As many people across America come together with friends and family for Turkey dinners and pumpkin pie, there is a hard core group of people that are in the garage or shop working on vehicles with 40” tall tires and fire breathing motors.
10 months prior they swore they hated everything about this sport we call off road racing. Then a few days later they started their plan to best their results from that year. Plans for more power, more traction, faster speeds and seeing that checkered flag fly again. These people, they are our kinda people!
Every year a dusty, dry and barren lake bed in California turns into a city filled with racers and teams who tell themselves “this is my year”. Every year we set up alongside those racers and teams and offer our support in fulfilling those dreams.
KOH is the toughest, most unforgiving race in all of America.Teams arrive 1 – 2 weeks before their race day and start getting settled in. There is lots to do once they arrive on site like getting the race vehicle set up to handle the terrain, prerunning, learning the race course and inevitably lots and lots of work. There is no margin for error here. There is no option to run to the store and no Amazon delivery trucks. Warranties aren’t worth anything at KOH.
Everything needs to work without flaw. This is exactly what Pro Eagle jacks were designed for and it is why 90% or more of all the teams demand our jacks.
In 2019 we decided to offer jack service on site to any team that had a Pro Eagle jack. Teams have so much going on with their race vehicles and maintenance and care for their tools is often overlooked. It was so well received that we have continued the service every year since. We did everything from fluid changes to upgrading jacks with improved parts.
KOH is one of the best opportunities we get to interact with our users and to inspect their jacks.This has allowed us to find flaws and make improvements. We are the only jack company doing this and it is the reason we are #1 at what we do.
When all was said and done KOH saw 80,000 people come through the front gate. We were set up for 11 days and we were busy all day every day. We hosted a Pit Crew Competition in our booth one of the evenings after qualifying. We had around 15 teams that competed and around 200 spectators that came out to watch.
Teams had to jack up the vehicle, change a tire and dump 10 gallons of water simulating a tire and fuel pit stop. The fastest teams won a huge prize package we assembled from some of our industry partners like Buggy Whip, Boxo Tools, Rigid Industries, Rugged Radios and UTV Source.
We had jacks in the pits of EVERY winning team this year and many “trucks” had our two ton Beast mounted onboard. We were also the onboard jack of choice on the 1st place and 2nd place winners in the UTV race. This was a very proud day for us since there are a few other onboard jack companies that are paying teams to use their product, yet we have been on the winning vehicle two years running now.
It was even more gratifying walking through the finishers and seeing those teams that were paid to use another brand that had our Phoenix jack in the vehicle as well as a “backup” jack.
We also took the chance to test a new jack that has been in the works for a while. We gave it to the team at Fox Shocks for them to use while working on vehicles. They work in the dirt and lift and remove the shocks from 15-20 vehicles a day. We are talking everything from UTVs to full tube chassis rigs weighing 5000 LBS or more. We are happy to say that it exceeded their expectations and will be put into production soon. Keep an eye out for more on this new jack later this year.
Just like the racers mentioned in the beginning of this story, we were burnt out at the end of our 11 days in the desert. We were ready to go home to our families and our own bed. If we never saw the dirt again or heard a 1000 HP motor at 5000 RPM again it would be too soon! ……. Ahhhh who are we kidding, as soon as we got home we were already working on plans for next year! We can’t wait to go back and show you what we have been working on.
