DP: How many races would you say you've competed in with the Green Truck?ES: I would say probably 25-just as a wild guess.
DP: And until recently, you've had very few problems with it?ES: (Laughing) We've had lots of problems with it. We had an issue where we were blowing up turbos. In Indy, I think they went through six or eight turbos with a whole group of diesel trucks. What it is, we're taking turbos and we're single-charging them. Our trucks have just been running with one charger and nitrous. Having BorgWarner as a sponsor that is actually furnishing us turbos, they're using us for their research and development a lot of times: 'This works and that doesn't.' They get some good out of it. We get some good out of it. That's basically what it is.
When you take the Green Truck and you take transmission and torque converter and you throw that much power to it-a transmission builder, if we run his product, he can take that transmission and pretty much guarantee it for 600-800 hp for pretty much the rest of his life. That's part of what racing does. It builds products they can sell and stand behind.
DP: And as you said, you really are reaching people with this.ES: I bought $600 worth of pictures of the Green Truck that we give to kids over a year or two's time. My wife asked me, 'Why are you wasting this money on these pictures?' We had an outlaw race the first of the year, and I told her, 'You're in charge of these pictures.' She said, 'What do I do with them?' I said, 'You'll see what to do with them.' She's hanging around the trailer and up comes these 5-, 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-year-old kids: 'Could we have one of those pictures? Could we get Philip to sign them? Could we get Mr. Stuckey to sign them?' Before you know it, she's talking to all of these kids and they're asking questions, and at the end of the day, she said, 'That's the best money we spent.'
We had a deal in June where we had a couple of pictures in the hauler truck. We're coming down the road, and there was this guy standing on the corner bumming-wanting you to give him $1 for food. We pulled over to the side of the road and said, 'Come here, buddy. We're going to give you $1, but right behind us is going to be a maroon-looking Peterbilt hooked to a white trailer. When he comes up this ramp, you hold this picture up.' He said, 'No problem.' Well, the guy coming behind us was Jeff Garmon. To see a guy standing on the corner holding up one of our Green Truck pictures just floored him. We do a lot of pranking, and we do a lot of having fun.
DP: How did you, Philip Palmer, and team owner Earl Stuckey get together?RD: Earl actually started this project himself. The truck got started from somebody telling him he couldn't do something. At that time, me and Philip didn't have anything to do with it. After a little while, when things didn't go really well, Earl picked us up. I had done the original injection pump on it. Philip had done some of the machine work. All of a sudden, we came together. Before Philip came along, Earl's son, Matt, was driving the truck. We had a little mishap: a motor blew out, and the truck got sideways on him. Matt kind of said that wasn't his cup of tea. Philip had done the machine work anyway. It just all came together. It's kind of amazing. We'd all known each other but never knew we'd have any kind of stuff like this happening. We're the Three Amigos. We've worked together and overcome a lot.