I’ve joked that being a jackman is a cakewalk, but the reality is it’s very dangerous. You’re talking about a 3,500-pound race car that’s a foot off your heel at 55 mph. That would be like going out onto a busy highway, putting your feet on the yellow line and letting traffic run by you.
I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve never been blasted by a car, but I’ve been grazed a couple times and had my heels run over. Two years ago I went down on the jack handle and my knuckles scraped the rear quarter panel of Jason Leffler’s [1] car.
It’s thrilling. There are definitely times you get the blood going, that’s for sure, but I think I live to ride on the edge. I’m more scared of being bored than anything else. If you focus on the fear, then you’re not cut out for this job.
Lug Nuts And Bolts
For those that don't know, the jackman is one of seven members of a pit crew. He’s the first one over the wall, he runs in front of the car, jacks up the right side, pulls off the tire, then runs around to the left side and jacks the left side up. He’s the last person who checks off everything and then dumps the car. If loose lug nuts or wrenches are left in the car or anything like that, it falls on the jackman’s shoulders.
Before I became a jackman I was playing in Wilkes-Barre in the American Hockey League. I was released and the coach I’d played for the year before was in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is NASCAR [2] country. I got sent down and started to play hockey there. My dad owns a garage there, so I took my parents on a tour of one of the rig shops.
The guys showed me around and introduced me as a hockey player. Pit practice wasn’t going well for these guys, so someone said, “Let's get the hockey player in there.”
I had boots and jeans on and wasn’t really expecting anything, and they taught me how to do it. It was just something that came easily to me and blossomed from there. I started on a truck team and quickly moved up to Busch Series.
The hardest thing in NASCAR is getting your foot in the door. In the new era of NASCAR, the big business era, there are schools you can go to, to train to be a jackman, but a lot of the NASCAR Old Guard started out sweeping the floor for five bucks an hour, as old-fashioned as that sounds. A lot of these guys were the type that always loved working on cars.
The reason it came so easily to me is because I’m an athlete. As there’s more and more money on the line, these companies started to look for athletes because they adapt quicker and can be trained quicker. I was just lucky that I got in around the time when things were starting to change.
In my first year I went to the end of the NASCAR season, which is two weeks into hockey season. At the time I was the captain of the New Mexico Scorpions. I was very fortunate that my coach was understanding and said, “We don’t want to lose you, so we’ll work around your NASCAR stuff.” I would go right back into racing at the end of the hockey season, and then would go right into hockey at the end of NASCAR season.
It got to the point where the race team said, “Enough is enough; what would it take to get you to focus just on racing?" I kind of knew it was the next transition in my life, and what made it so seamless is that, like in hockey, you still have that adrenalin rush, you’re still part of a team, and you still have the competition.
On the other hand, the cultures are very different. NASCAR is big business. The southern culture is what makes NASCAR so unique, especially with me being Canadian. It was just something I was never exposed to.
Staying True To Its Roots
NASCAR is really steeped in tradition. Guys run hard here, and it’s the way the sport’s always been. It stays true to its roots. The guys eat at the same restaurants that the older guys used to 40 years ago.
Because of the deep sense of tradition, NASCAR’s still an Old Boy’s Club, but as times are changing, it is opening up to women and minorities. There are 105 Fortune 500 companies involved in NASCAR. Basically NASCAR is being forced to evolve, and it’s done a really good job.
That said, it makes the NHL look like a melting pot. It is a white male sport and it’s been like that for years. It’s not known for its open-mindedness, but I’d say it’s made giant strides in the last five years, though it still has a long ways to go.
NASCAR 2008
I jack for 83 Red Bull [3] Toyota and the driver’s name is Brian Vickers [4].
It’s the start of the season and people are just raring to go. There are thousands and thousands of people down here. From this weekend on, with the exception of three weekends, we race every weekend until the weekend before Thanksgiving. This schedule just goes and goes and goes. Every company down here is putting their best foot forward this weekend.
We were out of the top 35 in points, so we had to race our way into the Daytona 500, which we did yesterday morning, so we will race Sunday. It’s a huge day for us. We had Red Bull bigwigs in from Austria. Everything has to look perfect - the truck has to look shined and you have to look presentable. Everything down to the Red Bull cans in the fridge have to be turned facing out.
The big thing in NASCAR is sponsorship. That does mean that you have to maintain a clean image, which isn’t a problem for me. Image is huge, and not just with Red Bull, but with all these other companies.
When you have a company like Home Depot putting millions of dollars into sponsoring one of these race cars, if you’re wearing a Home Depot jacket or hat or something, you’re expected to act with a certain level of professionalism.
Some teams are real hardliners with that, and some aren’t. When I worked with Chip Ganassi racing, one of the cars was sponspored by Coors Light. There was a company fine if we were ever caught out in public with a Miller Lite or anything like that.
With Red Bull, we’re lucky that it’s such a unique and youthful company. It’s not so strict about having shirts tucked in and this and that. However, we have a multi-million dollar deal with Puma, so we can’t ever be caught with Oakleys or any other brand’s shirts or shades or watches. That would be a big no-no.
As for this season, I’m hoping it will bring a victory for Red Bull, NASCAR’s newest team.
Almost Off The Record
How’d you find out I was in Talladega Nights [5]? It’s not exactly a secret, but yeah, I was in Talladega Nights, and everyone gives me such a hard time about it.
Before I went to Red Bull, I worked for the Target race car. They were a big part of that movie, so we taught Will Ferrell and the rest of the guys how to do pit stops and jack the race car. I ended up shooting Talladega Nights for two months.
My mom tells everyone in my hometown.
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