Clayton Walters is an industry icon, building Clayton Off-Road from the ground up. He is the name in long-arm kits. Listen to his story and how it began and where it’s headed next. There’s a lot of laughs with a guy like Clayton..
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3:22 – always had a knack with mechanical stuff
6:26 – lifting Grand Cherokees, “it’s just terrible”
9:48 – I’ll build this for $1500, but I gotta have ten orders
11:40 – my lousy pick up line “I can put a long arm kit on that”
14:14 – we had a one-car garage with a portable garage beside it
17:07 – I can’t send the government a bunch of control arms
20:58 – how’re we going to save money? (listen up as Clayton explains their process)
27:30 – adding value for our customers
31:13 – it was a rude awakening with football
33:26 – don’t let the Night Rider get ya
40:54 – is my 25 year old mind having issues with my 58 year old body? Or vice-versa?
44:19 – the wet t-shirt contest
46:20 – building Erik Miller’s first Jeep
51:49 – racing the Rausch Creek qualifier…and the expensive piss
Clayton Off Road, the premium Jeep Suspension Company. www.claytonoffroad.com
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:20.190] – Big Rich Klein
Today on this episode of Conversations with Big Rich, we have Clayton Walters. Clayton is Clayton Off-Road.
[00:01:28.260]
He’s the founder, got started in the nineties with with building parts. And we’re going to find out from Clayton where he got started. Clayton, thank you for coming on board. You’re looking good. How are you feeling?
[00:01:42.900] – Clayton Walters
Good. Good. It’s been I feel blessed this year. It’s been a great it’s been a great year, despite of all I know, some people have had some rough times this year, but I feel really blessed that we we’ve been doing well this year. Feel good. We just had a big snowstorm today and a little bit tired from all the snow blowing. But things are good. It’s good to be here with you.
[00:02:11.850] – Big Rich Klein
Well, thank you for coming on board. Let’s get started and jump right in. Where did you grow up? Let’s let’s give the audience the background.
[00:02:23.130] – Clayton Walters
I grew up in a little town called Prospect up in Connecticut. It’s a suburb of Waterbury and. It was such a small I was a small town, I think when I was growing up, there was only about 10000 people and we didn’t even have a high school. So I went to Waterbury and we were the farmers from Prospect and it was kind of funny.
[00:02:47.520]
And so I kind of grew up on a of half assed farm. My grandfather was an electrician and my dad was like he was a draftman that was more of an engineering background designer and he was in the rolling mill industry. So we were always like playing around with tractors. And I had motorcycles and I always had those apart. And I was fixin’ them. and I can remember, like, playing around with wires and popping circuit breakers in the house all the time, you know.
[00:03:22.450]
So I always had like a mechanical background, I kind of felt gifted. I know a lot of kids nowadays, they don’t know what they want to do. They don’t know what they want. And I just always had this knack. I feel blessed that I was always had an ability to do the mechanical stuff. So when I was in college, you know. I didn’t really know what I wanted to study, and I got recruited to play football for division 2 school in New Haven, and so I’m going to go go play football. READ MORE
