The ManEarl Stuckey, a 56-year-old construction company owner from Calvary, Georgia, is the owner of Team Green, the Diesel Hot Rod Association's '06 Pro Street class champion. Team Green set DHRA Pro Street e.t. and speed quarter-mile records of 9.56 seconds and 142 mph, establishing The Green Truck as the nation's quickest street-legal diesel pickup. Recently, Diesel Power caught up with Stuckey to discuss-among other topics-how Team Green came together, its success, and the future of the organization.
Diesel Power: First, let's talk about Team Green. It's a pretty special combination of you, driver Philip Palmer, and crewchief Robert Donalson. How did it form?
Earl Stuckey: I can rattle on for a while. The Green Truck got started when I decided to build a truck, a two-wheel drive when four-wheel drives basically dominated the class. I started building the truck and [driver] Philip (Palmer) came on board after the truck had been built and tested. Philip was doing the machine work. I mentioned to him I needed a driver because I'm 56 years old, and I couldn't punch the buttons that fast. He said, 'I'll be glad to do it.' Philip is a longtime racer. He's been around drag racing basically all of his life. He loved the idea of the challenge of running a diesel instead of gas.
Then my crewchief, Robert Donalson, basically built the injection pump for the truck. He started seeing the truck come together, and he sort of got excited because he loves diesels and anything to do with them. That's his livelihood, and he just loved the challenge of building a truck that could be No. 1. He got on board that way, and we sort of all came together, met up, and became a team in July of 2005. We ran the first race together in Atlanta in August of 2005. We won the race, and that pretty much inspired the whole team. Everything was working great together.
Team Green at the TS Performance Outlaw Race, all wearing their team colors: Robert Donalson, Philip Palmer, and Earl Stuckey (from left to right).
DP: Did you expect things to come together so quickly?ES: We had no idea diesel racing would become what it is today. We had no idea it would grow as fast as it has grown and expand to the magnitude it has. We have been fortunate enough to come together as a team that works good together. When we all did get together, and everything started clicking, we ran from August of 2005 until June 2007-when we had a transmission failure-and we were No. 1 or No. 2 qualifier and No. 1 or No. 2 finisher in every DHRA race in that span. That record stood true until June, when we had a transmission give up on us. We battled a lot of battles with turbos, transmissions, all kinds of pumps, injector problems-all kinds of problems. We were able to overcome them all until June.
DP: You participated in the BorgWarner Shootout earlier this off-season. Talk about that.ES: We got to carry the Green Truck out there and put it in the show. I was really shocked at the people out in California who knew about our little South Georgia race team. It was just tremendous, the people who would walk up and say, 'I've been following you for a year.' That was pretty amazing to me to see this going on.