LAURELVILLE - As a self-described small town country boy, Dan Patrick is sometimes a little surprised by his success. At times, that success even causes his friends to give him a good ribbing, especially when a California inmate proclaims a signed photograph of Dan would make him the "hit of cell block D."

"That's when you know you've made a difference in people's lives," he said with a laugh.

Dan who?

The clientele Patrick Enterprises serves is a very niche group and includes more than 300 people or businesses Dan maintains parts for. Each year, they build six to eight trucks with the last few months of the year being the busiest because people want a truck for the beginning of the year. During that time, Dan calls on some other "farm boys," he said, who have finished in the fields for the season and work with him parttime.

"Everybody is a farm boy or farm related. I'm very proud of that fact. We get to make really cool stuff and showcase it all over the world," he said.

Down at the farm

At 17, Dan began tractor pulling. His parents were into it and, naturally, he picked it up as a hobby, too. However, he and his friends decided to change it up a little by putting V-8 motors into the tractors, with the first one he did having an engine from a Corvette.

"In the '70s, we farmed and did tractor pulling as a hobby. In 1982, a promoter came along and started pulling it into indoor stadiums and it became very popular, and you could be paid as entertainment," he said. "Well, agriculture just sucked then and I saw it as a way to make ends meet with those shows."

Little did Dan know how that decision would change his life.

During the tractor pulling shows, a little sideshow started where these large trucks drove over cars.

"At first we figured they were just fillers for us," Dan said. "Within three to four years, the promoters felt maybe this was the start of something."

Monster truck shows then started becoming a main attraction, even more popular than tractor pulling, and Dan followed after first designing and building a few funny cars, including the WarLord funny car that was made into a Playskool toy and featured in a cartoon.

Into the spotlight

The current Samson was built in 1994 and is the prototype for all Dan's trucks. It was the 13th truck he had built and now he has built more than 80 and 10 of those owned by Clear Channel Entertainment are touring Europe.

Constructing trucks came when Bob Chandler, the owner of Big Foot, asked Dan to work for him in St. Louis building the next generation of trucks.

"Right when monster trucks took off in racing, he asked me to go out there and build trucks for him. He wanted me bad enough he let me take my truck out there," he said.

Frustrated the machine shop he had put together in Laurelville was being prevented from opening business because of zoning issues, Dan went to St. Louis for three years. However, he missed the slower-pace of south central Ohio and his family, and when companies continued to ask him to build trucks, he decided it was time to go home in 1992.

Hometown truckin'

A single truck takes four months to build, but only five months if they build three at the same time. The most Patrick Enterprises has done, with just four people, was 17 trucks in 17 months.

However, building entire trucks isn't all they do. They also build custom parts to maintain those trucks and other trucks - all Dan's trucks are built with interchangeable parts so the person receiving the part won't have to customize it to get it to work, he said.

"About any monster truck out there, we have something on it," he said. "We're the Bill Gates of monster trucks."

However, he's quick to add he doesn't have the billions of dollars Gates does even though a brand new truck costs around $135,000.

"I just care about making a good product," he said. "Six or eight months in advance, we are booked. We have people that will wait for our product."

A product Dan learned to design and construct on his own.

"I'm self-taught in every way, and I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing," he said laughing, adding his drawings are in a language no one else could understand.

Being hands-on, he does all his own work on his trucks at the races he competes in. He averages 30 events a year at 80 races, having races in every state except Mississippi and six Canadian provinces throughout his career.

As he's aged with the sport, Dan has been looking at ways to make it safer and has designed a seat using energy-absorbing foam - the harder you hit, the more the seat absorbs your body weight, he said.

"We're just farm boys who had to learn how to do out own work because we couldn't afford the parts," he said.

"We're just really happy things have worked out for us. We still worry about paying the bills like everybody else and whether we'll be doing this next year."

Related Link Samson Website  http://www.samson4x4.com

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