Trimarco
Yes.
[00:24:36.000] - Big Rich Klein
And how did you use that?
[00:24:40.870] - Scott Trimarco
I didn't even use it right away because I looked locally for a job. I didn't want to move away. I don't know why, really. I think I just enjoyed it here. I did do some fishing and hunting, and I had a grandfather that I went and did that stuff with a lot. So that was involved. And I guess I just wanted to stay around here. I had some relatives that were like, you should go to South Carolina or somewhere else. It has more opportunity. But I worked as a maintenance technician at a local factory that made tubing, mainly copper tubing. And I started there right out of College. And no maintenance or no work experience or anything like that, but I loved it. I got to do a lot of stuff that really helped me out to this day. And I got the machine parts. I got the repair tons of machinery that they had drawing tubes that were from World War II that were used for drawing out casings for bullet Shelley. That's how they made the tubing for the casings, but they also used it for making any kind of tubing. So I got just work on all kinds of old stuff and like mechanical machinery.
[00:26:22.110] - Scott Trimarco
And that was really interesting to me. And I worked there for exactly one year. And the whole time I was there, I was thinking I'm keeping my eye open for an engineering job because if I stay here, I'm not going to get hired as an engineer somewhere. So I applied a few places, and one of the coolest places I got to interview at was Honda. It was the Honda Research and Development Facility in Marysville, Ohio.
[00:26:55.380]
Okay.
[00:26:56.490] - Scott Trimarco
So I went for an interview, and at the time now my wife I was dating my wife then, and she went with me and they paid for everything for us to go there. And they interview was really cool. And I think the one thing I remember from it was that they asked me, we're looking for an engineer to work on automatic transmissions. And they said, do you have any experience with automatic transmissions? And really I'm thinking myself. I mean, it says on my resume, I worked at this factory for one year and I just was out of College. How would I have any experience with them other than in my garage or something? And I was like, no, but I said I've worked on manual transmissions and transfer cases and things like that. But I said I really don't have experience with automatic. So I didn't hear back. So I contacted them and they were like, yeah, we picked somebody else.
[00:28:06.550] - Big Rich Klein
That sucks.
[00:28:07.350] - Scott Trimarco
So it does, but it's okay. I'm glad I didn't move there. I hated the flat landscape, for one. And the other thing, I probably wouldn't have married my wife, so she probably wouldn't have moved there with me, and we had only been dating for less than a year.
[00:28:27.670] - Big Rich Klein
Let's talk about that. How did you guys meet?
[00:28:31.630] - Scott Trimarco
We met through friends, and it was kind of a blind date, except I knew about it, and I just didn't know her, though. A friend of mine was helping me out in the garage working on my truck, and he was like, you should meet this Lauren girl. I think you'd like her. And then him and his girlfriend set up a big party kind of thing where a bunch of friends. We all went to this one person's house, and they were like, oh, well, this is Lauren, and this is Scott. She was surprised that I was kind of like, I knew that was going to happen, although I didn't know her yet. We hung out all night, and that was the house started. We just. We got each other spending numbers, and we dated for about two and a half, three years or something like that. So we've been together this June, actually, today it will be 15 years since we met each other.
[00:29:38.030] - Big Rich Klein
Wow, that's pretty good. At 15 years, you can remember the date.
[00:29:43.070] - Scott Trimarco
January. It's 19th, right?
[00:29:45.950] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah. I couldn't even tell you that.
[00:29:48.260] - Scott Trimarco
I don't know what date. If it is the 19th, then. Yeah.
[00:29:51.920] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. That's good. Good on you, man. You keep.
[00:29:56.350] - Scott Trimarco
No, it's tomorrow. Tomorrow's the 19th.
[00:29:58.650] - Big Rich Klein
Tomorrow's the 19th. Okay. Well, at least you knew it was the 19th.
[00:30:02.780] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah.
[00:30:03.830] - Big Rich Klein
I mean, that's one of those things that as you get older, if you don't get it figured out, you never will. So I'm glad you got it.
[00:30:13.720] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah.
[00:30:14.140] - Big Rich Klein
That's bonus points.
[00:30:15.770] - Scott Trimarco
Yes.
[00:30:17.630] - Big Rich Klein
So then you get back Honda didn't happen. What else?
[00:30:23.520] - Scott Trimarco
Well, I kept applying for jobs, and I found this one that was 2 hours from here. It was working as a contractor for Grove Crane, and they've now become Manitok Crane, which is a huge company worldwide. And at the time, though, it was at the facility in I can't remember the name. It's near Waynesboro, PA. And I got a job there, and I rented a house in Waynesboro, and I worked at that place. And really, it was not what I thought engineering was. It was a large engineering Department, had lots of people, and I was in the hydraulic cylinder Department, coincidentally, that I do stuff with that nowadays. But I didn't really design anything. It was kind of manufacturing ordered this cylinder can you design put together these parts in CAD so that we give them whatever size cylinder they want to do this job. So things had already been, like, designed out, and we just kind of put them together. I don't know. Wasn't exciting at all. It wasn't like learning anything new. I don't know. It was really boring. And so I was like, I really need to find something different. And my dad called me, and I talked to my dad one day, and he's like, hey, there's this job opening in the newspaper here back home that has, like, it sounds like it's what you want to do.
[00:32:03.720] - Scott Trimarco
And it's at a place just a few minutes down the road, and you should apply. So I didn't even have a computer, and I didn't have a smartphone. So I was like, how the heck can I apply right now? I want to wait until I get home on the weekend. And so I went down, I found the library. I go to the library, and they were like, well, you have to sign up for membership, but you get one free day so you can use whatever you want computers and stuff here for today. And I was like, thinking myself, I only need one day. I'm not going to be back here ever again. And I filled out the application, and I sent in my resume and ended up getting a job back home here. And it was called News Printing Company, or NPC. And they didn't print newspapers anymore, but that was how they had started. And they did lots of government forms and printed booklets and different things. It was mainly printing and some packaging printed stuff, but they had a really small engineering Department, and it was only two guys there when I started there, two engineering guys.
[00:33:17.280] - Scott Trimarco
And so they had just gotten SolidWorks right before I started there, which I was familiar with from working at that previous job. And I had learned a different 3D CAD program back in College. So I really liked design stuff in 3D. And I was excited when I started there that they had this program. So the three of us took care of designing new equipment or additional add ons to equipment. And it was a change every day. It was something different. And I really liked that, too. It wasn't boring at all. It was always something changing or something breaking and something you had to figure out. So I like doing that. And I was there for eleven years. Wow.
[00:34:13.230] - Big Rich Klein
When you moved away, you were still dating when you went and worked at cylinders like you were still dating?
[00:34:19.730] - Scott Trimarco
Yes, I was. And I drove home every weekend, and it was in the wintertime, too, which was terrible. I remember driving in the snow so many times, coming home and going back down, and it was just like it was torture.
[00:34:35.850] - Big Rich Klein
But it was worth it.
[00:34:37.650] - Scott Trimarco
Oh, it was worth it. Yeah, definitely was worth it.
[00:34:41.840] - Big Rich Klein
So eleven years with the newspaper company.
[00:34:46.350] - Scott Trimarco
Yes.
[00:34:46.990] - Big Rich Klein
And what was the next step?
[00:34:51.630] - Scott Trimarco
The next step. And this was only about two and a half years ago. I started at another factory right down the road for me, even closer than the New Spring Company, which is Vitamuk. And they make parts and stuff, parts for fuel dispensing, so parts that go on fuel trucks or in gas stations. Pretty much all the stuff you don't see is what they make there and I'm a manufacturing engineer there, and I take care of these different production cells that produce electrical consoles and some mechanical parts and a variety of things. They make a large variety of all different components. And it's an interesting job, too, I think, because it's such a variety of things that I get to do. So since starting there, I've implemented SolidWorks, which they didn't have, which was a huge tool that I used for years before that. And I was excited to be able to bring that on to there been involved in a bunch of projects, and I'm enjoying it there so far. Good.
[00:36:13.510] - Big Rich Klein
Then let's talk about Scott's off Road. That probably all started with working on the Forerunner, correct?
[00:36:25.730] - Scott Trimarco
Oh, yeah, definitely. I didn't have the idea for creating the business for a long time, but I worked on people's stuff forever. And since having, like, the first couple of years of having my Forerunner, and I started modifying it, and I was in College, and people, I guess my friends would be like, hey, let me do this or that. And I ended up getting a welder, just a 110 welder and a tubing Bender. But I lived at home, so I couldn't really use any of that at home because they used the garage to park the cars in, and I couldn't work in there. So I borrowed garages forever. Seemed like a long time. I would borrow friends garage and work on my stuff or work on his stuff. And then I did a whole motor swap in my Toyota in somebody else's garage. And it was just always moving to somewhere different. And over the years, I guess I started doing so much of it that by the time my wife and I bought our first house, that was in 2009. I had been working at NPC for about a year at that time, and I finally had my own garage, and so it was a two car, two car garage, eight foot ceiling, and not much space, but I could pull two vehicles in there.
[00:38:08.950] - Scott Trimarco
And at the time, my Forerunner had become a pickup. And there's a big story about that one. But at some point in time and I can't remember what year or anything, but at work, when I was at NPC, my boss was like, you know what? You're using your phone a lot, so I want to get you on a phone plan. And this phone has to do with me starting my business, by the way.
[00:38:40.430] - Big Rich Klein
Thank you, NPC.
[00:38:42.830] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah. It changed my life for the most part, getting this phone, if you can imagine that. But I guess it's not changing my life that drastically from what I was able to do. I had to get a smartphone. I had a flip phone before that. And he was like, you have to get a smartphone because you got to have email. So pick a phone. So I go, I get a phone and I've had it for a while then, and I realized that I should create a website. So I create a website, and it's Scott's custom off road, and I don't know what. I couldn't think of anything better. I'm terrible at naming things.
[00:39:30.390] - Big Rich Klein
All right, what are the kids?
[00:39:32.490] - Scott Trimarco
Well, I was just going to say I'm glad I wouldn't have been able to name him anything if it wasn't for Lauren. Okay. Levi and Michael Lynn. Okay. That's their names. My daughter and son. And I wish I would have thought of a shorter business name, because it's too long. Anyway, this phone, I was able to do that and create a website right from my phone. And that was weird. I never thought I could do such a thing. And I'm not, like, an Internet guy, really. I'm not a computer guy. I just Typed in, how do I make a website or something like that? I started just putting pictures on, and I had made some parts for my forerunner that I thought people would like to use. And I did a bunch of drive shaft work, so I would make drive shafts. I had a small leave.
[00:40:33.430] - Big Rich Klein
So you made round ones? Not the Toyota square ones?
[00:40:36.430] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah. I never made a square Toyota drive shaft.
[00:40:39.370] - Big Rich Klein
Congratulations.
[00:40:40.700] - Scott Trimarco
Yes, I found a company in Wisconsin that sells rolled spline shaft and in the mating coupler that goes on them. So I still buy this material from them, and I'll machine it and make drive shafts out of it. And you can buy it in any length you want, so you can have a drive shaft with any amount of slip. So on my Toyota, I remember welding two of the female spline sections together to have more slip because my front drive shaft would pull apart all the time. And I was like, there's got to be a better way. I'm a freaking engineer. I should figure this out. So I found that company, which was hard to find. There wasn't too many things available like that other than, like, an agricultural drive shack, which they were all too small. So that was one of my things. I started, like, advertising, and I sold a few, but it was like it was hard to buy. I don't know. I just wasn't up to speed on how to buy things or how to buy parts, like yokes and stuff like that. So I would take old ones and cut them down and add the tubing and the spline part of it to other people's existing chefs.
[00:42:05.790] - Scott Trimarco
And that was the majority of it. Okay. I did some roll cages and some EXO cages or whatever. Bumpers build a bunch of bumpers. I think those are probably the main things that I was like. That's what started it. But I didn't have a company. It wasn't an LLC or anything back then. So then a friend of mine connected me with another friend of his that he used to work with. And this other friend had to work for a company that was a government contractor, and they would build parts for, like, weather balloons and blimps and things. It was like, I don't know if it was some top secret stuff or what, but he would just give me a print and say, here you go. Make this interesting. Yeah, it was really interesting what they were doing, but they required an LLC, at least, to be able to get paid. So he was like, you need to do that. You should have it anyway. So I looked up how to do it and the whole LLC thing. I even got an employee identification number, federal one. And I did it all myself. Did it all on the Internet and sent papers back and forth to the state and got all that stuff squared away.
[00:43:31.310] - Scott Trimarco
And it was super cheap. And I had heard that people pay thousands of dollars, but somehow I figured out how to do it for, like, I think $125. That was, like the next step in becoming a business. And all this stuff was still on the side when I would come home and work at night or work on the weekends.
[00:43:52.850]
Right.
[00:43:55.150] - Scott Trimarco
So I built some parts for this blimp guy. I just called him the blimp guy. Back then. There was this one project that he was involved with called Project Loon, and it was a Google project. And there's potential that some of my parts made it onto this thing. And I was really excited about it. I looked it up on Google and tried to find out if I could see a picture of it or anything, but I never did it's.
[00:44:22.000] - Big Rich Klein
Loon. L-O-O-N. Yeah. Okay. And what did they do with it?
[00:44:30.370] - Scott Trimarco
It was something to do with. They would put weather balloons up in the air, and they had communication devices attached to these weather balloons that I think a lot of them were for sale signal. And the one that I did read about on the Internet was there was like a big Hurricane had devastated on an island in the Caribbean somewhere. I don't know if it was Jamaica or something like that. And they were able to fly these weather balloons around in a pattern, and then they would, like, cycle in a circle or something, and they wouldn't get lost. It wouldn't just go out of the ocean. They were able to control the height and then drive them kind of. And it provided cell service for the island that they lost all their cell towers.
[00:45:22.190] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:45:25.550] - Scott Trimarco
It was interesting. It was a cool job that I got to make a couple Bucks on. That was like my first real job that I did for as a business, even though it wasn't for off road stuff.
[00:45:40.490] - Big Rich Klein
But that's cool where you can do something outside of. Outside of your bubble, you might say.
[00:45:50.150] - Scott Trimarco
Yes.
[00:45:50.980] - Big Rich Klein
So then with your steering pumps, how did that all come about.
[00:46:02.010] - Scott Trimarco
So on my Toyota, I mean, this is where I pretty much spent all my time figuring out how to make this thing work. Right? And I went from a forerunner to a pickup. And I think sometime when it was a pickup.
[00:46:19.350] - Big Rich Klein
Before we get into the steering pumps, let's talk about this transformation from a forerunner to a pickup.
[00:46:25.020] - Scott Trimarco
Okay? I won't try to drag it out so long because there's a lot to it. So the forerunner that my dad got me in high school, it had 200,000 miles on it. And I put about 50,000 miles on it in the time that it was a forerunner. And during that time, I saw it axle, swapped it without them knowing. And I drove it home and got heck for that. And my dad said, you're going to kill yourself driving that thing. So I had made my own steering, my own high steer arms and all that stuff because I couldn't afford to buy the ones from all Pro or borrowing and stuff back then. So I made them. I worked at a machine shop part time in College, so I was able to lucky enough to learn a lot there and make all this stuff. So let's see. I rebuilt the engine somewhere like 20 04, 20 05. It was a three o, which was notoriously bad and blew the head gaskets twice. So the second time rebuilt the engine. And then it was a solid accident at that time. But then I was driving to a friend's house, and another friend was following me.
[00:47:54.140] - Scott Trimarco
And where we were going was near our junior high and where I went to school. And they had this big parking lot, of course. So it's raining. And I go over in the parking lot because I don't even know why. I go over there and I do a doughnut. And it didn't even do half a turn. And it just rolled over and it was pretty tall. Then it was like, I think on 35s. That was big. Nobody had 35s back then, at least that I knew of. And it was pretty tall. So I just smashed it. It rolled over on its side, and I got out through the windshield because the windshield flew out. But my buddy was behind me. So we get out and it's pouring down rain. And I get out and I had a toast strap. So we hook it up to his Explorer and hook it up and roll back over. No problems. It looks sitting there. Looks like it's fine from one side, right? So we're staying there. Like, well, let's see if it starts. Nothing won't start. So we hear sirens, and then police in the fire Department and the ambulance all show up.
[00:49:10.500] - Scott Trimarco
And I was like, you got to be kidding me. My Buddy's house that we were going to was like a block away. And they beat us. The fire Department beat us. Then they got there before we could evacuate. They were like, oh, it looks like everybody's fine. Nobody's hurt. And it looks like it's drivable. So see ya. And that was it. And so we drag it over to the sidewalk, over the curb and park it. And the guy, we were going to his house, this kid my age, he had just bought a 1985 Toyota pickup, and the frame was routed in half.
[00:49:56.030] - Big Rich Klein
Imagine that.
[00:49:57.490] - Scott Trimarco
Exactly. And you know what so good? It was perfect because I bought the title and the cab from him, and he sold the axles to somebody else. And so I got the cabin title for $500. And so I was like, I know what I'm doing. I'm building a truck. When I put this cab on my floor, on the frame, which is the same body design and same body mounts and everything. That was when I bought my tube Bender. And I built a tube bed for it, and it was modeled kind of after the old I said it earlier. It wasn't Marlin. It was All Pro. Yeah. All Pro had a cool looking bed kit that they sold, and I made my own. So I bought tubing, bought a Bender. I couldn't even Bolt the Bender down to the floor because I didn't own a garage. And I was borrowing a friend's garage. And it came with, like, the lever that you had to pull and the JD two Bender, but his dad wouldn't let it. Let me Bolt it down. So I had to come up with a way to make it hydraulic or something. So I did the error over hydraulic cylinder that everybody does nowadays and made my own clamp.
[00:51:26.170] - Scott Trimarco
Use my 110 welder for everything. And I Weld the whole bed together with a 110 welder flux core. So I drove that for a long time, and I drove it. That was my daily driver. So whenever I bought the house and finally got a garage, then it was shortly after that I got pulled over for the last time because I got pulled over in that thing, like, every other week. They hated around here. When your tire stick out, that's a huge no no. And they stuck way out. And it was really tall. Like, you know, it just was unusual to see a Toyota truck that was like this around here. There was nothing. Nobody else like it. I had a snorkel on it. It was on the driver's side, big black tube, and it was homemade. So it was kind of unusual. But I got kind of threatened by the last time that I got pulled over. During that time when I was driving and I'd drive on the road, and I'd drive it to go four wheeling. And I drove to Roche Creek and Paragon with it. I had an issue one time with my steering pump.
[00:52:49.690] - Scott Trimarco
So that's where that started. We can talk about that now.
[00:52:56.540] - Big Rich Klein
Okay, perfect.
[00:52:59.010] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah, we came all the way back to the steering because in that truck it had a stock steering on it. And when it was a truck, though, I swapped the motor and it was a three oh originally. And then I swapped it in a 3.4 liter, which was super common. Everybody did that, and they had the 34 stock steering pump on it. I think it lasted two or three years like that. And I finally did hydraulic assist on it at the end of its life. I should have done it at the beginning because it was. I don't know. I tell everybody that now because that's like new into four wheel and to do hydraulic assist right away, it's just a huge improvement.
[00:53:43.220]
Absolutely.
[00:53:43.830] - Scott Trimarco
And I ended up breaking my frame where the steering box mounts. And that was the last draw. I had to do a draw like assist when that happened. So I did, and then the pump went and I was at a local place, and when that happened, so I put another stock pump on it. So then we drove to Rouse Creek to go for the weekend. And I don't know, might have made it to 10:00 on like a Saturday morning and the pump quit. So I called a local part store and they had a pump. So I go get one and put it on like Sunday. We camped out on Sunday morning, we go out four wheeling again, and then it did the same thing. This is ridiculous. You can't buy a pump that works. And I get back home and I put it on Jack stands. I got back home and I took the pump back to the park store and get another one. I put it on the garage and it's up on Jack stands and it won't turn. It had no power. It was bad already. So I was like, this is enough. I'm done.
[00:54:56.650] - Scott Trimarco
I'm done with these pumps. I can come up with something better. I took the pump back and I said, give me my money back. I want another one. So I had done a little bit with hydraulics and stuff at work, and I built a log splitter in the years before that. I wasn't super familiar with all hydraulic stuff, but it wasn't out of scope for what I could do. That's when I bought a gear pump and it wasn't even close to what I'm using nowadays, but still gear pump. And it works great on that Toyota truck with hydraulic assist, and it was a much smaller pump and different design and stuff, but it didn't have quite as much load on it. That like a full hydraulic system does. So it worked great. But then I guess when I put it on, I didn't really do a whole lot of experimentation. It just kind of worked. And I thought through it for a while before I tried it. But when I built the buggy in 2013, I was like, this pump isn't going to cut it. I need more flow because I need to have all the flow go to the Ram, and it's not going to be a steering box only.
[00:56:36.910] - Scott Trimarco
So it's just going to be full hydraulic. So I just need more I need more flow. I need a bigger pump. I need a better way. And I did a lot of experimentation with how to connect the pulley to it. And these pumps aren't designed to connect to be driven by a pulley or to be side loaded. I went through a lot of different designs on how to do that and different ways to hold a bearing, and then the pump is much larger than regular stock style steering pumps. So fitting it in is tough. And there's a lot of space constraints and things on the buggy. I guess it wasn't so bad because I could work around it. I was planning that while I was building the chassis. So that was like 2013 is when I first started using it on the buggy, but I had done it for a few years on the truck, and I didn't really start selling them until about 2018. So I used it for a long time and went through a lot of testing. I remember being out four wheeling, and it would be like, yeah, I have a problem with my steering.
[00:57:58.170] - Scott Trimarco
And my buddy Dan, Dan Eicher he'd be like, just buy a pump. Just go buy a PSE pump. Quit messing around. And I'd be like, no, this is what I want to do. I want to figure this out. See?
[00:58:14.560] - Big Rich Klein
No difference between the Jeep guy and the Toyota guy.
[00:58:18.350] - Scott Trimarco
Exactly right there. Yeah. Being the Jeep guy, you just Bolt parts on it. He'll probably give me heck for saying that. Yeah, I got a heck numerous times for messing around, because being the buggy guy now, I'm always working on my Buggy is what he was. I'm always under it or working on or something's wrong versus his Jeep just ran. He didn't have to do anything.
[00:58:51.630] - Big Rich Klein
So how successful is that pump been? Business wise to me.
[00:58:56.640] - Scott Trimarco
I think it's been fairly successful. I think there are different markets, I guess, for it, and it's such a niche thing that I'm not sure how to compare it to. So I compete against the two $300 pumps, and so that's tough because it costs three times more than that. My base price is $600, so it's tough for some guys and to want to jump up to that, but it's also got the performance of the $2,000 TT pumps.
[00:59:42.630] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:59:44.070] - Scott Trimarco
As far as flow and pressure. As far as I know, it's the highest pressure pump out there for steering it, and I'm limiting it to 2000 PSI, which I think maybe the next lowest one might be like 1800 PSI or something like that. Some of those TT pumps use external release valves similar to mine, and so they're adjustable too, and people can change that. But all the years of forewilling and things that I try to be really economical with how I do stuff. So I want it to be affordable and try to figure how to do how to make the best product as cheaply as possible or inexpensively as possible and still have a quality product and still have a quality product. Yeah. And it's really challenging because it's that way with anything really well. I've done better every year than the previous year. In the last four years. This has been my fifth year of selling them, that each year is increasing in sales. And I know last year sales doubled in January, and I was just like, Holy cow, this is insane. From the previous months before that in the previous year. So it was like off the charts.
[01:01:31.190] - Big Rich Klein
All while under Covet.
[01:01:33.530] - Scott Trimarco
Exactly. Which was really odd. I don't know what's going on, but the end of the year, it tapered off more or less and not tapered off, but it just slowed down. And I don't know if the economy has to do with it or if it's seasonal. Some of it is. It's kind of picked back up here in the last few weeks, month or so, people are tearing down their vehicles or looking for improvements. Now, one of the biggest markets for it is the rock bouncers. And I've heard numerous comments from the racers, the drivers, that it's game changing because they have so much power and technology and their suspension nowadays that they can go so fast, but they can't steer right.
[01:02:33.580] - Big Rich Klein
The steering couldn't keep up.
[01:02:35.300] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah, the steering can't keep up. And they race a lot of short woods trails, so they're between trees and rocks and things, and so they would hit trees and just have to stop and then Rev the motor to get the steering to turn and then go again. And it's costing them time and every second pounds these guys times, you're winning by 1000th of a second, which is insane. The competition is incredible. I have a bunch of pumps on these guys'vehicles down there now. It's super exciting. I'm just beside myself on how well they've done with it. It was never intended to work that way. These guys are running super high rpm. In my little crawler, it's like 5000 rpm Max, and typically it's like less than 2000 rpm. That was one of the limiting factors for this pump originally was like, oh, I can't go too high. It's just not designed for that. But there's been guys running this pump over 10,000 rpm.
[01:03:56.190]
Wow.
[01:03:57.590] - Scott Trimarco
Which is just crazy. And it works. I've had failures, but it's definitely been a surprise at how well it's really been holding up. This year is going to be really exciting. Tim Cameron bought a few pumps last year, and he put one on his new race vehicle. So I'm looking forward to that. And I'm planning on going to a race this year in Kentucky to watch. I think it's in August.
[01:04:35.140] - Big Rich Klein
Excellent.
[01:04:35.710] - Scott Trimarco
So the first time I get to go see those guys and I know a bunch of them, and it's funny, my son, he's only six now, but he'll turn on YouTube and watch the Bouncers on TV, and I'll be like, that guy there, he's like, hey, Levi, that guy has my pump on this. That's really fun.
[01:04:58.110] - Big Rich Klein
So any other product that you have, that's a key part of the business.
[01:05:04.710] - Scott Trimarco
There'S. I guess a couple of other things I make that are much less significant than the pump. I guess maybe the next one would be I make a Toyota style midship bearing or unit bearing for drive shafts. And I had to redesign it recently because Marlins stopped selling their 30 spline flanges. So I was using those flanges, and I was making my own 30 spline shafts for these unit bearings. And I made machine all the parts. I cut the splines on the shafts and get them heat treated and all that stuff. So they stopped selling those. And I had to redesign to use a 29 spline Toyota Pinion flange, which is they're much more common. So changed it to that. And I was like, really tempted. I took it off my website, and as soon as I did that, I had three people ask for them. Man, these take so much longer to make that I'm going to increase the price to $100. And they were like, okay, no problem. I just don't have time.
[01:06:19.290] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah. Sometimes you try to price yourself so you don't have to do the work.
[01:06:24.150] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah. One of the other things I make to go with the pump is a reservoir, and the pump needs a large reservoir, ideally. And I make a one gallon reservoir. It's pretty simple. It's just a box and some fittings. And I priced it pretty high. And I was like, I don't want anybody to buy this. And I sell a bunch of them because everybody wants, like a package they do. And so that's like the next step is packaging more of the components together. So I'm working on that to get, like a complete package. I've done it for numerous people, but it's just piecing things from here and there.
[01:07:14.730] - Big Rich Klein
So not only the pump and the reservoir.
[01:07:17.630] - Scott Trimarco
But a cool Ram Ram, everything fittings. I do sell pulleys a lot, but I just look them up on the Internet and buy them.
[01:07:30.210] - Big Rich Klein
But that saves somebody else trying to figure that out.
[01:07:34.370] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah, exactly. So I do that a lot. And I don't have online sales. You can't just click on a button and buy this thing. I don't want it to be right now, mainly because it's so different still that I wanted to talk to the people about their application and how it works and how you install it, even to like, they send me pictures and can I put it here? How can I locate this or can I use this part with it or can I use this cooler or what fittings you need? There are so many questions that they have. I feel like if they were to just click on the button and buy the thing, it would have more opportunity for failure.
[01:08:15.580] - Big Rich Klein
Right.
[01:08:16.770] - Scott Trimarco
So I leave it that way for now.
[01:08:19.120] - Big Rich Klein
So where do you think it's going to go? Do you think you're going think it's going to ability to move away from working for somebody else. You can just do that. Or is it always going to be a side hustle?
[01:08:29.920] - Scott Trimarco
I don't see it at this point being a full time job because I don't think the market's big enough.
[01:08:39.080] - Big Rich Klein
Right. Too niche.
[01:08:40.240] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah, right. It's not going to fit everybody. And regular steering pumps have their application, too. And you don't need to go faster. You don't need that much flow. So, yeah, it does have its limitations to fit it in every application. So that's limiting it on its reach where it's being used. Okay. Although it's still growing, I've sold a bunch to Australia, some in the Middle East, even lost to Canada. And of course, the Southern bouncer guys are still increasing there. It's definitely a niche, though, so I don't see that being my full time. I would have to have you tell I've thought of this numerous times, but I would have to have a bunch of products similarly sized to that to be, I think, independent of my own. The bearing one's pretty good, but it's niche, too. So a bunch of these things altogether maybe would work someday. And I always think of that. So I don't know, maybe someday, maybe when Levi is old enough to help me out in the garage, we'll be able to go on our own.
[01:10:08.920] - Big Rich Klein
There you go.
[01:10:10.140] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah.
[01:10:11.750] - Big Rich Klein
So let's talk about your event promoting. How did that come about?
[01:10:20.670] - Scott Trimarco
You're talking about the Rock Run thing, right?
[01:10:23.050] - Big Rich Klein
Absolutely.
[01:10:23.450] - Scott Trimarco
Okay. Yeah. Well, when I had my Toyota truck, there was Rock runs only half hour from me and it's mainly an ATV park. But there was a guy there that volunteered had a Jeep, and he wanted to put on these like Jeep, full size four wheel drive vehicle events. And I was like, we should do a rock crawl. I go to these rock crawls and I go to these ones at Rouse Creek. And I've seen the We Rock ones. I don't think I had done a We Rock event at that time. I'm pretty sure not. So he's like, yeah, how do you do it? And I was like, well, I'll just use the roles that We Rock uses or like Rouse Creek, whatever. We'll combine them or something, we'll come up with our own. So he was like, yeah, let's do it. So I came up with this idea and he didn't like it. He wanted to do something completely different. It turned out more like, I don't know it wasn't a rock crawling competition. And so the first time we did it it was six friends and I bought some cones and I set up the cones in the area where we had the rock crawl.
[01:11:43.360] - Scott Trimarco
And I always knew this area would work. It was like a large outcropping of rocks and we like there was at the beginning there was three trails on this Rocky area and there was a lot of trees between the rocks and stuff. And so the six of us did it and we was like, Holy cow, this is awesome. We had so much fun and the next year we did it again and it was like, I don't know, maybe like twelve people and friends of friends came and it just grew over the years and I did it for seven years in a row. I think it was about seven years. Yeah. And I think I started it right after like maybe in the last year I had my Toyota truck and when I built the Buggy in 2013 is really when it was popular around here, if you want to call it that. So there's nothing like this around. I mean, people ride dirt bikes and eat TVs like they're going out of style. But as far as four wheel drive vehicles or full size vehicles around here, there's some Jeeps and stuff, some Jeep guys, but there's nothing like there's no Buggies.
[01:13:06.990] - Scott Trimarco
And so when we like to maybe the second or third year we did that there I got some sponsors to donate, some prizes like parts and a winch and numerous things, camp chairs, all kinds of stuff. And we had a raffle and we got some banners made and it was kind of like trying to be legitimate rock crawling competition. And I had done the RC Rocks at Roush for numerous years with my Buggy and so I really liked doing that. But it was different. The roles were different. I was in like a class that I didn't really like maybe. And I wasn't in unlimited back then with my Buggy. So I had created my own class rules for my own competition and it was just three classes. I'm thinking what they were. It was modified, super modified and unlimited. And it was kind of like based on what the vehicles were that came to it. And it wasn't quite what your rules are or Rouse's rules are. It was more loose probably than those. It was really fun. You didn't win money or anything. I had a friend of mine make trophies that were made out of broken parts and plasma cut parts and things like that.
[01:14:44.600] - Scott Trimarco
So you got this like crazy looking trophy and then you bought some tickets for raffle and that helped me pay for all my stuff I had to buy. And we had a big raffle at the end and we had somebody cooking food and it was a blast. But it was so much work, you know how it is. So it's incredible what it takes to do that. I was, like, getting really burnt out at that, which is crazy because it was only one time a year, so I had wanted to do, like, a series. We had Roush Creek in mine, and I don't know if there's any other ones or anything like it around, but I had talked to the people at Rauch, and some guys had organized it there, and they were like, no, we're not doing that. And I think I convinced maybe them to do it a little bit, but it didn't work out. By that time, I was already kind of tired of it. So when Hans started his series, X Rock, him and I talked about combining my event and his series, and I was like, Holy cow, this is amazing.
[01:16:02.930] - Scott Trimarco
I'm so glad you're doing this. It was different, and I didn't have to work as hard, and I got to drive my buggy in the event, so I was a competitor back again, and I liked that. So last year in 21, we were going to do it again. And the park isn't the easiest place to work for work with, I should say. And they have a lot of events scheduled for ATVs and things, and so you got to schedule around those because we're secondary to all that stuff. We're not bringing in thousands of people like they do for those events, so that's their priority. But the scheduling just didn't work out. We were limited to, like, April or something to do the X Rock event there, and it just didn't work out. So we didn't have any event there. And I told Hans he was apologetic because he was like, Look, I'm really sorry. I'll help you out somehow. Just let me know what I can do. And I was like, look, I'm okay. Don't worry. If we don't have it there, I'm okay with it. I had my fun, and that was kind of it ran.
[01:17:38.290] - Scott Trimarco
It was a good timing for it. There was nothing around except for the Roush events, and it was only the Club Comp events. I think they had stopped doing the We Rock events like the main. They used to have a series, three or four events a year on top of the Club Comp events. So at some point, they stopped those, and it was only the Club Comp. It was like a combination. One was a combo event where you had, like, I have four vehicles and a team, so it's a completely different ball game, but there was no other game in town except for you. And you came around once a year. So it was like, we need something else to do. And people came from everywhere for that thing. And now Hans has his series going. So I think it was a little filling in the middle interim between the We Rock and X Rock, right?
[01:18:40.370] - Big Rich Klein
And I hope that Hans events can continue. I know that for us it was hard when we couldn't get the teams to come out when we were there. They wanted more events closer together and we just can't do that. No, I mean, we have to service as much square miles as we can with our events. And it's just the northeast, what I would call Northeast Pennsylvania and on up.
[01:19:15.440] - Scott Trimarco
Right.
[01:19:15.860] - Big Rich Klein
Just was not enough participation.
[01:19:18.110] - Scott Trimarco
No.
[01:19:18.800] - Big Rich Klein
So I apologize to everybody up there. But if you guys don't show up.
[01:19:21.960] - Scott Trimarco
I can't do it. I agree. Yeah. I mean, I would not hold an event that nobody comes to. This doesn't make sense for me. It was like I couldn't turn down doing the rock run crawl events because we were having like 25 competitors show up.
[01:19:40.590] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, absolutely.
[01:19:41.490] - Scott Trimarco
I'm like, well, Geez, I guess I have to keep doing this exactly where else somebody had to do it. People want to do it. Okay, let's keep going. But yeah, around here is really challenging to find enough people. I don't know, they want to go camping or something or just go drive around in the woods more or less and not so much be on the competitive side of things. People still don't know what rock crawling is and what a buggy is. They just don't know. It's very uncommon around here.
[01:20:22.370] - Big Rich Klein
Well, there's a lot of places that is the case. I come across a lot of people that will say, yeah, this is my rock crawling Jeep. And I look at it and okay, it's not even built like my Cherokee. So it's like, okay, it doesn't even have a dent.
[01:20:47.730] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah. You're not really probably rock alone if you don't have any dance.
[01:20:52.290] - Big Rich Klein
Exactly.
[01:20:52.880] - Scott Trimarco
Scratches, at least.
[01:20:55.770] - Big Rich Klein
So what's next for Scott?
[01:20:58.110] - Scott Trimarco
I don't have any huge changes. I don't think it's just the pump thing. I have another revision for. So I'm going to be putting out a new design. I have to make some improvements. There's a lot of improvements on this new bearing support design. Okay. So that will be coming out shortly, like in the next month or so. That's probably the biggest thing I'm working on. I built a plasma table last year. It's a four foot by three foot CNC table, so I have a little bit more capability now. I can design some stuff more easily that I like test it out. I designed two different bracket systems for Jeep four o Motors to Mount my pump on. I haven't set pricing and we're advertised them yet. So first to hear it and those should be available very soon so I can start nice thing is I can test that stuff really quickly and start making it. I only had an opportunity to work on a Jeep with a 40 only recently. After all these years, I've worked on so many Jeeps, but never had the chance to Mount a pump on one. Mounting one is one in the garage right now for a friend that he's going to test it out for me, but excellent.
[01:22:31.310] - Scott Trimarco
I've already bolted it on another Jeep, so it should be good to go. But yeah, just I think bracketry for different Motors. I have some other ones I want to make for LS Motors on top of a couple I have, and then the new pump bearing design will be coming out. I'll probably sell more of those Toyota unit bearings and I might get some help mass producing some parts on that so I can sell at least some of them and not waste so much time. Me manually machining every one of them.
[01:23:10.720]
Right.
[01:23:12.930] - Scott Trimarco
I have a person and you covered this story or this thing in your magazine long time ago. My Toyota Rear Disconnect.
[01:23:22.430] - Big Rich Klein
Right.
[01:23:23.610] - Scott Trimarco
I have a guy that wants one like real bad and he won't take no for an answer. So if I can ever get the projects out of my garage and get my Buggy in there, I have to take mine apart to draw some of the parts that I never did draw. And I just made them on the fly so I can duplicate it and sort of come up with a kit. If I make one for this guy, I'll probably be able to sell them. I really don't know what the market for that would be for Toyota Rear Disconnect. It's going to be expensive for what it is.
[01:24:08.720] - Big Rich Klein
I think that you're going to be really surprised because that's the Toyota guy's biggest complaint is I can't do front digs.
[01:24:18.900] - Scott Trimarco
Yeah. Well, I have to mention Dan again. He's the one who kind of drove me to do that and I really didn't want to. I was just like, it's stupid to put one in a Toyota. I'll just buy a Dan 300 or something and put in there and it'll do it just fine. But I'd already had a Toyota Doubler and all the gearing and all that stuff. I didn't want to have to buy that again. You're right. Guys in the same boat. I don't know. I want to get in there and start on that project this winter so I can at least get the drawings made up for it and make some parts and stuff and make another one or make a couple of them at once. That way I can sort of prove out my manufacturing design. Yeah. That could be a future product.
[01:25:09.930] - Big Rich Klein
Excellent. Well, Scott, I want to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing your history in off road and how you got to where you're at now and your engineering. And it's great that I love to see guys doing what you're doing and building stuff and trying to do something different out of the box than just buying something off the shelf. So kudos to that. That's how this whole industry that's how this whole industry has been from day one.
[01:25:48.110] - Scott Trimarco
Oh, yeah, definitely. It's doing the stuff that nobody else does that has gotten us to where we're at now.
[01:25:54.220] - Big Rich Klein
Yes, absolutely. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on and spending some time with us.
[01:26:00.140] - Scott Trimarco
Awesome, rich. Well, I appreciate talking to you. It was a blast for me and you asked the right questions to get the answers. The things I never thought of or the things I've forgotten over the years.
[01:26:13.380] - Big Rich Klein
Well, good. I'm glad I was able to pull something out. Excellent.
[01:26:15.970] - Scott Trimarco
Yes.
[01:26:16.860] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. Well, thank you. Talk to you later.
[01:26:19.120] - Scott Trimarco
Yes. Bye. Bye.
[01:26:20.210] - Big Rich Klein
Bye.
[01:26:21.590] - Speaker 3
If you enjoy these podcasts, please give us a rating, share some feedback with us via Facebook or Instagram and share our link among your friends who might be likeminded well, that brings this episode to an end.
[01:26:34.060] - Big Rich Klein
I hope you enjoyed it.
[01:26:35.120] - Speaker 3
We'll catch you next week with conversations with big Rich.
[01:26:38.230] - Big Rich Klein
Thank you very much.