Season 2, Episode 56 - Matt Caldwell of Tread Lightly!, Worst Drivers on the Road

 

 

The following transcription of The Truck Show Podcast was generated using a speech recognition software, and will contain errors. Please review the timestamp and listen to the corresponding audio for accuracy. 

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Kim Towsend (Instagram Story (1s):

It is negative degrees out here in Chicago. My car needed charging. So of course you look for the closest charger station, which for me was Evergreen. I made it to Evergreen charging station. And what happened of the 10 stations, I wanna say nine or eight of them are all broken and unable to be utilized. So of course, as you can see, you have multiple vehicles.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36s):

That’s a lot of Teslas that

Kim Towsend (Instagram Story (37s):

Have died and are unable to be charged. You have people who are stuck out in negative degree weather. Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48s):

Covered in Frost. You

Kim Towsend (Instagram Story (49s):

Have a tow truck here who is trying to help and support. But again, all of these charging stations no longer work.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (60s):

This audio was brought to us by Kim Townsend. She goes by Butterfly Lotus on the gram, but you’ll never figure it out because it’s spelled bizarre. So Te Tesla’s not doing so good in the, in this Hold on,

Sean P. Holman (1m 11s):

Hold on, because I think a lot of people in this cold snap that we had recently in the Midwest are realizing, to your point, that EVs don’t like extreme cold, double the time to charge ’em way worse range. I, I think the guys over at TFL had a, a model three or Model Y that’s over 300 miles and they got 1 57 in the cold.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 32s):

Ouch.

Sean P. Holman (1m 32s):

But if we’re gonna play that, we also have to play this post by Illumina duty at Illumina duty of a 2024 F four 50 cold start in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This was negative 31 degrees Fahrenheit. I think it’s only fair to show both sides of the equation. I think that that oil is a little thick. And my understanding was he’s using five, might be five 30 in there, or five 20 and was whatever Ford’s lowest recommended viscosity is And. it was still thick as maple syrup

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 14s):

And it’s plugged into a block Heater apparently didn’t do enough.

Sean P. Holman (2m 25s):

So it’s been a tough week for vehicles for most of the country. However, those of us who are California pompous and live at the beach, our lows got down to about 40, which of course means heated seats and steering wheels.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 40s):

My wife was just miserable. She’s like, it’s so cold. I go, do you have any idea what the rest of the country is experiencing right

Sean P. Holman (2m 46s):

Now? Yeah. And there’s nothing on the ground or in the air. It’s just cold but normal. Outside.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 50s):

Outside. Just cold but normal. Yeah. I’m

Sean P. Holman (2m 52s):

Not shoveling a driveway. And

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 53s):

Sunny skies sunny, by the way, if you sit on your porch for a few minutes, it’s warm. Warm.

Sean P. Holman (2m 57s):

Yeah. The sun, the sun is really low. So, it just, those rays hit you just right. We

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 2s):

Sound like a-holes right now.

Sean P. Holman (3m 3s):

Yeah. We, let’s, let’s move along. I’ve got a story for you that you may appreciate or not. By the way,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 8s):

It is the truck. Show Podcast. I’m Lightning Hees Holman. What’s your story?

Sean P. Holman (3m 12s):

So my, my parents took my oldest daughter to the Forum, which is a famous concert venue in previous home of the Lakers, back in its heyday to go see Steely Dan and the

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 23s):

Eagles I mean the fabulous forum. And

Sean P. Holman (3m 26s):

I get a text from my mom, And, she goes, Hey, we just met one of your podcast listeners. And I’m like, what? That’s weird. So shout out to Rick, who apparently walked up to my dad and said, Hey, are you a Holman? And my dad said, yeah. He goes, oh, is that Marin? I recognize you from Sean’s Instagram. And my dad’s like, oh yeah, that’s, that’s our son. He goes, oh, I’ve been a long time listener to the podcast. And guess took a picture with him and his wife. So my mom sent it over to me. So Rick, whoever you are, thanks for listening and finding my family out in the wild.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 56s):

And you’re thanks for being a creeper. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (3m 57s):

A little bit creepy, right? It’s super weird, but cool. Well, so yeah. So funny you say that. ’cause I asked my mom, my first question was, was it weird or creepy? She goes, Oh. no, he older guy, super nice. And wasn’t creepy at all. We, it was nice to meet him. I was like, okay, then. So, so Rick, thanks for not being a creeper. Thanks

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 12s):

For not killing him in the parking

Sean P. Holman (4m 13s):

Lot. I I, I don’t think he was gonna murder them. I think he just wanted a photo and to say hi. But that’s weird. Like, I, I don’t ever get noticed except for like locally you and I’ve been noticed at a couple breweries and things like that and whatnot, but I don’t really get noticed out in the wild. So shout out to him. I thought, I thought that was nice of him to, to come up and make I don know. Make me look cool to my kid. Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 35s):

Again, weird and super cool. Well, what’s not weird is Tread Lightly, we’re gonna be catching up with Matt Caldwell. He runs Tread Lightly. They’re a phenomenal organization that not only helps to keep trails open but clean. They do a lot of community service. And Holman, you’re intimately familiar with Tread Lightly.

Sean P. Holman (4m 52s):

Yep. So Matt’s the executive director and a lot of different things they have going on, whether it’s education, stewardship, working and partnering with other private organizations. There’s just so much going on to help keeping our lands open to recreate. And I know that there’s been a lot of conversation lately about some of the bigger closures that have gotten a higher profile, such as the ones in Moab. And I figured, well, it’d be nice to have Matt on to kind of see what Tread Lightly take is on that and, and maybe get a different point of view.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 20s):

And later in the show we’re going to reveal who the worst drivers are. Is it me, is it Holman? Is it you?

Sean P. Holman (5m 27s):

Oh, it’s definitely you. Oh, it’s me. No. Or them. Oh them. It’s not me. Well,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 31s):

We’re gonna find out All, right? We have the definitive list.

Sean P. Holman (5m 34s):

Oh, is it definitive? No, it’s not. No, it’s not. It’s not All. right. But before we can get to the worst drivers on the road, we have to think our presenting sponsor Nissan. So if you’re in the market for a truck head on down to your local Nissan dealer, you gave your choice of the mid-size frontier, the half ton Titan or the half ton plus Titan xd. The Titans come with the industry’s best five year, 100,000 mile warranty. And whether you go big or small, Nissan has you covered with some of the best, most reliable trucks on the market. You can build and price your truck today at Nissan usa.com.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 4s):

So Marina McKee is one of our listeners and a couple months back I hooked him up with some Banks parts. He hit me on on the gram at LBC Lightning and dialed him in. He has a 2014 Ram 3,500 dually fine choice. So he had, he was one of the guys that had the emissions recall that all these guys are getting now. Sure. So he goes to the dealer, has the emissions recall, he’s got his bank stuff on. Yeah. He’s kind of worried, right? He’s gonna get his warranty violated. Something like that. Yep. And nope. Rolled right out. Send me a DM says hassle. Hassle-free. Didn’t mess with any of my bank stuff. I was actually complimented on the bank’s parts. Awesome. He writes right there. So, you know, a lot of the dealers, they know the quality and the reliability of bank’s parts.

Sean P. Holman (6m 47s):

Here’s what you’re trying to say is, if you’re a bank’s customer and you’ve got an oopsie from Ram coming your way, you don’t have to worry because the parts were made to be compliant from the beginning and you no stress about ripping your truck apart and fighting all those stock parts because your stuff is gonna be compliant. Head

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 2s):

Over to Banks Power dot com to get your emissions compliant. 50 state legal performance parts.

4 (7m 8s):

The truck show up. We’re going to show you what we know. We’re gonna answer what the truck, cars, truck rides with the truck show. We have the lifted, we have the lowered end. Everything in between. We’ll talk about trucks that run on Diesel and the ones that run on gasoline. The truck show. The truck show. The truck show. Whoa.

5 (7m 40s):

It’s the truck show with your hosts Lightning and Holman.

Sean P. Holman (7m 47s):

So what have we been doing this show for almost six years?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 50s):

Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (7m 51s):

How much good do you Think we have put out into the world.

4 (7m 54s):

Hmm.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 55s):

Couple minutes worth

Sean P. Holman (7m 57s):

Out of all those hundreds of thousands of hours. Yeah. Very little All. right? Well, I wonder if having Matt Caldwell executive director from Tread Lightly on this show would give us some don don’t know, some, some brownie points and maybe offset all the ill conceived deeds that we’ve put out into the world.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 12s):

It’s not gonna help us, but we should dial ’em anyway. Matt,

Matt Caldwell (8m 26s):

This is him.

Sean P. Holman (8m 27s):

That,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 28s):

That was very strange. It was just, we have a good connection. Do we have, yeah. Hello? Check one, two. Is this thing on? Yeah. Okay, good. We’re

Sean P. Holman (8m 36s):

Good.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 37s):

All. right. Mr. Matt Caldwell.

Sean P. Holman (8m 40s):

Do Executive

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 41s):

Executive director of Tread Light. Are we gonna do this again?

Sean P. Holman (8m 43s):

Let’s just start this

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 44s):

Over. But no, I Think. this is funny.

Sean P. Holman (8m 45s):

It is not funny. Yeah, no.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 47s):

It is solid.

Sean P. Holman (8m 48s):

It sounded like his phone was thrown out the window of a car and bounced a couple times before I answered.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 52s):

Lemme check. Matt, are you okay? Are you safe?

Sean P. Holman (8m 56s):

This is audio, but win twice if you need help.

Matt Caldwell (8m 59s):

Yeah, as far as I know, I’m good. Okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 1s):

All, right, All right. We have a quick intro. Don’t move.

9 (9m 5s):

Yo, the truck show. Who this? Who this? Who the hell is this A truck show interview you don’t wanna miss? We Dr. Top Dogs in the industry. How’d you blow? W how’d you come to beat? Who this, who this truck show represent. Represent.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 22s):

Alright. Solid. So this been, been since we’ve had that intro, we haven’t done it in a while. Yeah. Squad, I missed That one.

Sean P. Holman (9m 27s):

All, right. So there’s been a whole lot of stuff going on and in, in the land use segment of our industry. And So I thought, you know what, I’m gonna give my friend Matt a call and say, Hey, could you walk us through the stuff that matters? The stuff that doesn’t matter, the stuff that is holding us back I mean, let’s just go over a few of the stories that have happened in the, in just the past few weeks. Well,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 48s):

First off, can I apologize for rolling my TRX down the hill and destroying a canyon?

Sean P. Holman (9m 53s):

Yeah. Well that wasn’t you, but that was gonna be one of the stories that’s bring up. It

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 55s):

Wasn’t me. No.

Sean P. Holman (9m 56s):

So somebody rolled off a, a cliff in Moab and I, I guess they were inside survived. The TRX was a, a tiny little smashed up, looked like it had gone through a crusher at the bottom that doesn’t help land use. and then you also have the recent closures in Utah, but there’s also a lot of good stuff happening in, in land use that I don’t, Think we hear enough about. so we thought we’d get Matt on. Matt’s the executive director of Tread Lightly and thanks for joining us on the show. Matt.

Matt Caldwell (10m 22s):

I appreciate you guys having me. Where

Sean P. Holman (10m 23s):

Do you wanna start? I mean there’s, I feel like the, the industry

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 27s):

Is, well, I I have a suggestion. Holman rather than jump into the updates, why don’t we get a little backstory on Tread Lightly? ’cause there may be some listeners that aren’t familiar with the organization.

Matt Caldwell (10m 37s):

Cool. I I’m, I’m good to go with that. I think I, you know, Tread Lightly has been around for 34 years now as a nonprofit. A lot of people don’t know that. We started actually as part of the Forest Service, we’re part of the Forest Service for, for five years. And then we broke off into our own 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit. And we really have three focuses, stewardship, and we’ve come to learn that not everybody understands what stewardship is anymore. So it’s, it’s trail work, it’s trail maintenance, it’s doing our part to make sure those trails stay open by boots on the groundwork and then education, work and communication and outreach with the public.

Matt Caldwell (11m 16s):

That’s really what we were designed to do.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 18s):

How did it break off, Matt? Like was it a, like a skunk works within the Forest Service? No, I’m, I, I don’t know.

Matt Caldwell (11m 27s):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, great question. So really what I think the Forest Service finally understood was they’re not gonna be able to do this on their own. They really need industry partners to be involved with this. And as a government entity, they weren’t gonna be able to be involved with those industry partners. So that was the reason it was broken into the nonprofit. And obviously where we are right now, I mean you guys are aware, there’s numerous industry partners that we work with, with that make the work that we do possible.

Sean P. Holman (11m 56s):

And in fact, Tread, Lightly has become, you know, really the, if you will, the premium or premier or the, the place to go. Like if you’re an automotive manufacturer and you want to get involved in, in stewardship or you’re shooting a commercial and you wanna have the action, but you want to do it right, So, it doesn’t, you know, have, have

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 16s):

A negative impact,

Sean P. Holman (12m 17s):

Right? Yeah. You don’t want the optics. A lot of times at the end you’ll see the Tread Lightly logo, or this was in conjunction with Tread Lightly and you guys end up being advisors or consultants of sorts to make sure that these projects are done the right way.

Matt Caldwell (12m 28s):

Absolutely. We have several brands that, you know, reach out to us, whether it’s for advertising or social media content, and really ask our opinion like, hey, is is, is this piece that we’re getting ready to push is, is it the potential there for issues? You know, have we done everything appropriate? It’s a challenging spot to be in, but I think it’s something that the industry needs.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 48s):

Now, is the average person involved in Tread Lightly or is this still governmental? I I know it’s a 5 0 1 3 C now, but like, can, can, can we be involved? Can our, can our

Sean P. Holman (12m 59s):

Listeners be Absolutely, we can have memberships.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 1s):

Okay. I didn’t know a

Matt Caldwell (13m 2s):

Absolutely. Yeah. So memberships are really important piece for us. so we have grants from the, the government, both federal level, state level, you know, some forest or BLM. But the, the memberships from individuals is what provides the funding that’s required for the match for those grants. So if a, if a grant has a $50,000 amount to it, let’s say we’re applying for a grant in the state of Arizona that might have a 10% or a 20% match that we have to come up with our own to get the totality of that funding. So the memberships are a really key part of that.

Sean P. Holman (13m 40s):

And if you go down to the Tread Lightly dot org page and you can go to the become a member dropdown, there’s all sorts of levels. Everything that starts from a $25 individual membership up through 50, a hundred, $250 to club members, a hundred or two 50 small business members, a hundred, two 50 dealer members, 500 each tier comes with its own set of, of, of things that you would get with it that come with a membership. I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 9s):

Want whatever’s gonna get me a badge to put on my Jeep.

Sean P. Holman (14m 11s):

Well, you know, if you do the individual level membership for 25 bucks, you do get a Tread Lightly decal. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 17s):

Okay. There you go.

Sean P. Holman (14m 18s):

So there you go.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 19s):

I’m official. When this broke off from the Forest Service, what was the first big accomplishment that Tread Lightly touted?

Matt Caldwell (14m 30s):

You know, I really think it was the educational component. We’ve got a program that’s called Tread Trainer, and then the Master Tread trainer, which is the train the trainer component of that Tread Whitely was started because of three-wheeled ATVs. Doesn’t really seem that it was that long ago, but it has been that long. Those till those were kind of bursting on scenes and they knew, knew that those were gonna provide impacts on the land. So education was gonna be a necessary component, you know, to help kind of mitigate some of those issues that we were gonna

Sean P. Holman (14m 60s):

See. You mean the death tricycles? Yeah, death

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 2s):

I mean we, we, we like stop, you guys should not be riding those Honda. Stop making ’em Right.

Sean P. Holman (15m 8s):

I mean any of us who are of a certain age, who grew up on those things hella fun and super freaking

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 14s):

Dangerous. Dude, my wife has scars from hers. Like literally she has scars. Yeah,

Matt Caldwell (15m 19s):

It’s it’s amazing that we’re all, you know, still around in some cases.

Sean P. Holman (15m 23s):

Yeah, no kidding.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 24s):

And so you’re out there explaining where to go, where not to go, how to go certain places. I I guess that was the education in the beginning, right? Just saying like, that’s the message overall, right? Well is that here’s where you should go to recreate and don’t go here because if you go here and destroy this land, they’ll close more of it. Well,

Sean P. Holman (15m 44s):

Not even that I mean that’s, you know, I would even go at, at a higher level. It’s wherever you do go, whether on private property or public lands or, or whatever. Tread Lightly came out with the Tread principles. And so these are the kind of things that, you know, new off roaders should be aware of. So Tread, T-R-E-A-D, each one stands for something. So travel responsibly, respect the rights of others, educate yourself, avoid sensitive areas and then do your part. And under each of those things is a piece of that education puzzle to inform people. ’cause a lot of times people just, you know, they see the commercials or, or they see a, a YouTube video or an influencer maybe doing something on a controlled course, maybe doing something environmentally damaging that’s going to hurt the rights of everybody else.

Sean P. Holman (16m 28s):

The key is to educate people so that they’re not ignorant to the decorum that should happen out in the back country.

Matt Caldwell (16m 34s):

Yeah, really well said. I mean, it, it, it’s interesting to call it, but we call it, you know, it’s an outdoor or offroad ethic. And some of us grew up with it, some of us didn’t. The last three years have brought a lot of new players into this thing that we love and you know, they don’t have that frame of reference of the Tread principles. So having those is a really important piece, you know, for them to get a better understanding of how do we go out, not just and have fun, but how do we make sure we can keep having fun.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 5s):

A couple of questions you, you’re talking about with Covid, a lot of people bought trailers, dirt bikes, quads side-by-side, Jeeps, all sorts of stuff to get out, you know, out and about. Do, do you find that the biggest impact comes from urbanites or is there a group of people? Is it just a good cross section of everyone who was, you saw kind of like hurting the land, you’re like, we need to protect this before it gets outta control or, because here’s why I ask, I’ll be specific. I was sure camping a couple years ago and there were people showing up and their like Honda Accord with a trailer and a quad and they were ripping, they weren’t staying on the trails. They were making dust in through everyone else’s campsite doing donuts where they shouldn’t be.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 49s):

And like, that was the kind of person who I needs to be educated. You’re gonna destroy it for all of us. Or am I, was that a bad cross section? Like what do you feel

Matt Caldwell (17m 59s):

No I mean? I think, I think part of that’s correct. I, I, I asked the question one time to a federal land manager and the answer I got was really interesting. I, I was a little bit backing him into a corner to try to give him me an answer like, who’s the problem? And his answer was, Matt, you know what, it’s 1% of everybody.

Sean P. Holman (18m 19s):

Hmm. I think

Matt Caldwell (18m 19s):

That’s fair. And I, he’s like, I don’t care whether it’s the full-size crowd, it’s the dirt bike crowd. It’s the UTV crowd. It’s a TV crowd. He goes, in some cases it might be, you know, the hiking or climbing or mountain bike crowd that have to access a motorized route to get to wherever they’re going. We, we look at anybody that is venturing off the pavement, you know, on public land, their motorized recreation person, whether their end activity is motorized or not, they still need those exact same roads and trails. You know, that those of us that are always on a motor vehicle need. So when we segment those out and look at, you know, it’s them against us, that can have a really different outcome depending on who you are and, and what your favorite form of recreation

Sean P. Holman (19m 7s):

Is. That’s actually a really good point. There’s a lot of people who might be anti-access, at least for motor vehicles, not realizing that they require that access to get to the places they want to go, to get to the trailhead, to get to that special spots to go hiking, to go where they wanna go, rock climbing or, or whatever the case is. And really everybody is a access person, motorized access person. If you’re recreating in the back country, because whether you’re on a bicycle, a dirt bike, A-U-T-V-A, a overland rig, any of that stuff, if you’re on a, a Prius, if you’re on the dirt road on public lands taking you somewhere, then you are part of that group. And I, I’ve seen it so many

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 46s):

Holman hoing into Tesla.

Sean P. Holman (19m 48s):

Hoing into

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 49s):

Tesla, sorry,

Sean P. Holman (19m 51s):

Can, you hear that? I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it so many times where somebody was arguing for anti-access. And when you press ’em on it, you find out, well they’re using the same roads and they think it doesn’t apply to them, they’re gonna close it off to those evil off roaders. But us in our, you know, RAV4 adventures are gonna be just fine. And you’re like, it doesn’t work that way.

Matt Caldwell (20m 8s):

I had a guy ask me one time, he said, Matt, why do you have to off road? And I said, ’cause I wanna see as much as possible. And he said, well that’s why I hike. And I said, well how much Can you see in a day? And he is like, you know, I could probably do 10, 15 miles in a day. And I’m like, I could do 10 times that. So I’m getting to see more than you.

Sean P. Holman (20m 30s):

Exactly. I mean we do regular trips where we do a hundred miles day off

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 33s):

Road and that’s just unfair. That’s him putting himself in or him putting you in his shoes or vice versa. Like he’s he’s putting his opinion on you, right? What’s that’s, it’s okay for me to do something and it’s not okay for you to do your thing.

Matt Caldwell (20m 46s):

Any of us that wanna recreate outside, we do it because we want adventure. We just choose to different, do it in different ways. That’s part of the fun of the outdoors, the, the ultimate number of adventures that it offers.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 60s):

What do you come down on the new YouTubers like Whistle and Diesel who’s blowing up trucks and dropping things from helicopters. Now granted much of it’s on his private land, but then I think, and I’m gonna screw this up, it wasn’t street speed 7 0 7, but it was one of those guys who took a TRX and jumped it over a small, it wasn’t a river, it was like a, a stream of some sort and he long darted it on the other side. But then a lot of people in that community, there was an, there was outrage that he was making a mess of his, the countryside out by him. And like there are a lot of YouTubers that are now into like the, the modern day jackasses and they’re doing these things off road, right? Are you having to educate based on those exploits?

Matt Caldwell (21m 44s):

Yeah, I mean, there’s plenty of those things that we get involved in. You know, we had a situation with a product launch earlier this year, you know, where something happened at the product launch and a video gets posted and I had my first call within about 15 minutes of the video getting posted. So then, you know, we go to work and try to figure out can we get that video down? Can we get it edited? Because it’s what you said earlier, some of this stuff happens in a private park or on, on private land, but the average consumer that sees that doesn’t always know that. And they can’t separate from, hey, there was a reason why this was done there, but there’s a reason why I can’t do this on public land.

Matt Caldwell (22m 29s):

It, it’s a hard piece to separate and get people to grasp. I tell people all the time, sadly, in some cases we create the most ammunition for our opponents than anybody else.

Sean P. Holman (22m 41s):

I mean, I think, I think that’s fair. I think there’s people that are us adjacent who do that as well, right? They may not be the hardcore off rotor, but they have a lot of say or influence on the average person, like a, like a YouTuber or something like that. And you always cringe I mean, I remember, you know, 15, 20 years ago, Tread, Lightly was important and you, you, you know, from the Magazine side, we were always trying to be respectful, but you kinda like, okay, but now it’s, it’s so ingrained in all of us. Like if there’s something that happens, like I see people self-policing all the time. Hey, hey, no, no, no, you, you can’t do that. You can’t do that. Right? Right. It’s, it’s amazing how much weight that those principles have on the average recreational list, I guess today because it It is taken decades.

Sean P. Holman (23m 27s):

But I think the vast majority of people either know Tread, Lightly in the tenants, or at least loosely understand the tenets of what Tread Lightly stands for. Because we were at El Auto Show in, in the OVR display, and you guys had your Bronco there, and I had a lady who came up to me and wanted to challenge me on all these overland vehicles. And She said, well, how Can you have all these vehicles when the air is poisonous to our, our children. And I looked at her like, oh wow, here we go. So I. I went toe to toe with her, we had a couple, you know, volleys, and I said, well, wait a minute. Tell me you punched her. I’m not gonna tell you that.

Sean P. Holman (24m 8s):

And you know, one of her things or one of the topics that I brought up was when I was a kid growing up in Southern, California, we had first stage smog alerts, And, it was So bad that the air was So dirty, that we weren’t allowed to leave the classroom to go to recess because the air would burn your lungs. I’m like, we don’t have that anymore. Most of the cars driving around have cleaner emissions coming out the tailpipe because of all the after treatment than some of the air that they’re, they’re that’s coming in the intake. And She said, you know, well you’re just ruining the trails with these big tires. And I explained to her about flotation, no, in fact the bigger tires leave less of an impact because they’re spreading the load out more. And then we got into conservationists and I said, look at all these people here.

Sean P. Holman (24m 50s):

I, I would challenge you to look at the off roader as the modern conservationist. We all are conservationists. We pick up trash and Mylar balloons and all those things that we see out on the trail. We get there and we’re powered by solar. We’re not running a generator or, or idling the car. Look at all these solar panels that are here. All of these people that you see in the display, these are all people from urban centers that have built up a vehicle so that they can go out to the, the wilderness Why? So that we can experience clean air and clean water and all that stuff in peace and quiet and tranquility also. So my argument is this industry really represents the, probably the most and, and the modern conservationist.

Sean P. Holman (25m 32s):

And at the end of our conversation, she actually thanked me and said, I wasn’t aware of those things, And. it was actually a very productive conversation. And I would hope that that’s been your experience more times than not in, in explaining what Tread Lightly is and what it stands for and, and the people that are involved with it. Because I think that, again, this goes to education

Matt Caldwell (25m 53s):

A hundred percent. I was involved at an event last summer where one of our industry partners brought a bunch of people from multiple forms of the recreation space, from, you know, human power to motorized, you know, one of the first exercises, one is one of those great exercises of pull out your phone and text the first thing that you, you think of when you think about, you know, human powered recreation or people that hunt or people that off road, you know. So initially the list of stuff that started to pop up on the screen for off road was pretty brutal. But by the end of that day and a half, I think a lot of the people that were in that room had a lot of respect for the off-road people because they got to hear about the amount of, I’m gonna call it positive impact that’s been had on the land because of people that care about the land.

Matt Caldwell (26m 46s):

We’ve had thousands of volunteers that have come out this year and helped Tread Lightly, you know, give back to public lands, whether that’s, like you said, cleaning up trash, you know, building fences that, that have been knocked out, replacing signage that doesn’t exist so that people stay on trail. That there’s a very active group and you know, whether people have been able to be there or not. We have tons of people that call us all the time, when are you coming to my area to do a project so that I can help? That’s some of the stuff for me that keeps me going when we sometimes wanna bang our heads to the wall with everything that’s going on, is the fact that we know there are people out there that want to do their part and be involved.

Sean P. Holman (27m 27s):

I was looking at the, the website and one of the things caught my eye, the 2023 Tread Lightly impact report. And this is just January 1st through September 30th. So this isn’t this full year. Already this year under stewardship Tread Lightly is bid and responsible for 219 projects, 1055 miles of off-Road Trail enhancement, 301 educational signs installed, 90 2008 pounds of trash removed from public lands. Over 2000 volunteers with over 10,800 volunteer hours. The value of time is $347,000 in basically labor and new renewing members over 4,007 million impressions from social media.

Sean P. Holman (28m 12s):

And then on the education side, 718 online courses, 75 courses offered 114 events attended 34,000 outreach and project 32 volunteer on and on and on. I mean just the amount that you’ve done in three quarters of a year is, is I mean commendable? And somebody’s gotta do this because without a group like Tread Lightly, there isn’t really a another advocate, you know, out there that is as intertwined at a national level. There’s a few other players in the space, but Tread Lightly is really, you know, the one that has seems to be, you know, always around and looked up to.

Matt Caldwell (28m 48s):

Well you just hit, one of the things that was big for me when I started, when I started in, in October of 2020, our entire team was Utah based. And I remember talking with our, our board and particular executive committee and if we wanna have the impact that we need to have as an organization, we can’t just all be in Utah. So we’ve gone from a team of seven to a team of 15 in three years and we now have team members in eight different states without those team members being spread out like that, the numbers you just talked about, they wouldn’t be possible I mean we’re gonna have done projects in 31 states this year.

Matt Caldwell (29m 30s):

Wow.

Sean P. Holman (29m 30s):

Wow.

Matt Caldwell (29m 31s):

If everybody was in Utah, just the cost to get to those places would’ve been, you know, crazy. Again, it’s, it’s our team, but it’s all those volunteers that show up and make those possible.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (29m 42s):

What is the goal of Tread Lightly, you know, like a state of California, let’s get rid of all internal combustion engines by 2030 or whatever. What is Tread Lightly goal? What, like how would you know that you’ve succeeded in 2035? If

Sean P. Holman (29m 56s):

Lightning knows more about Tread Lightly, that will be a success

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (29m 60s):

By the end of, by the end of the

Sean P. Holman (30m 1s):

Show. Yeah. Okay.

Matt Caldwell (30m 4s):

Well, well you brought up the Tread principles earlier and I had a really interesting question from somebody last year. We, we were at an event, it was kind of an EV focused event and the guy says to me, are you gonna redo the Tread principles because of ev I said, great question, but I said, go back and read ’em. And like you said, look at the stuff that’s underneath them. We’ve changed the types of motorized recreation over the last 35 years, but we haven’t had to change the Tread principles. The concepts that are there are, are still the same no matter the vehicle or whatever’s propelling us on that vehicle.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (30m 42s):

It could be shoes, you know, and legs, but what shoes, but what, well, you got, you got me curious now like Matt, what would have changed whether it was, you’re asking by what the guy

Sean P. Holman (30m 51s):

Was asking.

Matt Caldwell (30m 53s):

Yeah, I I, and I’m not 100% sure where he was going. I think it was like, hey, the, you know, EV’s changing the world. Do we need to change the tri principles? And I said, I think that’s part of the, the benefit. They’re kind of timeless, whether it was the three Wheel a TV you know, back 35 years ago or it’s the, the over landing rigs, you know, like Sean mentioned that were in the OVR booth at LA Auto Show. The concepts are still there. And I think where I’d love to be is honestly I’d rather do less stewardship projects because we’ve educated so well that everybody’s just doing it

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (31m 29s):

So well then you’re on a job. So that’s

Sean P. Holman (31m 32s):

Not No, he’s got, he got plenty of plenty of work

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (31m 34s):

To do outside stewardship that’s, he’s like, I want to cure all the ills and then I’m gonna retire.

Sean P. Holman (31m 39s):

Listen, here’s here’s the deal. Yeah. Going back to Matt’s comment about the, you know, the force manager saying the 1% of everybody, it’s all those loose nuts behind the Wheel. They all need to be tightened every last one of ’em. Right? I mean that’s, that’s, that’s part of the, the problem is, is the people and there’s gonna be always be those people that lack the respect no matter what. ’cause they just don’t care. And unfortunately

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (32m 4s):

It’ll grow back. That’s what they say. It’ll grow back well,

Sean P. Holman (32m 7s):

You know, unless they knock down, you know, some arch or so thing that took millions of years to We’ve

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (32m 14s):

Seen that in Utah. Yeah. We’ve seen that knock down stuff

Sean P. Holman (32m 18s):

Ugly or Joshua trees that have, you know, been hit or I saw somebody trying to winch off a Joshua tree and I’m like, it’s not a real tree, it’s Yucca stop. Oh my God, what are you doing? No, really. And people don’t realize Joshua trees are very slow growth. The Joshua trees you see on your way to Vegas if you’re going between LA and Vegas on Highway 15 and you’re going by the SEMA dome. And unfortunately that area was ravaged by fire a few years ago, but every one of those Joshua trees is hundreds of years old. It, the, the, the seedlings of the new Joshua trees that were planted in the SEMA dome area after the SEMA fire will not be a big tree in our lifetime, by the way.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (32m 54s):

CIMA not SEMA. Correct. Different, different,

Sean P. Holman (32m 56s):

Different SEMA. Yeah. So a lot of people don’t even understand, you know, the environment that they’re in or what they can attach their truck to if they get stuck or things like that. So there’s always gonna be education. We’re never gonna run out of people who, who, who, who

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 10s):

Are dumb.

Sean P. Holman (33m 10s):

Well, I wasn’t gonna say that. Who could use additional knowledge, I think is Oh, sure, okay. Yeah, that’s how I was gonna put that, that

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 18s):

Polite

Matt Caldwell (33m 18s):

Part of the adventure piece too is enjoying some of those things that, you know, took that long to get there or have been there for that long I mean, we did a project, you know, we talked, you know, briefly about Moab, we did a project in Moab last year at Easter Jeep Safari where we did some worm f or sorry, bucket rail fencing to protect dinosaur tracks that are along one of the trails. But the, the goal of that is to preserve the dinosaur tracks, but to also keep the trail open so we can enjoy both things. You know, that’s trying to find the balance, I think is, is always the key that, that makes the adventure bigger.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 55s):

So where do you sit between the, the tree hugger community that wants everything closed and they wanna do everything on foot or they want to have a put a fence around it and not a allow access to anyone versus you as an enthusiast. Like how do you, that’s a reason versus

Sean P. Holman (34m 10s):

Holman who says, I’m fine with wilderness areas as long as you let us drive on the existing roads, because that’s not always the, the case. A lot of times they shut down everything and Matt and I had this great conversation, people don’t realize when you shut down an area, all you do is move all that traffic to another area and then they’ll be like, oh, well now there’s more impact

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (34m 31s):

Here. They’re not thinking of it like that. They just go, they think they just won’t come.

Sean P. Holman (34m 34s):

No, that’s like glamorous, right? You start with Yeah, you know, closing off a big chunk of it and everybody gets smooshed into a smaller area and then they go, oh, there’s too much impact. Smooshed that down. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy where if you had all the lands open and people recreated, you know, you know, without causing damage and, and and did it with respect, then all that impact would be spread out over I mean fly over the United States. The western US is massive and there just aren’t that many people to cause a problem. The problem is when you smoosh everybody into one little area because you close everything off. And that to me is the travesty of, of land use today.

Matt Caldwell (35m 12s):

Well, I, I was telling somebody the other day, we were talking about trail breeding and user created routes and all of that stuff, you know, I live in Arizona, we have 45,000 miles of motorized trails in Arizona. There’s like 80,000 in Utah, but we need to create other trails. So like those are the things where, you know, we try to have that conversation of like, hey, there’s plenty of opportunities here, you know, let’s stay on the designated route so that we’re, we’re not causing, you know, damage. And like I said, we’re not creating ammunition for those people that wanna close it, but in some cases we’re putting up fencing. so we, we have a project that we’ve done in Sedona in the last year.

Matt Caldwell (35m 55s):

We had an area in Sedona that became known as the donut hole. That’s what everybody called it. It was where people that rented side-by-sides went to do their donuts. It was really causing a lot of issues and had the potential to become, you know, a closure area. So putting up the fence didn’t close off the area, it kept the trail open, but it’s preventing the issue that had the potential to close the area. You know, that’s really a, a role that we try to play. You know, it’s a different way of, of trying to keep trails open and trying to keep access open. It’s by teaching or sometimes preventing people from doing the things that, that might be the issue.

Sean P. Holman (36m 37s):

So what’s it like as the executive director of Tread Lightly when all of a sudden the internet blows up because there’s a, an accident like something on Black Bear Pass where somebody rolls off or this in, in the instance of the TRX that ended up in the bottom of a canyon in Moab. Do you start getting those phone calls right away and are you playing defense or how does that work? I mean? I can imagine that there’s a lot of people have your phone and you probably have it in your charger at all times. Yeah. And and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 7s):

Are you asked to go on TV and, and make comments about it?

Matt Caldwell (37m 11s):

Yes, to all of the above. So, you know, sometimes it’s local issues, sometimes it’s at state level, you know, sometimes it’s, you know, it’s advertising from, you know, NOE that we get questioned about. We get asked Can, you make a phone call. We had, you know, sadly we had a situation a couple months here ago here in Arizona where we had a couple of deaths on a side by side. And yeah, we get those calls and of course you’re asked like, what’s your take on this? It’s challenging sometimes you never in, in any stretch of the imagination, do we wanna see loss of life from something that we love to do.

Matt Caldwell (37m 53s):

The other thing I think is key where we choose to respond or not respond is making sure we have all of the facts. You know, in that situation we did do a lot of response because I didn’t have all the facts. You know, where were they riding? Did they have helmets? Did they have harnesses, you know, appropriately attached. All of those questions. I mean, you know, you, you’ve gotta have a lot of the information before we start chiming in and, and giving our opinion on those when we don’t know all the details.

Sean P. Holman (38m 27s):

What do you do when you have two really well-meaning groups that cause a stir in the community and what do you, what do you mean they’re not necessarily wrong either one of ’em, but their point of view is coming from a place of a good place and full of passion, but they’re looking at it at two different positions. So perspectives. For example, you know the recent land closures that happen in, in Moab out northwest of Gemini Bridges, which sent the internet into a spin and everybody was freaking out and there were some other land use organizations that were very upset about it. I myself, I was very upset about it. But then there were a few people who came out and said, listen, Hold on before everybody gets emotional and grabs your pitches or your torches and your pitchforks, let’s look at it.

Sean P. Holman (39m 15s):

This, from a logical standpoint, it’s way less than what it could have been. And most of the roads that were closed had a parallel road within a reasonable distance next to it. So it’s not really what it sounds like the area is still open and has trails, but they’re closing off, you know, duplicate paths and things like that. How do you balance those two different interests? One, you know, both people love recreating. Both people wanna see open lands, but I think there’s, there’s more of a logical side and then more of a passionate side. And sometimes those two things collide and, and cause a lot of angst within the community.

Matt Caldwell (39m 52s):

You just given the 32nd microcosm of, of my life since the end of October,

Sean P. Holman (39m 59s):

He has to play mom and dad. Yeah,

Matt Caldwell (40m 1s):

Right. So I mean you hit it really well. And look, I’ll, I’ll be honest, from a Tread Lightly standpoint, we were frustrated as well. Some of those exact trails that are on that closure list are trails that Tread Lightly is not just done one project but done multiple projects on say within the last five years. Hey Joe Canyon’s, one of them.

Sean P. Holman (40m 28s):

Sure

Matt Caldwell (40m 29s):

There’s frustration on our part when you’ve given sometimes blood slow and tears literally to do some of these projects, you know, and then have that, I also understand the, the comment that’s made regularly of, well this is just the beginning. If they take, you know, one mile next time it’s 21 miles and the next time it, after that it’s 121. And look I mean if we’ve been around this long enough, everybody has their example of that. You know, if we want to go all the way back and talk about Teleco or you know, whatever it might be, you know, that exists So I understand where that passion comes from.

Matt Caldwell (41m 9s):

I think for me the suggestion there is I I, my first default is go to the Tread principles to de and it’s educate yourself, understand what was the reasons behind this. Is it, like you said, is it some cases that it was, you know, parallel routes And when we have parallel routes, we know our land managers right now, they don’t have the resources in a lot of cases to manage the routes that they think people should be on. So when there’s more than that, you know, there’s gonna be the potential to close those.

Sean P. Holman (41m 42s):

Well now lemme throw in really quick Matt. A lot of the BBL m managers will tell you that their trail maintenance is through use. And so keeping those roads open require regular use of those roads. So if you have too many trails, sure, and the nature’s reclaiming one of ’em ’cause it’s not the main route, well then that is slowly moving into the background as the more used route becomes the one that’s, that becomes entrenched in that area. And so to your point, these land managers at the Bureau of Land Management Forest Service, they have to take those things into account. They’re not going out there once a year with a bulldozer or a grater and making that trail. They’re relying on recreation and people using the trail to keep it OO open and awake.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 22s):

That’s interesting don Don’t think a lot of people think of that. Like they think of just BLM as bad, bad, bad, trying to shut, shut shut. Yeah, sure. And, and they’re using us potentially for good in some cases.

Sean P. Holman (42m 32s):

Well, I would say two things. One, where was all the outrage when the BLM asked for input? You’ll look at some, they’re, it’s all publicly available. They may be have this area that affects a million people and they have 500 comments or something like that. But the million people on social media are pissed off when it comes to fruition. Where were they during the, the public commenting? That’s part of it. The other thing I’ll say is, you know, we recently did the old traction road retrace with the BLM and that was a trail that was on the last time it was on a map was in 19, I think 13 or something like that. So I. There were portions of that trail that because of the way the road was constructed, you could still see it. But people hadn’t been on it probably 60 years or more.

Sean P. Holman (43m 13s):

And, and it’s, it’s that balance of nature reclaiming itself versus use versus historical value versus educational value versus recreational value. There’s so many facets that go into it. It’s a very complex process.

Matt Caldwell (43m 30s):

A hundred percent. I sat at a meeting yesterday in Sedona with the Forest Service for four and a half hours and you know, we’re talking about the volume of, of traffic that we see in Sedona and it’s obviously it increased several years ago. It’s, you know, tapered back down a little bit. But, you know, there’s a lot of impact there. And there’s this balance that the land managers have to find. I mean they’re charged with recreational opportunities. I mean that’s BLM and Forest Service. That’s what they’re doing. I mean, you know, forest Service was the part, part of the Department of Agriculture back years ago. ’cause it was about forestation. But that’s, you know, somewhat shifted to, it’s about recreation.

Matt Caldwell (44m 12s):

You know, they’re challenged with finding that your example’s great. Some of these roads need to be maintained because they’re fire roads. So if we weren’t on them and you know, we have fire issues, the roads not, might not be in a, a condition where they can get into those areas. So there’s plenty of reasons to keep those routes open as well.

Sean P. Holman (44m 33s):

So much to think about I mean, it’s, it’s, I I don’t think the average person recreating understands like what goes into managing public lands. And it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a hard job

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (44m 42s):

And I don’t, I don’t think the average person understands how the trail got there in the first place or why it exists. Well, look

Sean P. Holman (44m 47s):

At the, i I know this will be California pompous, but we’re, we’re here in California. Look at the Mojave Road, which was on the map as the old government road that was the original trading route of natives on the coast trading with natives in the Mojave River Valley in the Colorado River River Valley. And then when the Spaniards came to build the mission system in California, they used that route and then eventually, you know, settlers came west and they found the route. And that road has been there for hundreds and hundreds, if not a thousand years. And today it’s a, it’s an over landing route that goes through the Mojave Desert. So some of these roads have that historic significance. There’s places on that road where you can see, you know, wagon ruts and things like that go out in other parts of the desert.

Sean P. Holman (45m 31s):

The George Patton Desert Training Center area of California. Yep. Yep. There, there’s bomb scars and tank tracks that are like the dinosaur tracks in Moab where those features are still able to be seen right off the road. It was a part of history. It should be preserved. There’s the, the camps out there, the roads that take you to the camps. and then you go to a place like Moab, again, fossils and dinosaur tracks. There’s all sorts of early man sites all over the, the southwestern United States with petroglyphs and the sleeping circles or the grinding stones and where they would, you know, grind up seeds and things like that, So.

Sean P. Holman (46m 12s):

it just, you just have to know where to look and, and that’s one of the great things about being able to recreate and go out there is you can go to a quiet spot away from it all and try and remember what it’s like when people way hardier than you had an ox and a covered wagon and were sitting out there in the same spot. By

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (46m 29s):

The way, everyone back then was hardier than we are now. Everyone, everyone. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey Matt, I have a question regarding the Midwest, south East, et cetera. Sure. Are the problems that we face on the west coast universal, like are they seeing them in Florida, for example, the guys, you know, the beaches where you can drive on the beach and things like that? Yeah,

Matt Caldwell (46m 48s):

So some of the issues that we see on the East coast kind of goes back to the discussion we were having about, there’s not as many opportunities, but obviously, you know, motorized recreation still popular. So you have impacts, you know, from volume from not having enough opportunities. So what we’re seeing in some cases on the East coast is, I would say two things in an area like West Virginia where we’ve seen a, a focused effort to increase opportunities and actually use it as economic development. There’s been discussions about, you know, how do we connect some of these towns that are, are going away because of the coal industry going away.

Matt Caldwell (47m 31s):

How do we connect those for motorized recreation and, and maybe revitalize some of those areas. The other thing we see on the East coast is a lot more private parks because they’ve had to, you know, open that private park on private land to have the opportunities. And we work with a lot of those, those areas as well, despite them not being on public land because, you know, we know those people in many cases want to make the pilgrimage west, you know, to wherever that is, you know, whether it’s the Mojave Road or it’s Moab or Glams, et cetera. so we have to make sure that they understand, hey, the same way that you need to act on that park is, is how we need you to act when you’re out on public land as well.

Matt Caldwell (48m 18s):

But really it’s, it’s just about having enough opportunities to be able to do, you know, the mo the forms of motorized recreation that we enjoy, like you said, whether it’s the beach or it’s the Ocala National Forest in the middle of, of Florida or all the way up into some areas of New England, like, you know, the Dorsett area of Vermont in Southern, Vermont. So it’s a popular motorized recreation area, but it’s some of the only opportunities in the entire state.

Sean P. Holman (48m 48s):

What would you say going forward with Tread Lightly are your biggest challenges? Is it the, is it the advent of social media exploding and, and people just looking for the glamor? Is it people who don’t care or don’t know? Is It is there any particular shift in society or, or pop culture or any of those things that are gonna make your job more difficult going forward?

Matt Caldwell (49m 13s):

You know, I think, and again, maybe it’s the microcosm of the, like Sean was saying of the last couple weeks or, or and months and with the Moab piece is can we band together and all try to accomplish the, the same goal even if we might be going about it in different ways. There’s a stewardship and a, a trail maintenance component to keeping, you know, access. In some case there’s a lobbying or, or litigation component to keeping trails accessible. But those things need to work together rather than, you know, potentially work against each other. The, the people that don’t want motorized recreation and a lot of cases they’re really unified and it’s why we’re seeing some of the issues that we see that they might have differences.

Matt Caldwell (50m 2s):

But when it comes to Sean’s example of, you know, you guys are hurting the land, not helping the land in a lot of cases, you know, that’s where they are unified and they’re pushing us pretty hard and we need to make sure, sure that as a community we’re unified and understanding that everybody can play a role in making sure we have, we have the opportunities that we want to have moving forward.

Sean P. Holman (50m 26s):

So what is the number one thing that our listener can do if they wanna be involved in, in Tread? Lightly? Is it to become a member?

Matt Caldwell (50m 33s):

Yeah, membership’s great. It’s, it’s obviously it’s valuable. You know, our funding is, is split between memberships and industry partnerships and our grants. But I would say there’s two other things. Look, not everybody you know, is at a place that they can become a member. So volunteer. We have a new tab on the top of the website there. Obviously we’re towards the end of the year, so there’s not quite as many opportunities, but that’s where we put our opportunities to volunteer and come join us on projects is on that event tab. And then the other piece is, what we kind of started at the beginning is make sure as many people as possible know about groups that are out there doing positive things, you know, to keep access open and whether that’s Tread Lightly or there’s a bunch of great groups, you know, all over the country that are doing that from, you know, Michigan to Florida to California, the last truck principles.

Matt Caldwell (51m 31s):

Do your part. Everybody can play a part in our goal to be able to continue to do what we want to do. If somebody needs help, figure it out what that is, you know, hit us up, come talk to us. We’ll, we’ll be happy to, to give some insight of what that is. We have our ambassador of the years, we’re getting ready to announce our third one, we’ve, we’ve been doing that for the last few years, but the guy that won back in 2021, he does a Tread trainer course like once a month. He, he goes to a local restaurant, he gets a private room and he teaches people that show up and wanna learn about the Tread principles and what they mean to them.

Matt Caldwell (52m 11s):

You know, that’s a, a single individual on the other side of the country that’s, that’s trying to do his part of make a difference. Hopefully all of us can figure out, you know, what that looks like for us and, and play a role.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 22s):

Damn. He’s making us look like Slouches Holman.

Sean P. Holman (52m 24s):

No, no. We have a podcast. We’re reaching, we’re reaching billions of people on our podcast about it. Oh, so he’s got, he Yeah, we’re totally doing our thing. He’s got

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 30s):

11 people in a, in a coffee shop.

Sean P. Holman (52m 32s):

Yeah. We’ve got billions. Okay. Got it. I was gonna say that spin to, to that end, one of the things that’s great about the Tread Lightly website, so Tread Lightly dot org is there are quick tips with responsible tips for all sorts of things. So whether it’s four by four dirt biking, a TV, you would expect those things. But there’s also great tips for fishing, drone usage, shooting, hiking, hunting, camping, mining.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 58s):

Any mining on there where Not to mine. ’cause that’s what I would do.

Sean P. Holman (53m 1s):

Oh, I mean you shouldn’t mine without a permit anyway. Oh really? Because you’ll probably go to jail if it’s on federal land and you have to have a claim and that’s a whole thing. So I love

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 9s):

Just mining wherever I park it where I mine. Okay, well

Sean P. Holman (53m 12s):

Don’t, don’t do that.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 14s):

I can’t just pan in any stream. No

Sean P. Holman (53m 16s):

Oh. no

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 17s):

I didn’t. I

Sean P. Holman (53m 18s):

Didn’t know. Yeah, clearly. Maybe you need to go to Tread Lightly dot org or you could head over on, on Instagram where you can, can find Tread Lightly at Tread Lightly team on Twitter at Tread Lightly and on Facebook also at Tread Lightly team. And Matt, it’s been a, a pleasure having you on the show. I’m, I’m sorry you were subjected to this podcast for more than 40 minutes and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 43s):

Matt Caldwell doing the Lord’s work, putting up with two yahoos on a podcast.

Sean P. Holman (53m 47s):

Well, one Yahoo. Hey

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 49s):

How, dare you.

Matt Caldwell (53m 51s):

Yeah, I really appreciate you guys. Thanks for the opportunity.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 54s):

We’ll talk soon. Thank you so much. Thanks Matt.

Matt Caldwell (53m 56s):

All right. Take care. Bye.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 60s):

I, I, I feel a little cleansed having spoken to Matt and Tread Lightly.

Sean P. Holman (54m 5s):

Is that because he’s doing so much good for the world? Yes. And we aren’t. No. We should check in with our inbox and see how many people send us angry emails about how much we suck.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 16s):

Do we have to?

Sean P. Holman (54m 17s):

Of course we do.

4 (54m 19s):

You email? Yeah, I email Do it. We email. That’s right. Everybody email. Type it up. You email proofread. I email send it. We email, click it. Everybody email

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 35s):

All. right. I’m gonna go first. Allman Jesse hit me on the gram at LBC Lightning and he wrote, Hey Lightning, y’all read my email on this week’s show. Sean mentioned reaching out to you on some more info on the Banks products for my 2017 Jeep Wrangler. I really like the Stinger bundle. Seems like it’s the best paying for the Buck Jesse in Texas. And I wrote to him. Yes. And here’s the discount code. I’m not gonna say it on the air ’cause it’s a one by one basis that I’m handing that thing out to y’all. Thank you for listening, Jesse. And enjoy your stinger pack and your, your hookup from your, your brother from another mother Lightning.

Sean P. Holman (55m 16s):

Wow. Or you could just say thanks for listening to the show and thank be good customer of base.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (55m 20s):

Thank you Jesse for listening to the show.

Sean P. Holman (55m 23s):

All. right? I got this interesting email from Jason Gainor. He says,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (55m 27s):

Interesting

Sean P. Holman (55m 27s):

Build in price 2024 Sierra at 2,500 H-D-G-M-C. so we went on the GMC website and he says, how does a company as large as GM make this error? The six liter has not been available for a few years and was never their Diesel. And basically it shows the comparing Sierra 2,500 HD trims And. it lists the three liter and the six liter durmax turbo Diesel engines as options what? Right on their website.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (55m 57s):

Six liter Durmax,

Sean P. Holman (55m 59s):

Which never existed.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 1s):

So they just screwed up. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (56m 2s):

Six. Somebody was telling just a typo. Yeah. I mean there’s a, they usually have agencies who do their website. I catch ’em all the time. So. It’s funny, when I’ve done stories and stuff, I’ll go to their website and get specs and like I’ll report back to the manufacturer more times than I go, this is all wrong. Like whoever’s doing this. ’cause a lot of times they’ll cut and paste and there’ll be a change for the new model year and there’ll be all the old stuff. And anyway,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 22s):

Do you ever find like a drop decimal so it’s a 30 liter, you

Sean P. Holman (56m 25s):

Know, no, I haven’t seen 1500 or something. Anything like that. Usually it’s just people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Just blindly plug it in text it continues. On another note, when should we expect a EV to offer their highline fender flares to accommodate 37 to 40 inch tires similar to their Sierra Grande concept? Well I can tell you right now that It is just a concept at this time, but I don’t think they would’ve put all that work into it if it wasn’t something that they were looking to to do. But nothing’s been announced at this point and working to get Dave Harrington, the founder of AV on the show hopefully in the near future. And he finishes with I am 500 miles shy of my a hundred thousand miles on my 19 L five p. Gonna keep on driving for a while, but I’m hoping AAV will bring out the fender flares for my next truck.

Sean P. Holman (57m 8s):

Best case is to pull a Holman and fly into Michigan and pick it up already. Ceramic coated. And that was from Jason Gainor. Well I did not fly to Michigan to pick my A EV Jeep up already ceramic coated. But I did fly there and pick it up and have it expelled before my my drive home.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 26s):

Although your expel is ceramic infused.

Sean P. Holman (57m 29s):

Impregnated. Yes.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 29s):

Yes. Oh, impregnated or infused.

Sean P. Holman (57m 31s):

It depends what your vernacular is. Gotcha.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 34s):

Edison motor suggestion is the subject line from Matt Brandt and he sent this over to the main inbox truck Show Podcast at gmail.com. I’m a big fan of the show. Thank you. By the way, Matt, I was wondering if you guys could get Edison Motors on the program. I think that’d be great people to talk to about big rig Truckin and the state of EVs. And they are designing a retrofit kit for one ton trucks to make them into hybrids. I think it would make a fantastic addition to the show there on YouTube. Thanks Matt. Edison Motors and the next email has a similar subject line. Edison Motors from Robert McKee. Have you guys ever seen Edison Motors beside talking funny? They are building a useful big truck, but recently they’ve been talking about making conversion kits for pickup trucks.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 20s):

Not sure if this is any interest to you, but what they’re doing seems to be geared towards reliability and serviceability. Something that Tesla and Nicola don’t seem to take into consideration. Trying to build an electric logging truck has different considerations than a road truck. Keep up the good work. Been listening for many years and you guys are making me want to move out west to get to public lands to play on. So what are we doing about Edison Motors?

The Truck Show Podcast is a production of truck famous LLC. This podcast was created by Sean Holman and Jay Tillis with production elements by DJ Omar Khan. If you like what you’ve heard, please open your Apple podcast or Spotify app and give us a five star rating. And if you’re a fan, there’s no better way to show your support than dive patronizing our sponsors. Some vehicles may have been harmed during the making of this podcast.