Family, Firsts, and the Evolution of Rock Crawling with Joel Randall on Episode 297

In the finale of Joel Randall’s audiography, Joel and Rich revisit the explosive early-2000s growth of competitive rock crawling and the community that fueled it. Joel shares heartfelt stories of competing with his daughter Kristin in the first Women’s National Rock Crawling Championship, the legendary Vernal controversy with Walker Evans, and the game-changing arrival of sticky tires. He dives into team-building the “farm way,” recruiting his daughters’ high school friends into a full-on pit crew, and the behind-the-scenes hustle with partner Anita that helped elevate the sport’s professionalism.

Post-competition, Joel turns wrenches with his daughters on rat rods, celebrates hands-on learning, and shares advice for newcomers: follow your passion, support your kids’ pursuits, and embrace the community.

We appreciate Joel’s willingness to share all the crazy stories, if you haven’t heard episodes one and two, it’s not too late!

Transcript

[00:00:05.100] 

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.

[00:00:46.400] 

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[00:01:12.960] - Big Rich Klein

Welcome to Round 3 of Joel Randall's audiography.

[00:01:18.320] - Joel Randall

All right, so in 2001, towards the end of the year, I had a really great experience and got to do some things that I never would have thought possible. The the way the rock crawling started. And one of those things is got to be part of the first woman's National Rock Crawling Championship. And, of course, I know through this so far. I haven't really talked about my family much, but I got to do this with my oldest daughter, Kristin. And we felt really fortunate to be able to do it. And I was I was just delighted to be able to do something with her and with a lot of the good people that I had met after that first year because through the early days, we had the art club, and my girls always felt like they were part of the family and had a great... Of course, they never had a real vacation up until now. My kids actually thought going rock crawling was a vacation.

[00:02:31.080] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect.

[00:02:32.080] - Joel Randall

That's about the only time we went anywhere, is when we were going rock crawling up to this point. I was so enamored in all of it and the early years. My oldest daughter actually got to drive quite a bit, not as much as some of the other girls that we were competing against, but she had. So it was amazing. We went to that woman's rock crawling, and Tracy was there, Tracy Jordan, which, I mean, he's a great guy. I always love Tracy. And of course, Heather, they weren't married yet, but they were always around. And I always loved being around young people when we were doing this. I mean, some of my best friends now and during the rock crawling, because I was doing it with a very large group and family people, and a lot of the other people were younger, and they were more partying and stuff. But I really enjoyed being around them. I mean, the Logan boys, the Twister boys, and I'm calling them boys because I know you guys know them as men, but when I met them, they were- They were boys when I met them. Yeah, they were young men and very passionate about this sport.

[00:03:52.480] - Joel Randall

I'll tell a couple of stories about them later. But I really love, especially those Those three that I've mentioned so far, the Logan boys and Tracy and Jason Poly was amazing, of course. But no, we did this skyjacker event, and Here we are, we're in a TJ. It's nicer than what I was competing in before. I had that CJ5 first, and this was a little bit nicer, and it wasn't automatic. I know my daughter was really happy that it was an automatic because she had driven the four-speed one quite a bit. But we went skyjacker, put it on. They did a great job. I can remember the whole time we're doing this, I'm thinking this sport is going someplace. Now they're even expanding, trying to build the sport into something that's going to carry on, which luckily it did. It really bloomed from 2000 and 2001. But yeah, we did that event. We competed against Steve Rumore's Avalanche Assassin. We were up against Heather and Tracy and that FJ40 and stuff. We had two snipers. Don Robbins had his FJ40 there. I can't remember. I think Kelly and Lance Clifford. Yeah, they were there. It was just a great group.

[00:05:36.130] - Joel Randall

I just couldn't believe it. We did really well. We didn't win because it wasn't in our cards that day, but we did pretty well. I think the Avalanche vehicle won and Tracy got second, but we just had a great time. I think we ended up fifth. I think. I can't remember for sure. But yeah, it It was one of the most memorable times that I had. We had a blast. Like I said, I hadn't been around Dawn that much, not competing because I'd been on trail rides with Dawn before, Don Robbins and Tracy. It was a completely new atmosphere because I wasn't competing. I was spotting, and we were seriously there to have fun. The skyjacker people were made sure that we enjoyed it. I mean, they just made the event really, really fun. Where was that event held? That's a good question, Rich.

[00:06:44.960] - Big Rich Klein

I don't personally remember.

[00:06:48.020] - Joel Randall

Yeah, no, I think it was in Farmington. But I can't remember. I don't know. Like I said, I'm 65, so all this stuff is It was 25, 30 years ago. It happened so fast. I know other people that you've had on there, they say, Yeah, from '08 to 2002 was just... One year, we did, I think, close to 15 events. Just cutting our teeth on this new sport. It was seriously, and I surely he shouldn't have been leaving work that much. Luckily, I have a really good brother. My brother, he picked up so much slack from me over this time, and he was happy to do it. He saw how much I loved it, and he knew it was a passion that I pretty much had to do. He could tell that. He never made it to a single event.

[00:07:55.400] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow.

[00:07:56.140] - Joel Randall

Because when you have a farm and you have cattle, he just never made it to a single event. Whenever I was gone, he can't be gone. Whenever he's gone, I can't be gone. So it just worked out that way. But he knew the rigs, and he knew the crew that it took to put this together. I think I might back up a little. I know this is getting lengthy, but- That's all good. Okay. A lot of my crew was actually my daughter's friends from high school.

[00:08:34.980] - Big Rich Klein

Very good.

[00:08:36.480] - Joel Randall

I mean, you can't believe it, but I started meeting these kids, and after the very first event, especially, they helped me, and I wanted to meet them. I don't know. I'll tell you a story. She was hanging around with almost all boys, and she She seriously tried me at every edge. She was a pretty wild kid. I know what they say. I deserved it, Rich. I know what you're going to say. It comes back on you. Yes, it does. But I can remember a couple of deals. I got called in. This is a really funny story. Actually, I'll go ahead and tell it. Because I got called in. I was in the field, and actually, we were broke down. I had broke a hydraulic fitting on a tractor, and we were out in the middle of this field, me and my brother, and we were working on it. I was just covered in dirt and oil. The principal calls me. Actually, I think it was the office secretary at the school. They called me that I had to come in. Kristin was in the principal's office. I go in and I get into the principal's office.

[00:09:58.000] - Joel Randall

I'd barely ever been to school. I mean, I drop them off, but Kristin, she didn't do sports. She was a horse girl. She showed horses. I hadn't never been to the school before, really, except to get her out of trouble a couple of times. But this was in the middle of the day, and they insisted. So I go in and I walk in, and there she is, and she's sitting there with one of her friends that's a boy and another kid that's a boy, and he happens to be a Latino boy. And they said, Well, we caught them and they cheated on a test. I was like... My first reaction took me right back to my childhood, Rich. It was like, Well, what did you call me for? What am I supposed to do? They cheated on a test. Punish them, I guess. I don't know what to do. Then I asked them what they did. I'm looking at the kids, and they had the school counselor in there also, and the principal, and the Spanish teacher, because this was a Spanish class that they cheated on a test. And I said, Well, what did you guys do?

[00:11:14.960] - Joel Randall

And she said, Well, I guess we did too well. This is what my daughter said, I guess we did too well on the test, and we all missed one answer. And I said, Seriously? And she said, Yeah. And she said, and it was, We all I missed the same answer.

[00:11:32.500] - Big Rich Klein

So, of course, they assumed they cheated.

[00:11:35.240] - Joel Randall

Oh, I know. They cheated. I guarantee it. And I just looked at the principal and I said, I really don't know why I'm here. I was busy. I said, yeah, they They've obviously cheated. They just admitted it. And I said, I don't know what you want me to do. Do you want me to tell them to be smarter about cheating and miss different questions? I don't know what you want me to do, and I just walked out. I didn't I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do. I'm not that good at handling situations like that because I was busy and it's just school. In my mind, it's still just school. I mean, I tried to make my kid's life as normal as possible when I was bringing them up. I didn't shelter them, and I definitely kept them in a pretty tight rain, but I was a single parent raising two girls. I was trying to do the best job that I could, and I didn't have a lot of experience, I guess, is what I should say. So throughout that, after this happened, I started meeting these kids more and more because I guess, I don't know, the kid that got caught with her, he wanted to come out and see my shop.

[00:12:55.250] - Joel Randall

Of course, he was scared because I was rough on him when I was in the the principal's office. He wanted to bring a friend, and they came out. These kids are just hanging around my shop now. It gets bigger and bigger. There's four or five kids every afternoon stopping by my shop to see what we're building because we had other stuff. I had old mud racers and stuff. I had a lot of junk around my shop. And we ended up, we had a a half-finished project, me and that machine guy that helped me in the mud racing. We had a monster truck about half built on 48, 20 Terra tires. Not quite as big as what Bigfoot runs, but the next size is smaller. And they talked me into it. I had a suburban, an old '73 Chevy suburban that I bought them just for the motor. I had it, so I had an extra 5454, and a lot of the '73s had a four-volt main in them. So I just bought a bunch of those old pickups and suburbans. And those kids spent so much time and so much effort. One of them was his dad owned a tow truck company, and he brought a semi tow truck out here and lifted that suburban after they took it off of that chassis and put it on top of another frame, and they ended up putting that monster truck together.

[00:14:27.900] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[00:14:29.020] - Joel Randall

And they A lot of them did not know wrenching at all. I really love being around them. Like I said, I love being around younger kids. I tried to help Tracy, and I tried to help Jason, and Travis, and all these kids. If they came up to us, I guarantee you they did not... I did not want them to think that anything except we were there to help. We love this sport just as much as you do and more. I was that way with these kids, and they helped me Build, especially later on. I know I'm dragging this on, but they helped me on that CJ. We both sided it at one point, and I know they all helped with that, and they just loved it. They got to touch the competition car at that point because this was after '98. This was right after that first one. They all went on to become part of our team. Nice. A lot of them get to go to events. Most of them, well, I guess almost all of them that helped with that Monster Suburban did. But they took that Monster Suburban to Homecoming and did burnouts with it and donuts around the bonfire.

[00:15:43.000] - Joel Randall

I mean, they had a blast with it. One night, they did do donuts in the assistant principal's front yard. To add misery to injury, they also had the rear drive shaft break out of it while they were doing it and had to leave it on the street. So they got in some pretty big trouble with that, and I had to reel them in after that. But yeah, that's... Actually, To top it off, to even make the story more fun, is that was the first time that I met... I never married her, but we became a couple. And she helped everybody at at the competitions remember her. But that's the first time I met Anita. She was definitely my partner through all of this. She did more stuff for the promotions and more stuff. I don't know if you remember when we came to an event, we usually sat up a table and handed out posters, and we handed out any stuff. We had all of our sponsors send us pamphlets and stickers, and they gave us T-shirts. The kids and my daughter and her friends, the girls that came, they all helped at these events.

[00:17:10.300] - Joel Randall

They would go and throw T-shirts out and do stuff. It was really a family thing. I hope when people look back on this history of this, that they don't look at us as... Because a lot of people thought because I had that big rig and we were doing well and stuff, but we truly, we just had a love for this sport. That's all there is to it. We wanted it to do as well as possible, and we did everything we could to help every competitor that was out there. We had tons of bolts, we had tons of parts. If anybody broke, my pit guys, and I had quite a few of them, they all knew. If anybody asked for anything, give it to them. They were 100% on board I mean, I had a crew chief. I had these kids. I had Derek Gobberson. I had a kid from Arizona that helped us, Danny Sutton. We just had so many people. I mean, I can't name them all, but it was really a family thing, and it brought our family closer together for sure. Yeah, her son was actually the other kid that cheated on that test.

[00:18:30.880] - Joel Randall

We became quite the family. The braided Bunch is what most people called us because I had two kids and she had three kids. It was a good match, and she was a very good partner through all of this. She worked her tail off. You know it takes more than one person to do this.

[00:18:49.130] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, absolutely.

[00:18:50.980] - Joel Randall

We had an army of people that helped us. I tried to thank them as much as I could through the whole experience, but it was a really good time. This was the highlight for Kristen. That's the only time that she competed. She never learned to do it again, but it was really nice. This also makes me think that I breached over that first series, which was very important in the growth of this, and that's when I met most of those kids. I can remember clearly the first time I saw Tracy Jordan and Rob Bonny, because I just love their enthusiasm. I love their passion. Of course, everybody loved Jason's adrenaline because it got him every time. He says he didn't do well at the beginning. That's because he didn't have that harness. He had too much. The kid just... He was exciting to watch for sure. I knew from the very beginning that he was going to be great. Like I said, that first series was... I shouldn't have breezed over it so quickly, but like I said, I got pretty emotional with my child and the mud racing history and all that stuff. A few things that happened on that, and I know Tracy will never forgive me if I don't talk about the vernal event because those kids By this time, this was later in the 2000 series, I'm pretty sure.

[00:20:35.640] - Joel Randall

I can't remember exactly. I think Wernel was before Cedar City, right? Yeah, it was. Was it?

[00:20:47.360] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:20:48.200] - Joel Randall

I think so, yeah. But we went to that event in Vernal, and there was a big controversy about Walker and me We're on the same team. I think I told you, Walker was an idol for me because I met him in 1980. He was an idol to me the whole time. Then when Good When Good Year pulled him on board, we got Good Year to sponsor us after the first event. When Good Year got him on board, we went out and practiced. They wanted me and Harold and a couple of other people to take him out. And he was a good guy. We were good friends. And we went out and practiced. I can remember I had Kristen driving mine because I was spotting and trying to work with Walker, and he just thought it was hilarious that I was talking to him just like I was talking to her. He just loved it. And then his biggest problem was he'd He'd never really driven with two feet before. He'd only driven with that right foot. And to get him to ride the break and power, get build up in the torque converter and stuff like that, It took him a while to figure out that you have to control that rebound because when that big, giant tire comes up over a rock, you've got all that pressure in your torque converter and all this pressure built up.

[00:22:28.120] - Joel Randall

Well, that pressure wants to let loose right after it gets past that. And if you're not controlling it with your other foot on the break, you're going to just bounce and hop off of everything. And as you well know, because I know you probably watched me at a couple of three events, at least, probably more than that, but I like to be a very controlled driver. I did not want that hop. I didn't want the rebound. My love of the sport was trying to make it graceful.

[00:23:01.280] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:23:02.700] - Joel Randall

So we were good friends, and we got in that. We got in that controversy in Bernal, and I don't know that I ever told the boys the whole story or what, but They all wanted me to protest it. Tons of people came up to me afterwards, and they're like, You just have to protest it. Well, I knew he did it. I was standing there. A lot of people were standing next to me, but Absolutely to my left was Phyllis, his wife. We're watching it and we're cheering because she knew that Walker and I was tied. Everybody knew we were tied because I can't remember who was announcing back there. I don't think it was fuel and fire yet that we're announcing, but whoever was announcing made it clear as a bell that we were tied. We did really well on that hill earlier, too. We didn't make any highlight reels because that wasn't really my style, but not like Tracy, or Tracy made the highlight reel on that hill for sure.

[00:24:11.440] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:24:12.540] - Joel Randall

But so we watch him. He goes up, he gets around there, and he just keeps going to the left and keeps going to the left around and ends up running directly over that flag that was out there in the middle of the sage brush, more or less, just to keep you... It It was not a flag that anybody worried about the whole day, but he rear-steered and went right over the top of it, and she hit me on the shoulder, and she said, I can't believe he hit that flag. She said it a little coarser than that. I said, Yeah. That's still us. Of course, a lot of people came up and congratulated me right there, Rich, that I had won the event.

[00:24:56.900] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I was standing right there as well.

[00:25:00.000] - Joel Randall

Yeah. People were coming up to me and high-fiving me and congratulating me and everything. And then a lot of people didn't know until later that they didn't charge them for that flag. Right. That were watching. Of course, I went to a meeting before the event, before the awards ceremony, before they handed out the trophies and stuff. I went to them and they wanted... They, Good Year and Ranch, and I can't remember who all was in there. There was probably 10 other people in this conference room in that hotel. They called me in to make sure that everything was okay and that I was not going to cause a ruckus. I told them right off the bat that it wasn't me. I said some other people said that they weren't going to clap for Walker, they were going to... Whatever. It was a big deal. I don't know why it was such a big deal, because it happened at every event, but I had never really been in it before, I think is why. I was a pretty mild-mannered competitor. Not competitor, but mild manner as far as... I love the judges. I mean, Mill and Gary and all those guys.

[00:26:28.760] - Joel Randall

I could name a ton of judges because I came close friends with them and of course, Phil. But we had that meeting and it did work out. It did work out well for me after that. Good year was very... Everybody wanted the sport to grow. No better way for the sports to grow than have Walker win one. That was going to be, and it did. He had the team. He had the Good Year, sent out press releases and stuff. It was good for the sport. But things like that happened every time. So it wasn't... I just wanted everybody to know I had no animosity towards Walker. I had no animosity towards anybody on that whole controversy. And I know a lot of people don't remember it, but the people that were there because I listened to Tracy's interview with you, and he still remembers it.

[00:27:22.660] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah.

[00:27:23.920] - Joel Randall

And other people... I know other people do, but it really... I mean, I would have loved to have won that event. No no doubt. Everybody up there, anybody competing wanted to win the event when they were there. But stuff like that happened. On the judge, you can't fault anybody. It ended up being very good for the sport because I guarantee you that Good Year used it to really promote the sport and to put... And any traction we could put on getting the sport any higher up, everybody there was in favor of. It doesn't matter how it happens. It It was a good deal. And that whole series was... And maybe that's why I breached over it earlier, but that series was awesome. Like I said, Jeff and Chris Durham were really good poster child, poster kids, or whatever you want to call it for the sport. It was really good. We had that Cedar event. We had a lot of other people that came in. Johnny G was up in the top five I think Shannon did pretty good at Cedar. I think Steve Ruemore did good. There was a bunch of people, Mike Palmer.

[00:28:39.440] - Joel Randall

These are all new names. A lot of them that weren't in that first event. True. That were in that. Were in that first series. And it was a great, great year. I didn't mean to not include a lot of that in what I was talking about earlier. Like I said, that Walker thing, I don't know that it needed to be, but I guess, Tracy, I did it just for you, just so you know. If you listen to this.

[00:29:10.200] - Big Rich Klein

He has listened to it quite a few of them.

[00:29:13.520] - Joel Randall

Yeah. Oh, I'm sure he will.

[00:29:14.880] - Big Rich Klein

I have a feeling yours is going to be being very well received.

[00:29:20.920] - Joel Randall

Yeah, I was kidding. I know he's going to listen to it because I'm going to call him and tell him to.

[00:29:25.180] - Big Rich Klein

There you go.

[00:29:26.580] - Joel Randall

Yeah. But yeah, The sports just blowing up, and we're enjoying it. That woman's deal was amazing. Like I said, the people that are doing this by this point were just phenomenal. It was crazy. We had so much fun. It's hard to remember a lot of things. It's just the people, a lot of new people came into it, and a lot of them became friends. It was really, really exciting. I mean, the vehicles and stuff that were coming in, every event you went to, there was a new vehicle. It was just... And a lot of them, there were two. I can remember when Jason Poly and Travis. I can't remember the year, and I was looking for some pictures, and I didn't find all my pictures because I've been through a couple of relationships, a couple of divorces and stuff. And so a lot of my pictures got lost. But I don't know if you remember, but they came to an event, and I can't remember if he was in his new rig or his Jeep at this point, Jason. But they came to the event with their hair tied. Jason had his hair with the green and white checks like my Jeep always was.

[00:30:51.060] - Joel Randall

And Travis had his hair tied like Ken Shoup. Then they came to the event and kept their hair like that the whole weekend. It was a blast. The art club, we were a family, but this group of people became a second family for me and for my kids. My kids loved... Like I said, this was their vacation. They looked forward to it. My daughter hung out with all these boys, all these teams. It It was just phenomenal. We couldn't have asked for better people to have shared in the experience of those first couple of years. It was great. We had... And Johnny G and his family were amazing. I mean, there were a lot of amazing families, because some of the others, like even Tracy admits, there was a lot of partying going on in that first one.

[00:31:57.760] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, there was partying? There still partying going on in rock crawling.

[00:32:01.960] - Joel Randall

Yeah. So I did have to keep... Because I wanted my girls to be safe, and I wanted... I actually would invite these kids, and a lot of them would come, and they would come and play pitch and poker and stuff with us in the evenings instead of getting caught up in that lifestyle. Not that there's anything wrong with that lifestyle, but my daughter was only 15, 16 years old.

[00:32:26.740] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:32:28.020] - Joel Randall

So I did They did ran them in, and it was a great time. Jason and Travis, I don't think those boys probably ever woke up at five o'clock in the morning, except at events. Because seriously, Mike and I had a a tradition. Mike Voka and my spotter and myself had a tradition. If there was a restaurant nearby the hotel, we met there in the morning at 5: 30, 6: 00, and had breakfast together and talked about the day and talked about everything. And those kids that I know had never been... They're not morning people to this day. I know Jason really well. They would come and go to breakfast with us.

[00:33:16.720] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:33:17.680] - Joel Randall

I mean, it's just hard to believe. Here's people that we're competing against, and they just become so close to you that it's unbelievable. And you look forward to every event. It was an awesome experience for sure. Like I said, we built that TJ for 2001, and But I'm not that... I had never considered myself a great fabricator, but we're behind on this, on everything. We're behind on the technology. And the Good Year, I can't remember what year BFG came out with the sticky tires. But Shannon jumped off the boat with Good Year. A lot of the Good Year people jumped ship.

[00:34:14.320] - Big Rich Klein

Right. When those Crawlers came out, yeah.

[00:34:18.880] - Joel Randall

Oh, yeah, and they were amazing tires. And Good Year could make them at the drop of a hat. They could go to that sticky compound any time. We could add, when those tires came out, we could have had Goodyear stickies at the next event, and we didn't get them. And like I said, Shannon left. I can't remember all the people. I think Schafer left. There were quite a few people that were on the Good Year team that just jumped ship. I'm just a small farmer from Nebraska, and I was banking on the Good Year sponsorship to help get me to these events. So I did not jump. And I like the tires. I never had any trouble with the tires. But we definitely... I went from being on the podium a lot to being on the podium every other time or so. And it was frustrating because they could have, but they wanted the tire that we would win with or that we would compete in. They wanted that tire to be the tire that people could buy.

[00:35:34.380] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:35:37.740] - Joel Randall

Back then, I was a lot more opinionated about things because I really thought, Yeah, everybody should be running the same. We should run vehicles that, I think I mentioned this earlier, vehicles that all of the sponsors can build products for.

[00:35:58.680] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And relate to people can relate to them. Yeah.

[00:36:02.800] - Joel Randall

Trust me, I loved when, later on, when all these Moon Buggies and stuff came out, I loved the technology of it. It's just not... I don't know how those guys got sponsors. I was having a tough enough time. Everybody... Because when you're doing 12 or 15 events a year, you pretty much have to have sponsors or you have to have deep pockets. It was It was always... Like I said, I loved watching it. I loved the technology and the changes, and I love the vehicles that they're running now, but it was really hard for us. You want to be the best you can, and here we are. We're running these for two years. We ran DOT tires against stickies. I'm pretty sure that in 2002, because we did pretty well, we got, I don't know, In the Good Year competition, we got, I think, two second places, and a third, and maybe a seventh or something like that. But we were up against stickies.

[00:37:11.440] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And they do make it... The The buyer does make a huge difference.

[00:37:17.040] - Joel Randall

Oh, yeah. Even to this day. Oh, yeah. They all run them, and every company makes them now.

[00:37:22.920] - Big Rich Klein

Right. But there's still a trick to it. It's a sticky compound. It's not about just Just how soft the compound is. It's about rebound. And I mean, there's so much stuff that's involved in it. It's crazy.

[00:37:40.300] - Joel Randall

Yeah. The controlled energy aspects of, oh, yeah, we talk to them about it. Because when Goodger came out with a soft tire, finally, it was just too late, unfortunately. But yeah, it was... They did a lot of testing on it, and they changed the side walls and stuff for the stickier. It was just a sport growing for sure. Like I said, it was good for the sport. We just didn't get them soon enough. I guess I'm still crying about it a little bit. But yeah, so we go into 2002, and I'm still in the... For the first couple of events, I'm still in the TJ, and I can't remember exactly. I think we ended up third overall for the series in 2002. It was great. Like I said, all the things that happened that year, we had, like I said, the new people coming into it, Mitch Guthrie. We had Johnny G. Come in. We had those Logan boys come in, which- John and Nate Williams. Oh, yeah. John and his brother, they were great kids, and they loved our group. They hung out with us a lot, too. Like I said, Tracy was a little bit older.

[00:39:15.360] - Joel Randall

He didn't hang out with us as much on the free time, but we definitely had good conversations and good talks at just about every event. I can remember trying to make time. I know he made time and came and saw us, but not as much as the younger ones. And I was really glad because it made it more fun for our whole team that people, afterwards, they'd come and find us. We'd be in the hotel lobby playing poker or playing pitch or just sitting around talking and just family fun more or less, way different than what was outside at a lot of these events. But yeah, it was a great year. 2002, like I said, there were just a lot of new people and a lot of new... Every time we'd show up, there'd be something new. I mean, Steve Nance built that centipede. That was an awesome piece of equipment. I mean, I thought it was amazing to build a two-seater, one in front of another There.

[00:40:30.840] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:40:32.000] - Joel Randall

I mean, it just changed. The whole dynamic of rock crawling and trail riding just started to change so fast. Yeah, and then I don't know if you remember Revolver Shackle guy.

[00:40:48.140] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah.

[00:40:48.650] - Joel Randall

What was his name? It'll come to me. But we called it the Bucking Horse because he was from Wyoming.

[00:40:56.580] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:40:57.540] - Joel Randall

But he had the front axial. He riding on the front axial. Everything was just welded to the front axel, and then he had these big revolver shackling quarterliptics on the back. Hildebrand.

[00:41:12.900] - Big Rich Klein

Yes.

[00:41:13.440] - Joel Randall

Hildebrand. That was his name, Hildebrand. But there were things like this showing up at every event. I guarantee you if Ranch wouldn't have written into the rules, the hydraulic stuff and all this other, we would have had some monster vehicles back then. I mean, we would have had four wheel, hydraulically driven vehicles that could walk up these obstacles like spiders. But these guys were working within the rules. As you know, what happened later on with the Tiny and the scrapper and all that. For the life of me, I can't remember exactly what year Tiny came into this. I was thinking it was 2003, but- I believe it is. I I think so. Actually, I built a new car in 2003. It was my first attempt at a full-tube car, and it had a Dodge Dakota grill in it. All the panels were inset into the roll bar or into the tubes so that the panels weren't on the outside. So when you scraped on a rock, it scraped on the tubes and on the chassis, but not on the panels, because I got so tired of fixing my vehicles because I always like them to look nice.

[00:42:37.600] - Joel Randall

So I built that and had it with the panels in set inside so that when you rolled or did anything, everything was protected. Because I had rolled a few times pretty bad. I just now remembered, I think it was 2002. Yeah, 2001 and one or the other, I rolled over really bad. I've got pictures that I saw when I was going through to get ready for this of Phil Collar. He was up on top of my Jeep with a handyman jack, jacking up and straightening up tubes while we had the hood and stuff off, trying to fill the fluids to go to the next obstacle. I've got pictures of him, just you know how dangerous handyman jacks are.

[00:43:29.330] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah.

[00:43:30.000] - Joel Randall

Absolutely. They're the scariest things around. And he's got that in between my cow bar and the roof of my roll bar, jacking that up because he didn't want me to go to the next event because he was going to have to do a safety on me for the roll bar being too close to my helmet.

[00:43:50.940] - Big Rich Klein

So he said, You guys go ahead and worry about the fluid.

[00:43:54.970] - Joel Randall

I'll get this. And he was the marshal. And he was a really good friend because he had wheeled with us in the early days. So whenever we'd go to Farmington, he'd always end up going on a couple of trails with us back in the day. I knew him. I mean, you He did so much for the sport later on. I can't thank you enough for keeping our sport alive because I really feel like even though I had to pull out of it at a certain point, I still followed it and I still love that people were still keeping it going. But he really, he surprised us when Ranch had him do the deals because we knew him pretty well. To become that good of a course designer that quickly was almost as amazing as what we were doing. We were pushing the sport so fast, how he kept up and kept the obstacles just right on the edge where we didn't even know if we were going to make some of them.

[00:45:03.860] - Big Rich Klein

And that's the whole idea.

[00:45:05.700] - Joel Randall

Oh, yeah. Every week, every time we went, it's like you have to raise the bar because it's not going to be interesting enough. It's not going to be challenging enough. And he did it. And I know you did it. I unfortunately didn't make it to a lot of your events. I made it to three or four. But it's just we were driving, you know 1,300 miles to go to most of our events back then. It was brutal because I was also working at that time. For all of that to take place in that short amount of time was just unbelievable. I built this Dakota, this Dodge, Dakota. Jason and the boys, they nicknamed it the Bob Sled. I don't know why. I don't know. I wasn't smart enough at this time. I should have named it because they named all their cars.

[00:46:11.680] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:46:12.900] - Joel Randall

And I guess I should have been smart enough to name it so somebody didn't come up with something like bobsled. But yeah. So I built that and I was really happy with it. It worked really well. It was keeping up with the full two. Like I said, everybody, by this time, everybody in the top 20 had really improved their rigs. From 2000 to 2003, if you took pictures of the cars from the beginning to just that two-year gap, I had three cars in that amount of time.

[00:46:56.860] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[00:46:58.780] - Joel Randall

In those three years or four years. And a lot of other people did the same thing. I know Mitch Guthrie had that many. Jason Poly, he kept changing. He came with... He ended up in that rear steer car, of course. I think that's about, I think, 2003 is when he brought his rear steer car out. And was the Matrix, was it rear steer?

[00:47:20.600] - Big Rich Klein

Yes, the Matrix was rear steer.

[00:47:22.660] - Joel Randall

Yeah. So, yeah, I think they both did.

[00:47:25.600] - Big Rich Klein

Tracy just brought that one back out with his daughter driving it this last year in Bagdad, Arizona.

[00:47:35.040] - Joel Randall

Oh, awesome. I did not know that.

[00:47:37.490] - Big Rich Klein

It was pretty cool to see that car again. And Don Robbins in the old Land Cruiser with his son driving.

[00:47:45.780] - Joel Randall

So what a class were they in that they did that?

[00:47:48.970] - Big Rich Klein

They ran in Sportsman because of the kids.

[00:47:53.060] - Joel Randall

But Tracy, if he was driving the Matrix, could have run in the unlimited class. Yeah.

[00:48:00.160] - Big Rich Klein

I mean, Tracy's still just that good.

[00:48:04.360] - Joel Randall

Yeah, he is. Like I said, you asked me one time earlier, out of the art club group, who the best driver was, and I just kidded around and said me. But we were lucky enough back then to where everybody had a talent, and everybody learned from everybody else. We had Pat Dermillion and Harold Off, and we had Ned and we had Rod Pepper. We had all these people that had been wheeling for years, way longer than what I'd been wheeling. That attributed definitely to how well Jeff and I did and Rich in that very first event because we just had all these people on all these fun trails, but we were still learning and we were still pressing each other all that time together. That's I think that's how we came with a lot of experience. Then, of course, we figured out the strategies of it really quickly. There were just so many things at the beginning that were so interesting. But yeah, I attribute a lot of what I know to all those guys, all those older guys that a lot of them aren't around anymore. I know Tracy he does, too, and I know Jason and all those kids.

[00:49:32.180] - Joel Randall

I mean, they used to come and ask me why I did certain things, and we would ask them or tell them, That's why this works so well. If you stop and think about what you just did, that's why this works so well. It's because you didn't bounce. You had your tires in the right place where everything just happened to work and you flowed up there. And so we tried as much as we could to help everybody because all we wanted It was the sport to get better. Right. And I know I keep repeating that. Sorry about that. No, it's all good.

[00:50:05.420] - Big Rich Klein

There's so much truth in that. I mean, we all, at that point, were hoping that it would become at least as big as Monster Truck was. But a lot of us, like myself, I came to the realization that it wasn't really going to happen because we couldn't bring it into a stadium, cheap enough or to be able to build it and take it down, move it from stadium to stadium like they do dirt. You can't do that with rock. We tried to do it with concrete. We did it with shotcrete and containers. And we did all sorts of different things to try to make it so that we could do it in an urban environment. But that's not where the sport is at or the sport came from. And we were never going to be able to duplicate that with manmade obstacles.

[00:51:02.660] - Joel Randall

Yeah. I mean, everybody, unfortunately, that's what it came to be. Like I said, I tried as much as I could to get it to go forward. I mean, we tried to put on the most professional fronts that we could put on to make this thing go on. And a lot of the other teams did, too, I know. And then so I I can't remember exactly, but I think in 2003, like I said, I built that new buggy. I think that's when Ranch had fuel and fire for the announcers. Maybe they had them the year before, but that really We had some crowds. Oh, my gosh, it was crazy. Cedar, we'd get so many. Farmington, we would get so many people. It was just a rush. The whole thing was just amazing. Like I said, everybody's bringing new cars to every event. We just couldn't believe it.

[00:52:08.080] - Big Rich Klein

What was your last year competing?

[00:52:10.990] - Joel Randall

The very last thing that I did was the SEMA Super Crawl, when Super Crawl was at the cement that they left for SEMA.

[00:52:25.400] - Big Rich Klein

Right. The first year, yes.

[00:52:27.500] - Joel Randall

Yeah, well, yeah, that's for sure.

[00:52:29.180] - Big Rich Klein

The first year they did it. Yeah.

[00:52:31.060] - Joel Randall

That was 2005. But in 2003, that is when Tiny came out, now that I think about it. Yeah. I mean, we did really well in 2003, too. I had that, Dakota. We were having fun. I still had my original spotter, Mike Vocon, who I couldn't have done this without. I can't say that often enough because it takes a village to do this deal. We got up on the box a couple of times. We ended up fourth overall in the series that year. I can't remember. I think John Bundran actually did end up doing pretty well at a couple of them. I know at Moab, he won because I've got a couple. I got some pictures of him on the top, and then I got second, and Tracy got got Moab that year. He was coming up, and I can't remember where Moab was in the schedule or anything, but I do have that written down. I saw pictures of it when I was going through all my pictures. And we rolled a couple of times pretty hard that year. It was getting pretty... I mean, the obstacle is not compared to what these kids are doing now with the portal cars, but we were It was getting pushed to the limit pretty easily, that's for sure.

[00:54:04.640] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I had a conversation with John Nelson. And in those early days, nobody ran weight in the tires. And when John had talked to... He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to run shot or water in in the tires. And he got in the okay from everybody but me, from the different promoters. And I was arguing against it because I knew it was going to take The vehicles were going to get so good at hanging on the rocks and making big climbs and sidehilling that we were going to have to set up courses that were even more dangerous than what we had been setting and were more difficult. And I argued the fact. And then when he came in to me and said, Rich, water is free. Water is free. Water is free. And I said, yeah, it is. But Everything around it is not because you got to run 300m. You got to run this and that. And he goes, Rich, I'm the only one that can afford to put titanium in my rims and weld them to my rims, and I'm going to do it if you're not going to allow water.

[00:55:36.900] - Big Rich Klein

Water's free. Everybody can do it.

[00:55:39.940] - Joel Randall

I remember the controversy.

[00:55:42.020] - Big Rich Klein

I was like, damn you, John. He was like, Yeah. So when he did that, he convinced me to go ahead and do it, and then that's when all of the organizations went to to wait in the tires, whether it was shot or water or combinations of it. And then it got pretty crazy, the obstacles did after that.

[00:56:07.760] - Joel Randall

Yeah, they definitely did. And what you're saying is very true, because in 2004, I went to Johnson Valley in Pro-Rock, and everybody was running water, so I decided to try it. And I went there, and Mike couldn't spot. He was hurt at that point. Another friend of mine spotted Rich Hudson that used to compete and did really well in the very first event, and quite a few after that. But he came back and spotted for me. We got wedged into a rock into an undercut rock with a tire that was full of water. I'd been running 300 M's before that, but they were But I've been breaking the U joints, and I had some of the CTM U joints in at that time. The funny thing is that I had changed some stuff on my car, and John Curry was there, and they weren't the CTM 300M axles at that time. John was making them. Curry was having them made. Then I had a CTM U joint. When my car was stuck in this undercut and down in this big crack, you know how they We always ended up all twisted up and messed up when you got in the wrong place.

[00:57:33.880] - Joel Randall

I was in the worst wrong place that I was ever in in my whole career. And when I would put my car, I can't remember if I was... But from going from forward to reverse, I could lift both back tires off the ground. And I could have just flipped the car over, Rich.

[00:57:51.770] - Big Rich Klein

This is how- Because the tire was wedged.

[00:57:54.200] - Joel Randall

It was wedged, and both the front tires were full of water. And it was just lifting up and down my car. And Rich kept saying I was close to getting it out. I was close to getting it out. But both of those guys, and I can't... What was the CTM guy's name? John? Jack. What was it? Jack. Yes. They were both standing on a rock right in front of me. I could see them. They were watching me as I was doing this. And of course, I kept doing it because Rich thought I was going to get out of there. And then when I saw where I was, I was like, there was no way it was ever coming out of there. It was never coming out of there. But in that, just to emphasize what you just said, in that moment, I broke the actual CTM U joint did break, but it took a yoke out when it did. And I pulled the third member of the curry nine inch that I had in the front. I pulled it out of the... Ripped it off of the housing just a little bit on the top where it bolts in.

[00:59:02.270] - Joel Randall

It has 12 bolts that holds it in to the peanut or the differential, depending on what you call it. And I broke a couple of lug nuts off all in that moment. I mean, it was How much damage? Just what you said. Exactly. Everything else, everything else. But it was being abused no matter what. It wouldn't have mattered what I had up there. It was probably going to break. And that was at a Pro-Rock. And I had to be at a competition in St. George the next week. Maybe it was two weeks away, but anyways. I was really glad that they were both there. And then I talked to John afterwards, and him and Jack, the CTM guy, you're right, his name was Jack. They were just standing there looking at each other, and he said, We looked at each other and both of us were like, I hope your part breaks. But yeah, I went I went to Curry after that because I wasn't going to come home. I'd planned on being gone for the full two weeks. I went to Curry after that. He built everything I needed, of course, because John loved us, and we loved that whole family, of course, and we were really close with him.

[01:00:20.300] - Joel Randall

But Chris Durham was there, and I did not even know. This is how much vehicles were changing and what was going on. But Chris Durham had portals at that event, at that Pro-Rock event.

[01:00:35.630] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, I didn't know that.

[01:00:37.680] - Joel Randall

Yeah, because he twisted it right out of the center section because all the torque, you move that torque down off at the center of your axial when you have that portal, and then your axel has to take the full brunt of all the torque that you're developing, and he broke that. And I didn't... This is how fast, because Chris and I were... I mean, we were really good friends, too. And I didn't even know he was bringing a portal car. And I don't know if he... Because he was waiting for John to get done with my stuff so that they could work on his. And I didn't stick around. I'm pretty sure he fixed it, but he might have just taken it out and went back to what he had. I don't know. But I was just shocked that he had portals. And we had quite a talk about them because I'd always wanted to run them. I always thought either portals or planetaries were going to take over the industry sooner or later. I had talked to different people because advanced adapters and some other people were sponsors for us at that time about building a planetary system that you could put on in place of the lockout hub to drop a couple of gear, to drop your ratios at the wheel so you didn't break so much stuff.

[01:01:54.010] - Joel Randall

But it never... I mean, the portals, now they just took over. But Yeah, that was 2004 was a pretty rough year for me because like I said, Mike got hurt. He hurt him. He hurt his foot and his knee pulling on that rope all those years. And all the jumping off of rocks and stuff, those spotters, they deserve... When people get up and talk on stuff like this or if they get up to the podium and they don't really think they're spotters, I was like, I mean, this is the guy that did all the work. You were sitting in a really nice chair and you were driving doing the funnest thing in the world, and this guy was working his butt off and sweating, and so many of them got hurt.

[01:02:49.240] - Big Rich Klein

Very true.

[01:02:50.140] - Joel Randall

It was such a combined sport. I mean, it was two people, A machine against the rocks. That's the way I always looked at it. I never looked at it. I was up against everybody else. I always looked at it. One obstacle, and that's what Mike and I always emphasize, is it's one obstacle, and it's just you and me. It's you and me in this rig and that one obstacle at a time. I know some of these other guys, and Mike was like Lance Clifford. Mike and Lance would back and forth, funning with each other at the events, but they worked so hard. It was just crazy. The year that Lance spotted for Schafer, I think it was 2002 when Mike won the series, wasn't it? Yes. Yeah. I can't remember where we came out on 2002 for sure, that series. But Yeah, I don't know. I thought I had it written down here. But that was the year of the spotter. Because I drove on my two... I bicycled so many times that year, and Mike was keeping me from tipping over. I know our rigs were pretty similar at that time. I mean, we weren't that far off.

[01:04:26.640] - Joel Randall

It wasn't like Moon Buggy against full-body Jeeps and stuff. Those guys, and they did. Mike finally got an award for the best spotter of the year or something at one of the events. I can't remember which one it was, but they did give out a spotter the trophy, and Mike got it because he worked so hard. It was just crazy. I don't even want to mention how many people got hurt.

[01:04:59.840] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, it's quite a few. I mean, everything from knees and ankles blowing out to head injuries to smashed fingers, that slip and fall off a rock or get pulled down because they didn't let go of the spotter strap. All sorts of different things.

[01:05:20.840] - Joel Randall

But none of them would take it back. No. Even the ones like Jeff ran into Jason Bartlet, his spotter, after John quit, Jeff had Jason doing it. I know he hit him. I know Jason, I've asked him several times, and he's like, I would never take it back. I had so much fun doing it before that. That was just part of the risk. It's just like if somebody rolls over and gets hurt. It was part of the sport. It's sad that it went away, but it definitely probably needed to at the time with the obstacles that we're doing because a lot of point and shoots came. Everybody was trying to get more highlight, real stuff. And so the spotters, instead of it being as technical, the spotters were in a more dangerous spot more often. Right. I mean, Phil was really good about giving us everything. He gave us technical courses, he gave us some point and shoot courses, gave you some technical into a point and shoot, and then technical at the top. Like I said, I know you guys got really good at it, too, you and Little, but it was just amazing.

[01:06:37.680] - Joel Randall

Like I said, you can't get up and accept something without thanking the whole group. And like I said, we had a huge group. I couldn't thank them all at every event. I can't. You just...

[01:06:55.780] - Big Rich Klein

So after your days of competing, What did you concentrate on then? Was it just family and work?

[01:07:08.700] - Joel Randall

Well, I did quite a few things. I don't know. I did build another buggy after that, too, a single see-through I was going to talk about. But I know I'm pretty much washed up at this point, Rich. I think I did get up on the box one more time. Okay. I'm trying to remember. I don't know. But I did. In the middle of this season, I broke that front-end, like I told you. And I ended up just getting mostly the parts. And then I'd been a bunch of other stuff. And I ended up at Dixieland, Four Wheel Drive, to put it together in St. George. And those are some other people that need to be recognized for this sport.

[01:07:58.020] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, Milt Thompson, yes.

[01:08:00.000] - Joel Randall

All of the judges. Milt and Jeremy were definitely... I cannot remember a controversy on any of his courses. He was so good.

[01:08:12.300] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:08:13.720] - Joel Randall

I mean, he was, and he is. He's meticulous about everything he does.

[01:08:18.520] - Big Rich Klein

Very true.

[01:08:19.860] - Joel Randall

And so people like that. And I know there was a heavy equipment hauler, Gary something. And I knew him all back then. This is 25 years ago, again.

[01:08:28.630] - Big Rich Klein

Gary and his wife.

[01:08:30.260] - Joel Randall

Yeah. Oh, he was good. He would get excited. I mean, he'd be running up that hill and trying to follow the deal, and he'd get pretty... But Mill and Jeremy, and all of those guys that were judges, and still to this day, you know because you... I mean, a lot of the competitors did not take the time. I tried to thank them all the time. I mean, I knew what they were doing and what they were giving up because we were giving up the same things. But yeah, right after that, Mitch brought out his knockoff of Tiny, and then they just they just flowed. Walker had a knockoff. I don't know how many of them. I don't know. Every event I would come to, I would be like, holy cow, did Shannon even sleep between the last event and this event? I mean, Shannon and nick had to have been pumping these things out one a week.

[01:09:29.140] - Big Rich Klein

You know, they could build them that fast. It was crazy.

[01:09:33.240] - Joel Randall

Yeah, so now, and what's funny is I can remember Tracy having a no Moon Buggies sticker on his car, and about as quick as he stuck that sticker on, I think he was ordering one.

[01:09:48.260] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:09:49.400] - Joel Randall

I mean, it was just everything was that fast. It did not stop in those, because every time you do it, you'd be like, Oh, we've come to the... This is the pinnacle. This is the top of the... Oh, no. Somebody else would come in with a new idea. What John Nelson brought to the event, it was pretty cool. It was definitely cool to look at and watch and the visibility. I ended up building a single-seat car at that point. I thought I did it fast because I had all these kids that I'd mentioned earlier. We built one from that Dakota front-end to that single-seater in three weeks, which I thought was unbelievable, especially in my shop, because I don't have that much tooling and stuff. Mike, I built that car so quick. He came back and spotted for me for one event, and I did. I got third place in Vernal in that car the second time we went to Vernal. That That was probably the last time I was on the box that I can think of, because after that, I had every event, I had somebody else spotting. We did go to Tennessee, and that was a lot of fun.

[01:11:13.680] - Joel Randall

We had a blast out there. We'd never been to the East, so we did an East Coast. I'm pretty sure we did a couple of wee Rocks in the two-seat Dakota, two buggy. I'm pretty sure we did. I seriously, like I said, I've been through a lot of things since the rock crawling, and I can't find all my pictures to go back and really tell. But that Tennessee event was pretty eye-opening. We met that... I'm pretty sure that's when we met that Torbit guy that had the Planetaries on and the. Tractor axles. Forklift axles. Yeah, they were like forklift something axles. I can't remember, but Yeah, Randy. Yeah, Randy Torbit. That's what it was. And we did the Super Crawl that year. And of course, that was the manmade course in 2004, that next year, we did that. I didn't do very well. It was a lot of point and shoot and a lot of just stuff. The manmade course is weren't really my style. Most of the obstacles weren't my style of driving, so I didn't do that well. By this point, I was outgunned. I'll quote one of Walker Evans' famous ones, Bringing a knife to a gunfight.

[01:12:48.140] - Big Rich Klein

Yes.

[01:12:49.460] - Joel Randall

Yeah. So that was... And that's when we finally got sticky tires. It's too late.

[01:12:58.000] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:12:59.720] - Joel Randall

It I was a little disappointed, but Goodyear, they had been so good to me over all those years. I couldn't have asked for any more. I had other sponsors, too, and they were all so good. I couldn't have done it without them for sure. I did compete in five, and I got, like I said, I didn't do very well. I remember, I think I got a fourth or a fifth, maybe. I can't remember. The Arizona Manmade course, that is where I got that. That's because I was out at Thunderbird or Thunder something. Thunderbird.

[01:13:37.840] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[01:13:38.520] - Joel Randall

Yeah. And then we went to Sema and did the Super Crawl there. And then we also, I don't know if you were around that much at that event, but afterwards, they left our rock course set up. And so if you came out of the front doors of SEMA, our rock course was there, and we had to be there driving our cars and letting people drive our cars for all four days of SEMA. Every day. All day. It was a blast, but I was already contemplating getting out of it. But we stayed, and my daughter was with me, and she drove it out there because I couldn't drive it all day long, and I couldn't help. Also, my car wasn't... It's funny. There's a kid that's racing King of the Hammers now, Paul Wolf.

[01:14:43.800] - Big Rich Klein

Yes.

[01:14:45.060] - Joel Randall

Yeah. I had a fan on the top of my car for that. I put it on there. I don't know. I built it for... I can't remember why I built it. To cover up the ugly roll bar that was on that car because I never really liked my single-seater car. So I built a little foil up on the roof that looked like a Outlaw car foil on the top of it. And now it cracked me up when I saw Paul Wolf was running one on his 4,400 car. I put that on there. And we were, like I said, we We had a blast at that event. We didn't do very well. I think we got like 16th or something like that at the Super Crawl, but that was the last time that I competed was at that. And then after the CEMA show, I decided that I would just retire. I had a lot of reasons. I had a lot of reasons that my brother was overwhelmed and he was hurt. He had an operation that winter and just different things. I just decided it was my time to go out. I wish I could have went out when I was doing better, but I really enjoyed it.

[01:16:12.780] - Joel Randall

I love the camaraderie of it. Like I said, the family that it grew into for us was very rewarding, and the friendships that we made and that I still have to this day, they're worth it. Every sacrifice was definitely was worth it.

[01:16:41.980] - Big Rich Klein

Well, it was really good seeing you at Sand Hollow during Trail Hero, and the Rocksport's gala. That was pretty cool.

[01:16:55.720] - Joel Randall

I've been doing some wheeling, actually. I didn't do anything for a couple of years, but in 2008, I think it was. Here was that. Anyways, no, I guess it was later than that even. It was 2011. I actually, when I retired, I started building a trail car, and then as I was building it, right the next year in 2006, I thought about... When I started building this truck car, I thought, Well, I'll just build it for what was it called? The Pro Mods?

[01:17:44.400] - Big Rich Klein

Yes.

[01:17:46.040] - Joel Randall

Yeah, that Josham, Josham, and Lovels, and Bullock. I loved a lot of those guys, too. I mean, that weren't in our class. And And of course, we were around them all the time. And so I actually built that car so that it would compete in that class just in case I decided to go back. And I thought about it. I kicked it around. And of course, all of my friends wanted me to come back. And that was more in my wheelhouse, that style of car. And so I did. I built that car, but I didn't finish it I had some things come up in my life and I didn't end up finishing it. But I put it back together in 2011 because we had a pre, I don't know what you want to call it, but Harold off from Farmington had been diagnosed with cancer.

[01:18:50.740] - Big Rich Klein

Yes.

[01:18:51.660] - Joel Randall

We had a last run in Moab for him to go wheeling because he was really in bad shape. And luckily, I finished my car. I pulled a five-day deal and put that car together just to go on that event with him. And a lot of people came and went on that last run. I know I saw Chris Durham on that because we went to... I think it was actually at Easter. It was definitely Moab. I think it was Easter.

[01:19:26.460] - Big Rich Klein

It was Easter. Yeah.

[01:19:27.880] - Joel Randall

Because Harold and- Because we had a big party.

[01:19:30.520] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. They all hung out at- Grandpa's.

[01:19:34.190] - Joel Randall

Yeah.

[01:19:35.320] - Big Rich Klein

Danny Grimes house. And I always parked there as well.

[01:19:39.180] - Joel Randall

Yeah. I remember. Like I said, it was a really emotional weekend for our whole group. And we had a celebration in Los Cruises also that I didn't have my car ready for, but we'd had one before that, too. But yeah, he was a great guy. And really, he was the cement that held everything together in our group for all those years that the R Club was wheeling and stuff. So I did put a vehicle back together. And then after that, I have wheeled, really just for fun and easier stuff. But you're asking what I did after I was thinking about that and I was like, I don't really know what I did. But, yeah, it was the time got away. I worked a lot. I had to bring my I had to bring my farm back up to par, and it was just back to...

[01:20:57.180] - Big Rich Klein

Back to reality?

[01:20:59.760] - Joel Randall

Yeah, back to reality, I guess, is what you want to use, is a good way to put it.

[01:21:04.300] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. Yeah.

[01:21:05.340] - Joel Randall

Yeah. But one of the things that I know that I did right away after that, and I can't remember exactly what year it was now, I should. My daughter's going to be upset that I don't remember this story, but her and her husband moved back to the farm, and He thought he wanted to be a farmer. Her boyfriend did because they weren't married yet when they came back. They actually ended up getting married on the farm. But they came back and I fixed up a house for them and stuff, just family things like that. It was a good experiment. People don't understand what being a farmer, what what you have to give up because you have to work when you can, you can't plan vacations, you can't do all these things. But they came back. And luckily, I didn't get him a job with me. I got him a job with a neighbor, so he hated my neighbor instead of me at the end of the summer. But they came back, and that was really nice having them back. And he actually loved the truck driving part because we had trucks. And so he drove truck, and then he got a job driving truck for FedEx.

[01:22:36.660] - Joel Randall

So they did stay a couple of years, and they ended up getting married here, which was really nice. And this is leading to something, Rich, just so you know. I'm not just telling a story to be telling it. They stay here a couple of years, and they figure out they didn't... She actually met him in Phoenix because that's where she was living, and they'd moved back to try the farming, and they tried everything. They got here and they got all excited. They bought chickens and all the stuff that you do when you first moved to a farm. He thought he liked being dirty and everything, but He really didn't. He found out really quickly. But he had to finish out the year. I told him, If you take this job with my neighbor, you have to finish out the year no matter what. Because you can't leave a farmer high and dry, at the end of the season or during harvest, you can't just walk away.

[01:23:31.980] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:23:32.740] - Joel Randall

You take on a year, you have to do the whole year. And he did, but he did not like it. So after a couple of years, they decided they don't even want to stay in Nebraska because they're not going to farm and stuff. So he decides to go back to Phoenix and look for a job. But my daughter, she's like, well, I don't want to leave because I want to build a rat rod.

[01:23:58.440] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow.

[01:24:00.000] - Joel Randall

Yeah. And where she... I mean, she always liked old cars and stuff. She didn't always like the shiny stuff. But at that SEMA show that we did for the last time that I competed, we had to stay for the whole SEMA show. We didn't have to. I wanted to. But that Richard Rollins parked right next... I had my semi parked up there, and he parked right next to me with his semi, the Grease Monkey garage semi. And he rolled out of that semi three rat rods. She'd never seen one. She fell in love with them, and she loved them from that time on. I mean, I was like, Why do you like rust buckets? And I always called them... It was more like a jalopy for me. But he left. He left and went back to Phoenix, but she said she wanted to stay here. While he looked for a job in Phoenix. She stayed here and wanted to build a rat rod. My girls, I guess, I really didn't talk about my family much, but My girls, when they were growing up, I was pretty strict. They couldn't watch TV until after seven o'clock.

[01:25:26.090] - Joel Randall

They came home, they had to do their chores, they had to do their own laundry, all those things. I made them very responsible, and I was a single parent for most of the time. I was a very strict parent. If they wanted something in their room, I know my oldest daughter wanted a desk, I would tell her, Okay, we'll meet at the shop and we'll make you a desk. She was always game. My younger daughter, she always thought it was more or less torture if I made her make her own furniture. My oldest daughter, she was gained. She'd be like... And she made entertainment centers, she made desks, she made night stands. She made everything for a room out of metal and fashioned it in different ways, either shiny or whatever. So she wants to build this rat rod. And there was a car up in one of our pastures, a '32 Ford two-door sedan. And So she wanted to build it out of that car. She knew exactly what she wanted. And I'm still working on the farm. And I'd expanded the farm since I'd quit rock crawling. I was farming more and I was doing more.

[01:26:43.860] - Joel Randall

And I told her, I said, you're going to have to do. And she said, oh, no, I want to do it all. She said, I just want you to help me. I don't expect you to take time off. So we built that car. And I would get out of the fields and I'd come to the shop. It'd be like nine, 10 o'clock at And she'd be out there and she'd say, what do I need to do to get this done? What do I need to do to get this done? And I'd tell her and I'd go home and go to sleep. And she'd work on it the next day. And at the end of the next night, she would. And it took her, and I helped her a lot, but she seriously welded everything on that car, except for I turned a steering arm around and welded it back together. And I wanted that to be really safe.

[01:27:26.520] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:27:27.640] - Joel Randall

So I did weld. That's about the only I welded on that car, and she chopped it. She chopped it 6 inches. Wow. And put it back together. I mean, she built this car and had it done in, like I said, in about six months. And We loaded it in a trailer. I had an enclosed trailer at the time, and she ended up taking it to Phoenix because my girls the whole time living on the farm, they drove trucks, trailers, pickups, whatever. Kristin took herself to horse events all of her life with a gooseneck four horse trailer with a slant in the front and stuff. So she was very capable. But while we were building this car, her husband had been in Phoenix looking for a job. And he's going to all these labs because he's got a biology degree and he's trying to get a job in Phoenix being a lab tech or something. And he's finding out that there's so many applicants for every job and he can't find a job. But one day, sitting at an orthopedic supply company applying for the job as a lab tech. And they told him flat out, we have 50 applicants.

[01:28:50.880] - Joel Randall

We'll take your application and a copy of your resume, but we have 50 applicants. And he's sitting in the in the HR office filling out the form. And the guy comes in and he's yelling at whoever's reviewing all the candidates for this job. And he looks over at Matt, my son-in-law, at this time they got married on the farm, but he pointed over there and he's like, what are you here applying for? And Matt said, I want to be a lab technician. And he said, I've got people standing in line to be lab technicians. I a truck driver for our lab truck. If you had a CDL, I would hire you right now. Matt stood up and gave him his CDL and said, Yeah, I've been truck driving for three years. I've got three years experience. The guy hired him to drive the lab truck. But he was also applying to be the lab technician because he had that biology degree before he came to help us on the farm. So he gets this job to be a lab tech. And I can't tell you how many times he called me, thanking me for teaching him how to do something.

[01:30:15.800] - Joel Randall

And I'll give you an example. What he has to do with this lab truck is he has to cut up cadavers and put them in a jig like he cut the knee out or the wrist out or the elbow out or whatever out of a frozen cadaver body, a person, and put them in these racks or these jigs, and then the doctors would come, and then the orthopedic guys would come and train the people.

[01:30:51.080] - Big Rich Klein

On surgery techniques and things like that? Yeah.

[01:30:53.450] - Joel Randall

Oh, yeah. And how to replace a knee and new tendon pieces and all this stuff. And I can remember I guarantee you in that first couple of months that he had this job, he probably called me 10 times thanking me because I told you they got chickens, right?

[01:31:10.680] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:31:12.060] - Joel Randall

Well, they had these chickens. They just like Everybody that moves to the farm, they ordered two boxes of chicks, and they had a chicken coop because they were living in my grandma's old house. And those chickens, after about six weeks, you have to butcher them. You can't let them keep growing because they grow so big that their legs start to bow and all this, so you have to butcher them. And those guys, the kids didn't want to butcher them because they'd become friends with them. I I made them. I said, You have to butcher them. It's cruel to not butcher them because they're getting so big. So I made them butcher them, and he did not like it. But he called me and he said, I am so glad that you made me butcher those chickens because there is no way I could do this job without having been gone through everything that I went through on the farm. He says, There's no way I could have this job and do it, because, he says, I'm fixing things that break in the lab truck. I'm fixing things on the truck when I'm on the road.

[01:32:24.720] - Joel Randall

And he just impressed the heck out of the owner of this company And he'd only spent one year on the farm, but he was from Connecticut. Before that, he went to school in Arizona. But it's like people just don't realize the hands on. And any kid that was raised by anybody in the rock crawling or the farming, just getting your hands on things, you learn so much more than just what you're doing when you're getting dirty.

[01:32:55.820] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely.

[01:32:57.100] - Joel Randall

So true. It's just It's a very... I mean, hand skills are so important and just figuring your way out of trouble. Just like in rock crawling or anything with mechanics, that's where I just think anybody that is deprived, learning all that stuff is really missing out on a lot in their life. That's where I was going with the story, but I just think it's crazy the job that he got and how he got it. And how thankful he was to have been. And all those kids that I helped learn all the things when we were building that Monster suburban and doing all that stuff, I get calls from them all the time now thanking me for helping them to grow up, become better people. It's always nice. I don't know. You asked me what I did. I spent a lot of time with my kids.

[01:33:58.920] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect.

[01:34:00.160] - Joel Randall

And later on, actually, during COVID, my younger daughter came back because my older daughter is in Phoenix and has a rat rod out there. And she actually sees a lot of Tracy's relatives because a lot of his relatives are into rat rods. And so they come up and talk to her at hot rod shows and stuff. So it's a small world when you're in automotive stuff and everything. But during COVID, my younger daughter came back and built one.

[01:34:31.500] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, really?

[01:34:32.820] - Joel Randall

Yeah. She was here. It took us about six months, and she did the same thing. She wanted to... No, I want to do it. I want to be able to say I did this, and she wouldn't let me weld. They used me to help them set up the frames and get the steering and stuff like that working properly. But they wanted to do all the work. They wanted to do all the welding.

[01:34:56.500] - Big Rich Klein

And what's your younger daughter's name? Katie. Katie.

[01:35:00.940] - Joel Randall

Yeah, yeah. And they both live down there now. Katie started out COVID in California, but her roommate went absolutely bonkers over the COVID stuff, and they couldn't live together. So she went and lived with Kristin in Arizona during COVID, and they hadn't been that close since childhood. And they really, they became best friends again, for sure. I mean, Katie saw how much fun it was at the rat rod stuff, and she wanted a rat rod right away. And she had a love for cars. And I guess I never really mentioned, but my dad actually came back to Nebraska back in the late '80s and wanted to make a manza with my whole family. And he started collecting cars here. So I have a junkyard next to my shop of about Well, it was as high as 300 cars. When these girls were building these rat rods, they had quite a few cars and a lot of vehicles to pick off of. They were pretty fortunate. Katie just walked around in this junkyard. And at this time, when she came back in COVID in 2000, there's only about 100 left. But she just had her pick.

[01:36:24.720] - Joel Randall

I said, just go out there and pick any car you want. And she had a tough time deciding because there are 100 cars out there. But she picked the '47 Willies' wagon, panel wagon. Nice. Panel wagon. Yeah. Because my dad, as you probably figured from my childhood, he does something for about two years, and then he leaves a mess for somebody to clean up. And we had, like I said, he collected a bunch of old cars, and he did a real... I mean, He's not... He did a good job. He bought a bunch of cars that people wanted, like the old cabover trucks and the diamond T's and stuff. Right. People were building hot rod haulers out of. But he would also go to the auctions and get carried away and buy stuff that he shouldn't have. So we have a bunch. I still have, like I said, I still have about 75 of them out here on my farm. And he lives in Missouri now, and he probably has another 100, 150 there.

[01:37:33.340] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[01:37:34.720] - Joel Randall

Yeah. So they had plenty of cars to pick from, and we didn't have to drive very far to get parts. We could just walk out. Kristin had a heyday building I mean, and they both did. They both just loved it. Katie's, she did it all on Instagram, too. If anybody, I mean, if any of my friends want to see it, she has her page, Katie Rades. I think it's Katie, R-A-I-D, Rades. And she's got four episodes of Building Rat Rods on there.

[01:38:08.540] - Big Rich Klein

I'll have to check that out.

[01:38:10.500] - Joel Randall

It's pretty cool. She does a good job. She does a good job on the social media side of things. It was great to do that with them. And they both, like I said, they both turned out to be really good kids.

[01:38:33.720] - Big Rich Klein

Proud papa moment.

[01:38:35.340] - Joel Randall

It is. I told you what me and my sister and brothers saying were when we were kids is home slaved.

[01:38:47.440] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:38:49.220] - Joel Randall

And they always, when people ask them, or I don't know, whenever the conversation comes up, they always say, Yeah, my dad did a good training me. They don't say raising, they say training, because like I said, I was a pretty strict parent. After the way I grew up, I didn't really have a map to go off of. So I just I tried to be the best parent I could be. But I also knew that if you don't respect your house, you don't respect things and take everything that you do halfway serious and want to do a good job at it, then you probably shouldn't be doing it. You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing.

[01:39:45.540] - Big Rich Klein

True.

[01:39:46.200] - Joel Randall

And I wanted to raise them to believe those things, so they learned them from a very young age.

[01:39:53.260] - Big Rich Klein

That's the way it should be. There's too much, I They call it free range parenting nowadays. And I don't think it's... I think we're seeing the ill effects of it in society nowadays as well.

[01:40:16.040] - Joel Randall

I've seen it close up, trust me, where parents want to be their kid's best friend.

[01:40:22.380] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:40:23.600] - Joel Randall

It's not always... I mean, I'm not saying that can't be your child's best friend and still end up in a good ending, but a lot of them, they're...

[01:40:37.380] - Big Rich Klein

It doesn't work sometimes.

[01:40:39.180] - Joel Randall

Yeah, the kids don't get the full benefit of their potential.

[01:40:43.140] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:40:46.220] - Joel Randall

Like I said, I tried anything my daughters did. Like Kristin, she rode horses. She didn't have the $150,000 horse. But she did the best that she could with the horse that she had. Trust me, Rich, I tried to discourage her from that sport, actually, because it's so competitive and so expensive.

[01:41:20.020] - Big Rich Klein

Yes.

[01:41:20.900] - Joel Randall

But she did so well. She just knocked it out of the park, and we ended up with a really good horse. She had to start with it and train it from a two-year-old, but she did so well in that that it was unbelievable. I know her schooling, her high school and stuff, suffered from it because she was as focused in that as I was in rock crawling, and my farming suffered from my rock crawling. So she learned it from me, as they all do. And that's when you're raising children, you got to remember everything that you do Everything you emulate is going to mirror right on them, whether you like it or not.

[01:42:05.840] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:42:06.840] - Joel Randall

And I know you ended up with a really good son. So I know.

[01:42:12.400] - Big Rich Klein

He's okay. He's okay.

[01:42:15.020] - Joel Randall

He's way better than okay.

[01:42:16.720] - Big Rich Klein

He took the better parts and have worked on those, and luckily, didn't follow my footsteps on all the bad things.

[01:42:30.000] - Joel Randall

I know what you mean on that, too. I'm just saying it's... Yeah. Yeah. No. I am a very proud father. Like I said, I've had some relationships with and had other kids. Like I said, the Katie that helped me through all the rock crawling, and she did so much for my family and for the rock crawling. It was crazy. She hung out with Rick Russell. I don't know if you remember who Rick Russell is. Oh, yes.

[01:42:57.920] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah.

[01:42:58.420] - Joel Randall

Yeah. She me and Rick Russell ran the Goodyear. I don't know exactly what they called it, but they brought... Every time we went to an event, Goodyear would bring a bunch of either engine or dealers or distributors. I don't know exactly because I never went to them. I was always studying the courses and getting the cars ready and doing the stuff that I was doing. Well, her and Rick were running this deal on the side.

[01:43:31.140] - Big Rich Klein

It's a hospitality thing.

[01:43:33.560] - Joel Randall

Yeah. Do you remember them doing it? Yes, sure do. Yeah. And I had a TJ that we built out of curry stuff, a wrecked one that I built. And then They took my comp car a lot of times early on, and we'd be set up somewhere with the truck. And they would go out and let people drive them, and they take them on trails, especially. I know I know they took Collier's car once in Farmington and a bunch of other people that I knew in Farmington. Skittles, I don't know if you knew Chip Monk.

[01:44:09.900] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yes.

[01:44:10.920] - Joel Randall

Harold's vehicles, they would take those and they would go out. And take all these Goodger people and represent them. Like I said, she got me most of my sponsors. It takes so many people, and I can't thank her enough. We're not together anymore, but I couldn't have done it without her. Of course, I couldn't have done any of it without Mike. But most of all, we couldn't have done it without the other competitors. It took the perfect group, and we took the sport. I think as far as popularity and sponsorship, John Curry was the color person or not. I don't know if he was the color person, but he was one of the people that helped ESPN cover it. And I mean, for a off-road sport to be covered by national television is pretty unbelievable. I mean, we took the sport really quickly and built it into something, like you said, it's about as high as any motor sports ever got. As far as off-road motor sports, I know people follow the blah, blah, blah, blah, and all the other ones, but the coverage that we got was unbelievable. And then, like I said, Walker, he was just shocked at how much money the payoff were at that time.

[01:45:44.320] - Joel Randall

Because when he won that Vernon event that was the controversial one. That was the biggest prize check that he had ever gotten.

[01:45:53.400] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, there's not a lot of money to be made in- In prize money. In prize money in off-road. I And it doesn't matter what off-road you're doing.

[01:46:03.740] - Joel Randall

No, he'd won 150 races. And here, the rock crawling was the biggest... I remember him vividly telling me about it, because I think we We're having... I think we always went out to dinner with 25 people. I feel bad for the restaurants that we used to invade sometimes. Yeah, he was just shocked. He's like, This is unbelievable. And of course, The Good Year team, we were trying to do everything that we could do. I would take my truck early and we would go to other places in park and hand out posters and stuff. It was our life for sure. Like you like to say, it's definitely a lifestyle. It becomes your vacations, it becomes your passion at home, It becomes the family drive. Like I said, it was just we had such a great crew and the other competitors, everybody pulled their own weight and helped to carry it. I'm just glad to be part of it and to know all these people that helped make the sport what it ended up. It's an amazing thing to be a part of.

[01:47:29.720] - Big Rich Klein

Yep, especially as an O. G. I mean, that group that you came up with in the competitions really set the groundwork for the future.

[01:47:43.240] - Joel Randall

Oh, so much. Yeah. And then so many of the guys, it's just crazy, like what the levels have done. It's just amazing. And I know a lot of the guys, I don't know. I feel like a lot of the guys didn't have the respect for that lower class. But I could not believe the rivalry and the skill that was in that. I wanted to go compete against them. Like I said, when I retired, I built this car based so in case I got a wild hair and wanted to go do it, that I could go compete with them because they did so much. Josham and Brian, they were almost as amazing as Jason and Travis.

[01:48:28.860] - Big Rich Klein

Correct.

[01:48:30.260] - Joel Randall

Yeah, they just, I don't know. They might have had my curse. They did not win as many as they should have, but they were really good. And I guess, I don't know. I know this is getting long, Rich, but I did go in 2010 or '11 in co-drive with Josha and Hammers.

[01:48:51.680] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, okay.

[01:48:53.140] - Joel Randall

Yeah, we did great. I mean, they had a phenomenal car that they'd built. I can't remember. Jason. Well, Tracy competed that year. Jason competed that year. And then Josha and I competed that year. And they rented Neil Lillard's car out to a team from Holland to race in the Hammers. And they all came out. The car that Josha raced was brand new, never had been raced before. And when they were backing it out of the trailer, the wiring lit on fire, and we didn't get to pre-run at all. It was really scary. We just worked on all those cars. They tried to do too much. George and Jason, I don't know, they put everything in this. And we raced that King of the Hammers race, and Josh and I never got to practice, never got to pre-run. We were just going off of the GPS. And when we started in because we couldn't qualify or anything. We started, I think it was 76 place. Wow. And when we broke, we broke a steering, a hydraulic line to our steering cylinder.

[01:50:28.500] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:50:29.400] - Joel Randall

And We broke. We didn't know what place we were in because our radios. I could probably do a whole show about that race because it was so exciting. But we broke and we were third overall, which probably would have been first because we started in 76th, and we waited an hour and 20 minutes for somebody from the pit to bring us our part. And the worst thing is that a lot of people A lot of people did not bring us the part in the pit, which I couldn't believe because rock crawling is so good. But the worst thing is that they had to bring... We lost almost a gallon of power steering fluid. They had to carry a gallon jug, and nobody wanted to carry it.

[01:51:18.700] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:51:19.120] - Joel Randall

Which I don't blame them. But anyways, a crew from Mexico ended up bringing us our gallon of... A team from Mexico did, brought us our part and the gallon of oil. And so we got it back together. And karma, the way it is, a couple of the people that refuse to bring us the part, we passed them further on in the race because they should have brought us our part. And then we caught up to the people from Mexico, and they had lost their rear drive shaft, and we pulled them up five or six different hills. I can't remember. We just We kept them on the strap going up a canyon.

[01:52:03.960] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[01:52:04.660] - Joel Randall

We caught them on the bottom. I can't remember what trail it is because I'm really not that familiar with the with the KOH, but we drug them up. And and drug them up more than one spot, the spot they were hooked on. Then we didn't stop. They had no opportunity to take the strap off because we didn't stop. Then when we got to the top of the hill, we unhooked. I think we ended up in sixth or seventh place after all of the changes. I think they had us at eighth, and then they changed us up to sixth or seventh for the whole race. But it was just those kids were so much fun. That twisted group affected... They had such an impact on the sport, too. They built so many cars for other people other than themselves. And then what they did, and Tracy and them did. And I mean, they really deserve a lot of credit for our sport going the way it did.

[01:53:02.680] - Big Rich Klein

And what they did is they created... Jason created a chassis design that has been copied over and over and over for years. And I mean, there's not a... I mean, you can look at so many cars that are being produced now, and seeing those traits that Jason put into those cars.

[01:53:26.880] - Joel Randall

Yeah. And during the events, He brought cars that had $5,000 worth of airbrushing specialties on them.

[01:53:37.210] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah. The painting was incredible that he did.

[01:53:40.360] - Joel Randall

They were pieces of art that Tracy would just take out and demolish. I would be so upset. He'd be like, the most beautiful car I've ever seen. I mean, this is car show quality paint jobs. If you look at them from one direction, it looks like one thing. You look at it from another and you see, I don't know, Brittany Spears or something. It was just like, it was unbelievable. And yeah, the craftsmanship. Like I said, Jay, he stopped by my farm here a couple of years ago with his wife, and they're just wonderful people. But he is somebody that you need to go and interview.

[01:54:22.720] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, he has said that he will do an interview with me if I come up and visit him. And Yes. The last time I visited him was I was not doing the podcast at that time. I need to get up there.

[01:54:39.580] - Joel Randall

Absolutely. You do. Yeah. He's definitely one of the ones that He was underappreciated the whole time for the whole deal. That King of the Hammers race that I'm talking about that I helped him with, that pretty much blew up the company. Josham and Brian both left after that. They quit competing and doing stuff. They put so much into that race. I'm not saying it blew them up, but it dissolved after that. I don't know the circumstances exactly, but I know that they divided up. George Wadeson, he He did so much to hold that team together and to help them develop into the... Because they were pretty skateboardish when they started.

[01:55:45.560] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I would call them raw.

[01:55:47.400] - Joel Randall

Yeah, they were definitely raw. And they had their styles, and he brought them. But I'll tell you, without these characters and those styles, you just wouldn't have the sport that we built up to.

[01:56:00.840] - Big Rich Klein

True.

[01:56:02.120] - Joel Randall

And like I said, I can't thank you enough for keeping our sport alive. And these new kids, they're just as amazing. I helped Jeff Wagner racing the King of the Hammers now. And I actually rode with him in 2003. But we had a little problem. We had a couple of problems, and we didn't do it. We finished the race, but we came in, I think, 19th or 20th or something like that. In '23. What?

[01:56:33.740] - Big Rich Klein

In 2023?

[01:56:35.640] - Joel Randall

Yeah, 2023. I thought you said we got 23rd place. I thought you knew what place we got. No, no, no. Okay. Yeah, we may have been 23rd, but yeah, it was in '23. And then I went in to help last year, and I'm planning on helping this year, too. So I'm still involved a little bit, but just from the sidelines. And I don't want to ride in the race again. I'm not fast enough to winch and to get in and out of those cars with all that safety equipment that we should have been wearing and using the whole time. It just takes it out. I mean, you're winded by the time you get out. Plus your adrenaline is so high. Yeah. Oh, and getting out in the cars, he races one of those Broncos, Jeff does. And it's so tight getting in and out. I don't know. I would love to do it more, but I I don't think I'm the one that you want in there if you're going to win. I'm a little bit too old for that.

[01:57:35.020] - Big Rich Klein

I get it.

[01:57:36.360] - Joel Randall

We'll see. But yeah, I'm still passionate, and I can't thank you enough and your son for keeping our sport alive and pushing it because I know you guys had trouble during COVID and afterwards. And I see it's on a rebound, because I did watch an event out there at King of the Hammers last year.

[01:57:55.640] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:57:56.480] - Joel Randall

Yeah. And to see what those kids are doing. I mean, they're falling off of some big rocks and the portal cars. They're amazing. And the vision that they have out of them, it's just like the visibility is unbelievable. It's gone to a completely new level, but it's almost a spec class from what I saw. Every car, you couldn't tell them apart.

[01:58:19.120] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it's gotten to be just about that. I mean, there are three or four chassis builders, but a majority of them are still, Jessie Haynes' FAB. But the chassis builders, they're very similar. Maybe not exactly, but they're very similar and have a lot of the same traits and everything with the portals and and rear engine and just the visibility is just phenomenal. It's pretty crazy.

[01:58:55.280] - Joel Randall

Yeah, but they're very, from what I saw At that event, they're very good drivers.

[01:59:03.000] - Big Rich Klein

Yes.

[01:59:03.820] - Joel Randall

Very good.

[01:59:04.720] - Big Rich Klein

And some of the young kids, the young kids coming up, the Brazzanini and Brazzanini and Dickey, and those The kids are just phenomenal. But they've been around it for so long that it's just second nature to them, too.

[01:59:23.320] - Joel Randall

Yeah. And as anybody knows, when you become one with your car at such a young age, like Jason and Tracy and John Williams and the levels and all that, they got into this. I was already an old man when we started this stuff. But to get started at a younger age and do it for as long as a lot of them have been doing it with their parents and whatever these young kids you're talking about. But even the kids at the beginning of our era, by the end, they're... Like watching Jason Poly is still one of the funnest things for me to do, is to watch that kid figure out his way up a hill. Because he's methodical. He's way closer to the type of driver that I am. I always thought that him and I, if we would just compete, would be just awesome. Because we're both at the same. We want to make this look graceful. We want to dance with the rocks. Right.

[02:00:38.620] - Big Rich Klein

So what would your advice be to somebody listening to this that has never competed but wants to?

[02:00:51.680] - Joel Randall

Well, if you even are thinking about it, you obviously already have a passion for it, because if you're going to take it to the competing level, you should absolutely try and follow through on it. I mean, it's very rewarding. You're going to be around great people. If the parents are contemplating whether or not bringing their kids into it, you have to go back to what I said earlier about kids being hands-on, figuring out how to get out of situations, and just using their minds and their skills to do things. You can't ask for a better sport. I would definitely encourage anybody that wanted to try, no matter what age. But I know now it's a a lot of... If the younger kids are, which is awesome, that younger kids are getting started in it. And if you're a parent that's lucky enough to have a kid that's passionate about this, you should definitely back them and help them in whatever you can to help them do what they love, no matter what it is, rock tralling, motortross, downhill racing, whatever it is.

[02:02:10.940] - Big Rich Klein

Give them the opportunity.

[02:02:12.780] - Joel Randall

Exactly. And I know a lot of the guys that we wheeled with, like Lance Clifford, his son now is a downhill bike racer. And I guess Lance is doing it, too. I mean, you just have to do wherever your kid's passions go, follow them and help them. There you go. That would be my advice is if your passions are leading you someplace, you better follow through with it because you're going to regret it if you don't.

[02:02:44.280] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect.

[02:02:44.900] - Joel Randall

For sure. For sure.

[02:02:46.480] - Big Rich Klein

What a great segue. Joel, I want to say thank you so much for all the time that you spent not only competing and helping move the sport forward, But just the research you did for this interview and the interview itself. I know it's long, but so detailed and so much passion in it. I want to thank you for that.

[02:03:16.820] - Joel Randall

Well, you're welcome. Like I said, when I got started, you asked me to do this, I just got started. Well, I'll look through a couple of pictures. And of course, the way I do things, it exploded, and I tried to look into everything, which I couldn't because I don't have it. But I talked to so many people that I hadn't talked to in a while, and I texted with Jason because he won't talk on the phone because he doesn't have a signal, and he He's always been a little bit particular about... He doesn't really like socializing. I should have probably called Tracy. It would have been fun. I might have had more stories if I would if I would have called him. But all, everybody. And I know if I didn't mention you, I'd probably still look up to you, respect you, and love you. Because if you were in our sport, that's how I felt about you. So. Awesome. You bet.

[02:04:18.240] - Big Rich Klein

Well, Joel, thank you so much. And yeah, it's been great.

[02:04:23.740] - Joel Randall

I'm sorry it went so long, Rich. I warned you at the beginning, though.

[02:04:26.710] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, that's okay. It's no warning needed. Good. I mean, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Thank you. All right. Okay. Talk to you later. Yeah.

[02:04:35.980] - Joel Randall

Bye.

[02:04:37.200] - Big Rich Klein

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.