Mighty oaks from little acorns grow. This old colloquial proverb teaches us how with enough time, faith and the proper care things with even the humblest of beginnings can become much more significant that anyone would have imagined. It’s unknown if Jake and Jasmine Burkey or Matt Myrick were familiar with this phrase when they first planted the acorn that would become Busted Knuckle Offroad inside of a 40 square foot storage unit on the wrong side of the tracks of Augusta, Georgia. However, now that the company has grown into an international operation manufacturing turn-key offroad buggies for clients across the globe, it is one which certainly applies. 

Jake he and his co-owners were all into off-roading since they were children and it was their love of the sport that would eventually bring them together. During Youtube’s infancy Matt had started filming his excursions and recalls meeting Jake after he captured him rolling his Jeep down a hill at an event. Jasmine said her father raced competitively and would find herself taking his buggy out for her own joyrides, which would more often than not require at least a few minor repairs once she was done. She met, and later started dating, Jake after he transitioned into racing in the same division as her father.

At the time Jake was working as an engineer for a nuclear power plant, but became increasingly frustrated during the week — a problem which was not aided by the frequent texts he would get from Matt saying he was “out surfing on a Tuesday.” While Jake had gained credibility and name recognition through racing he knew it wasn’t a sustainable career choice. Instead, he approached Matt with an idea to use his Youtube channel as a springboard to start their own business.

“I was an engineer and then I started getting into project management but I just absolutely hated my life. But every time I would go to a race or an event or something me and Matt would meet up and ride together. He would be telling me all about how his week was and I would just think about how I’d been stuck in meeting all week. One day I told him how I’d been in the offroad and parts industries my whole life and I thought we could turn followers into revenue,” Jake said.

Matt said at the time “how-to” videos were particularly popular on the platform and the two had already had some success with their Rock Rods Tech series so it seemed to be a natural progression to transition into an online parts distributor. At the same time, Jasmine had been thinking of quitting her job in research and development with Phoenix Bass Boats and at Jake’s request she moved to Augusta into the storage unit where he was living at the time. 

Jasmine said the group formulated a strategy of drop shipping parts to eliminate overhead and keep operation costs low but ran into a fairly substantial road block when the company lost nearly $60,000 less than a month after opening its online store.

“We went to a race and when we came back we realized that someone had been purchasing a bunch of parts with fraudulent credit cards. They were stealing them from overseas and using them to purchase our parts. So the people who had their credit cards stolen were cancelling their cards and we had to refund the money while we were out on product. So, there was definitely a time when Jake and I seriously thought about going back and getting real jobs again,” Jasmine said.

It wasn’t until Matt invited Jake and Jasmine to move to Cullman that the group began to focus more growing the business into a successful enterprise. Jake said he had already stopped racing and his savings from his engineering job had begun to dry up. Neither of the two had jobs making it difficult to find a loan to purchase a suitable base of operations. Luckily, Matt’s father located a piece of property owned by Dodge City Excavating in close proximity to Stony Lonesome ATV Park which included an existing shop. When the owner agreed to finance the property for a year, Jake sold his racing buggy to help finance the transaction

The group continued to focus on selling parts and had no intention of expanding operations much beyond the original model. That is until they were contacted by a client from Italy asking for a fully built custom buggy. Matt said they continued filling custom orders for a time and while it grew their online fanbase, the model wasn’t sustainable, which spawned the development of the company’s first production model.

“We did custom buggies for a while and realized we spent so much time in R&D and doing all of this work to put out this custom build just for all of that work to be lost because then it’s time to build something custom for the next customer. That was awesome in the Youtube world because we would get a lot views by building these crazy 1600 horsepower, one-off, off the wall buggies but the business wasn’t making enough money doing that,” Matt said.

Jake said another factor in shifting to the production model were the customer requests for things he knew from experience would be ineffective. So he spent over a year designing all of the parts to create his version of his custom buggy. 

“The design for these vehicles came 100% out of my head. I sat there for over a year pecking at the computer doing all of the CAD work. So, it’s my design and what I knew was going to work,” Jake said.

That model has been used as the foundation for Busted Knuckles’ three current models — the Ride, Vision and Trail series — all of which come with additional supercharger and rear-steering options. That isn’t to say there isn’t plenty of room to customize any of the production vehicles. Busted Knuckle offer performance upgrades on everything from a vehicle’s suspension to it’s driveshaft. Creature comforts such as rearview cameras and heated seats are also available. Customers are even able to add a Milwaukee Packout or a headrest-mounted CB radio to talk between vehicles if they feel so inclined.

Jake said a good comparison would be to view their strategy just like a major automotive manufacturer, certain specifications such as color and features can be added but a customer can’t request any motor they would like. “We give them a platform and they can customize inside of that box,” he said. Matt added that since the company began manufacturing production models they have been able to increase the number of vehicles produced from one or two each year to around 13 and have been able to keep customer costs relatively low.

“The biggest benefit for us moving over to a production model is that we are able to get our customers a nicer vehicle, that’s built better, for less money,” Matt said.

The company also continues to utilize its social media platforms to create unique personal experiences for each of its customers offering trips to Stony Lonesome and  creating videos and photo spreads for each completed model. This perfect amalgamation of hard work, technical know-how and an awareness of up-to-date marketing strategies has been the formula for Busted Knuckle’s current success and one which they hope allows them to grow in the future.

“That social media aspect of the business definitely helped us catapult because there’s a lot of guys who have the ability to build awesome vehicles but can’t because they can’t get enough clients to scale the business. It really takes both, you have to have the following and you have to somebody with the vision to be able to create those vehicles,” Jake said.