Tyler’s Ultimate Off-Road Secrets MORRFlate, Custom 4Runner and Rubicon Adventures!

Join us on the Jeep Talk Show as we sit down with Tyler, a lifelong off-roader and innovator behind MORRFlate! 🚙💨 From rock crawling the Rubicon to building a custom Toyota 4Runner with Ford and Toyota axles, Tyler shares his passion for the outdoors and off-road adventures. 🔥 Highlights: Tyler’s journey from a kid under a Jeep to conquering iconic trails like Johnson Valley and Fordyce. The story of MORRFlate: How a need for faster tire inflation/deflation led to a game-changing product line, including compressors, tire repair solutions, and automation systems. Deep dive into his custom 4Runner build, featuring snow tracks, custom axles, and a comfy ride that handles 75 mph on the freeway and hardcore rock crawling. The challenges of off-road industry issues, like the 29 Palms military encroachment on Johnson Valley and its impact on King of the Hammers. Insider tips on tire management, business lessons, and the importance of universal, user-friendly products. 🌄 Why Watch?Get inspired by Tyler’s story of turning a garage idea into a thriving business, plus hear about the latest in off-road tech and trail advocacy. Whether you’re a Jeep enthusiast, Toyota lover, or just passionate about off-roading, this episode is packed with insights and laughs! 👉 Explore More: Visit MORRFlate.com for innovative tire inflation/deflation solutions. Check out the SnailTrail 4×4 Podcast for more off-road talk: SnailTrail4x4 on Instagram. Follow Tyler’s adventures and custom builds: 4x4ToyotaTyler on Instagram. Support trail advocacy with Blue Ribbon Coalition. 📢 Use Code JTS15 at TrailsOffRoad.com for 15% off detailed trail guides! #JeepTalkShow #OffRoading #MORRFlate #Tyler #RockCrawling #Toyota4Runner #KingOfTheHammers #TrailAdvocacy Like, Subscribe, and Hit the Bell 🔔 for more off-road adventures! Welcome to Jeep Talk Show, the ultimate podcast for Jeep enthusiasts! Join Tony, and, the crew as we dive into off-road adventures, Jeep Wrangler 392 updates, Jeep Gladiator camping, and the Jeep Cherokee relaunch. From $130K Jeep resale trends to Gladiator tent reviews, we cover Jeep modifications, off-road gear, and events like Easter Jeep Safari and Great Smoky Mountain Jeep Invasion. Get expert Jeep 4xe towing tips, lightweight truck camper insights, and off-road trail guides for Jeeps. Subscribe for weekly Jeep news, join our community at jeeptalkshow.com/discord, and hit the trail with us! Head to https://jeeptalkshow.com to explore our world of Jeep madness, subscribe, and let us make your day a little more rugged and a lot more fun. Ready to roll with us? Let’s hit the trails together! #Jeep Talk Show, #Jeep podcast, #off-road podcast, #Jeep community, #Jeep off-roading, #Jeep Wrangler, #Jeep Gladiator, #Jeep news, #Jeep modifications, #Jeep accessories, #off-road adventures, #Jeep events, #Jeep 4xe, #Wrangler 392, #Jeep camping, #Jeep trails, #Jeep Wrangler 392, #$130K Jeep resale, #Jeep infotainment bricking, #TuneOutdoor Gladiator tent, #RealTruck trail access 2025, #Jeep Gladiator camping, #lightweight truck camper, #$13K Jeep camper, #Jeep Cherokee relaunch 2025, #Great Smoky Mountain Jeep Invasion, #Easter Jeep Safari 2025, #Jeep Badge of Honor app, #women off-road Jeep podcast, #Chic Chat Jeep podcast, #Jeep off-road gear reviews, #best Jeep accessories 2025, #Jeep 4xe towing tips, #off-road trail guides for Jeeps

Hidy Ho boys and girls, it’s time for another Jeep talk show interview. And we’re going to be talking with tire Tyler, Tyler, you know,

(Explosion)

to time. I could, you seem noticeably upset.

(…)

It’s what I call that more flat. It used to be one of my pet peeves, but it’s just like so many people do it now. And I’m like, I mean, technically you’re not wrong. Our stuff does, it doesn’t flatten your tires, but it does let out of your tires too. So, you know, as long as we’re being thought of, right, that’s the main point.

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And then the very professional setup I have going here, I did not turn on my lights. So I’m just going to tell everybody when things get brighter here all this sudden, that’s because of that. Uh, so I really appreciate you filling out the, uh, the information, the intro information I used to have to look this stuff up and I didn’t always come up with the stuff that people wanted me to say. So, uh, we fortunately made it to where you, when people are shining up for the interview, they can fill out a form and put their, what they, what they like. So anyway, to that end, uh, Tyler has been rock crawling and enjoying outdoors since he was born. Literally born under a Jeep is what I’m, what I’m hearing here. Or maybe not. Toyota, Toyota, Tony. Thank you.(…) Well, you know, Jeeps are so universal. It’s that is the, that is the answer 95% of the time. Yeah.

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I’m picking a fight here. Uh, living near the Sierra Novatas, he spends lots of times on iconic trails, such as the Rubicon. Oh, and I, you know, I can’t pronounce that is what is it? Forest forest, Ford ice. Okay. Well, that makes sense. Uh, just if they had put an eye in there, I would have had a better chance. Um, uh, in his sometimes tracked custom for runner rock rock lander. What is, what does track mean? Do you mean the, like on GPS or ARP? Like I have snow tracks for the forerunner. Oh, wow. So are you locked into that on that vehicle or can you move it to another vehicle if you upgrade?(…) Um, you can move them to another vehicle. They just take wheel adapters. So I get a wheel adapters made from Bora Bora adapters. They’re kind of drop into the Reno, Nevada area. Um, and I have stupid custom axles under the forerunner. And so, uh, no such thing. No such thing.

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I was waiting till I tell you about these axles, man. They’re a mix of Toyota and Ford and custom parts. So that’s wonderful. Um, but they look at adapters. They look at you funny when you go to auto zone and you want a part for your, uh, for your axle. Oh yeah. Yeah. If I, if I go in there, like anything on that vehicle, it’s just such a mishmash of it’s wonderful though. That is really, really cool. It’s like you’re taking the best of all world. You’re MacGyvering it is what it is. So that I, that’s just amazing. How does it, has it worked out for you or is there more modifications coming? It’s working out great. It’s at a really good spot right now where it’ll drive 75 miles an hour down the freeway. It’s comfy enough to drive, you know, eight, 10 hours if you want to in it. Um, but I can go rock crawl at Johnson Valley, Moab, uh, Rubicon, Ford ice. And it, and not really worry about breaking stuff and drive it home if I want to. Um, so it’s, it’s in a really, really good spot right now. Um, the last big things I did to it was a full new, everything framed down, got replaced. Um, new suspension, new axles. I chopped off part of the frame and put a new, um, frame from firewall forward on it, um, and it’s, uh, just, it drives and wheels. Awesome. You know, upgrading this thing, this thing’s never, you’re going to be buried in this thing. I can tell. Yeah. I mean, I’m in a predicament right now. Uh, the, do you know of stellar built, uh, Toyota building company and they’re branching out to doing more stuff now. Um, they do anything framed down suspension, acts of all um, there, but they’re a builder here in the Sacramento area and they build some pretty wild and crazy shop vehicles. And they have a 2004 forerunner called the Moscow mule. Oh, that’s not familiar. Yeah. And it’s, it’s on 42s, um, super duty axles, completely custom suspension, a three link in the front and a reverse triangulated four link in the rear.(…) Um, and straight piped with that four seven V eight. Um, it just, it sounds so good and it’s really well done. The interior is in great shape for a 2004 vehicle. Um, and so I, he’s putting it up for sale right now. And so I have it at my house at the moment.

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And, uh, so that’s how they get you. They let you drive it for the weekend.(…) Exactly. Yeah. So I have it at my house. I ran errands yesterday with it all day long and just driving that thing around is so it’s not like driving an off road vehicle like my four run. Really? It’s, it’s driving you. You walk up to my forerunner and you’re like, okay, yeah, we’re going to go party. We’re going to go play. Um, but you walk up to the Moscow mule and you’re kind of like it’s kind of, it looks really tame, but man, it sounds not tame and on 42s and super duty axles and, and, and, you know, 40 inches of articulation, you’ve got, it can play just as hard as mine does, but doesn’t really look it and doesn’t drive it at all. It feels like you’re just driving another vehicle. They did an awesome job with everything on that car.(…) Um, so I’m kind of like debating on selling my four runner right now, which is kind of crazy to think about. So a lot of time and efforts that you put into it. I mean, you do what you want to do, of course, but I think that’s one of the hardest things for all of us, whether it’s, uh, off road vehicles or muscle cars. You put all that time and there was a lot of joy and hard work and designing. And then, then the, the payoff that it actually worked and then 1000%. Yeah.

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And then that’s why I say that you’re going to be buried in it. Cause you, you obviously have put a lot of time in there. I know that if I do sell it, I’m going to cry my heart out for like a month. Um, but that while you’re driving around, yeah.

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Yeah.

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And then whenever I hit the, I just kind of smile and be like, Oh yeah, that’s why that was an interesting four foot shelf. I just climbed up. Let’s check the phone. Oh yeah.

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So, uh, all right. So anyway, uh, getting back to the intro, he dabbles in radios, trail maintenance projects, uh, NorCal recovery, volunteering and off road podcasts. Uh, so what the, and tell people what the off road podcast is. I appreciate you here, not plugging your podcast, but we, we, people have to know about your podcast. Yeah. Podcasting is, it’s fun. Podcasting is like my, my, I don’t know, release of stress. Um, being able to just kind of sit down and talk about off-roading, talk about outdoor recreation, talk about, um, trail advocacy issues we have in the country right now, um, you know, and just, just talking about off-roading. I don’t know. There’s something about it. Just sitting down and talking with your buddies about off-roading that just kind of like relaxes the mind, um, and kind of disconnects you from all the shit you have to worry about with owning a business. I mean, a lot of people go off-roading, not only to do the obstacles, but also to sit and have, have conversations with people, which is, which is basically the same thing that you’re doing on the podcast. Uh, you’re, you’re just out there and have to worry about audio quality and, uh, speaking to the mic, damn it.(…) Exactly. Yeah. But it’s, it’s minor once you get, uh, get going on it. So, uh, yeah, so it’s a, uh, snail trail, uh, cause I’m, damn it. You didn’t say it. So I got to say it. What’s the name snail trail four by four. Um, and so, yeah, we have three episodes a week. Uh, we kind of do a Monday episode, which is what we kind of call our infotainment episode. We like to cover either an interview from somebody in the industry, um, news segment of, you know, something that’s happening in the off-road industry right now, like, um, something that just popped up and was brought to my attention this morning is Johnson Valley. There’s a, a military base that kind of shares the OHV area for Johnson Valley called 29 palms and they have been, um, slowly encroaching and trying to reclaim the OHV designated areas for a while now, ever since kind of Johnson Valley got designated as OHV by congressional designation. Um, 29 palms has been trying to get it back. Um, and so they literally split the area in half. The OHV community said, yeah, you know, we were big advocates of military as the, the OHV community typically is. And we, we understand that the military needs space and area to do training exercises and, and be ready as a military. And, um, so the OHV community gave up half of Johnson Valley area for the 29 palms. Um, and then 29 palms has now started moving up their training dates, um, in to get closer and closer into king of the hammers. Um, which if the, if the military has a training exercise out there, then, um, king of the hammers is not happening. And so they, I was just going to ask if, if that was going to affect king of the hammers, uh, 100%. That’s a, that’s amazing. That’s going to be, that’s going to hurt some people’s financial, people financially.(…) A lot of people. Um, I mean, and, and there’s so many people in this, in this community, in this industry that really relies on king of the hammers for like that, that mental health, you know, that escape that I was talking about that I get from podcasting and from hanging out at a high Sierra Lake, right? Um, so it’s, it’s really is a shame that they’re, they’re trying to do that. But the big thing that they just did that they’re trying to do is take over the airspace.

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Um, so the OHV designation is technically for the land. Right.(…) And being a military helicopters.(…) And yeah, so if there’s no drones and helicopters, there’s no filming, there’s no filming of KOH, there’s no live stream. This doesn’t sound American to me. I mean, I love the military, but damn it. Uh, what about all that land you got around area 51? I mean, come on.

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Oh my God. I just watched a Netflix series on storming, uh, storming area 51. The big movement that happened out. I don’t know how many years ago, right?(…) Crazy Netflix series on it. It’s hilarious. But yeah, the, I mean, it’s, it’s kind of one of those things, you know, if you take away the airspace, there’s no live streaming for KOH, but also the big concern is there’s no medivacs for anybody that gets themselves into a really bad situation. And I didn’t think about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, it’s, it’s a really big concern. There’s a big link. Um, Shannon, well, choose a big time, a administrator for KOH, uh, and deals with a lot of kind of legal issues and, and, and, and permitting issues, uh, stuff like that. Um, just put a big, uh, post out on, I want to say it’s the KOH Facebook group page, um, with a link to for public to give public comment to 29 palms about this decision and how it’s going to impact, um, recreation in the Johnson Valley area. So there’s going to be a lot of people screaming about this. Um, there, there should be. Yeah. Um,(…) so that that’s disappointing. And I’ll just say, I mean, I love the military. I want them to be able to be, uh, be able to defend us. But I think the next time they ask, uh, can we have some of that land is like, uh, I just want to say no,(…) thank you for asking, but no, because I mean, obviously it’s like, okay, thank you. Now we want more stuff. We really want to screw it, screw it up for the people. Yeah. It’s like, where does the line draw like the, the big collaboration or I guess, um, not necessarily collaboration, um,(…) uh, uh, that the, the agreement that was ha that was done in order to make, you know, the symbiotic relationship between 29 palms and the OHV community out there was splitting the area in half and, and letting 29 palms have complete access and keeping users out of. They’re the OHV area that we handed over to 29 palms. Um, and it seems like they’re not stopping there and they’re going for more and more. So, um, yeah, there has to be, there has to be a point where it’s like, dude, this has to be sustainable. Like we’re, we want to work with you guys, but come on, work with us too. It’s a, I don’t know. So we need, and we may have, uh, people in a Congress that, uh, are off-roaders. Uh, we would hope so. We need to find those people and, and not necessarily call them out, but bring them out and get their opinions on this type thing. I mean, they may not even be aware of it. Uh, I mean, they may be king of the Hammers fans. And could you imagine as a Congressman and all the, you know, like you’re ready to tune in, you know, what, what, but there’s no drone views. There’s no helicopters. Why didn’t I know about this? So, yeah, yeah, it’s definitely blue ribbon coalition is informed about it. Um, and they, Oh, they would, yeah. They’re, they’re drafting some stuff and they have a lot of connections. Uh, they’re awesome. They’re our top lobbying organization for the offered community and outdoor recreation access in general. Um, so, and they, they’ve done a lot of really cool things with Congress and with, uh, federal legislation nationwide over the past few years. So, um, they’re on top of it. They’re, they’re looking at ways to attack it and who do they need to get involved and informed about this whole thing? So,(…) yeah, I mean, uh, but honestly, I’m sure that the military, a lot of them are off-roaders, whether they have an off-road vehicle or not, they have them by the military and they know how much fun. You know, they know how much fun it is to go off-road. We seem to have a lot of military people in the OHV community. So it’s kind of like,(…) I don’t know, just meet us eye to eye here. I don’t know. Yeah, exactly. Well, and I’m serious. I mean, if you, if you’re not, if you’re not going to play with, uh, play with the rules and they may be saying, Oh, we could have taken the whole thing and not asked. And that’s probably, that’s possibly true. But if you’re asked to say no, and then, then you take the whole thing. And let’s see if it,

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we’ll go down that road. If the people, yeah, if the people just get really upset about that, uh, heavy handed method. All right. So in 2015, he started making these neon green hoses of always thought they should be red. Uh, in the 2019,(…) he turned that into a business and now in 2025, he has expanded more flight, multi-tire inflation and deflation to include compressors, tire repair solutions, and finally automation. So, uh, I want to start with that last one first. Automation. What, what automation is it like it, it will, uh, it will deflate your tire automatically while you’re going down the trail. Not quite that. Is it a, is a Hummer, is it a Hummer set up where you can air up and air down while you’re driving? That would be cool if it worked well. It’s it. So that is not that far out of the works at the moment with how many, um, portal companies and the technology with portals, um, coming into the industry and coming to market at a kind of as a feasible option for, um, civilians and recreational users, um, CTIS is not really that far out of being hap, uh, being a very happening common. But isn’t it something else to break and you drag it across something and now it’s gonna hat you’re going to have a major issue. There’s, there’s definitely ways to protect the airlines. Um, and, and there’s different methods. Um, so it would be so cool at the head of the trail and you know, everybody’s out airing down and you’re like, you know, sipping your coffee and you press a little button and I’m assuming you’re gonna make some noise and then the tires are just kind of, you just look at the gauge. Yeah.(…) So yeah, it’s right now you can do that. You can sit out there and sip your coffee and push a button. Is it Bluetooth? It’s got to be Bluetooth.

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Also not too far out of the works.(…) We make fun of the Bluetooth, like Bluetooth drive shafts and Bluetooth shocks and you know, where you can change the shock settings. I so badly want a shock that I can adjust. I don’t know what I would use it for. I’d probably just set it one place and leave it there the rest of my life, but it’d be fun to have that, have that knob. Dude, the, the knobs are great, but the stuff, the, the auto adjustment, um, shocks that are coming out from Fox and, um, ADS that have in cab controls where you can set your shock, um, uh, tuning two different presets kind of thing. And it’ll, it’ll also adjust on the fly. Yeah. Like it’ll, it’ll tell if you’re going through whoops and it’ll adjust your shock, your, um, your, uh, rebound and your other one, um, for appropriately for a whoops, if you’re going through rocks, slow rock crawling, it’ll adjust the shocks for that. Like it’s, that’s pretty impressive. The technology that is going into freaking coilovers and suspensions right now. So just about the time that, uh, the suspension, all that stuff is, uh, whether it’s Bluetooth or not, it’s all self-adjust adjusting AI. The voice from kit is telling you what’s going on or what it’s doing about that time, it all gets perfect. We’ll start flying cars. It’ll all be flying off road. We’ll be dead. It’ll be just over a terrain is what will be the new thing we’ll be doing. Yeah. Well, the ongoing joke that I have with, uh, my podcast co-host Jimmy is that with all the automation coming into cars, self-driving cars, the software that’s in cars, all the sensors they can tell where they’re going, um, it’s going to turn into a thing where you just kind of take your car out and hit go on the trail and then just walk along beside it. You have your hike and you just get well, the AI kit will, kit will ask you to exit the vehicle because the terrain ahead is too difficult.(…) Let me just do it from here and it’s going to be, can you walk? Do you need assistance? Get the segue out and follow along. It’ll be an off-road segue. Exactly. Yeah. We did a, we did a number of years ago now we were talking about Land Rover and they were talking about that exactly where you would exit the vehicle and it would traverse the terrain for you. And then once it was safe, you get back in your vehicle. Yeah. Shoot me in the fucking head.

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Right. I’m like, I don’t, I do really like watching my, my vehicle suspension. Oh yeah. Well, um, as an influencer, as somebody that’s putting up video, that’s what you want. Now you can give those great shots from outside. Very true. Yeah.(…) Yeah. Um, but yeah, automation, man, that’s a, it seems like I don’t, I’m, I’m a very, I, I sometimes I call it a borderline between efficiency and laziness. Um, you’re always, you know, what, no, let the computer do it. Right. I mean, it’s just stupid. Why do I have to do this? Let the computer do it. So I’ve always, you know, there’s the, there’s, there’s been this notion forever in inflation and deflation with tires and off-roading that, um, it’s all evaluated based on how fast does it take, right? How much time are you spending airing up and airing down your tires? Um, so it’s always been about speed and, and to some extent with our stuff, it still is about speed, right? You don’t want to be sitting there for an hour, 45 minutes, inflating your tires or deflating like you do that once and twice and once beginning, once at the end of the trip, that’s two hours of your day almost gone. And it just, it’s no, and a lot of people just don’t air down at all on the trails because it just sucks. It takes too long and they don’t want to take the time or they don’t have a compressor, they don’t have an air tank. Yeah, it is what it is. So with the, the, the cool thing about automation is yeah, our stuff is still fast, but the time it takes to do it is no longer really relevant, um, because it’s not your time, right? You can do other things now. You can go through your recovery gear, you can re spool your winch. You can put your sway bars back on. You can, there’s, there’s so many, you can make a sandwich and have lunch. You can go fishing while the air system is doing its thing. It’s not your time anymore. So, um, the, you just set the prep, you have to, you know, spend a little bit of time deploying the stuff cause it’s all portable so that you can move it between vehicles, all the portable stuff. Um, so you spent a couple minutes maybe in the deployment and tear down and putting it back in your rig, but otherwise you just dial in your target pressure, hit go, and then you can do anything else you want. You can go, if it’s you’re in a snow storm or it’s storming outside, you can jump back in your rig and be nice and warm and toasty while the air system does all the work. Um, there’s, there’s lots of different, you know, ways to play on this notion of. It doesn’t really matter how much time it takes anymore. As long as you’re doing it in like, you know, in my opinion, under 20 minutes, like anything more than 20 minutes stop and people are like, that’s too much time and effort to really care about airing up and down for the trails. Um, so as long as you’re under 20 minutes, like who cares, you know, you, you get your time back to do other stuff now. That’s the cool thing about automation. I’m really glad that you mentioned this because we have several Jeep talk show listeners and team members that have your more flight system. Uh, they love it. Uh, I mean, I think John Lee was having an issue with, uh, something, uh, freezing up on him because of the compression, deep compression, night nature of, uh, how that physics thing works. Uh, but, uh, they, they really love it. And I always say, but have you looked at it from the time it costs you and the time it saves you because you have to pull this thing out, you got to unspool it. You got to hook everything up. I mean, I know it’s quick connect, everything I’m sure is quick disconnect, uh, and quick connect. And that’s exactly right. And I never thought about it, but once it’s up and operational and filling up your tires, you can do something else, which is, which includes nothing to stand in there. Yep. You know, yep. Just sipping your coffee, talking to your buddies, you know, whatever, whatever you want to do. Um, one of my favorite things is to grab the manifold breakfast burrito off of the engine block and, uh, chow, have some breakfast while I’m deflating for the trail that day. I don’t know. So does that thing work like a microwave where some of it’s cold and some of it’s hot? Definitely sometimes. Yeah. I can imagine.

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Yep. Well, but so that’s really, really cool. Now let’s, let’s go back in time a bit. I remember talking about this stuff. It was, it was very, very fascinating. Uh, the, obviously the reason why you came up with the more flight system was that you needed to air up your tires and you didn’t like going from tire to tire. Let me, let me put words in your mouth. I’m just assuming you don’t like going tire to tire. Is there a way I can just do this? And, and you’re not the first person that has come up with the idea of doing multiple line, multiple lines. But I think what the big deal for what you’re doing is you came up with a compressor that was capable of putting out enough a CFM to actually do this in a timely manner. Yeah. So yeah, the, the big thing that I did, I started more flight with just the hose kits, right? Um, I was I’m six foot four. Um, so my, when I squat at a tire, my knees don’t want to extend back out. Oh yeah. Get up. Right. So having to do that four times and squatting at a tire for two to five minutes at a time for deflation, inflation, etc. Cause you have to bend over and hold it or squat. Like what you’re saying, it takes a long time compressors are nice, but it’s, they’re not fast. Exactly. Um, and so I created the four tire hose system. Um, and there was other, there was other people out there making these, there was DIY designs out there with parts lists you can get on Amazon at your hardware store. Um, but they were all using really not user friendly parts like rubber PVC hose that degrades and UV freezes up in cold temperatures and it’s unwieldy. It’ll kink over time. Um,(…) that they were using hose clamps and that just, they stab you and poke you and cut you, um, the air chucks air chucks has been one of those things. I never realized how bad air chucks are in this world. Um, and there’s, there’s really no great options for air chucks. So we ended up having to go and design our own air chucks. Um, but like it was just a combination of all of that and how do you, how do you make something that’s super user friendly that’s going to last a long time? Um, and kind of once I got the formula down for myself, which took five, six years of just trying a ton of different parts, um,(…) uh, Pete friends started asking me to build them for them. And then I was like, okay, well cool. Here you go. Testing pay for pay for the parts. I’ll put them together. I don’t care. Yeah. Um, and it just, it totally grew from there and then COVID hit and everybody was just, all we had to do was go outside. And so it was kind of right place, right time with a good thing that turns out a lot of people really like convenience and simple solutions to avoid problems. Absolutely. Um, so upon doing that though, what that was my main thing, I was like, I’m never going to do anything more than these hose kits. Um, you know, it’s a side gig for me. Um, and I realized pretty quickly, um, I was running twin ARBs in my, my crawler at the time, um, and you realize that as you start hooking up one tire, you know, the ARB kicks on cause the pressure releases and it turns on and starts putting air into that one tire. Um, you hook up a second tire and the ARB kind of picks up speed in the motors a little bit and you’re like, Hmm. And then you hook up the third tire and the motor kind of picks up speed again. And then you hook up the fourth one and it kind of picks up speed. And it almost smooths out. And I was like, there’s something going on here with that. And it took me a while of digging into it to figure out what was happening. Um, and turns out 20 RBS awesome compressor. They do a phenomenal job with it. Um, they output about 6.2 CFM at zero pre PSI. So we’ll just say it for argument of math or six CFM, um, a tires, Schrader valve. So that’s your valve core in your valve stem. Um, that valve core, the valve stem itself has an ID of about one eighth of an inch, and then you put that valve core, that Schrader valve into that one eighth of an inch thing, and now you’re passed through orifice that air can pass through is around one 16th of a little. I was going to say, it’s probably half that. Yeah, that’s not much. It’s not a lot. And so that orifice can only pass about two CFM of airflow through it because it’s so restricted. And so when a twin ARB does six CFM output, but you can only accept two CFM through your tires, valve stem, you end up with this backlog of pressure between your valve stem and the compressor. Um, and you see this, you see it happening all the time. If you are using a, an inline gauge between your, your ARB and your valve stem and the gauge is reading 50 PSI, but you only have 15 to 20 PSI in your tire and you have to stop the compressor, stop the airflow to see what the pressure in your tire actually is. Oh, I hate that. That’s what’s happening. You’re building this back pressure between the valve stem and the compressor because the compressor puts out more air than your valve stem can accept. All right. Um, so this back pressure makes compressors work harder because they have to overcome that back pressure more to get air into your tires. Right. Um, working harder makes compressors run hotter. Um, they use more electricity and bigger amp draw to the motors. Um, which again, more electricity creates more heat as well. Right. Um, and, uh, ARBs, um, a lot of people put them in their engine bays, which are already a hot environment. Right. And so, um, if you run a twin ARB doing one tire at a time, you’re slowly cooking your compressor. Um, eventually it is going to blow gaskets. It’ll blow seals. It’ll seize the motor up. It’ll not wiring.(…) Um, and so by hooking up and distributing that six CFM to four different tires at a time, you’re now going, you have a usable.

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Airflow of eight CFM, right? Two CFM per tire, four tires. Um, so now the 20 RB can run completely efficient. It’s outputting its full airflow, six CFM, um, which a makes your job go a lot quicker. Almost three times as quick now. Um, but B because it’s not fighting that back pressure all the time of, of trying to get air into the tires and fighting that back pressure between your time, your compressor, the compressor just lasts so much longer. Yeah. It’s not overheating as much. It’s not stressing out as much. It’s not pulling as much amp draw from your battery. So the wiring is more happy. Um, it just, it goes a long way to save the compressors. So I kind of stumbled on that just from having a 20 RB and being like, what is going on with this? Why did the motors change? It’s not a variable speed motor. Why is it? Why is the motor changing speeds here? Found that out. And then I was like, okay. So if a 20 RB puts out six CFM, but the usable capacity of going into four tires is roughly eight CFM.

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We, we have room to improve here. We need, I need to make a eight CFM compressor. Yeah, exactly. How do we get more air into these things and make it go quicker? Um, and so, um, I found a factory that was making, essentially they’re making Smittybilt compressors, right? Um, that single cylinder, the five and a half CFM, um, Smittybilt compressor.(…) Um, and I was like, Hey, do you guys, you know, do you, do you have any means of making a higher output compressor? Like, could we make the cylinder bigger? Is that going to have too much stress on the motor to push a bigger cylinder? Um, and they said, well, we have this design. It’s essentially taking the cylinder on the one side of the compressor and adding a second cylinder on the other end of the compressor and using a dual shafted motor.(…) Um, and they said, we’ve done it before, but it’s never really taken off. Um, and so I found somebody who actually had imported those compressors, um, uh, about like maybe three years before I stumbled on them. Um, and I was like, why, why’d you stop importing them? He goes, they, they never lasted. They overheated super quick. Same issue you were talking about on the ARB, the twin ARB. Yeah. Uh-huh. And so I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. Okay. I’ll just, I’ll talk to the factory about it. And blah, blah, blah in my head. I’m like, yeah, they, they weren’t lasting because they were blowing themselves up because they’re pushing away too much airflow. Let me, let me just jump in here real quick and make sure people understand you were contacting and talking to this company, but you had to learn Mandarin first, well, they’re actually, it’s surprising how good of a, I know. I know there’s a lot of, a lot of English, but this is, this is, in China, I’m sure, or somewhere over there. Yeah. Um, so that’s, that’s really cool. So now how much,(…) I don’t want to ask too much information here, but how much money do you have to put up to have somebody start making compressors for you? Or did you have to do that? Um, at first it wasn’t that much. You can get white labeled products. So you can order something on am on, uh, not Amazon Amazon team, but you can order something, um, as long as you’re willing to order bulk quantities of it. Yeah. That’s where the cost comes. That’s where the cost comes in, right? You have to have a place to store it all. You have to be able to make a 10 to $20,000 minimum order. Um, but you can just slap your logo and colors on pretty much anything in this world that you want to. Yeah. Um, so 10 to $20,000, how many, how many compressors were you talking about there? I think our first run of compressors was 300, 250, 300 compressors. And they were literally the white labeled compressors. I didn’t know a whole lot about compressors at the time. Um, and so, so you’re looking at your setup, you’re looking at the space you have available and you’re thinking, I know you’re thinking, so worst case is I’m gonna have 350 compressors sitting here for the rest of my life. Yeah. Yeah. Right. This could be a $20,000 loss for me, but you know, I think the math checks out and, and I got some samples sent over and I was like, these do work phenomenally. They’ll air up a set of 35 inch tires, all four of them in under five minutes.(…) So I was like, they do work. Um, but the problem was that I was, I’m still has to be really nervous to make that first purchase. Oh, for sure. Um, never done a business. I mean, I’m assuming this is your first business. And so yeah, pretty much. Yeah. At least on this scale for sure. Like everything that I’d a business, quote unquote, it’s always been a side gig in the past, right? You’re just making an extra 500 bucks a month, but something to this scale was it was nerve wracking spending that much money. And you’re like, uh, I’ll take a leap. Um, and they worked. Um, we got a lot of great feedback. The main problem was that we didn’t know really compressors very well. And, um, I knew about how they worked, but there’s a lot of little intricate details that goes into a compressor from materials used to tolerances on your piston rings, um, to how the read valves work, um, and how to get them to keep working efficiently long-term. Um, heat sinks. I mean, the biggest issue with compressors, they just generate heat. And yeah, piston piston driven thing is going to generate a lot of heat. And so how do you manage that heat? That’s the number one killer compressors. So we ran with compressors for, uh, I want to say two to three years slowly, you know, every batch that we did of compressors production batch, we had some change happening to make the compressors last longer. We had that we would find what the weak points were and address them with the next production batch.

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Um, and then once we finally got, you know, two to three years down the road here, we, we were like, okay, let’s completely change, like a lot of the materials and the internals of the compressor, um, because we figured out that if we messed around with different materials, then we could dissipate heat so much quicker and so much better than anything out there. And so we ended up specking out and, and building our own molds. And once you start getting into that kind of thing and you’re, you’re no longer doing a, um, a quote unquote white labeled product, we’re now making your own molds. I mean, to make your own mold for a compressor and get all the tooling made and everything, it’s 50 grand, 50 to $70,000.(…) Um, and so I was like, now this is paying off the market wants efficiency. They want quickness. And when you take this output of compressor and put it through four tires, and then you can create a compressor that can dissipate heat better than anything out there. Um, it’s a no brainer. It just, it works. And at the price point that we can do it at, um, it just, the market wanted it. So we spent the money and made our own tooling, made our own production line. You have to be really proud about that too, especially when it works out. Cool. Yeah. It’s so cool, man. Um, so like, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot that goes into running a business. There’s a lot of, you know, your time is committed to the business and you have to give up your time in other places, but being able to kind of take an idea and, and really change up an industry with it. That’s priceless, man. It’s so cool to do so. Um, I don’t know about you. I don’t know. I don’t know how you look at it, but that’s kind of the way I’ll look at the podcast is because people are taking their time to ingest what you’re doing. And people are taking the time to buy the product that you developed. And I’m sure it was your team, you and your team. Uh, but, uh, it’s a, uh, fulfilling thing. I mean, it didn’t have to even have money attached to it. It better, but it doesn’t even have to have money attached to it. It’s that, that wonderful feeling you get that you’re doing something that matters to people.

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100%. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a really cool thing. I think that’s one of the things that really sets the offer of industry apart from a lot of other industries is that, um, it seems like the OHV and, and offered recreation community really values that feeling, um, of helping out and doing something that matters.(…) And so, uh, you just see more and more people in the off-road industry. It seems like more than other industries that are willing to step up and, and help with things and do things and be a big part of something they believe in. So really cool industry, really cool people. Um, yeah. And when you’re able to do something that matters, it’s, it’s, it’s just rad.

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So I think, I think we talked about this last time and I’m not sure if I said it here while we were recording episode 709 of November, 2022, just in case I, I didn’t say that and also forgot to say, uh, more flight.com M O R R FL a T E. Dot com. Uh, people are saying finally, damn it. I mean, I think most people know where this stuff is anyway, but if on the outside chance that somebody is a knows about it, hasn’t purchased one day, I’m sure they want to go back and have a look. Uh, oh, I’m sorry. Real quick question. I didn’t want to disturb you on what you were talking about there on the say somebody has an ARB twin. It’s working fine. They don’t want to, uh, buy a more flight right now. They’ll wait till it dies and then they’ll get a more flight. You have a hose kits that they can use on the ARB, correct? Absolutely. Yeah. All of our hose kits, I believe in universality. I don’t, I don’t like the business model that some businesses, Apple, um, take and that everything is proprietary. It only works with their stuff, right? That’s not the business model. I like to follow. I like everything to be able to work with as wide of a range of things as they can. So it’s just, it’s more user friendly, right? You don’t have to worry about if you get this hose kit, is it going to work with your twin ARB or your Smitty built or your Vaire or whatever compressor out there. Um, we have adapters for everything, but our stuff does work plug and play with ARB power tank, um, anything that uses a quarter inch industrial interchange. Um, so industrial fittings, I’m quarter inch industrial. Our stuff will work plug and play with it. So I believe in universality. Um, and that just makes it easier so that. Yeah. If people, I don’t, I also don’t believe in wasting stuff. Like if you have a perfectly good ARB, keep using it. It’s a phenomenal compressor. They do a great job. Yeah. Um, the best thousand dollars you’ll ever spend. Exactly. Right. Um, and they’re, they’re new brushes compressors are phenomenal. They’re awesome. They’re expensive, but they’re great. And they did increase the air output on them and they work really well. And if you, if you use that compressor doing one tire at a time, it gets hot. I mean, it, it keep things away from it. But if you distribute that airflow to all four tires, like having one of those, if you have the brushless air be compressor, you’re thinking about getting one great compressor, you definitely want to run a four tire hose kit with it because it’ll help keep that compressor living. So you’re going to save money. I mean, basically because you don’t have to buy another compressor, but when that one burns up as quickly. So, uh, I would assume that once you have the more flight hose kit, uh, when you, when the ARB goes away or you want to upgrade, uh, to the higher CFM, which I’m sure it’s the more flight is higher CFM, you can buy the compressor by itself. Correct. Yep. So you can just, you can piecemeal the system and build to it. Yeah. Yeah. And that way the spouse is less likely to see the charges.

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Yes. And we always joke around too, that we will do a secret gift gift receipts for people too. If you’re like, yeah, I just need a receipt that says my buddy bought this for me. And I’m like, yeah, we’ll do that for you. No problem.(…) Not too many people actually take us up on it, but we’ll, we would do that for you guys. Yeah. But it’s fun to do. And then you need to do also to the receipt of what I actually paid. So upon my death, open, open this. Yeah. Yeah.(…) Yeah. So modularity and universality. Um, you know, I don’t want to force people to buy one of our entire systems all at one time, right? If you got, if your budget is 200 bucks here and there, um, it’s perfect to piecemeal our stuff together. Um, get the co get the hose kit. Now, I think that’s the biggest thing. No matter what compressor you use, as long as it can handle the duty cycle of the time it takes to inflate your tires.(…) Distributing airflow is always going to be easier on your compressors. Um, so get the four tire hose kit to start with. Make life easier on your compressor, make it last longer for you. And then if, when it finally dies on you, come back, get a compressor. If your compressor doesn’t die on you and you’re like, man, this hose kid just helps it last forever. Then come back and get an air hub, make it automated. That’s cool thing about the air hub is we designed to the algorithm in it so that it will learn whatever airflow. You have it hooked up to. So if you have it hooked up to a Harbor freight cigarette lighter compressor, um,(…) it’ll, that only puts out half of a CFM, right? Um, the air hub will learn it and it’ll figure out what that air flow is and adjust the runtime of the system. Does it have a little laugh track that’ll when it sees what you’re using and laugh at you, I think that’d be a big seller. There’s a little pop up that shoots out of the air hub that says, lol, upgrade your compressor. Yes. No, it’s a, uh, it’ll learn that. And on the opposite end, if you’re using shop air that pushes a ton of CFM or like a power tank or something, it’ll learn that air flow. It’ll learn that you’re pushing 30 CFM and adjust your runtime for that. So, um, it’s, it’s a universal thing that you can plug in line between your air source and your hose kit, um, to create an automated air source. Um, so go with that. If your compressor is lasting just fine. And then eventually your compressor will die. Um,(…) I don’t know when it could be next year. It could be 10 years from now. It will be whenever you’re airing up a tire from a blown bead, uh, on Black Bear pass, right?

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It’s the worst time when you need your compressor to work. Um, so yeah. And then come back and get a compressor, spend another 200, 300 bucks and get a compressor. It’s a, and then our compressors now, all of our stuff, um, we ended up putting a lifetime warranty on everything, which is kind of unheard of in the off-road space, especially my air compressor. Good Lord. It’s going to die. Yeah. It’s going to die. And, um, we, it will compressors, just consumable items, but we have done such a good job, I think, uh,(…) um,(…) choosing the correct materials at minimizing the tolerances in the cylinders, at using the, uh, better material for the piston rings at, um, how to make a more durable, longer lasting read valve, how to dissipate heat from the units. Um, we’re getting from the, the white labeled unit that we started out with that you see everybody having that looks like the same compressor we do. Um, that we were able to increase the duty cycle by three times. Wow. So if you hook up somebody’s unit, uh, somebody, one of the other compressors out there that looks like ours, um, to a four tire hose kit, you’re probably getting about 10 to 12 minutes of runtime, which is good for about two vehicles,(…) we take our compressors out to, um, events. So like Jeepers, Jamboree, which is out on the Rubicon, uh, we go and has. 800, 900 vehicles added sometimes. Um, I think this year they were at 600 vehicles. Um, we go out to to Homa, the to home a staging area, the, where everybody comes out of the trail. And we inflate anybody who wants to inflate their vehicle coming off the trail. And I think this year we did something like 450 vehicles spread out over, I think six compressors.(…) So, I mean, it’s, and they all did it awesome all day. Did everybody get a thermal cut off? Did everybody get a snail trail and a, uh, a more flight sticker? Yeah. Here you stick, er, put a slap it right over their headlights and see if they notice on the way home. Um,(…) yeah, it’s the compressors are they’re lasting. It’s, we, that’s great. Oh, that has to make you feel so good too, that you actually did the work and it pays off. Let me ask you this, and I don’t want to hear who’s doing it because I don’t want to send somebody to another, another vendor, but this is one of the dangers of having things done, uh, in, uh, external to the U S. So how long was it before your new designed, uh, compressor showed up, uh, somebody in somebody else’s, uh, stock? The automation, um, showed up pretty quickly that when we actually had to get lawyers involved with, um, one of our competitors, uh, uses the same factor. We do for good reason. The factory is awesome. They make good stuff. Um, they’re good at that. That about their quality control procedures and sticking to whatever your specifications are that you give them. Um, they went to the factory while we were making our first production run of air hubs. And it was, we hadn’t told anybody. We hadn’t really started teasing the air hub. Um, they were just in production and, um, our competitor, our factory took one of our air hubs off our production line, gave it to my competitor and said, here’s what we’re making for more flight. We can make something similar for you. And, um, our competitor took it back to the States and immediately put it on social media saying, look what we made, look what we came out with, launching.

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And I had to get lawyers involved and, um, it was, it was a mess for a little bit. Um, so yeah, it happens and it sucks when it happens, but, um, that’s one of the big things that I had to learn late in owning a business. And that was one of the things I had no clue about. And I had to do a lot of research and spend a lot of time and spending a lot of money talking to lawyers about how to do this as intellectual property. Right. Um, so when you, when you deal with overseas production, um, to help keep costs down on, on retail prices, um, there’s a really big, you end up spending a lot of money on intellectual property to protect yourself. So, um, it’s a, that was a, that was 20, I think last year, 2024, I spent a lot of. Time and effort being like, okay, this is, I need, I need to do something to protect this business. Did you get an I I’m sorry or anything from the, uh, from the other company, the, uh, the company?

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No, they, they pretty much, uh, in, as in, in lawyer terms, they flipped us the finger and, um, they took the unit that they had and enclosed it into a steel box so that it didn’t look like our unit and kept, and kept showing it off and taking it to events and telling everybody that this is what they came up with and everything, um, and, uh, we’re running, uh, pre-orders off of it. So they were, they were, they had a picture of our unit on their website saying, here’s our pre-orders. We’re going to be launching this, um, send us money for your pre-orders. And then they changed the image to this steel box because we’re like, you can’t put our stuff on your website and get money off of it. But it’s amazing that they would just do that. So blatantly, like nobody’s going to, I mean, you’ve got customers, you got people that love your stuff and they’re going to say, what the hell man? That’s, that’s what, that’s what I bought from war flight. They’re Tyler, by the way, these people are selling your shit or trying to sell it. Yeah. Granted they Photoshopped it. So they, they took it and then Photoshopped their own coloring and logo on it. But I was like, no, that’s, that’s our, that’s, I have one in my hand here. This is what you guys have on your website. Um, but yeah, they, they just, they put a steel box around it and continued on. And I asked the lawyer if there’s anything we can do about it. And he said, the only thing we can do is if they deliver your product to their customers, then we can go after them for the sales and profits, all the revenue that they, they brought in from it. But if the product they end up delivering is different and all they’re doing is collecting money based on your quote unquote, your product, but it’s not your image, you know, it’s a copyright thing and it’s a pretty weak argument. I’m like, that’s such, I dunno, intellectual property is, is a weird thing in the United States where you have to do it, but there’s such easy ways to get around intellectual property that it’s kind of cheating and it just sucks. So did you, did you go back to the company and ask them what the hell, man? Oh yeah, for sure. I asked them about it and they were like, no, we’re not doing anything. The factory gave this, this to us and said that it was what they can make for us. And I was like, so I talked to the factory. No, no, no, no. Yeah. The factory is who I’m talking about. Oh, the factory. No, I was like, what the fuck man? Um, they’re like, yeah, sorry. We, I told them this was an engineering sample and this is an example of what we can do, but we can’t make this because it’s yours. And I was like, did you really say that? He sent me emails. He sent me screenshots of emails with my competitor and he literally did say that. So, I mean, granted he, he did have well intentions and you know, he’s running a business too and Oh yeah. No, I mean, it’s hard to say no to money. I mean, Yeah. But at the same time, like, did you have to give him one of our units? Like, could you have just made him a sample of a different unit and, and out of, I dunno, and he, he got it once I explained it to him, but(…) Oh, he got it ahead of time. This, I mean, this goes on a lot. That’s the reason why I asked him. I knew, I knew that this was some of those going to happen. And I think that on your, your white label ones wasn’t that same compressor. I mean, not that it was illegal, but wasn’t that same compressor showing up at, uh, what was it Napa? Uh, yeah, that was the white labeled one. And that was just, you know, Napa. And I’m actually not sure who launched that compressor first in the United States. If it was Napa or us, but Napa has a way bigger buying power, way more storage space, so they had way more of them than I did in my little 300 run of compressors. Um, I sold out quick and Napa had more inventory. So they kind of got credit for being first to the market because they had inventory longer for people to keep ordering. Sure. Um, but it’s a, And nobody was stealing anything. You weren’t stealing from Napa and Napa wasn’t stealing from you, but it was the same compressor because some people noticed that as well as that you get the same compressor at Napa. And that was, it was the exact same compressor, different color, different logo, um, and it wasn’t until our gen two compressors that came out. And those ones you can tell easily by a stainless steel hose output on them. Um, that compressor is a very different compressor internally. It uses different molds, a different production line from pretty much every other compressor out there that you’ll see.(…) Um, and so that that’s the one that is our specification compressor. It is very different from every other one. And I think you were smart doing that. Let me, let me ask you this. We’re getting along on this interview, but it’s really interesting. Um, knowing what you know now, because basically you’ve gone from zero to a full fledged profitable business. Yeah. What else would you have tried to do? No one, the process.(…) Um, knowing the process, that’s a good question. Um,(…) I think there, there’s a lot to learn in the background of businesses, um, and how to run a business so that, um, you don’t get the IRS coming after you so that you don’t get your, your local county business, um, operations license department to come after you. Um, how to, how to get it so that your state sales tax is done correctly. Um, there’s how to get it so that you’re, you kind of protect yourself and your employees and everybody who you’re, you’re paying and you’re providing paychecks for, um, on the intellectual property side so that you’re not getting ripped off and getting the market taken away from you. Um, there, there’s a lot to learn of the behind the scenes of just running the business and, um, it’s, I, I, I love the off-road industry because it, almost all of our stuff that we have in the off-road industry, the cool stuff that we see out there started because an off-roader needed something done. They needed some problem solved and they went into their garage and freaking solved it. And another off-roader said, Hey, that’s, that’s neat. Can you make me one of those? Exactly. Right. Um, you see Durobumps, that’s what he did. That’s how more flights started. That’s how, um, uh, uh, BAMF Bay area metal fabric map, Bay area metal fabrication started, I mean, that’s kind of how metal cloak started. They did just looking to do fenders. Um,(…) and so you just, you see really cool ideas, really cool products come to market. But then the business after two, three, four, five years kind of fizzles out because there’s so much more to making a business sustainable in the long-term that off-roaders are just notoriously not good at because it has to deal with dealing with government agencies and keeping books good,(…) um, and, and making sure that your, your bottom line is sustainable. Um, and off-roaders were great with working with our hands. We’re great with fabricating stuff and coming up with things, but there’s so much in that background that was difficult to learn by making mistakes. So I wish going back that I had consulted with more people about the back end of business stuff and how to do it right the first time rather than making expensive mistakes and, and, uh, having to learn that way. So it’s kind of like when we put a lift on our vehicle for the first time, and then we go out there and use it and go, I need a bigger lift. And now that money that you spent on the first lift was just, it was, it was a learning experience. So yeah, I understand exactly what you mean. Is there another, another product knowing all the back end now of, of going through this process? Was there another product? And, and I don’t know, maybe there’s another product on the horizon that you’re, that you’re thinking about. Um, not, I don’t know. You got more than one great idea, Tyler. I know you got more than one great idea.

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There are, there are definitely some fun ideas rolling around up there. Um, I, I, so I, I got the chance and opportunity to interview Quinn was 74 weld, um, a while ago on the pod on our podcast, no trail. Um, and he said something that really resonated with me is he has no interest in ripping off other products in the off road market. Um, he can, he’s got, he’s got the knowledge. He’s got the know how to create some really cool stuff and apply his production facility to some rad things in the off road industry. But he’s like axles at fusion makes great axles. Spider tracks makes great axles. Uh, there, I don’t, I don’t have, they do an awesome job with that. I don’t have any reason to try and compete with them and make their product better or anything. They do a good job with that already. He goes other stuff out there. If somebody already has a great product, I have no interest in competing and trying to rip off their product and gain their market share and follow their coattails kind of thing. You want, he wants to make cool shit because nobody else is really making it or nobody else makes it well. And I’m, I’m kind of like that re that resounded with me. I resonated. And so other products, you know, we could make those screw on tire deflators, the storms, the all tops, the other things I’m like the coyotes, the coyote deflators, um,(…) but they are, those, those companies already do a good job at those. I don’t, I I’ve looked into them. I’ve bought those and tore them apart and reverse engineered them. And I’m like, there’s not really much improvement you can make to these. So I don’t, you know, those company have a good product. Let them do those products. Um, so when it comes to our stuff, you know, we’re, we’re definitely trying to make tire management easier for people.(…) So, um, the fun thing about the way my brain works is I’m not just a mechanical guy, I love electrical stuff as well. Oh, we didn’t get into the radios. We didn’t get into the radio, the nerdy stuff. Right. So if we can take electrical technology and add it to something so mechanical as an air flow through a tube into a tire,(…) um, that’s really what kind of is interesting me right now. So there’s definitely more that we can do to make tire inflation and deflation.(…) Easier. I think you just mentioned something that I was, I was waiting to talk to you about, about the actual, the, the, the constriction point, the tire valve. Cause that seemed to me, that would be a perfect thing for you to, to make is something that you can get more air flow through a tire valve. It would be proprietary because nobody else would be doing it. I would assume, but that would be really cool where you could actually get more of that CFM from the compressor and maybe even come up with another compressor. Oh, and it hits me too that because of the stealing that goes on in the industry, uh, that, that forces companies like you to innovate and make things better. And for sure. And then, and that, because you, you have to come up with something, okay, that’s all that they’re selling our old stuff. Here’s the new stuff. And it’s a game that has to be played. It’s almost like the radar detectors and the radar, uh, guns, the, the same company made both of them.

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Exactly. There’s definitely a lot to be said about how capitalism works in this country. And, um, the, the cool thing that comes out of competition and having a competitive market. I am a big fan of competition. I’m like, I talk, I talked down on, on one of our competitors, one of our main competitors, because they do it in such a way that is it, it borderlines on theft. They’re not really innovating anything. They’re just copying other things that get done. Um, whereas another one of our competitors, they’re actually doing different things. They’re trying different stuff. And I’m like, that’s cool. I like that. Like keep doing that. I want competition in the market, um, because competition drives, um, ingenuity, it drives innovation. Um, and there’s a lot to be said about having competition and striving. Then, then you really find out which companies out there are the ones that really care about the products that they make and the things that they’re doing, because they’re going to be the ones that are going to be innovating. Yeah. You know, this is almost like politics that you should never talk about. Um, you mentioned Apple earlier. I can’t stand Apple. If you’re listening to us on the, or watching to watching us on the Apple device, you know, God bless you. You do whatever you want to do, but I don’t like Apple for the reason that you’re talking about the, everything is proprietary for them. And I understand it’s like the great philosopher, Steve Barton once said, uh, it’s a profit deal. So I understand, but I don’t like them. I would rather have you, anybody else, uh, than use it. But, but at the same time, um, they’re filling a niche and, and making things, I mean, they, they don’t, the steal from other people. I mean, Samsung does that from, from iPhone. Yep.

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They pay iPhone, they pay Apple quite a bit of money to have the galaxy phone shaped the way they are. Oh, I love my, uh, I love my, uh, my note 10 plus. Yes. I know it’s an old phone. Uh, people are going Tony, Tony. All right. So let me ask you this before we wrap up, um, how, when, when was it that you got your first offer from somebody to buy the company?

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Um, that actually happened in 2023. Um, and it was really interesting the way it happened. I’m not going to name the company or call them out. Um, because I, they are, they are pretty cool guys, the guys that own the company. Um, and they’re big, they’re bigish company. Um, they do some good things. They do a lot of things I don’t agree with though, but the way that they approached the buyout was, Hey, you need to let us buy you out or we’re going to take you over your market and kick you out.(…) I was like, that’s an interesting way to approach, uh, uh, buying out a company. Um, I wonder if this would work out, work, uh, when you’re asking your girl out for a date, cause that really sounds more of a great way, a great way of getting her to say yes.(…) Right. You either let me take you on a date or I’m taking on a date and you’re not going to know what happens the next day. So yeah, I know it’s a, oh, that’s a Bill Cosby joke. Yeah, right. It was a, it was, it was a big eye opener because technically they were right. Um, I didn’t have a lot of intellectual property at that time. Um, I had the name more flight protected, but nothing that we were doing was really protected because naive little me, I’m like off rotors are pretty stand up ish people typically. And I would, I would hope that anybody that’s trying to, you know, do business in the off road industries, typically off rotors themselves. And they’d be like, yeah, we’re not going to steal other people’s ideas and just, you know, run with it. Um, but this company is not that company. And I think a lot of companies are like that, frankly. And the reason why I asked you about this is, is that I hate when somebody comes up out of their garage, they come up with something. It’s a great product. They employ people. They they’re doing the small business thing wonderfully, great customer service. And then some multinational bullshit company buys them and everything starts getting made like it’s a pile of shit. So now they’ve taken your name and sully that you don’t care because you’ve got the money. I think everybody still cares, but you know what I’m saying? And, and it is like the death nail of, uh, of a great company. So, uh, I hope you never sell or maybe whenever you’re, you know, 90 years old and you’re trying to provide for your family and their grandkids and their grandkids, I understand. But I hope you don’t sell. Uh, cause I think that that changes the company significantly. 1000%. I mean, nitro gears was an awesome, awesome gear company, um, gears, axle shafts, you know, uh, ring and pinion stuff. Um, they did a really good job. Their customer service was phenomenal. The dude that ran that company really, really cared about the customer service.

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And then, um, the company that bought them, I’m not going to say names, but you can go look it up if you want. Um, completely ran it into the ground. They, they, they kind of bought nitro gears and paid off the owner to just. Take off the, the, usually when you, when you buy a company, the owner signs a contract to stick around for one to two years to help that transition and help train the new owning company on what is the philosophy of this company? What made it great to begin with? And how do you carry that forward? And if nothing else, just a figurehead. So it looks like it’s going to continue on in the, the, the, the same vein, the name that it’s made. Yeah, exactly. Um, but they didn’t, they paid the owner to take off and, and leave it, you know, like a light, like a light switch. Um, and, um, the new company kind of drove it into the ground and they couldn’t fulfill orders for upwards of a year. I mean, you literally ordered something and they’d give you a backorder date a year out and you’re like, what? How are you? I don’t know. And it, the, and nitro gears that they’re still around, but they’re there. It’s a way, it’s not what it was. I don’t know the full detail on Yukon, but Yukon gears was wonderful. And, uh, now people just won’t touch them. I mean, uh, installers that, uh, the do diffs will not, will not touch them. It’s just so sad. And it happens time and time again. It’s just, it’s simply the matter of this company has built up a great name. Now let’s buy that great name and sell stuff that’s, uh, that we’re making 50, 60, 70% profit on for as long as we can. And when it goes away, we’ll do it again. Yep. So, um, I’ve had, you know, anytime, anytime I see an off-road company or like, I’ll have friends that have, you know, small product ideas that are being successful and they’ll be like, Hey, I got an offer to sell the product idea. And I was like, who’s buying it? Who is funding the buying? That’s what I would have the biggest concern. And if it’s something, anything like John and Jay’s investment firm or a conglomerate of investors, um, stay away in my opinion for the off-road industry, the off-road industry is two grassroots driven. Um, that buying company or the it’s typically going to be a holding company that’s holding brand assets. They don’t care about the product. They don’t care about the industry. They’re just care about the bottom line profits. And that’s what they’re going to focus on. That’s what happened to four wheel parts. Four wheel parts was sold from boot. Greg sold it to, um, Trans America, Trans America sold it to so-and-so trans, so-and-so does Polaris. So-and-so to wheel pros. Um, and wheel pros essentially, um, dissolving four wheel parts before Greg bought it back again, full circle. Um, but as it, as it changes, it’s a profit deal. That’s cool. Oh my God, dude. He let him run it into the ground and they’ll buy it back and I’ll make a good profit and have a vacation at the same time. Yeah. Um, yeah. Kudos to Greg for, you know, being able to buy back what he sold for

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percentages of a cent on the dollar. I know what you assholes are going to do. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll sell it.

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But when, when he originally sold it in and to Trans America, um, Trans America only cared about the profit and it changed the entire business structure and all the sales reps at four wheel parts, the main part of how they were, um, compensated was just on peer commission. How much crap could they sell you? They didn’t care what they were selling you. They didn’t care what they were putting on your vehicle. The word’s going to get out very quickly about all the crap that you sold me for my Jeep or Toyota that I really didn’t need or paid too much for. Yep. And four wheel parts essentially went under within five to seven years of that. So, um, Tyler, this is, this is the thing, man. This is really interesting. You ought to consider starting a podcast because you got a lot of, a lot of, a lot of good information here, uh, snail trail podcast. You can find snail trail on, I’m sure all over. Uh, it’s primarily a audio podcast, but are you guys on doing the video as well? We do a video, but it’s mainly just to have another channel for people to consume it, the video we haven’t streamlined the studio to make it good for video viewing. Um, but if you like to watch podcasts and video and watch me and Jimmy talk about and goof around the things that we talk about, um, it’s up on YouTube. I never thought talking heads, especially like in an hour would do. Why, why would anybody sit there and watch two talking heads, you know? And then, and then somebody, after we started doing it, I’ve got a team now and the, the, the volunteer Jeep talk show team says, you need, we need to get on YouTube though. Okay. We’ll do that. Uh, I can’t have a team without listening to them. Right. And, uh, so, uh, it wasn’t until after we started doing it that I found out why it’s a good thing. Yeah. People work on their Jeeps and their garage and people like using YouTube to help, you know, with what they’re doing. They’ve got the TV, they’ve got the fire stick. Yep. So now instead of trying to figure out a way to listen to the audio only podcast, they can just pull it up on the TV, pull it up on the YouTube. Yep. And if they want to look, they can turn and look and go, what are these knuckle heads talking, what are they laughing about? What are they showing? You know? Yep. Yep. So it makes sense. So yeah, I mean, I’m a convert. So, all right. So you know how the kids love the social media, uh, working in the find more flight tire Tyler and, uh, some sexy gratuitous axle shots from your Toyota. Yeah. Um, over on more flight. So that’s the business one. It’s more flight everywhere. So M O R R FL ATE, um, there’s Instagram of a very lively Instagram account. It’s kind of, it’s really cool the way that, um, we’ve kind of created it. It’s, it’s become a cool thing for customers and people getting our gear to share it on Instagram and social media and share the fun adventures they’re doing. And so we love sharing those adventures with everybody else. And so we, with all of our stuff, pretty much on the more flight Instagram is all user generated content. We don’t really do the stuff that we create ourselves anymore. Um, we’re just sharing everybody else’s adventures while they’re out using our stuff. That’s really cool. Yeah. Um, so that’s on Instagram. Um, we haven’t really done a whole lot with tick talk or I’m, I’m hiring a new marketing guy now. Um, and he has some fun tick talk ideas. So we’ll see how that grows in the future. Um, we have a really pretty lively, um, educational email blast. So a lot of companies will just email blast all their sales they’re doing. Right. And talk about all their products and we really try and make sure our emails are educational. So, um, if you’re interested in learning more about inflation, deflation, tire repair, um, get on our email chain. Um, there’s a lot of really cool educational stuff going through there.(…) Um, the Facebook is just copied over what is happening from the Instagram account. So, um, that’s all there. If you want to see stuff of what I’m getting myself into, which is more of building stupid axles, playing with dumb vehicles, um, run it. Romping around in the forerunner on tracks in the snow. Um, that’s over at four by four Toyota Tyler on Instagram. So, and you guys are on Instagram with the podcast as well, right? Yep. Snail trail four by four is the podcast one for Instagram. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. So I always say this, but I’m going to be bugging you to get you back on because I mean, we’ve talked an over an hour and I let it, I let it run. It doesn’t feel like that. Yeah. I know I let it run a lot longer, even though I saw that we were getting at the hour because it’s just so interesting. And I have not asked you all the questions I want to ask you. And I’m sure you haven’t, yeah, I’m sure you haven’t told me everything, uh, that, uh, that you’ve, uh, that you’ve learned and people you’ve talked to. So going to get you back on, um, maybe, maybe next month, if that’s not too soon for you, uh, we’ll September, sometimes September should be good. So, yeah, good. So we’ll be in contact with you and you guys out there watching and listing, uh, you can get, uh, more Tyler, of course you could go to snail trail, uh, and, uh, get more Tyler right now. Who’s all on the, uh, on the show now you, you mentioned somebody else, uh, Jimmy jet. He kind of started snail trail four by four as a YouTube channel showing people how to work on Toyotas and mainly older school to it as the mini trucks. Um, a lot of fifth gen forerunner stuff. He’s doing more Tacoma tundra stuff now. Um, so we just kind of took the, um, the, the, the channel, the podcast and put it under the snail trail brand, um, which works out really well. So we both drive older Toyotas and love talking about how many transfer cases you can put in a vehicle and how slow you can go. So, you know, it’s too many when you’re reaching way behind you for the shift.

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Yeah. I got to train the kid to shift to the shifter in the back seat there now. Get the, the, the, uh, the 50 cal gunner glasses, you know, right there on the, on the shifter. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. It’s all good stuff. It’s fun. All right, man. A lot of fun. Glad to have you back. It shouldn’t have been this long, but you know how it goes in the podcasting. So, uh, have a great day and, uh, I’m glad we were able to make this, uh, this connection. Me too, Tony. You too, man. It’s always fun being on here, chatting with you, having fun conversations. So we’ll do it again soon. And, uh, yeah, thanks

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You’re my friend, you’re my new friend.