Episode 1017 – Interview Big Rich
Big Rich Klein
Wheeling since 82’, decide to make off-roading my life in 2000 by starting CalROCS, name change in 2005 to werock. 4low magazine owner since 2016, podcaster since 2020. Joined the Off Road Motorsports Hall of Fame Board of Directors in 2023 and the Rubicon Trail Foundation Board of directors in March of 2024
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I’m Tony and welcome to the Jeep Talk Show. The talk show where we talk about all things Jeep, from trail riding to overlanding and everything in between. Every Friday we have an interview with a new and exciting guest. Sometimes they have products that you need for your Jeep. Sometimes they have a great story to share. So sit back, grab a cold one and get ready for another great guest right here on the Jeep Talk Show. Are you ready? It’s time for the Jeep Talk Show with hosts Tony, Josh, Wendy and Chuck.
You know, I love doing interviews. I get to meet new people and talk about Jeep products or Jeep stories. It’s not always about hardware. Sometimes it’s about publications, shows, magazines and podcasts. You know, I always learn something new. Interacting with the Jeep community is the best part of doing this show. That means interacting with you, the listener. We try to make it easy for you to get in touch with us. Just go to jeeptalkshow.com slash contact and you’ll see how you can email, call us, voicemail us or join us in our round table episode recording every Tuesday at 7.30 PM central time. You know, if you don’t want to do any of those, that’s fine but do make sure that you check out our Discord server. You will really like that. And you can communicate with many of the JTS team and listeners there. Again, jeeptalkshow.com slash contact join the Jeep talk show community today.
The Jeep talk show has a huge back catalog of great episodes. In episode 76, we interviewed a jeeper that was chased by a black helicopter. – We were coon hunting at about three o’clock in the morning and everything was pretty dead. Got on this road and we just started hauling but trying to make it to our dogs. As we’re driving along on this road and everybody in the back, he says, there’s a helicopter chasing us. Well, there was a helicopter up there but I shagged it off. I said, it’s not chasing us. He just whined around. This thing was pre-top level, maybe 300 feet behind us. I mean, it was obviously chasing us at this point. You know, we don’t know if maybe we weren’t supposed to be in there after all, you know, are we in some serious trouble? What do these guys want?
And my brother’s not scared and he floored it. He’s gonna try to outrun this year 60 black off helicopter which is not going to happen. – Head over to gtalkshow.com and listen to episode 76 to hear the final outcome. – Yeah, that was a really fun interview. And early on we were doing interviews. We just did the interview. I guess it’s kind of like the way Joe Rogan still does them where he just talks and talks and talks until the story’s done. And so I think that interview was like two hours, two and a half hours. There was a lot to it. It was very interesting. It was a lot of fun. And I specifically asked the guest to not reveal the helicopter portion of the final outcome of the helicopter thing until the very end. And it was fun. It was a good buildup and it was surprising. It really was. So try that. And also too, this is episode 1,017. So with the exception of any recent episodes or any past episodes you’ve listened to, let’s say you haven’t listened to anyone, any of them, like this is your first one. That means there is a 1,016 episodes that you can listen to in our back catalog. And actually there’s more than that because there’s some call-in, keep talking about call-in shows with me and Tammy. And there’s a couple of special episodes that we did. So there’s well over 1,000 episodes that you can go back and listen to. And I think you’ll enjoy the majority of them. (upbeat music) From around the world (upbeat music)
or from your city
and sometimes just down the street. – Howdy neighbor. – It’s the Jeep Talk Show interview.
(upbeat music) – Audio boys and girls, it’s time for another Jeep Talk Show interview. And tonight we’re gonna be talking with Rich, but I have here on my piece of paper that it says Big Rich.
Big Rich has been wheeling since 1982, decided to make off-roading his lifestyle in 2000 by starting a Cal Rock. So Cal Rocks, I’m guessing the Cal is California. Is that right, Big Rich?
– That is correct. When I moved back to California from Utah in 2000, and I knew I was gonna start a rock crawling series. So I picked the name Cal Rocks, thinking I was gonna be in California, Nevada and not expand it. And of course then in 2005, we had to change it to We Rock because we became one of only two series that were still running, one being You Rock and then they were the United. And so I figured, okay, they’re gonna unite everybody in the US. I’m gonna unite everybody in the world. So we became We Rock for world experience. – Yeah, very nice. I mean, You Rock is just, I mean, that’s a catchy one because it just sounds like You Rock, man.
So anyway, like you said, you changed the name of 2005 to We Rock, For Low Magazine owner since 2016, podcaster since 2020,
a little salute there to a fellow podcaster, joined the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame board of directors in 2023, and Rubicon Trail Foundation board of directors in March, 2024. You can find out more about all of what Big Rich does at forlowmagazine.com. Big Rich, thank you a lot for being here. I’m thinking back to that movie. I think it had Elizabeth Taylor in it and oh, I’m praying for it in the guy’s name. He was the snowman in Rudolph the reindeer, but he was known as Big Daddy. Burlai, he was known as Big Daddy in that movie and I always thought it was funny that I’ve actually got that set up on like one of our TV things as a name for me as Big Daddy. So this is pretty funny, Big Rich. Tell me about Big Rich. Was that something? I mean, are you a real tiny guy? That you know how they call people that are heavy, tiny, and the ones that are big or small, they call them large or something?
– No, it started because I’m Richard the second. – Oh, of course. – My son, when he was born, we named him the third. And when I had a landscape construction company and he’d be running around the shop, as a four or five year old, the guys in the shop would call out for me, hey, Rich, are you available? Or hey, Rich, and my son would go running. And they said, okay, you’re gonna be Little Rich.
So they started calling him Little Rich and he’s all of like almost six, four now, 220 or something like that. And so with him being called Little Rich, it morphed into me being called Big Rich. And then I grew into the name. – Well, you had to. It was just part of you just doing what you needed, you had to do to live up to the name.
– Exactly. – Oh, very, very cool. So you are a jeeper, I’m thinking.
You do have one or more jeeps. All right. – Yes. – So do you have a favorite Jeep and it doesn’t have to be a modern Jeep, it can be an older Jeep.
– The Jeep that I would love to have would be, I’d like to have another 1953 M38A1.
That’s the old CJ5 military Jeep. I had one for a while and I absolutely love that. Had an odd fire V6 Buick in it and it was all manual. There was no power steering, there was no power brakes,
no lockers, open, open. It was a fun Jeep to drive. – Would that be one that you would actually go wheel again?
– Oh, absolutely. – So roll bar, it didn’t come with a roll bar stock, right?
– It had a B-pillar hoop and then a down bar and then an angled down bar. – Okay, good. So you had something. I see those guys out there on the Moab trails with absolutely nothing, because it didn’t come with any kind of roll bar. It’s probably the military Jeep. And it’s just so funny. And sometimes I see them bailing out
whenever the thing gets wonky on them.
– I’m too old to bail out like that. – Oh, I know, a few of me both.
– With age comes cage. – So, well, there’s some people that don’t want to do that because that’s not how it came. That’s not the way it was built. So, and I certainly can… – Correct, that whole retro thing. – I certainly can believe in that. So tell us a little bit about, you started telling us a little bit about your journey into where you are now.
Let’s start with the Four Low magazine and that’s Four Low just like it reads on your shifter there, fourlowmagazine.com. Tell us about fourlowmagazine.com.
– Well, we were, it goes way back to 2002, 2003.
I was looking to start a magazine to compliment what we were doing in rock crawling because there was no extreme magazines out at the time. It was all the Peterson stuff and everything was, just trail Jeeps and chrome bumpers and things like that. And they would do, they would occasionally do a story. So I developed an idea for a magazine. I never got it started. Some guys asked me about starting a magazine. I told them here, start what I’ve put together. And they did that. It was called XOM, extreme off-road magazine. And it only did three issues. And then they had some problems. They came back later, changed the name to Crawl and then had some problems and sold it to John Herrick. And John’s done a great job with Crawl magazine, but I always wanted to have a magazine. So in 2016 or 17, somewhere in there, we found somebody on the East coast that had been a photographer that had come to our events and stuff and had an online magazine and it was for low. And he decided he was gonna go to print. We tried to convince him not to because we didn’t think he was ready, enough advertisers, that kind of thing and enough reach.
And then after a few issues of print, he put it up for sale. So we snagged it. We modified it to fit what I had looked at in the past, making it the magazine that I always wanted, but more trail than hardcore. I didn’t want it to tie in with the rock crawling, just a rock crawling magazine, because it limits the scope. So it became more of a trail enthusiast magazine. And that’s where it is today. – I don’t know how you feel about it. – For me, magazines, physical magazines, that you keep in the bathroom, so you have something to do.
Those have, for me personally, those are dead. I don’t do that anymore. I use my phone. So I was just gonna ask you if a magazine is a good idea these days. I mean, that’s just me, but I think a lot of people are like that. But this is specifically to print magazines. Some people like that feel. They like to be able to have that in their hand. I know that. But I think it’s an uphill battle these days. Have you found that you’ve had this issue? – It is.
It is on the advertising point. And I believe what that is is because of most of the companies that are out there right now in our market have marketing people that are brand new out of college. They’re young, they’re inexpensive, you might say.
And their idea, what they were trained is that digital is the only way to go. That everything has, you know, the internet is the all powerful tool. Well, I come from an age where magazines were the viable way to get your information. – Absolutely, I remember them.
I saw a lot of stuff in magazines back whenever I had my first four wheel drive. So it was wonderful.
– Right, and I still believe that to be able to research and to find stuff that you’ve always, you know, that you’ve read about, if you do that online and read an article, whether it’s news or anything else, trying to search for that, the way social media is set up and the way, you know, there’s nothing, there’s no way to search all that old heck and everything. And the magazines provide that. And there is a resurgence in the magazine industry where the younger generation, just like going back to vinyl with music, is finding out that reading a magazine where you have high quality photos, you got, it’s something that you’ll always have
is a viable product. And we are seeing that with the– – Excellent, I’m glad to hear that. That’s a good analogy about the vinyl because the kids these days are missing the hiss and all the little things, the little subtle nuances that you got with, and it was random. It wasn’t like it was on the pressing or in the recording. It wasn’t a perfect representation of the audio, but those subtle nuances give a little thing. And, you know, there’s, I mean, I don’t go around smelling magazines, but there’s a smell associated with the magazine, the print, the ink, the paper, how all that stuff binds together and becomes part of the experience. So yeah, that’d be really cool. I’d like to see magazines come back. As I was saying, whenever I first got my first four wheel drive back in 83, that was the only way you could research anything off-road other than that are getting bad advice from people you knew the head four wheel drives,
which still happens.
But yeah. – Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it’s interesting. You brought up the smell and the feel of a magazine.
We can always tell when somebody has been in the magazine industry, because they’ll pick up our magazine. The first thing they do is open it up and smell it. And they’ll go, “Oh, you use good ink. You know, you’ve got good paper.” And what they’re smelling is the difference between China ink and USC.
And there’s a distinct smell difference in the smell and the quality of the ink in the paper. We use all American products and printed here in the United States. In fact, it’s Oregon, right there, Oregon, Idaho border.
But it’s a local, the guy that owns the company is a wheeler. And, you know, we try to keep all that way. – So the Chinese magazines, does it smell more like soy sauce and flat noodles or something?
(laughing) – I don’t know. But the guys that have been in the business for a long time know. – I just think that would be funny. Oh yeah, this is a Chinese magazine, printed magazine. – Well, that’s cool. And you gotta pay a little more for that too, but you save it in shipping, I would guess.
– Correct. You save it in shipping, but it’s about the quality of product. You know, it’s about everything that made in the USA,
quality.
One thing I didn’t wanna skimp on was paper. Didn’t want it to be, you know, that really flimsy stuff that everything became with the print industry. And I think that print magazine didn’t die. I think that print magazine killed itself. And that was because of all the layers of corporate,
you know, if you look at one of the last issues of like, you know, any of the four wheel drive magazines that have disappeared, and you look on the editorial page, there’s an area there where there’s like five or six names for that actually editorial producers, you know, the writers, the editors, that kind of stuff. And then you look at three quarters or seven eighths of the page, and it’s all accountants and lawyers and presidents and vice presidents. And it’s all that those money market funds that bought all that stuff up and basically destroyed themselves because they tried to make the magazine cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to pull more pennies out of it. – Yeah, that’s a shame. Yeah, that’s a shame. – I kind of like the,
we get to interview a lot of people here at the Jeep Talk Show, and I’m very lucky and happy to be able to do that. And there’s nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with somebody that is part of a big, huge corporate environment. But I really like talking to not only the president CEO, but the owner, the guy that started it in his garage, had the idea, had that passion. And it seems like these days, so many people are selling their babies to the corporate networks. And it just doesn’t have the same feel to it, at least. And I don’t know if this is like the magazine where you can smell it and tell the difference or if it’s just in my head. But I really like it whenever I can talk to the person that’s in charge of the company, the products that are being made, the products that are being printed. So, and I think a lot of people are like that.
But yeah, I mean, you know, people gotta do what they gotta do. I spoke with a gentleman recently that had a major corporation that he sold, and he was out of it for two or three years. And then he started up another one. So I thought that was pretty cool. And I think that’s kind of the thing to me. I mean, I might think different if we ever get super successful, but I don’t ever wanna get rid of this. I’d rather put people involved in it where it still continues to be the same show that it was with this more voices running it.
– Exactly. I agree 100%. I don’t blame anybody for taking the money and selling their business.
I know a lot of guys that have come back and done, like you said, they’ve either started a very similar business once their contract was up and then have been successful at the second business. Or what they’ve done is moved on to something similar, but not quite the same that they enjoy more. So I have no problem. I think if somebody offered me enough money, who knows, I might fail. – Well, there’s a business sense to it too, because you have to think about more than just yourself, often in companies with other employees. So it’s not just an advantage to you. And damn it, you might have to just do jeeping for three years and do nothing but go around driving wherever you wanna drive while you’re getting ready for the next business.
– Well, considering I don’t have a nine to five job anywhere, I do that anyhow. – So that’s the Jeep that you wanted. I asked what your favorite Jeep was. What Jeep do you have now? And I know that’s probably plural, but so your best Jeep.
– The Jeep that I have that is my trail Jeep is a 92 XJ. – That’s great. – With 44s, I’m on 35s. And it goes everywhere I wanna go. And it embarrasses a lot of vehicles that have bigger tires and have a lot more money invested in them. – That’s really cool. You know, a lot of people, like whenever I would take my XJ, I have a 98 XJ, I own 33s, long arms, but it’s not set up like yours. But I would take that to some local get togethers and local shows and people would walk by and you go, they go, my first Jeep was an XJ. My first Jeep was an XJ. And I said, and you never should have gotten rid of it.
So the XJ. – Correct, out of the box, they were great. – The XJ has a very, they’re very well known and they were much less expensive than the Wranglers. So I think a lot of people went with them. It’s kinda like what they’re doing with the Renegade today with poor people getting the Renegades or not getting the same thing. I mean, there wasn’t much difference between the XJ and the TJ, especially drive train wise. So it was an excellent choice. – So you didn’t mention the color of your XJ. What color is it?
– It’s got, it’s primarily black. It was gray and black. It’s got some green panel. It’s got a green door that’s been spray painted over. It’s got a blue tailgate that’s been spray painted over.
Yeah, it’s not pretty. – You said the primary color was black. So I have to play this, sorry.
I’m sorry, Big Rich. That’s the wrong answer. The right answer is red. It is always red.
– Well, my 98 is red. – So, but this one is a fail. – But it’s a work in progress. – Aren’t they all? I will bait everybody to say, so you’ve done a lot to your Jeep, are you done now? Is it finished? And then some people will say, oh no, it’s never finished. And that’s how you tell a real jeeper or one that isn’t lying to themselves. – Exactly.
– There’s always modifications to be done. – Right.
Well, the 98 is at a friend’s shop right now getting new axles and changing the suspension.
So it’s getting finished. It’s gone through the engine.
JT 44’s, but going all from Ollie 35 spline. And then it’ll be four linked in the rear with a Clayton kit. And the Clayton radius arm in the front, all long arm.
It’s got an LQ4, about 390, 400 horse and a 700 R4 and an Atlas. – What ratio did you go with the Atlas?
– 3.8. – That’s what everybody was telling me to do. I had a NP 242 in my Cherokee from the factory and it kept stretching the damn chain. And after replacing the chain four or five times, I don’t know if it was that many, but it was at least three. And I would always find out right before I was going on a wheel entry up, because I would put it in four low, just four high at least to try it, to see if it was going to be jumping on the teeth. And it would. And I finally had enough of it, got an Atlas. I was thinking four one, because that’s what comes with the Rubicons. But a friend of mine said, “No, get a 3.8. That way you can stay up with everybody on the trail. You won’t have to be shifting in and out of four low to keep up with everybody on the run.”
– Right. That’s then I, and I agree. It depends, totally.
You got to look at the whole picture when you build something like that. Axle ratios, the final drive train ratio compared to the size tires you have. So, I always go with the 3.8 because I’ll make the changes in the axles if I need to.
– On your XJ, did you do anything with the brakes because I noticed once I got that Atlas in there off-road, I felt like I had to use two feet on the brakes to keep it from moving when I wanted it to come to a stop.
– Well, on the black one, I have their Currie 44s under it, front and rear. And their brake kit is pretty good. But yes, it does need the,
I think it does need with the Atlas a better brake booster.
And I think that would be like the Mustang type or something like that. But I haven’t changed mine. – Well, you probably don’t have to. Well, there’s, especially if you’re out in Moab, sometimes you have a panic stop because you’re going, “Oh crap, that’s a long ways down.” And you just have to stop just to feel better. (laughs)
You may not have to stop. – I just close my eyes and keep going.
I just close my eyes and keep going. – If somebody’s riding with you, they’d like hearing that they’re not watching you so they can’t tell when your eyes are closed.
All right, well. – Oh, I take my hands off the wheel and cover my eyes. That way they know I’m doing it. – So you’re looking forward to the full self-driving that’s coming in the jeeps, right? The Tesla’s working out the first full self-driving, you’ll have the full self-rock crawling.
– Nope.
I don’t believe in any of that. I want full control. – I agree. And that’s the neat thing about the Atlas because now you have another lever. You have actually more control of what you’re going to do with that Jeep. And actually, depending on the breakage, you can actually get yourself home with a front wheel drive with an Atlas.
– Exactly. And then I do the lockout hubs in the front.
And so I can put the worn conversion on there so that I can free spin them too. – So what was the reason for that? Was that because of breakage? Because I don’t think it really does anything for you in gas mileage. And if you’re a Jeep or you’re not so concerned about gas mileage anyway.
– It was drive train drag.
I do a lot of, at the time I was doing,
with the rock crawls, the Jeep would go into the back of our semi truck and we’d get some location. And then we’d go drive for maybe a thousand, 2000 miles. And so it wasn’t just like a trail rig or just around town. I mean, we were driving it all the time. So if I could get an extra mile per gallon, but also less drive train drag, it just made the ride easier. – What do you do for lockers on the one you’re talking about where you had the wheel lockouts? – I mean, you’re not doing anything that is automatic locker. I’m sure it’s a selectable.
– Correct, I run ARBs. – I’m the same way. I’ve got a ARB in the, now I don’t have magazine money. So I just have the stock axles that came with it. (laughing) – That means you actually have money. – I’ve got some, but anyway, I’ve got a ARB in the Chrysler 8.25 rear of the XJ. And I still have the Dana 30. It’s a high opinion Dana 30, but I have a locker for it. It hasn’t been installed yet, but that’s what I got. I made the decision on ARB a long time ago. I like the idea of the ox locker with the cables because that’s a mechanical thing. And there’s, I think there’s less things that can go wrong.
And a lot of our listeners, a lot of our team members use the e-lockers, the e-lockers or the electric lockers that came with their Rubicons.
And I think that’s fine. I just, something about that, I think it’s the build or the quality of the locker. ARB has always impressed me with just strength.
– I absolutely agree.
Every once in a while you gotta replace a seal, but that’s it. – Yeah.
So now you weren’t at Moab. Do you ever go to Moab and go through the whole Easter Jeep Safari experience?
– Absolutely. Did it for years. Started going to Moab.
Had 1996, 97 around there when I was living in Utah. And then continued that after starting Cal Rocks and We Rock. And only the last couple of years have we not traveled to Moab during Easter. And this time it was, it just didn’t fall in. I was hoping to get there this year, but with everything, the way the calendar and the schedule laid out, it was just gonna be too big of a drive from Texas
to Moab back to Texas, and then back home to Northern California. – Well, I don’t know if you’re aware or not, I’m in Southeast Texas, so near Houston. So I got my wife to go with me this year for the first time. And we drove obviously from the Houston area about halfway and then stayed at a rent house or whatever our team members rented, and then made it up into Utah. And as promised, I told her, I said, “The drive is kind of boring, you know, because Texas, we know Texas. Both of us have lived here all our lives.” I said, “But once you start getting closer to, getting West Texas and certainly in New Mexico, the scenery really changes.” And then obviously we went through like the little tip, a part of Colorado to get to Utah. And you see definite changes there. And then when we got to Utah, she was just blown away. It was so much fun. My first time going to Moab in Eastern Jeep Safari was last year. So it was neat getting to see her view, what she was seeing and reacting to it, like when I saw it for the first time last year. And I was also telling her, “See, this is why you should have gone last year.” (laughs)
– Exactly. Yeah, we have always, when we were on the road in the semi-truck full-time, we lived in that for, well, from 2011 up until
a year and a half ago, we were full timing in the semi-truck slash motor home. It’s a conversion. And I mean, we have houses, but we didn’t live in any. And then we made the,
we’d go into Moab every year because we were on the road going to or from the next event. And at one time when I was running Dirt Riot, which was a series of racing, more like KOH,
King of the Hammers, we ran that for a number of years. So we were doing 22, 23 events a year. So we were constantly on the road moving. – So did you get to drive the 18 wheeler? Or was that something that you did? Or did you have to have a commercial driver?
– Oh no, it was registered as an RV. – So you definitely drove it. I think that would be fun. I think that’d be a lot of fun. Was it very much a pain in the ass, especially parking and getting around? I mean, I would think it would be pretty tough going through the drive-through at McDonald’s.
– Yeah, you don’t do that.
It was a lot of truck stops, a lot of truck stops and rest areas. – I can see that.
Even like Campgrounds of America or any of those type of RV campgrounds, you’d have to call ahead and say, “Well, I’m 75 feet long.”
And they said, “Well, can you separate? Okay, fine.” And then I paid for two spots for the tractor and the trailer. So it didn’t make much sense. – It sounds like driving the open road, it would be wonderful because, other than grade changes and stuff, I guess you had to worry about, like I saw in Moab where they tell you the grade, the percentage of the grade. So you had to really think about what you were doing in that. That wasn’t just a drive a vehicle, a normal vehicle type situation.
– The main thing we had to plan was bridge heights. – Oh, yes. – We were under 13, we were under 13.6, but there’s a couple of places that we would have to go around because their bridges were only at like 13 foot and we were 13 too. So that was a bigger issue. Running it as a trailer and the semi truck,
everything was rated for 80,000 pounds, all the brakes and the engine and the compression brake.
But we only ran, the heaviest we ever ran it and weighed it was at 52,000 pounds. So going downhill or pulling grades going up, we’re really never an issue. I could smoke everybody all the other semi trucks going uphill. And then I’d use the jake break going downhill because I wanted to conserve my brakes. So it was never really an issue. The only place I didn’t like going down was Parley’s grade going down into Salt Lake City. – And this is primarily because you weren’t towing a 80,000 pound load or anything. So you had a lot of power because you didn’t have all that weight. Yeah, I think that would be an interesting thing to do. I guess that would get you used to driving around a long time, but our ride was 19 hours both ways. So that’s a long ways. And that’s the furthest I’ve ever driven last year when I went to Moab for the first time. That was the furthest I’ve ever driven anywhere. I’ve been further in a plane, but not in a vehicle. And you miss so much in a plane.
– You do?
One thing living on the road in like a semi truck is visiting national parks or something like that, or sightseeing became an issue. So we’d find that truck stop that we could pull into, unload the Jeep and then go do a national park or go do the scenic drive that we wanted to do. You were not taking a semi truck to the, to like Zion, no way. – Very true. That sounds like a really interesting time. How long did you do this?
Oh my goodness.
– 12, 13 years, full time. – I bet you that was. – I have a very understanding why. – Well, yeah, but I mean, but she got to see a lot of things that other people wouldn’t see.
I mean, there’s gotta be, there’s gotta be. – Absolutely, and living a lifestyle. – That’s gotta be a plus. I mean, I know everything can get boring, but I would think that would be a very exciting thing to do.
– You know, it never really was boring. Maybe the first day of a long day, a cross country or something to get to the next event site would be the boring day. And then by the third day, we’d come up with the greatest ideas and laugh our butts off over the stupidest things.
– Probably needed a carbon monoxide detector in the cab. That might’ve been an indicator.
So I know that, I know this doesn’t have anything to do with the Four Low magazine, the reason why you’re here, but tell folks where you, what you’re in right now. Cause I thought that was cool.
– I am in the state of Texas in a place called Port Aransas, which is the opening to the Corpus Christi Bay. And we are sitting on our 48 foot Chris Craft Catalina and enjoying our vacation, even though it’s a little overcast and the wind is blowing today, you know, we can go drive on Audre Island National Seashore like we did yesterday and, you know, do 120 miles of Sandy Beach driving down and back, you know, 60 miles down and back. We only went to 45 yesterday, barbecued, sat back and had a good time and, you know, timed it with the tides. And it’s just a nice little resort community that it’s not like South Padre Island where everybody comes to total party and get crazy. This is more of a family place. So it’s a nice place to be. – It sounds like a wonderful way to live.
I always want to call you rich, but I’ll call you big rich. I think it sounds like a wonderful way to live big rich, but I want to know how you keep the depression from creeping in and living a life like this.
– I’ll tell you what. – It’s a trick question, Rich. – There is a lot less depression this way than there is living in a house. And this way you don’t have to mow the grass either, right?
– Correct, correct. You know, it just, yeah, no grass to mow. I get to watch dolphins and turtles. – So getting, yeah. – And I like turtles. – Turtle soup is wonderful.
So now Four Little Magazines is only part of the story. What else you got your hands in?
– Doing the podcast. – Oh yeah, that’s right. Tell us about the podcast. I forgot about that. Tell us what you do on the podcast. It’s a cooking podcast, right? – It’s called Congress, yeah, cooking, that’s it. Cooking with history.
Actually, it’s a four wheel drive, off-road history podcast. It’s all interview.
It’s get to know the people that live the lifestyle of off-road and made history. I do, I’m in the process of trying to get all of the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees interviewed. Those that have passed away, I interview their family members or friends to get the information about them. And then we just starting on our, well, my next podcast will be starting in my fifth year. So we’re at 200 and some odd podcasts once a week, never taking a break.
Just me and a guest on each episode. And it’s, I’ve really enjoyed it. My wife tried to get me to start it years ago. And during COVID, we were sitting in our hotel in Mason, Texas, because we had to cancel an event or postpone an event because, you know, March, COVID came along and everybody shut down.
So we sat there and about four days, five days into sitting in a hotel room, even though it’s our hotel and it’s a nice hotel, and we got to use all the rooms because we had no guests.
We were, I was poured out of my mind. And so I asked her, I said, okay, talk to me about this podcast thing you want me to do.
So I called my first person that I wanted to interview. I did the interview and I was hooked.
And I just love doing them. Get to find out more about my friends than I ever knew. – Oh yeah, because as the host, you need to think of questions and there’s no telling what kind of question you might come up with during the course of the conversation. And it may be something that you wouldn’t normally ask if you weren’t trying to produce something for an audience. And yeah, it very well has worked out that way for us as well. And it’s a lot of fun. It’s really fun getting to know people. And the other cool thing is, is that you find that G passion in these folks that no matter how successful or unsuccessful they are, they’re all the same. They’re G people and they have the same passions and goals as all the rest of us. And I think that is the neatest thing that I have found. I dropped this name as often as I can, but back in 2022, we were lucky enough to get, and I’m brain farting. God, give me a second.
Yeah, I’ve said that name so many times at Moab this year. The guy that was in charge of Jeep North America. Also a name of a singer.
– No clue. (laughs) – I have to, yeah. – Is it a G corporation?
– I am out of it. I actually been sleeping a lot since that long drive back up here. All right, little pause and then little pause. Yeah, exactly. Little pause and then we’ll continue.
I like to drop this name as often as I can, whether it’s in person or on podcast. So forgive me on this, Rich. But we had Jim Morrison, VP of Jeep North America, was our first Jeep employee I had to have on the show. And the great thing about getting to talk to Jim was that he is 100% a jeeper. And just as a Jeep owner and a Jeep fanatic, it made me feel wonderful that the man in charge of Jeep North America that was making a lot of decisions that directly affect me was a jeeper. And it was really fun to find that out. And it’s repeated several times with the people that I’ve spoke with, including you.
– Right. One of the things that I like to do is,
and I introduce, I mean, I interview a lot of people in the industry, whether they’re media, drivers, racers,
rock crawlers, company owners, people that work for different companies. And what I try to do is find out why and how they became into off-road and doing that they’re in the industry. And I do that so that enthusiasts that are just, guys out there just have a Jeep for a couple of years or been maybe in the Jeep for 30 years, but maybe they don’t like the job that they’re doing. They don’t like going that nine to five job and they want a lifestyle in off-road.
It gives those people the opportunity to see that everybody that is in the industry started off somewhere and made that decision to make off-roading a lifestyle change.
And it’s all about the passion of doing it and then finding out where you can fit within the industry and within the market. And that’s, I mean, that’s what I did. I got tired of working for corporate America and gave the pirate flip off and walked away from a fairly lucrative job and just started putting on events because I knew that I was sick and tired of what I was doing. I didn’t like myself, I didn’t like anybody.
So I just, I got into off-road because that’s what I love. – Exactly. I really liked the Steve Power Tank story where he literally just made something for himself. And then people were saying, hey, could you make me one? (laughing) And then the, the red. – I was once, guys. – Yeah, Steve’s a great guy. – Yeah, I was one of those guys in the early days. – Yeah, I got to see him at Moab this year. It was fun. It’s always fun talking to Steve, nice guy. But the, I love those stories, but it’s not something that’s easy to do. I mean, maybe it was easy for you, but there’s a lot of learning. There’s a big learning curve to doing this. And it’s a big, a huge risk where working for the companies is less of a risk, at least short-term, because I think that you’re only there for as long as they want to, or until there’s a buyout and they want to change people out or whatever. So there’s no, there’s no security in that. And frankly, I’d rather have the, rather have the security of a bunch of employers,
in other words, like listeners, than one customer, which is the, my employer.
– Well, I agree, absolutely. I looked at it as, when I started the rock crawling,
my customers were the drivers,
the property owners, and the spectators. So I built my business on kind of a triangle
with the center being the spectator, the people that come out, buy the tickets to watch what we’re doing, manufacturers on one corner,
drivers on another corner, and myself on the other.
And the pyramid, kind of like a pyramid, and what’s in the pyramid is the spectator. So everything had to focus on all of those four,
had to focus on us, but that was the plan on how to,
our focus was how to take care of our sponsors or marketing partners, and how to take care of the drivers. Because if I did a good competition, and did a good job of advertising for my marketing partners, the spectators were gonna all come anyway.
And so that’s how we’ve stayed in business since 2000.
And all the other ad-dev promoters that we’re doing, the extreme rock crawling have gone by the wayside. – So if you don’t mind sharing, and if you do, the answers are always no or pass. What is the difficulty though, because I would think that with spectators, there’s a certain aspect of issues that could happen, like people drinking too much, or going places where they shouldn’t go, so on and so forth. What difficulties do you have? Because I’m sure it’s not all a butterflies and paradise.
– It’s not, but over the years, we’ve created a family atmosphere. In the early days, we had people that would drink too much, and we would escort them off the property. We used private lands, we don’t use public lands, except for two instances.
Well, three instances, I guess. But there’s one county, there’s one BLM, now there’s two BLM if we use it every year. But the rest are all private property. So I have complete control over the gate, and where people can go and what they can do.
The keeping people off the courses is easy, because we use delineators to separate the spectator area from the competition area. And then we have volunteer staff as judges, and the drivers also keep track to make sure people aren’t where they’re supposed to go.
When we were doing the racing, that was a little more difficult, but we would create a spectator area near the parking area, and then not allow the spectators access to the racetrack by roping it off and marking it with signage. Every once in a while, we’d get somebody that just thought they were smarter than us and could do anything they want. And you’d have to ask what those people are. – Well, I’m thinking influencers. I’m thinking influencers, the ones that have the camera up and they wanna be in where nobody else is. And getting into some dangerous situations. Everybody wants to be on the YouTube or podcasting. I just wanna always say, they’ll say, “Oh, you got a podcast or I’ve got a podcast.” I say, “Yeah, everybody’s got a podcast.”
That’s what we try to call ours a show to make a difference.
– Yeah, well, everybody has a podcast for at least the first seven, right? – So true. – And then typically they fall off. – Podplay, absolutely. – Exactly. – But here’s my thing on influencers.
Are you really an industry influencer if you have to tell everybody you’re an influencer?
(laughing) – Yeah, that was really cool. – You’ll never see on anything that I post that I’m an influencer. Do I influence the off-road industry in any way? I don’t know.
Do I encourage people to go out and have fun with it? Yes.
Do I encourage people to enjoy life? Yes.
That’s my influence is what I can do to do that. Am I out there beating the drum for companies that support us? Yes. But I don’t tell people directly that I’m an influencer. And you’ll never hear me use that term describing myself. – So I think that that’s a really good point. I don’t know that we do any influencing, but we did influence some people for EJS this year.
I was amazed and I’m bragging because this isn’t any kind of draw for the show, but I’m just amazed that this happened. We had 18 people show up at Moab EJS this year. And they were all either Jeep Talk Show team members or listeners. And it wasn’t like, you know, we’re paying anybody to come out there. They just came and hung with us. So we had a campfire at one of the team members’ houses and it was just so neat. So we have influenced people by having our show just so they’ll come and be at a place that we’re at. It wasn’t any kind of event for us or anything. And that’s the kind of influencer I wanna be. And it sounds like that’s what you’re talking about or you’re influencing people to have fun, to be part of that Jeep brethren type thing. And I think that’s a wonderful thing to do. So if we’re never any more successful than we are now, I’m happy with that because we have influenced people to meet each other, to go on wheeling events with each other that wasn’t a Jeep Talk Show thing that they never would have known about except because of the Jeep Talk Show. So it’s a wonderful place to be in.
– I agree 100%. – Rich, you know, the kids love the social media these days, the influencers and so on and so forth. Where can we find For Low Magazine or anything else you got going on on the social media?
– They’re on Instagram. It’s For Low Magazine.
On Facebook, it’s For Low Magazine. We have pages on both of those. The podcast, same thing.
The We Rock events, same thing as well. We Rock Live on Facebook and on Instagram.
And then of course all of our own websites.
And it’s a great lifestyle. I can’t imagine doing anything else. One thing I’d like to bring up is the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame.
I got involved with this years ago
it first came to my knowledge when Rod Hall,
the historic racer that raced in all of the first 50
Baja 1000s approached me and asked me to be part of the Hall of Fame when he had acquired it and was looking to expand it and make it into something truly worthwhile. And I passed up the opportunity
and have kicked myself in the butt for years
because of passing up that opportunity.
I got the opportunity last year, last March to join the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame board of directors again. I jumped at it and it’s something that’s so worthwhile to me that I’m willing to donate hours and hours and hours every week to making sure that the Hall of Fame for Off-Road, which includes not only desert racing but includes the four wheel drive industry. It includes rally, it includes motorcycles, it includes media, it includes the advocates, business owners, clubs, everything that has to do with Off-Road, whether it’s four wheel drive or two wheel drive is in the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame. And we induct individuals every year that have had an impact in the community, whether they’re racers or like I said, advocates for land use, business owners, media people. And we have 128 inductees so far and we’re gonna probably bring in another seven to nine this year, but it’s a way to preserve history and we’re preserving the digital history, we’re preserving the old print history. We took all of the magazines or the newspapers that used to go out by Gene Calvin, Dusty Times, and we had them all digitized. So they’re all available on the OrmHoff website, that’s the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame, ormhoff.org. And we have memberships available for individuals and clubs and organizations and then marketing opportunities for sponsors, business companies to come in and help us support that legacy.
Because the legends of Off-Road, the people that do, that made this industry what it is, are we’re old enough and long enough in the tooth now where we’re losing a lot of those people that made that history. And the only way that people know about that is by recording it and keeping it alive. And that’s what we do at OrmHoff, at the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame. – Very nice, that’s great. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Greg Henderson, unofficial use only or not, but I was talking to Greg, he’s kind of a big friend of the show, and I was talking to him last year at SEMA first time meeting him in person. And he was saying, “Oh, there’s Chris Collard over there, “you wanna meet him?” And I said, “Okay, I don’t know who he is.” And he says, “He’s a big deal in the industry. “How do you have a Jeep talk show?” And you don’t know about this guy. I said, “I don’t know, Greg, I just know what I know.” So I got to go over there and meet Chris Collard, actually a wheeled with him and the gone jeeping crew this year at EJS. Rick Peyway was there, and of course Greg was there. And one of our co-host Chuck was there, so we got to go up to a uranium mine. I still don’t know where the hell we went because Moab still confuses me, but it was really fun. It was also fun watching Greg dig around for a petrified wood, and he threw up a big rock, and he goes, “That’s uranium.” And I didn’t catch it.
The question was, “How do you know it’s uranium?” It’s real heavy.
Somebody was holding it, and I would go, “Man, this is a bad week to not wear my lead underwear.” So it was, but it was a lot of fun. But yeah, so I was informed that Chris Collard, I haven’t checked this out. I mean, I don’t check anybody’s resume, but he was part of the Hall of Fame thing you’re talking about. So I need you to go over there and look and see all the famous people I know.
(laughs) – Exactly.
Peyway is an off-road motorsports Hall of Fame inductee, so is Chris Collard. – Well, good, Greg wasn’t lying to me. Greg wasn’t lying to me. Good, he wasn’t lying to me. (laughs) – No, no.
Lance Clifford, who started Pirate 4×4 back in the day, is there.
Brad Lovell, Shannon Campbell, guys that have cut their teeth racing, but before that were always, you know, enthusiastic in off-road. So it’s people that have changed their lifestyle or created a lifestyle in off-road that have become part of the off-road motorsports Hall of Fame. Guys like Dell Albright. – Dell’s been on the show. We need to get back. – You know, there’s a ton of advocates on there and we have a whole bunch of people that have made history. You know, you got John Curry that eventually will probably get into the Hall of Fame. – If he plays his car, I think it’s what you’re saying. – Guys like Grant Pratt that started ARCA.
(laughs)
You know, it’s all about,
you know, it’s all about creating something that’s worthwhile to memorize, you know, to always have their recorded so people don’t forget what came before us. – So let me ask you this. Let me ask you this real quick here before we wrap up because we’re going long. But what would it be worth
if somebody had a video of Rick Payway high centering on flat ground?
And having to be, oh, you’ll like this. And having to be towed off the part where he was hung up by an XJ.
(laughs) – I hate to say it. It would probably be only worth a beer because if anybody has spent any time around Rick Payway on any trail or any dirt road, you’re gonna see something like that happen. – But I thought it was hilarious. I literally got a video of it. And I think I told Chris what happened and I got a video on it. He goes, yeah, Rick wouldn’t like that.
(laughs) Nobody would. That’s the whole point of recording it.
I’m sorry, I haven’t been calling you Big Rich. – Oh, Rick’s a great guy. – They all are. And I think that, you know, that’s part of the jeeping thing too, having to take shit from everybody else. – So, Big Rich, thank you so much for being here. I can tell that we’ve only just scratched the surface. I probably talked too much. I’ve learned as a podcaster, you know this, you have to be on point because you don’t want dead air. And sometimes that keeps people from being able to tell their story. So I think that’s what we did here tonight. I get the feeling there’s a lot more that, I could probably just sit back and sip on my drink here and listen to you talk. So we’ll have to get you back on.
– Sounds good to me. I’m always interested in talking. – Well, it’s not like you have to plan it around your corporate job.
I’m sure you have lots of spurts of free time. Oh, real quick. So you’re still doing the events, correct?
And where, you mentioned this earlier. – I do have a partner.
I said, I do have a partner in the events. So I don’t have to go to all of the events anymore. But so that frees up a little more time to be on the board of directors and do some of the other things. – So how would people find out about the events? They wanna look and see if there’s something close to them or something they’re really interested in going to.
– It’s werocklive.com or on Facebook or Instagram. – And you don’t do anything on YouTube. You don’t live this stuff. You don’t post it up later where people could go and look at it. – There’s, there are, we do have a Facebook page that, excuse me, we do have a YouTube page, which is We Rock Events. And there’s a lot of video there available.
Our Facebook page, we do live coverage at the events on We Rock, on the We Rock Events page on Facebook and now doing it on Facebook as well. So we’ve been able to integrate that.
And then it’s Four Lows, same thing.
The podcast, it’s all out there. Conversations of Big Rich, Four Lows Magazine. – So the videos, I think I like the videos because people can get a feel of what the events are like. And then they can say, oh, this is really something I’d be interested in going to, which is probably the case, but sometimes people need, sometimes they need evidence to show the spouse too. We need to go do this. Look at this, look at this, look at this. All right, we’re a big rich. – Well, and video only shows a little bit of what it represents. You know what I mean? When you see it live for the first time, if you’re blown away watching a video, you’ll be totally blown away watching it first. – It’s just like going to Utah, to Moab. You can see pictures all your life and it pales in comparison to actually being there. Or trying to get a good wheeling video. You never get the sense of how deep that thing was or how about it was unless you roll over.
Big Rich, thank you a lot for being with us tonight. It was great talking to you. And again, we’ll have to get you back on. Oh, and let me mention this to you real quick. If you have the time, we have every Tuesday night at 7.30 PM, we record our round table episode, which is published on Wednesday. So you and anybody listening to this is more than welcome to join us in our Zoom meeting and you can be part of the show.
But mainly you can have fun talking to all the other Jeepers that are there. So you are certainly invited to that and you might have fun doing that. But it’s just a Zoom meeting. You go to gpalkshow.com slash contact and you will find all the ways to contact us, including on how to get on our Zoom meeting Tuesday night at 7.30. And again, that episode is published every Wednesday. Rich, thank you very much. Hope to see you on our Zoom call. Hey, thanks again to Big Rich of Four Low Magazine. You visit their website right now, fourlowmagazine.com. Isn’t that cool that you can still get a magazine printed on paper?
I mean, there’s probably some of you out there that probably still have magazine subscriptions that comes to you in the mail and you get really excited about it and you open it up and look and thumb through the pages. Does anybody still dog-ear pages? So you can go back and find what you’re looking for later. Yeah, magazines were the way to go for a long time, but it is nice having the convenience of a phone or a tablet to look at magazines. And of course you can get it this as soon as they’re published. So yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Actually, I need to go over to Four Low Magazine and see if you can do both, because that’d be pretty cool too, to have the paper one.
And in those emergencies, I’m not saying this about Four Low Magazine, they’re just magazines in general, because we all keep them in the toilet. So those toilet paper emergencies, they come in handy.
Sorry, Big Rich, I’m not saying Four Low Magazine is toilet paper, I’m just saying. When you’re in an emergency situation, you gotta do things you wouldn’t normally do.
Just remember paper cuts. Anyway, coming up next week, Sam from Off-Road Air Buddy, and you can check him out at OffroadAirBuddy.com. Think of half price, but not half quality power tanks.
Okay, so coming up this on Sunday, April 21st, I started to say this, but it’s not this week. Coming up on Sunday, dammit, I’m gonna get it right eventually, April 21st, the Jeep Talk Show will be at Katie Crossings Ice House for the monthly Jeep Meets event. It is from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Come see me and the Jeep Tops on the 2021 Jeep Talk Show Gladiator. Also Greg from Underground Graphics, Todd from OffRoading101.com, and Clint from Texas Four Wheel Drive will be there. And you can ask them questions about off-roading classes. You can ask Greg about graphics for your Jeep, stickers for your Jeep, maybe for your club, maybe for an event that you’re doing. And you can talk to Clint about the Texas Four Wheel Drive community, and also to the various government-run parks in Texas. Barnwell, I’ve been to Barnwell, Barnwell is fine.
So the fourth annual Jeep Talk Show Off-Road Texas event is coming up on June the 8th, but wait, there’s more.
I’ve been wanting to work that out. In addition to the June 8th event, there will be a wheeling with Bill and John, at least Bill and John, at the park, Hidden Falls Adventure Park on Thursday the 6th, a local area venture ride on the 7th, that they will, I think it will culminate, or at least for lunch, be a Texas barbecue restaurant. And I gotta say, if you’re thinking the Jeep Talk Show is paying for you, we ain’t.
So everybody buys their own, and of course that means if you don’t wanna go to the barbecue, you don’t got that. But that’s one of the destinations that Bill and John have in mind.
So we’re basically, oh, and also too, if you wanna do wheeling on Sunday, you just talk to the people while you’re the Jeep Talk Show listeners, team members, whatever, that are there on Saturday and see if anybody’s staying for Sunday, and you may be able to set up a nice run on Sunday, maybe Sunday morning. But that’s, and the reason why I’m mentioning this is, is that we have a lot of people coming in, and this surprised me every year, we have a lot of people coming in from out of state. And if you’re driving 12, 15, 20 hours, to come to the Jeep Talk Show event, which we really appreciate, it’s an honor to have you come down, it’s also fun to be able to meet you guys.
It is a little rough to come down for a one day event, and then either find something to do or immediately drive back. So we’re trying to extend this event into multiple days. Officially, it’s gonna be on June the 8th, Saturday, but we’re trying to have things on the 6th, the 7th, the 8th, and the 9th. So you can make it a nearly a week long or a work week long event.
And again, it gives you more things to do, more time to interface with the Jeep Talk Show folks, and also to take a little break before you have to make that long drive back.
So this is truly a Jeep Talk Show Texas adventure, expanded significantly from the prior years. Big thanks to Bill and John for all their hard work this year and in the past years.
Well, that’s a wrap for today’s episode, the Jeep Talk Show. I wanna give a big thank you to our special guests for joining us today and sharing their knowledge and experience with the Jeep community. Thanks again to G-tops for sponsoring this episode of the Jeep Talk Show. You can find out more about the G-tops at gtops.com, J-E-E-T-O-P-S.com. Support the companies that support the show you love, the Jeep Talk Show. So several EJS attendees had a look at these G-tops. We had on the 2021 Jeep Talk Show Gladiator and loved them. Big thanks to Chris for sending us the loaners and having those available to us, both me and my wife, to be able to look up while we were in Moab. And if you’ve ever been to Moab, you know there’s lots of things to look up to see.
It’s the rock formations are very tall and this just gave an extra dimension. Yeah, absolutely. You can see the same thing with the top off, but if it’s snowing, which it snowed on us a couple of times, or if it’s hot or if it’s too windy and dusty, it’s kind of nice being able to just roll up the window and not have to scramble to get the free top to put it back on. Or especially if you’re doorless and topless, you’re gonna be, gosh, that’s a good reason to wear a face mask because it gets really dusty. And it gets pretty windy there at Moab as well. So big thanks to G-tops. Check them out, gtops.com.
Oh, and I know several people have been concerned
about the heat coming in from the G-tops. And I didn’t notice anything. Now it was in the 60s, maybe as high as 70 at Moab during the day, but, and maybe they had something to do with it, but neither I or my wife, and I checked with her yesterday about it, noticed any additional heating from the sun beaming through the G-tops. We did notice the views though, as mentioned. Hey, we love hearing from you, our listener. Reach out to us via email, phone, and social media. We use your voicemails on the show. Until next time, keep on jeeping and we’ll see you on the trails. Oh, and don’t forget, Fridays are red. Remember everyone deployed.
– [Announcer] Broadcasting Sense 2010.
– You’re my friend, you’re my new friend. (laughs)