Lance Gilbert on Tribe 16, Racing, and Community on Episode 287

In this episode of Conversations with Big Rich, Texas native Lance Gilbert traces his winding path from small-town Keller and church-band guitars to VW shops, GM dealerships, architecture school, homebuilding—and a post-9/11 pivot back to off-road. Lance shares formative years at Sunray Engineering with the late Tom Ellison, a decade at PSC with Tom Allen, and deep roots in early Ultra4 and King of the Hammers.

Highlights: - Early days: fishing, bikes, first wrenching job at a VW/Audi/Porsche shop; first rigs from Suburbans to Isuzu pickups and Jeeps. - Career pivots: dealerships to homebuilding; how 9/11 led to Sunray and custom axle innovation; later years at PSC and into Tribe 16. - Racing stories: Class 3 in Baja, the early KOH era, and a memorable Vegas to Reno with the Texas crew. - Tribe 16 name: a nod to 4x4 (“the 16”) and the “night shift” culture of building with friends. - Today at Tribe 16: customer Jeeps, high-end builds and restorations (Scout, ’72 Commando, CJ-7), gear and maintenance, and two new Tribe chassis trail cars. - Community first: Texas trail rides, shop trips, the legendary Crawfish Boil, and why local shops collaborate more than they compete.

Lance’s take: passion fuels the work, but relationships sustain the business—and the off-road family is the heartbeat of Tribe 16. 

Transcript

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[00:00:05.080] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.

[00:00:46.360] - 

Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks 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.

[00:01:12.860] - Big Rich Klein

This week's guest is Lance Gilbert. His path has been from dealerships to construction to off-road businesses. And now at Tribe 16, family and off-road, go hand in hand. Hello, Lance Gilbert. It's good to have you on the podcast. I've been thinking about you for a while. Your birthday popped up and said, Okay, let's move Lance to the top of the list, and you were available. So this is awesome. I'm glad we're going to get a chance to talk.

[00:01:40.120] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah, me too.

[00:01:41.360] - Big Rich Klein

So let's start off right away. Where were you born and raised?

[00:01:48.160] - Lance Gilbert

Keller, Texas. It's a little town north of Fortworth, close to Dallas. It was a rural farm and community. It was really, really small growing up. It's insane now, but gravel roads and ride your bike everywhere. Friday night lights, football and baseball is huge in our community. American dream stuff.

[00:02:13.180] - Big Rich Klein

You said it was rural. Has the suburban lifestyle moved into the area?

[00:02:20.540] - Lance Gilbert

Oh, yeah. The sprawl is a real thing. It really started when they built the DFW Airport. Our little town, just like all of them around, it just exploded. The schools were full of kids, and they were building houses everywhere. It hasn't slowed down. It's that. You used to, if you went from Dallas to Fort Worth they were two separate places, but now it's just, going from Chilly's Home Depot to Chilly's Home Depot, to get to wherever you're going.

[00:02:52.680] - Big Rich Klein

I noticed that in Denver, when they built the Denver airport, they moved it out like 25 miles or whatever it is out of town to the east, and it was just all farmland. And before they even finished the airport, there was housing tracks going in almost right up to it, and starting across all the way to Denver. Now it's industrial and housing all the way. And the same thing is with every major airport, when they build them like that.

[00:03:24.780] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah. Yeah. It's a city move to me as far as that goes, and it seemed to all start with the airport.

[00:03:31.980] - Big Rich Klein

Well, in those early years, you mentioned baseball and football, a big way of life, that Friday night lights type thing, which, by the way, I thought was a great show and a great movie. But when you were in school, did you participate in any of those sports?

[00:03:52.820] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah, I played baseball until, I don't know, until I met my junior or senior year, and I wasn't great. It takes up a lot of time. I had a job and was already in the cars and girls and making music. I was in a band, and we were doing some traveling already. That became a lot less important to me than a lot of other things. I pivoted on that and ran off to do other stuff.

[00:04:25.260] - Big Rich Klein

When you were even younger, grade school or whatever, what did your family do for entertainment? I mean, did you guys go out camping or fishing or hunting or anything like that, or just stick around in movies or what?

[00:04:46.140] - Lance Gilbert

We did all that stuff. My dad loved to fish. Camping, not so much, but we'd go to state parks where they had cabins and whatever. We always had a raggedy old boat that never ran, but we were always taking it places. We water skied and fished, and we hunted it. We actually a lot of folks bag on Texas because it doesn't have any public land, but we actually do have quite a bit of public land around here that you can hunt on up north. Then Oklahoma is full of great lakes and state parks and the WMA that's There's actually a lot of stuff around, but that's what we did. But we were always doing something outdoors.

[00:05:37.120] - Big Rich Klein

Cool. You have brothers and sisters?

[00:05:41.500] - Lance Gilbert

I have an older brother. He's in law enforcement here in Texas. We lived together for a long time in between divorces for both of us. So we've always been tight. He's a good guy. Okay.

[00:06:01.640] - Big Rich Klein

And living in a rural area, especially growing up, did your parents commute to work or mom stay at home? Dad worked nearby. What What was the relationship there?

[00:06:17.040] - Lance Gilbert

They both worked. Dad worked for the Santa Fe Road, which is now being a huge yard there in Fort West, just north of where we live. And he became an insurance agent later on. My My mom did hair and she worked all over the place. I was the latchkey kid for sure, but we lived out in the middle of nowhere, so it didn't matter. The bus had dropped me off or I rode my bike to school for It's ever, it seems like, which I loved. That was just a part of the deal. We lived in the woods. As soon as I got home, run off to catch up with your buddies or go shoot at something or whatever, we could ride our bikes down to several creeks and fish. We had access to everything. Back then, we just assumed that all of that land around there was ours to use however we wanted.

[00:07:16.400] - Big Rich Klein

Now it's suburbia. Oh, yeah.

[00:07:19.460] - Lance Gilbert

That area is just houses everywhere. It's crazy.

[00:07:24.240] - Big Rich Klein

You still live in Keller?

[00:07:27.100] - Lance Gilbert

I live close. My parents are still there in town. They They moved into town town. They live right downtown. I lived down there near the park that I grew up fishing at for 25 years, but I moved out north, a little further out to get away from all the mess four or five years ago.

[00:07:49.840] - Big Rich Klein

When you were in school, you said you played in a band. What instrument did you play?

[00:07:58.720] - Lance Gilbert

A guitar, mostly. I play a couple of things, but R was a... If you played guitar, you could start a band, right? You're always hunting down other guys. But music has always been a huge part of my life, and it was through my parents and growing up in church and all of those things.

[00:08:22.000] - Big Rich Klein

How early did you start playing?

[00:08:24.960] - Lance Gilbert

Probably eight or nine.

[00:08:26.200] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:08:28.740] - Lance Gilbert

We had a piano in the house and an old guitar and just goopy stuff, a trumpet, shimmering and stuff. As a kid, you like to make loud noises. I took to that and learned a lot of stuff from people in church. I never really took any proper lessons or anything. I wish I had. I wish I had time to do it now. But we just got a little group of kids that played in church, and the guy that was our music director in church took time to show us a few things and help us out. He was a great guy, and that's where it all started for me. Okay.

[00:09:07.300] - Big Rich Klein

Where did you do any work? Odd jobs, or what was your first job?

[00:09:15.540] - Lance Gilbert

I worked at a VW shop that was out just west of town. He was a friend and client of my dad's, and I worked there, and we repaired VWs, and Audis and Porsches. And when we were slow, we built a few sandrails and, fiber glass buggy, fiber glass, body VW things. A lot of top top VWs with suitcase motors in them and, fun stuff, frustrations on busses and what have you.

[00:09:43.920] - Big Rich Klein

Cool. That's pretty cool. I wouldn't have, I didn't think about, whenever I hear people talk about being into bugs or Volkswagen's, they're normally Southern California guys.

[00:09:58.880] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah, they're There are pockets all over the world. There's actually a place right across the street from this shop that we're in now. It's folded up and become a deck staining and fence staining and whatever. But it was a VW shop forever, and we have People stop in here all the time to ask if we know where him and all of his bug parts went. I do realize it's definitely mostly Southern California thing, but there are definitely people that love them. Texas It was a tough place to drive something with no air condition. I was never wild about them, but it was something to do. They're easy to work on. My stepdad has even restored a couple. I've helped him with those over the years. They're definitely a fun project. Even if you're not a crazy car guy, you can take one of those from a barn find to a runner pretty easily.

[00:10:54.140] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, that's so true. What was your first car?

[00:11:00.000] - Lance Gilbert

I had a late '70s three-quarter ton suburban. My dad and I actually shared it. I was king of the one tire fire there at Keller High School, for sure.

[00:11:18.380] - Big Rich Klein

That's funny. Did it stay? If you were sharing it with your dad, it probably stayed stock?

[00:11:27.220] - Lance Gilbert

Oh, yeah. No, it was just a run around. It was everybody's car. It was the neighborhood bicycle for sure.

[00:11:38.110] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. And what about your own personal car? What was the first one?

[00:11:42.760] - Lance Gilbert

I had a little Honda It's like a two-door Accord, an '80s two-door Accord that was great. But a very, very short time after that, I bought a four-wheel drive Azuzu pickup. We were already into four-wheeling, so my brother, that's 10 years older than I am, he caught on a deer lease. Maybe, of course, it can. I don't remember where that one was. But we wanted a four-wheeler, but we couldn't afford one. So he bought the cheapest thing he could get off the wholesale lot at work, and it was the Subaru Brat. Man, we thought we were killing. We got some mud tires for it, which back then you could find a 13-inch mud tire. We started With Peterson's, we welded up the diff. We welded up the rear diff only to find out that they're a front wheel drive. Then we welded up the front only to find out that there was a differential in the transfer case. We eventually welded that thing up, and we rolled that thing a bunch of times and rattle, erased it and did just dumb stuff to it. It had a great time. It started out, actually, my brother drove it forever.

[00:12:57.020] - Lance Gilbert

But then we really tore it up. But then, like I I bought a four-wheel drive Zuzupup, and I bought a Jeep right after that. I was that idiot kid down to high school. I had three or four cars all the time. And just enough knowledge and money to keep one of them running so I could get to work and back.

[00:13:14.600] - Big Rich Klein

And work was still at the VW shop, or what did you move on to?

[00:13:19.140] - Lance Gilbert

I actually went to work at a GM dealership, just doing whatever around their wheels. I looked at them. Rotating balance, tire mount, full changes. Then they opened a quickly, but at the dealership, and I ran that, and then I ran another one. But I stayed working at GM. I went to college at University of Texas, Arlington, and the dealership was right down the street from school. I had an opportunity to work at that dealership, and that guy owned several other dealerships. I could pick up work anytime I wanted to. It was great. It was actually an amazing opportunity to just work whenever they always needed work. I wasn't doing heavy line stuff there or anything, but all the way through college and probably about a year after, I was working at a GM, something all through that time.

[00:14:16.460] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect. And with that Jeep, your first Jeep, did it stay the way you bought it, or did you modify it?

[00:14:24.920] - Lance Gilbert

Oh, I modified it. I had that one a few weeks, and the guy that I bought from. The motor was supposed to be dead in it, and it wasn't. And there was actually not really anything wrong with it. I took it home and got it running, but he had another motor and transmission and a transfer case that he was going to swap into it because he thought it was I knew a newer Jeep. It wasn't. But there wasn't anything wrong with that. So that Jeep was black, and I immediately bought a Jeep that did have a blown up motor in it. I put that other motor in it because there was nothing wrong with it. Then I had three Jeeps from that first one Jeep. This just cartels perfectly into the next thing goes on in my life because as I was finishing college, I got my first job in industry and went to work at the 4L Parts in Dallas. My friend Doug Baker, who he and I were already friends through other Jeep stuff, poked around at me to come up there and go to work. They needed somebody, so I did that.

[00:15:29.320] - Lance Gilbert

Actually, I did that for a long time. I did that for three or four years. They opened a store in Fortworth, and I'm the king manager over there. Used a lot of trash takeoff stuff from Jeeps that we built there to build my stuff and flipped a lot of Jeeps, which was really easy to do back then. I've had too many jeeps right now. I've had too many jeeps back then. It's just, that's just, jeep people, I guess I am once.

[00:15:59.020] - Big Rich Klein

It's an It's a conviction. It really is. I'd have more if I had more room to park them.

[00:16:05.100] - Lance Gilbert

Well, that's part of the reason I moved out to where I moved out. Now I've got a lot of room, and I've acquired quite a few rescues since we've moved out there.

[00:16:18.840] - Big Rich Klein

And from Fourwheel Parts, you said you were working in Dallas, and then they opened up the store in Fortworth, and you became the manager there?

[00:16:28.040] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah, that was perfect for me. We opened that store. We tiled the store. It was just a regular tires store before. We changed it around a bunch. It was fun. It was a great experience. It was still not super corporate-y. New Greg and George, both personally, they were in all the time. I liked both of them, had great working relationships with both of them, which is definitely not common in a company that size, but it wasn't that big back then. But I had gotten done with school, and I went to architecture school, so I felt like it was time to move on. I was about to get married, and I needed to be leveling up in life a little bit. So I left that and went and got a job at a big homebuilder, fixing They had moved here from Seattle, from that area, and they were trying to fit that product into Texas. Texas is a very different animal. So we worked through getting that product from how it would work up there to how it would work here, which was a super boring job. That was a tie in the shot in the office every day thing that I didn't really care for.

[00:17:59.370] - Lance Gilbert

I I eventually moved out into the field, which I liked a lot more, and built homes, and was a project manager. I had a great time doing that, and I did that all the way to 9/11, which is an interesting part of the story because of what today is, obviously. They shut my project down on 9/11 and all the other projects around. I just disappeared for a while after that. I put my Jeep on the trailer and just took off. That wasn't the only thing in my life all the part of the time. It was a good time for me to take some time off I didn't do anything now. I knocked around for probably eight months. But I had a Jeep with big axles and big tires and V8 and whatever. I had been hanging out with the Sunray guys a bunch because they were one of the only groups of guys around, and I still do. My race birthday was yesterday. I saw Barry last week. I was already in that family, and Tom eventually got tired of me having too much time to come out to his place and go to lunch with him every day because I wasn't working or doing anything else.

[00:19:22.520] - Lance Gilbert

It caught me in me to start answering the phones there. That's when I started at Sunrise, which It was another absolutely amazing experience. A great bunch of people. Tom took me into his whole life. Working there wasn't just a matter of having a job. I mean, you were really part of a family, and I needed that really bad. I didn't have anything. My marriage had fallen apart, and my dad had passed away years earlier. I'd just been floating around and I want to work there, which was exactly what I needed.

[00:20:03.380] - Big Rich Klein

That's Tom Allen, correct?

[00:20:05.680] - Lance Gilbert

Tom Ellison.

[00:20:06.520] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, Tom Ellison. Okay.

[00:20:08.300] - Lance Gilbert

Tom Allen is coming up 10 years, 10 years down the road from there. All the time at Sunray, building custom axles and custom cars and some race cars stuff. We did some oil field work and other stuff, but we mostly did Jeep stuff, which was great. We did a lot of the early crazy Axel stuff was Tom Ellison's brainchild and a few very memorable buggies and some desert race stuff and a lot of really cool Jeeps, crazy motor stuff. In that time, I met so many great people, Kerry and Jeff Noel and Wyncer and Other Lance, and all through crazy actual stuff in Waeland. Then I got into Racing Class 3 in that time, which King of the Hammers started right in that time, which was perfect for me. That was a marriage of all the things I was already into. It was '05, '06 time period when all of that power of this course was huge and you could have friends in California, right? Yeah. That like the same stuff you did, even though you couldn't hang out with them every weekend. But then King of the Hammers became that, right? That was all your vacation that you went on with all your friends.

[00:21:33.000] - Lance Gilbert

Tom and I, obviously, were out at all of the first ones. I raced with Kerry the first couple. Of course, you've been there forever. Ended up co-driving with Woodley throughout all of that. Then when Tom Ellison died and Sunreigh fated away, at the end, I bumped around doing nothing, but I was already building cars or Tom Allen, and we were already really good friends. Eventually, he probably got tired of me coming out every day, going to lunch with him because I have everything else to do. He put me to work over there. That's how all of these things have always fallen together. Then I did another I've been up about another 10 years, 10 years over there and met Adam. He was putting a hemming in a car for Tom where he worked before, which was a shop that exclusively did that thing at a Jeep dealership. We became fast friends, and I was already racing with Tom and Dean all the time. We started scooping him up and taking him a lot, which was fun. We're in all the same stuff. We're the same age, grew up very close right down the road from one another.

[00:22:51.960] - Lance Gilbert

We both dabbled in sport bikes. We both loved to fish. We became immediate friends, and it obviously had been ever since. There just became a time where the tribe was getting big, and I was spending more time working on tribe stuff and being gone from PSC racing and whatever. Even though that was a big part of my job, I've been to a million rock-rolling competitions, and a million races, and a million circle track shows, and Inkster Jeeps a forward for an hour or many years in a row. But it just became time to to turn the tribe thing up a little bit. Adam was doing all he could, but with a little help on the business side of it. And everyone else I could do my limited abilities. We just decided to change the way it worked a little and pivot towards growing it. That's what we've done.

[00:23:58.220] - Big Rich Klein

Those early years, like at Sunray and then at PSC, you went from working in GM dealership, doing home building in the construction line, and then back into automotive. And that's not that different of a route than a lot of people do. And what was your college education? What was your focus What's there? Architecture. Architecture. That's right. Okay. And some business in that as well, or was that just something that you acquired along the way?

[00:24:40.520] - Lance Gilbert

No. Yeah, just... I mean, not that I know anything about it now. If young people ask me about a woman in a business, and I tell them, Oh, I'm like, You've already got your passion. Concentrate on it. If you want to do this for business, learn how to do the business part, the passion parts, the easy part, the business parts, so it was the second to that. So everything I've learned about business, I learned by doing it wrong once or twice first.

[00:25:11.860] - Big Rich Klein

Well, at least you've survived that. There's a lot of shops out there that have come and gone with great fabricators, guys that really knew their stuff, but just could not control the books. And that's an important part of business.

[00:25:31.160] - Lance Gilbert

It's a tough business. It's a great business. I have lifelong customers. I still am building cars for people that I was building cars for at Sunray so long ago. That's amazing to me. I'm blessed to have not just one or two of those, quite a few of those. It's great. It's Everything's about relationships. Again, I'm blessed to have had a lot of really, really great relationships with a lot of great people inside and outside of my business. I've had incredible guys work for me. I have incredible guys working for me now. We have the best customers in the world. The business part of it's hard, but that part of it really makes it worth it. There's a lot of long nights, and there's not just, nobody's getting rich in this industry. I get a lot out of the customer side, but we will with our customers. If I'm having an event, it's a ton of customers. If I just go, if Ethanage doesn't want to go somewhere, we always end up with customers. All these people are in my life, are both of those things, right?

[00:26:57.500] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And that's the name for tribe.

[00:27:01.500] - Lance Gilbert

Right. That's exactly right. That's how it all started. So it's just our tribe has gotten a lot bigger, for sure.

[00:27:09.460] - Big Rich Klein

So enlighten me on the name tribe16. Is that just because of 4x4?

[00:27:15.380] - Lance Gilbert

It is. We always joked around. Adam got the tribe part from something else. Sorry, you guys covered that in his interview. But I used to leave PSE and go to wherever he was working, which started off in his garage, and then the place down on north side, and then where we're at now. But this was a long time ago. I'd go down there and work all night. We just hang out all night and drink beer, and put together whatever it was he was putting together. That was just fun. We just called it the night shift. We just called it the 16. That was the 4x4 joke. He came out of the stereo business, and a lot of people would call a 6x9 a 54. That was It was always a joke. The 4x4 was the 16, and we always just called the night shift the 16. Then whenever we put it together and I came on a full-time, we had to do some switcher shifting around of how all everything worked. And so it just... That was the natural progression of the name, I guess you'd say.

[00:28:23.860] - Big Rich Klein

You said that you raced Class 3. Where were you doing the racing at?

[00:28:33.920] - Lance Gilbert

Baha, where we had that car. Baha, okay. Yeah. We built a Bronco for some guys here in Texas, and they needed extra drivers and extra everything. So we just started that deal off with them. And then King of the Hammers picked up a ride after that, which was great because in those early years, that first Vegas to Reno race, how much fun was that? Of all those things, I really just enjoyed it. Then when they smashed those things together, and I didn't have to cross the border anymore. I was super excited about getting involved, for sure.

[00:29:16.320] - Big Rich Klein

When you said that first Vegas to Reno that you guys raced, was that with... Which car was that? Was that with Dean? Yeah.

[00:29:26.600] - Lance Gilbert

Okay. Yeah, the big old floppy-eared dog car. It had one of those... It was a front engine car, which we learned a lot about. We burned everything up in that motor on day one, and got to replace all the sensors overnight and rewire a bunch of stuff. But it had a big dust flap on the front of it, try to keep dust up out of the belt and stuff. At some point in time, somebody painted it red, so it looked like a dog with its tongue hanging on. I always remember that car. We built that car in Tom's garage after work. They had that Tom and Dean had built that twisted car that Dean was rock crawling in. And then we built a bigger car for a race, and then Tom's stop after work with a guy that worked for me outside. I've known for a million years. That was grassroots. That was fun. It was definitely just a bunch of buddies getting together to do something.

[00:30:26.780] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And that was a straight axel, front straight axel? Yeah.

[00:30:30.330] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:32.030] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. And when did... Did you work on the IFS car as well?

[00:30:40.180] - Lance Gilbert

Absolutely, yeah. I tined that car overnight. On the whole interior of it. But we worked on all of it. That's when I was working down there, I laid it. And the first IFS car, Adam built Jason an IFS car. The Curveback car is still racing. The one with the swoopy back. But that car wasn't finished. I don't even think that car had been raced when we started on the tank, when we started on the first IFS car. I think we had already gathered parts. My timeline might be wrong on that. My memory isn't great, but it was not long. Jason didn't race that car very long until he was in the IFS car.

[00:31:30.000] - Big Rich Klein

What do you remember most about that Vegas-Torino race?

[00:31:34.380] - Lance Gilbert

Being with everybody. Everybody worked together. I worked on every ultra four car in that race, even though we just went there to support our car. But everybody's leapfrogging together, and we are all in touch. We had no... Communications were terrible. We hadn't learned anything about that yet. In a point-to-point race, that becomes a deal. It's all just cell phones and trying to find a spot to make a phone call or send a text. Then every night, everybody's staying at the same place, so we're partying like idiots, which is great fun. We took one of the What was Todd's last name? The guy from Vegas, whose name was Todd, home of Concrete Pumping Company.

[00:32:22.490] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah. Now you got me blanking out.

[00:32:27.800] - Lance Gilbert

Was it Stevenson?

[00:32:30.000] - Big Rich Klein

There was Todd Stevenson, and he was out of Cedar City with Dean.

[00:32:37.520] - Lance Gilbert

Anyway, their buddy that lived in Vegas, we used one of his box trucks. We rented a box truck and used a bunch of his trucks, and we had the spare motors and all kinds of stuff. We had everybody's stuff loaded up in that thing. We wanted to go eat Mexican food, so we had 15 people in the back of it. We We got pulled over and they pulled everybody out. It was an absolute calamity. Of course, everybody had already been drinking. It was a mess. They wouldn't let anybody get back in the damn box, though. So crammed as many people as we could and went back and got cars, made like 15 We were just back and forth to that gas station. But the most memorable thing about that was, of course, Ben killed it. We had a penthouse after the race was over. Tom and Dean were third. It was just everybody being together. It was so much fun to get to spend time with everybody. Steven Watson and his dad and all the power guys and just all these people that you were friends with, that you get to spend a lot of time with.

[00:33:46.400] - Lance Gilbert

We stayed all that long. I couldn't find my hotel room. Doc Mercer let me sleep on the floor in his hotel room. Then Tom scooped me up 6: 00 AM, and we drove all the way back to Dayton in a box truck that we jumped the night before, and everything on the front end was screwed up. You get over 55, and it about shaker feelings out. Both of us were hung over as could be. It was an amazing trip.

[00:34:15.620] - Big Rich Klein

Which was your first KOH? Do you remember what the year was? It was 9 or 10, 11?

[00:34:21.780] - Lance Gilbert

It was the very first year, not the first year, first year, but the one after that. We were all still sleeping, and we were all still in the trailers on the lake bed. No vendors, no nothing. We did. The five or six of us slept in our race trailer, froze in there to death. Yeah, it was amazing.

[00:34:45.860] - Big Rich Klein

So that was the first year after the O. G. 13 race? Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I remember that. I remember that race well.

[00:34:55.340] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah.

[00:34:55.760] - Big Rich Klein

It's when Cody Noel and And Bayly Cole dug the trench on the backside of the start line. So you take the start line, make the corner, because it was almost like a football track or a running track in high school. So everybody's parked around it, but they built it on the opposite side, if I remember right. And people would take off and not know that trench was there.

[00:35:28.040] - Lance Gilbert

I like the short course version of it, but I miss those early days where everybody was just parked along there and everybody just got out of line and got in line. It was like grudge drag racing on a Friday night or something. It was like for you just getting off out into the desert to hopefully live through it.

[00:35:48.480] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. Those early days of KOH were some of the best. I mean, really, when you... Of times, because everybody wanted to win, but everybody was... There wasn't the super secretive stuff, and it wasn't so much like circle track racing or drag racing, where everybody's trying to fight in the pits and stuff. Everybody was helping each other. And then in the evenings, the bonfires were the best.

[00:36:20.120] - Lance Gilbert

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I never really felt like it got bad. We were always helping everybody out. We eventually We had that giant trailer, and we brought so much stuff. Of course, we were also... We had piles of cars in the race. We weren't just chasing Matt and Adam anymore. We had so many cars, and that was one great thing is that the car that we needed to concentrate on the most was at least racing on a different day. We didn't have any other 4,500 cars. That was before 4,800 even existed. On the day that all of our cars were racing, we were always spread so thin and already wore out. Adam's had raced the day before. It was always a deal. But we helped everybody out no matter what. That's probably just because that's who we are. In my GM days, I participated in a lot of circle track stuff and in a lot of drag racing. There was definitely a lot of secrecy, and everybody's doing any little thing to get an advantage over somebody else. But that's a difficult thing to do when you've got to compete against the desert. There might be 100 other dudes out there, but there's a million problems out there, a million problems a mile out there.

[00:37:56.300] - Lance Gilbert

Very, very few people have ever beaten anybody else out to win that race. It usually gets taken out. True. Mechanical problems or course problems or whatever. I don't tell.

[00:38:13.840] - Big Rich Klein

At least I never really felt that way. No, I don't think so. I think what I was more getting at was that there is that family with the off-road, where you don't necessarily get that in drag racing or circle or any of the other types of racing. But also getting together at the bonfire. Nowadays, at KOH, or at least the last time I was there, which was probably five years There was, I walked through where the fire pit was, and there used to be hundreds of people there, and I knew probably 90 % of them. And there was 50 people there, and I knew nobody. And I was like, wow, this place is, it's changed. Everybody's in their pits. People are taking it much more professionally.

[00:39:12.540] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah, it's big business now, and everybody's getting sleep. And, of course, in the first few years, nobody got in shape to race. But that's stupid. Jason always was. That's not entirely true, but I think that's just who he is. But there's a huge edge in it. It's like anything else. It evolved into a completely different animal, which is probably great for them business-wise, but it definitely changed it. From the fun standpoint, if you were there before, I'm sure those guys are still having a great time. But you had the early years of big nights at the bonfire or when it was safe to go up to Chocolate Thunder after 10: 00 or hang out at my door or whatever.

[00:40:03.100] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, exactly. And I think that where you find people now instead of at the bonfire is at their own pits. It's easier and safer for everybody to stay, stay where they're at, than it is to go wander around out there.

[00:40:20.720] - Lance Gilbert

And there's always work to be done. Yes. That's another thing. People pack their cars, and that just wasn't going on. At first, we did it like you're going on a trail ride, right? Make sure you got enough tools to fix it, and a spare drive shaft, and a fuel pump, and go rock out. It was just a really long, fast trail ride when there wasn't that much a steak, so definitely a different deal.

[00:40:48.380] - Big Rich Klein

Right. So what are you guys... You guys built a lot of race cars. The Texas contingent at KOH used to be really big. I don't know if that's the case so much anymore. If it is, it's all new people that I don't know. But what are you guys concentrating at now? Is it more of the trail wheeler?

[00:41:19.020] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah, we do a lot of just regular Jeep stuff. I mean, that's the biggest section of the market. By far, it's just the guy that wants to have a cool-looking Jeep. We always hope that he'll turn into someone like us, but it's rare. We work on a lot of really, really custom Jeeps and buggies, some that we built, some that we didn't. We're doing quite a few restorations. We got a killer scout thing going on right now. I'm finishing up a '72 Bullnose Commando. It's in a poultry right now. We got a '7 that we completely frame off and batter-coated everything. He's got some really, We're really crazy custom paint that we're fixing the start. We just got it back from paint. We have long term jobs like that going on. I've got two trail cars, two tribe chassis, trail cars going on at the moment, finishing one start and another. But lift gets wheels, tires, gears, whatever. Actually, when we moved out of downtown Fortworth, we moved into a great little neighborhood in North Richmond Hills. We're doing quite a few people's general maintenance, just people that live in the neighborhood. It's easy for them to walk down here.

[00:42:34.060] - Lance Gilbert

We got a nice place for them to hang out if they want to, or they can walk home, or get your ride home or whatever. It's very Texas-y over here. That was something I wasn't expecting it all, but I really enjoyed getting to know a lot of these people. That's the same guy that will come, Hey, did you hear Jim's car got broken into in the street? It was a black SUV. If you see anything, Hey, can we see your cameras? Everybody's doing everything they can to take care of one another. It's really nice. I like it over here. It was a great move for us, especially from the shady town that our old shop is in.

[00:43:12.900] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Of course, there was that really good, was it Italian restaurant or pizza place around the corner?

[00:43:18.740] - Lance Gilbert

Oh, yeah. Yeah, Mamma Mia's. They just went under, too. That's funny. She mentioned that. Adam and I were just talking about that probably a week ago.

[00:43:27.720] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, that's a shame. That place was really good.

[00:43:30.000] - Lance Gilbert

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was excellent.

[00:43:31.740] - Big Rich Klein

One of the things that I noticed that you guys do, you guys do a lot of trail rides for a customer appreciation ride or something, or is it that you guys just plan on going out and then just invite everybody to come along?

[00:43:43.480] - Lance Gilbert

So we love to have one in the spring and one in the fall. It doesn't always work out to do a customer appreciation thing. It's really tough. All the guys here have kids and stuff going on. And We're still a small place. The only way for Adam and I to be at the same place or Jason and I to be at the same place at the same time is for the shop to be close. It's difficult to do that just from trying to stay alive. We try to plan it out. Spring's always hard because everybody's spring breaks in a different place. But that's what we usually try to do. We try to do one in the spring, one in the fall, and all of our customers to go. Then we usually do a shop trip in the summer. We have classically, we did it this summer, but we have, I think, four or five years. But again, it's hard to be closed. Of course, we used to do it 12 weekends a year when we raced, or two weeks for King of the Hammers and all kinds of dumb stuff. But we grew to point that we have too many projects going on to just halt them, but we're not so big that only a third of the shop is going to want to go on a trip.

[00:45:11.120] - Lance Gilbert

It's still one of those things. Everybody that works here. We've all known one another forever, and we've all wheeled together on and off forever. It's your buddies that you want to go wheeling with, but unfortunately, you all work together, so it doesn't always work out. But we try to put something together. Plus, it's fun. It's fun out with your customers, especially people. One of my favorite things about all of this, and it has been forever, is taking somebody and showing them, Hey, your car is very, very capable. Especially if we built it and give them some confidence and show them how it all works or let them drive my car and try to hook them into spending a 150 on a buggy, whatever the case may be. It's just all about going out and having a good time We're really lucky to have great parks. We've got Ketempsey and Wolfgaves just to the south. Clayton is not far. Rugged Mountain is not far. Hot Spring is not far. It's easy to have an event at most of those places. That's what we used to, Thanksgiving and once in the spring. I don't even know. I Of course, Adam's doing a lot of the overlanding stuff, and they're doing two or three trips like that a year.

[00:46:38.220] - Lance Gilbert

So it may just be a split. It may just be a split thing as people are getting into different stuff because that's just what they enjoy more, and I'm not sleeping on the ground.

[00:46:50.200] - Big Rich Klein

Roof top tents.

[00:46:52.140] - Lance Gilbert

No, no, no, that's worse. That's worse. That's a rooftop tent with a death sentence. You see me getting out of one of those things, Rich. I said, you're insane.

[00:47:03.100] - Big Rich Klein

I know. I've got them. I've had them for years now. And as I get older, my bladder dictates my sleeping patterns. I understand.

[00:47:13.720] - Lance Gilbert

100 %.

[00:47:14.680] - Big Rich Klein

And four or five times up and down that ladder every night is a pain in the butt.

[00:47:20.820] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah, that's four or five trips to the ER, man.

[00:47:26.040] - Big Rich Klein

So then one of the things that I really liked that that you guys have done is the Crodad boil.

[00:47:36.900] - Lance Gilbert

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. That's a big deal, and a lot of people come from all over the place to do it, and it's still growing, which is crazy.

[00:47:49.080] - Big Rich Klein

Because it was- And we have a lot of fun. When that last time was there, and that was a long time ago.

[00:47:54.460] - Lance Gilbert

Yeah, when we were looking for properties, when we wanted to move out of Fortworth, we looked at a bunch of stuff, and Nothing just really seemed to click. When we got over here in this place, had this basically giant patio that we could use to park cars on during the week, but we could also have a huge party on. It was a pretty unanimous, Hell, yeah. This is going to be the place for us. We were already like, We put the band over here and we have whatever stupid human trick we were doing this year over there. But yeah, those part, I talk to people on the phone every week. Oh, no, man. I was there that year. You all did the human foosball. My wife still missing a tooth or whatever. It always got so out of hand. But yeah, we had a big one this year, and we Last year, we had a cornhole tournament, and then we had an inflatable obstacle course the year before with the band. Yeah, it's always something for sure. But, yeah, it's It's a big event. We used to also always have a Halloween party, which we're bringing back this year.

[00:49:08.020] - Lance Gilbert

I'm getting too old for that stuff, but we had to stop it. It really got out of hand. If the Crawfish bowls went on into the night, I have a feeling the same thing would happen at those. But the Halloween parties always just got out of hand. Of course, we're all getting older now, and we've all got kids now. So these things are all getting a little bit of a softer edge to them. But it's good. It's good to have those things. We work really hard. So it's nice to interact with your customers in a different way, where we're not having to talk about their cars dying. We're not delivering bad news about their about their baby. That's the worst part of all of this. I love it when people who have just come in here once and we maybe just sold them just a little bit of something or just fix something small on there, and they remembered or they watch our socials or do whatever, and they show up. That makes me feel like we're headed in the right direction and doing the right thing all the time. You know your usuals are going to be there.

[00:50:27.540] - Lance Gilbert

I have a fairly solid Friday night gang. It was Tuesday nights forever. You're going to always have those people. And that's great because they come and help. That's your family. It's really good when these things reach the outer edges of what you're doing. And all of the guys from all the other off-road shops are here, and their customers come, and we all get to hang out. That's the biggest far Of course, in the off-road community is that all the off-road shops hate one another. It's this competition out there. We've all worked together before. We've all wheeled together before. We all know one another. But Most of us hang out on the weekends. It's in that absolutely shocks people, especially a guy that comes through the door badmouthing one of them. He didn't know when I'm leaning back in my chair, looking at my phone, I'm texting him. I'm like, What'd you do to this guy? Oh, he He didn't pay you, and you got mad about, Okay, well, I'm going to send him on down the road. I think it's a very, very common misconception that this is some crazy competition. That's the way it is in DFTW.

[00:51:43.700] - Lance Gilbert

We all know what it means. We We do work for... We rebuild shops for every shop around here. We do gears for half of the shops that just do lift kits and all that stuff. We have great relationships with all the people that work there. Again, it's the biggest little community anywhere. It's probably not as rampant these days now that most of the magazines are gone because, boy, it sure did seem like a kid growing up that this company, Oh, my God. I said, 5,000 people working there. Then I got into it and started going to visit these places. They're just small mom and pops like anything else. Ten or eleven guys there working their asses off. And that's what it is. We're just made up of a whole bunch of those.

[00:52:27.120] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Yep. Absolutely. Well, one of the things that I know is that Shelle and I want to get back out to one of your feeds because that was just so much fun. But man, for being retired, sure I'm a busy guy. Understood. And know you guys are, too. Well, Lance, I want to say thank you so much for coming on and being a guest and talking about your life and your time across the board in the off-road industry there in Texas. I really do enjoy your guys' friendship, and I wish that I was closer or could get by more often.

[00:53:12.140] - Lance Gilbert

It's just- We are always here. You've passed through several times in the past, and we're going to be in the same place when you do it again. So you're always welcome.

[00:53:22.800] - Big Rich Klein

All right. Excellent. Well, say hello to everybody in the shop for me. I'll do it. Especially Adam. And we'll talk to you guys later.

[00:53:33.680] - Lance Gilbert

All right, brothers. Good talking to you.

[00:53:34.840] - Big Rich Klein

All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.