One of the coolest things about the off-road racing community is how family oriented many teams are. The Brenthel Industries [1] racing team is no different. What started as two brothers, Jordan and Jonathan, building trucks in their garage has turned into one of the most well known off-road racing teams.
At the heart of their business are three major operations. The first part of their business is building off-road racing machine. They build everything from the ground up including the entire tubular chassis. The second part of their business is their Baja Kits [2] brand which designs, builds, and tests suspension kits for production vehicles.
The third and final part of their business is desert racing which helps get their business name out there as well as their sponsor’s. Doing all this isn’t easy, “It’s three businesses combined which make it a pretty hectic schedule,” said Jonathan.
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Brenthel Industries testing one of their trophy trucks.
When it comes to building race vehicles for customers the biggest part is delivering a high-quality product. When designing and building Jordan Brenthel likes to take a slower, more methodical approach to make sure their product is as best as can be.
Jonathan Brenthel, on the other hand, is a little bit more focused on getting the product to the customer as quickly as possible. Luckily they’re able to find a balance in between production speed and maintaining the highest quality possible. Their customers know this, and many of them become good friends with the Brentel brothers.
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One of Brenthel Industries race trucks shredding through the desert.
Baja Kits always start with just an idea. When the new generation Raptor came out Brenthel Industries had to figure out how can they make the truck better, and how can they make their kit better than the competitors.
Creating such a kit involves lots of 3D CAD design and lots of testing. Once they design a kit that works the way the like it moves onto production and becomes available on their website for anyone to buy. Many of their kits for productions trucks such as the F-150 offer as much as 18 inches of wheel travel.
One of the hardest parts of running a family owned business is making sure the whole family stays happy. It’s easy to step on each other’s toes and get on each other’s nerves. The Brenthel brothers have had many years to figure this out and they now know how is good at what. Each brother is better at different things, being able to recognize this and take full advantage of this is key, and the Brenthel brothers have mastered it.
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Jordan and Jonathan running the day to day operations.
Back in 2005, it was just Jonathan and Jordan building trucks in a garage. Things started growing and they hired one employee. Then things started growing more and more until they were hiring employees left and right. Brenthel Industries is currently up to 20 employees and all of them like to have a little bit of fun at work. In this video, you can even see some employees wrapping up furniture in cellophane as a prank on Jonathan and Jordan.
We’re looking forward to the very bright future of Brenthel Industries as a racing team and as a parts manufacturer. Years of hard work has paid off for the Brenthel brothers and all of their clients.