DP: Did you have any specific goals when you first started this thing?RD: Our goal is to do what they say can't be done. That's how the truck got started. Somebody said, 'You can't do that with a two-wheel-drive pickup truck.' Oh, really? That's something that we all strive for. Really, you can't tell Team Green, 'You can't.' We're not cocky. We're down-to-earth guys like everybody else. We try to have a whole lot of fun, but everything that I do and everything that Philip does is taken very seriously when it comes to that truck. Everybody looks at Earl and says, 'Earl has a bunch of money.' But money's not the thing. Yeah, it does take a little bit of money. But we've defied the odds by doing what we have done with the truck with the amount of money we have spent. It's scary to know what our actual cost is as far as how cheaply it can be achieved. People say, 'How can somebody afford to build a truck like Stuckey's to run like that?' They say that not knowing that we've got less than $4,000 in the motor. That's what scares me. Other people probably have $20,000-$25,000 in a motor. We've kind of defied the odds.
DP: How did you start working on diesel engines?RD: I wanted to be in fuel injection ever since I was a kid. I went to Nashville Auto Diesel College back in 1986 or 1987. I was one of them kids who was tired of English, tired of school. So when I graduated, I said, 'I want to go to Nashville Auto Diesel College.' Like everybody else, people asked me, 'Where are you going to go to work?' I said, 'I don't know. I'm going to try to go to Shiver Diesel Injection in Tifton, Georgia.' Why? It was close to home. It was one of those things I thought was interesting. I had always been around it. I wasn't one of those guys who tore your car apart every weekend. Mine worked, and I didn't mess with it.
A month before I graduated, I went by Shiver Diesel. The owner wasn't there. I talked to a bunch of the guys. I said, 'Well, as soon as I graduate, I'll come back and I'll talk to him.' I graduated. That weekend, we went and played a ball tournament. I got in late Sunday night. There was a note on my bed that said, 'You need to be at Shiver Diesel at 7:30 in the morning.' I said, 'Really?' I went there, had never met [company president] Jerry (Shiver) before. I talked to him. He hooked me up with a place to live, a place for me to rent. I went and took care of all of that. He said, 'Be back to work tomorrow.' Eighteen years later, you know . . . it's just one of those things.
DP: What has been the toughest part of making this truck as quick as it is?RD: Overcoming little things. I mean, we started off with a Dana 60 rearend. We ran it forever, and all of a sudden, we started breaking. We broke it one time and thought maybe it was a coincidence. So we upgraded parts. The next race, we broke it again. We figured out, 'The horsepower range where we're at, this stuff isn't going to go.' The key to where we're at right now is turning weight. The thing people don't understand is, 'Yes, we want to be No. 1.' But everybody thinks if you're going to run these high horsepower, you've got to have a lot of beefy parts. That's true to a certain extent, but what do you give up when you go to those big, heavy-duty parts? It takes horsepower to turn everything. You've got to get the strongest you can with the lightest weight.