TOO BUSY

When Business Finally Meets Pleasure

JOHN MATA JR.

BUILDING CUSTOM TRUCKS FOR A LIVING SOUNDS LIKE AN ABSOLUTE DREAM, RIGHT? Who wouldn’t want to turn their favorite hobby into a business? Well, for those who have done it in the past or are currently neck-deep in the reality of the situation, the general consensus might warn possible onlookers to “be careful of what you wish for.” While working on trucks every day can start to feel like more of a job than a pleasurable escape from work at times, the lucky souls who get to dirty their hands on the daily still wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now, the big changeup that comes with turning trucks into a career is the time (rather, the lack thereof) spent with one’s own personal truck. When paying gigs take priority, finding the time to do literally anything else but work really can take a toll on the progress of building a side project. While that is just the turf that accompanies the job, it doesn’t always have to be like that. It does take valiant effort to carve out hours for personal play, but the key to doing so may require some reinventing of the process as a legit business opportunity instead of just an ordinary wrenching session.

To get an insider’s perspective on this particular work scenario, we reached out to Shane Williams of All American Billet to get his take on balancing the tightrope between work and play.

“I had been already been working on this ’72 C10 when we purchased RM Garrison Machining in 2013,” he says. “I had the intention of always doing something in the automotive industry, and after taking over the machine shop, All American Billet was soon founded.”

While the first few years were too busy to get any work done on his truck, Shane hadn’t stopped mapping out the next steps of its progress.

“As the truck sat idle, we concentrated all our time to product development and growing our new brand,” Shane admits. “I actually started calling the truck ‘Too Busy’ since that’s exactly why I hadn’t touched it in so long.”

While it was nice to have the truck sitting around, it was soon being used to supply other ongoing projects with parts. On the flip side, Shane’s trucks did serve a purpose on the R&D side, so they weren’t just sitting parked in vain.

“We did pull the motor for another truck that we still own, which has the very first front drive kit we designed installed on it,” he says.