{"id":1143,"date":"2022-11-15T04:04:22","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T04:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/funnyvideo.us\/?p=1143"},"modified":"2022-11-15T04:04:22","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T04:04:22","slug":"matts-off-road-recovery-a-southern-utah-tow-truck-drivers-journey-to-youtube-stardom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/?p=1143","title":{"rendered":"Matt\u2019s Off-Road Recovery: A Southern Utah Tow Truck Driver\u2019s Journey to YouTube Stardom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt\u2019s Off-Road Recovery: A Southern Utah Tow Truck Driver\u2019s Journey to YouTube Stardom<\/h1>\n

By Elainna Ciaramella<\/em><\/p>\n

In just three and a half years since the YouTube channel started in 2019,\u00a0Matt\u2019s Off-Road Recovery<\/a>\u00a0has become a national sensation with nearly 1.3 million subscribers and growing. What makes this YouTube success story intriguing is the channel\u2019s atypical creator, Matt Wetzel, a rugged, big-bearded, technology-impaired, middle-aged tow truck driver from Hurricane, Utah.\u00a0With pure grit, Matt managed to build a wildly popular YouTube channel from the ground up with just an iPhone.<\/p>\n

\"\"Matt\u2019s Off-Road Recovery is a family-friendly, edge-of-your-seat\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u00a0channel based on the real-life adventures and bare-knuckle\u00a0recoveries of Matt and his crew: his wife, Jaymie, their four sons, and a gentleman named Ed. They are joined by a growing\u00a0crew of capable and likable\u00a0characters, and\u00a0three dogs, who are all rescues\u2014Lady and Peanut, both Border Collies, and Max, a chocolate Labrador\u2014possibly the happiest dogs in the world, given the stunning natural\u00a0landscapes where they\u00a0run.<\/p>\n

The channel brings viewers along for the ride on a variety of off-road recoveries of automobiles, and UTVs, etc., mostly rentals driven by helpless tourists who are unfamiliar both of the terrain and\u00a0the off-road capabilities of their vehicles. The videos are a slice-of-life showing how Matt and his crew cope with often difficult\u00a0recoveries in remote corners\u00a0of some of Utah’s most scenic landscapes,\u00a0including\u00a0Zion National Park<\/a>,\u00a0Sand Hollow State Park<\/a>, and other parts\u00a0of southern Utah. On rare occasions Matt and his crew will\u00a0venture north<\/a>\u00a0for recoveries in the mountains of\u00a0northern Utah, but most of the action happens within a 200 mile radius of Hurricane.<\/p>\n

The videos follow a three-part formula: the “So-I-got-a-call” incoming\u00a0telephone plea\u00a0of a stranded motorist indicating the location and situation of the stuck vehicle, the fast-motion journey\u00a0to the location (accompanied by music and the dogs running alongside the recovery vehicles), and finally the\u00a0diagnosis and rescue, which is often dramatic. Stranded motorists are always treated with kindness and respect, regardless of their lapses in judgment or inappropriateness of their vehicle for\u00a0a given situation. Matt and his crew delight in problem-solving the most extreme rescues\u00a0in often ludicrous and seemingly hopeless situations, usually\u00a0requiring much creativity and\u00a0improvising.<\/p>\n

How it all began<\/h4>\n

Before he was a famous YouTuber, Matt spent 12 years in the roofing business\u201410 years as an employee and the last two years as a business owner. Matt and Adam Stout started\u00a0Skyline Roofing<\/a>, a successful roofing company that is still based in Hurricane, Utah. After two years, Matt sold his interest in Skyline,\u00a0bought the assets of a local towing company, and started Red Ryder Towing.<\/p>\n

Before Red Ryder, Matt had not towed professionally, but between roofing and farming and everything else, he towed a lot of heavy loads. \u201cThere is a side of towing that is problem solving and understanding what equipment can and can\u2019t do, and what you should and shouldn\u2019t do with it,\u201d says Matt. \u201cI stepped into the towing industry going full speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not long after Matt started Red Ryder Towing, he purchased\u00a0Winder Towing<\/a>. \u201cI looked at it like I could spend my life building this towing company or I could buy one that\u2019s already built. So\u00a0in 2013, I bought Winder Towing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"In 2009, they started getting calls for off-road tow jobs, but Matt didn\u2019t have the right equipment. \u201cWe just started doing them anyway, and we didn\u2019t do super good and we knew it was all wrong,\u201d says Matt. Calls would come in and Matt knew the system was wasn’t working. For instance, it might be August, 110 degrees, and a couple of college kids would drive their car out to the beach at Sand Hollow and get stuck.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d come out there with a wrecker and cable extensions. You’re asking your employee to drag 150 feet of cable out, walk back through the sand, pick up 100 feet of cable extension, go back, drag it all the way, hook it up, come back, and get another one and go out there. Well they’re in trouble at that point, like heat exhaustion.”<\/p>\n

He continues, \u201cIt would take me two, three, or four guys to drag the cable to that car, hook it up,\u00a0and now it’s the same process over again. We can only pull in 150 feet, and then we have to pull that cable back out and hook to the next one, pull this cable up and pull them again. By the time it’s done, you’ve got a $1,200 dollar or $1,500 dollar job for some college kids that just barely had enough money to pay the fee to get through the gate.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some cases, the tow bill is looking like it’s going to total the car that we’re pulling out. It’s not a very nice car.\u00a0I knew the whole thing was wrong and I would discount like crazy. And even if I discounted it down to $400 or $500 bucks, it was devastating to them. Also I’ve got these expensive trucks that I’m pulling through the sand and I’m pulling them out there too far, and then I have to self-rescue and all this stuff, so it just wasn’t working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt decided modifying the tow rigs for off-road recovery was not the right decision. He needed to start with a clean slate. He chose a 2001 Jeep Cherokee (XJ), which he built up and painted yellow. The yellow paint is what led to the Cherokee being derisively nicknamed\u00a0\u201cThe Banana” by a doubtful customer a few moments before the modified Cherokee yanked his class C motorhome out of the sand (the customer is a firm believer now).<\/p>\n

Matt\u00a0incorporates\u00a0kinetic energy ropes, which he calls\u00a0\u201ca fantastic tool.\u201d The Banana or the more recent Morvair, (a highly modified Corvair), combined with\u00a0kinetic ropes make it possible for Matt and his crew to\u00a0dramatically reduce the time and prices of\u00a0recoveries. \u201cThese jobs are getting done now in literally minutes instead of hours,\u201d says\u00a0Matt.<\/p>\n

Personal podcasts to friends<\/h4>\n

As Matt\u2019s off-road recoveries became the norm, he began to share\u00a0nightly personal podcasts to some\u00a0long-time friends. \u201cOne of them is an airline pilot and the other is a nuclear engineer. They have jobs where they sit and do boring stuff. They\u2019re living through my stories and they\u2019re like, \u2018You should write a book, send me pictures<\/em>.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"To satisfy\u00a0friends\u00a0living vicariously through his often ridiculous extractions, Matt started taking\u00a0more pictures and short videos which he sent to\u00a0his buddies. \u201cI\u2019m doing all of this work for two people to just show them interesting stories of what we\u2019re doing.” Friends and family suggested he look into posting the videos on\u00a0YouTube. \u201cThey said,\u00a0\u2018You can make it worth your time\u2014some people are doing this for a living<\/em>.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Matt wasn\u2019t great at technology. \u201cI can\u2019t run a laptop” says Matt. “I\u2019m technologically impaired that way. I love problem solving, but for some reason, I don’t like computer problems.\u201d Matt looked into YouTube. He\u00a0knew people who would make\u00a0family vlogs\u00a0and post them to YouTube because it costs nothing.<\/p>\n

During Matt\u2019s initial YouTube research, he saw how\u00a0people turned their YouTube channels into multi-million dollar businesses, “because their videos were good and people wanted to see them,\u201d says Matt.<\/p>\n

Matt\u2019s brother-in-law helped him start a YouTube channel but it didn\u2019t go anywhere.\u00a0\u201cI think there are two videos on it,” says Matt. “It was a lot of work.\u00a0I realized somewhere between 2016 and 2017 that\u00a0this was a really long process…I was so far away from it on the videography and editing side. Then, I thought about how there are 10 billion YouTubers and almost none of them are successful. What are they doing, and what are the successful ones doing that\u2019s making them quit their jobs and do this full time?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Matt didn\u2019t know\u00a0the right questions to ask. \u201cIt was a really long process, but I\u2019ve had the ability to hyper focus for years, so I hyper focused on YouTube and learning how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt discovered\u00a0LumaFusion<\/a>, a mobile app that allowed him to edit on his phone because he didn\u2019t like using a desktop. He figured, \u201cOkay, if I can run this off my iPhone, I can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt\u00a0learned\u00a0how to YouTube from YouTube. “There are YouTubers like\u00a0Nick Nimmin<\/a>\u00a0who are all about how to start YouTube channels,\u00a0how to do the right things and not do the wrong things,” says Matt. \u201cEverybody\u2019s natural tendency is to do the wrong thing on YouTube. One of those things is, \u2018Please subscribe and share.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0Never do that\u2014that\u2019s annoying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Matt\u00a0meets\u00a0real YouTubers and people in the industry who tell him\u00a0they use him as an example of someone\u00a0who think they could\u00a0start YouTubing until they have hundreds of thousands of dollars of camera equipment,\u00a0a studio, etc.\u00a0\u201cThey\u00a0say,\u00a0\u201cHey, this high-school-educated tow truck driver started a YouTube channel with an iPhone,<\/em>\u201d which is exactly\u00a0what Matt\u00a0did. He focused on the equipment on hand and started filming and editing\u00a0his own stories.<\/p>\n

24-hour towing and editing all night<\/h4>\n

At this point, Matt was\u00a0road towing with tow trucks and\u00a0doing off-road recovery. Everything was filmed on\u00a0his iPhone. \u201cI\u2019m filming myself with it. I\u2019m filming a lot of what\u2019s going on out there,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen we get to the job, I hand the phone to Ed or one of my kids or my wife or somebody. If not, I\u2019m propping it up with sticks and rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"During the early years Matt was running a\u00a024-hour towing company which dominated most of his time. When everybody went to bed around 10 p.m., he would lock himself in his attic and edit videos, dropping two to three videos a week, and getting about two to three hours\u2019 sleep a night. \u201cI\u2019d catch cat naps wherever I could, but I lived that way for a little over a year and a half,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

Within six to eight months, Matt had a video that went viral. \u201cAt this point, we were getting some videos that were fairly viral,\u00a0videos<\/a>\u00a0with over a million views. You know, when you first start out, your videos are getting a couple thousand views, but ours started growing really fast, and getting 10,000 views on every video, then 20,000, and now we’ve got this\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0that hit a million views. We had a couple of good\u00a0videos<\/a>\u00a0in a row.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt started asking himself more pointed questions. Instead of, \u201cWhat makes a good video or what makes a bad video?\u201d he asked, \u201cWhy did this video perform, and why did this one not perform?\u201d<\/p>\n

Meeting Derral Eves<\/h4>\n

Matt felt he had to launch his channel right because he found out that you can run a pretty bad YouTube channel or a pretty good one\u2014they both take about the same amount of work.\u00a0\u201cI wanted it.\u00a0I knew I could make it into a business and monetize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"In the middle of everything, Matt kept hearing the name,\u00a0Derral Eves<\/a>, and how he founded\u00a0VidSummit<\/a>. People would say to Matt, \u201cHe lives right in your town,\u201d and Matt would respond, \u201cWho is this guy?\u201d and they\u2019d say, \u201cOh you know, he\u2019s tied in with\u00a0MrBeast<\/a>,\u201d and every other successful YouTuber Matt could think of.<\/p>\n

Matt got Derral\u2019s number from a friend and was surprised when Derral answered the phone, especially a number he didn\u2019t know. Matt gives his account after Derral took his call: \u201cHey, I got this little YouTube channel. I feel like it’s doing pretty good, but I feel like I’m at a dead-end. I don’t know how to make it better. Do you do any consulting? I would like to hire you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Derral replied:\u00a0\u201cNo, we don’t do one-on-one, but I’ve got this class coming up that you can take. It’s $5,000.\u201d To Matt this\u00a0sounded like a ridiculous amount of money.<\/p>\n

Matt was thinking he hit another dead-end. He was about to hang up the phone and Derral asked, \u201cWait, what’s the name of your channel? If I get a minute, maybe I’ll look at it.\u201d Matt told him it\u2019s Matt\u2019s Off-Road Recovery, and hung up.\u00a020 minutes later Matt received a text from Derral:\u00a0Hey, we need to go to lunch.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

When they met Derral shared with Matt what he liked about Matt’s channel: the\u00a0tenacity and hardwork of Matt and his team.<\/p>\n

Derral asked, \u201cWho\u2019s doing your editing?\u201d Matt replied, \u201cI\u2019m doing it.\u201d Derral responded, \u201cHoly smokes…we\u2019ve got to stop that. We\u2019ve got to get you an editor because you should be out creating content. Your editor should be editing and putting it up.\u201d Derral put it on the line:\u00a0\u201cIf you\u2019re serious and you really want to do this, and you want a partner who can help you, we can partner.\u201d The pair ended up coming to a deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to understand the chaos that was going on before this because I didn\u2019t know anything about computers,\u201d recalls\u00a0Matt. \u201cWe were losing footage. Audio didn’t always work.\u00a0It was just chaos.\u201d Matt took Derral’s Channel Jumpstart class that teaches users how to YouTube and create content people want to watch. Matt said he loves YouTube because he sees it as a puzzle.<\/p>\n

“If you can\u2019t keep the audience\u2019s attention, they\u2019ll move on. Everybody\u2019s looking for the least boring thing to watch. They don\u2019t care how much effort you\u2019re putting into it or how artistic it is. They just want to know:\u00a0does it make them feel better? Is it\u00a0engaging? Can they identify with it so that\u00a0the time they spent watching it is worthwhile?<\/em>\u00a0I really love that aspect of YouTube,\u201d says Matt.<\/p>\n

Capitalizing on YouTube and Merchandise<\/h4>\n

YouTube pays Matt’s Off-road Recovery\u00a0with Google’s\u00a0AdSense<\/a>. The company\u00a0also has\u00a0sponsorships, affiliate partnerships, and merchandise. \u201cWe’ve messed with some global markets,\u201d says\u00a0Matt. \u201cI have my own signature series of\u00a0kinetic energy ropes<\/a>. Every year, we crush the global\u00a0nylon kinetic rope market. We have a walk-in store at our junkyard. Walk-in sales there are bigger than my towing company by far.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Today filming is done by company\u00a0employees (the characters in the videos), but Matt still films occasionally. \u201cIf I\u2019m vlogging, the audience seems to really like it,\u201d says\u00a0Matt. \u201cFrom there, we upload the video footage to Google Drive where it is assigned to one of our four editors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt hasn\u2019t been editing since he partnered with Derral. It\u00a0still takes some of his time because he’ll still watch videos in the editing process and say, \u201cNow take this out and put this in.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for Matt\u2019s YouTube Channel? Not surprisingly, Matt has been approached by scouts for the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, but he continues to deny them because he wants to maintain creative control.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think going the direction we\u2019re going, but managing it better is the correct way to go,\u201d says\u00a0Matt. Additionally, Matt and his team are considering putting their content in\u00a0a more customized platform, similar to\u00a0Patreon<\/a>, where viewers pay to access content that connects them on a more personal level.<\/p>\n

Paying it forward<\/h4>\n

Matt has a big heart. \u201cThe biggest pain that Jaymie has about me is I\u2019d rather do jobs for free,\u201d says\u00a0Matt. “During our\u00a0entire\u00a0marriage she’ll ask me, \u201cDid you collect on that?<\/em>\u201d and sometimes I’ll\u00a0mumble in a low voice,\u00a0\u201cWell, no.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Helping others is extremely important to Matt.<\/p>\n

To date, Matt\u2019s Off-Road Recovery\u2019s YouTube family has raised over $600,000 dollars in charitable donations for local organizations like the\u00a0Hurricane Valley Food Pantry<\/a>,\u00a0Tan\u2019s Treats<\/a>,\u00a0Shop with a Cop<\/a>, and an\u00a0all-abilities park<\/a>\u00a0in Hurricane, as well as fundraisers for off-road recovery groups that improve and protect public land for wheeling and other off-road recovery activities.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt\u2019s Off-Road Recovery: A Southern Utah Tow Truck Driver\u2019s Journey to YouTube Stardom By Elainna Ciaramella In just three and a half years since the YouTube channel started in 2019,\u00a0Matt\u2019s Off-Road Recovery\u00a0has become a national sensation with nearly 1.3 million subscribers and growing. What makes this YouTube success story intriguing is the channel\u2019s atypical creator, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38,42,191,192,259],"class_list":["post-1143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-38","tag-a-southern-utah-tow-truck-drivers-journey-to-youtube-stardom","tag-matts-off-road-recovery","tag-matts-off-road","tag-southern-utah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topkeynews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}