Industry Insights | Ft. Dan Truman 2

In this week's Industry Insights we talk to Dan Truman who is the Brand Manager for Athena USA and GET Data. Dan tells us about racing against James Stewart in his amateur days, working as a professional mechanic, his involvement at the Dog Pound, and his week-to-week for Athena and GET.

For the full interview, check out the Vital MX podcast right here. If you're interested in the condensed written version, scroll down just a bit further.

Jamie Guida - Vital MX: What's up, Dan? 

Dan Truman: Oh, not a whole lot. I'm just getting ready to go to France for the Motocross of Nations, and then our factory is in Italy, which isn't too far. I usually make two or three trips to the factory a year, and this will be one of them.

Vital MX: That's going to be a fun weekend. So, you grew up in Florida, but how did you get involved with motocross?

Dan: Yeah, I grew up in Florida, born and raised. My dad rode a little, and I started racing dirt bikes when I was six. All the local stuff like Dade City and all the Florida races, things like that. I started taking it more seriously when I got on 85s and raced Loretta's. The first year at Loretta's, I got fourth behind (James)Stewart, (Broc) Hepler, and a kid named Brandon Layton from Oregon, who unfortunately passed away. I grew up racing in the amateur scene at Florida races, such as the Florida Gold Cup, Florida Winter AMs, and all that stuff. We traveled to all the major amateur races, which led me later in life as a mechanic and where I am now.

Vital MX: As I recall, you even beat James Stewart once or twice. Were you thinking at this time, "Hey, I'm going to make this a career, I'm going to go pro?" 

Dan: Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's what we all thought of. Actually, I think I didn't get fourth in my first year at Loretta's. I think I went in '96, but in '97, I got fourth; but yeah, I beat James a few times at local races. He was unreal. Even on minibikes, there were a few Winter AMs where I beat him straight up. I think I beat him at Englishtown straight up one time. That's kind of what got me my Team Green ride because Englishtown used to be a Kawasaki Race of Champions, so it was a big Kawasaki race. I went up there and Craig Martin was the Team Manager back then, and he noticed me. I won the Mini Olympics one time, and yes, the goal was to be a professional. Unfortunately, I had a lot of injuries. My first pro race was the Alessi 'Believe the Hype' race at Millville. I did a few fair races with Jeff, Mike, and Tony that week, and I won one. I was on a two-stroke at the time. Me and Michael Byrne were maybe two of the only guys on two-strokes. We were both on Kawi KX250s, and everyone else had a four-stroke. I qualified and went 32-26 for 33rd. It just wasn't very good. I wasn't in good enough shape. I didn't work hard enough for that and would be a struggling privateer. Fast-forwarding to that next year, I would race Supercross as a privateer. I had some help and was training with Davi Millsaps and Bryan Johnson. I had a big injury in Supercross and broke my femur badly. I just didn't want to be a struggling privateer, so I looked elsewhere in the industry.

Vital MX: I have to ask: Did you believe the hype?

Dan: I mean, Mike was awesome. He podiumed two weeks later. For me, it was tough, right? Because I beat him at a couple of the fair races going up there. Of course, he was a dominant amateur, so I thought I would be much better than I was at Millville. I mean, I didn't think I was going to be in the top five or ten or anything like that, but I thought I would get points. It was an eye-opener. The guys that were 18 to 22 were fast, and I just wasn't in good enough shape. I was in the top 20 during the moto and thought, "Man, this is hard. I need to work harder." I didn't come from money or anything like that, so I had to decide whether I was going to do this the right way or not. Then I got injured going into Supercross and realized, "Yeah, this is kind of it." So, I took a different route at that point in my life.

Vital MX: For a racer, that's a bit of an ego check and not as easy as it sounds. How did you decide what the next step was?

Dan: I mean, it's hard, right? You grew up racing your entire life. That's all you know. You're looking in the mirror, asking, "Am I going to do this or not?" I was on Team Green for four or five years with all the amateur support. I won amateur nationals and did all that stuff. The pro level was a whole different ballgame. Luckily, I worked on my own bikes a lot of the time and did all my sponsor stuff. I was pretty knowledgeable, and right around the time I got hurt, I was really good friends with Jason Thomas and Chad Reed. I was always with them at the track when I was still riding, and JT needed a mechanic going into the next year. At the time, the BTO Sports team was run by the Butler Brothers, and we were all friends. JT said, "You know how to work on bikes. Would you be interested in being my mechanic?" I said, "Yeah, for sure." You know, it was something to do. I'd still get to travel and be a part of the sport. So, that was going into 2005. My first race was the Jeremy McGrath Invitational, and JT and I went to it. I built his bike, and I stuck with JT for several years. We had a good relationship, and we're still really good friends. We did a bunch of overseas races with them. That's what led me to the next part of my career.

Vital: So, did that opportunity with JT allow you to meet the owners of Athena?

Dan: The president of Athena was going to sponsor me for my Supercross year in '05, and they were going to be a big sponsor of mine. I had met him through some mutual people at Pro Circuit, and they were looking to get more support in the US. I was going to race a Honda 250 with support from Athena. So, that's how I met them, and I just kept in touch with them. I was a mechanic for a number of years, and I think around 2010, they were looking for someone for more of a technical support role in the U.S. I was going to take a job at Pro Circuit after Paul Perebijnos went there. We were BTO Sports then, and he got the job at Pro Circuit and went to work for Dean Wilson. My wife and I were going to move to California, but at the same time, Athena offered me a job. So, it was between Athena and Pro Circuit. The difference was with Athena, I could stay in Florida, where I was born and raised. So yeah, it was kind of a crazy turn. We look at it now, and I think I made the right choice, but my career almost went the other way.

Vital MX: You could have ended up a mechanic working endless hours at the track.

Dan: I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time. I was a mechanic, and we were a lower-budget team. We did start to get more support at BTO and got better riders like Michael Byrne. As those guys were coming on board, other sponsors were joining. We had built an awesome team but were still a B-level team. The goal when you're a mechanic is to be on a factory team. Pro Circuit was the next step. I did two races with Pro Circuit, including Mt. Morris and Southwick, helping out and interning that year. I would have gone that route, but the Athena thing seemed really good. They needed someone to do some trade shows and somebody with a technical background, which led to the GET program, the electronic division of Athena. I enjoyed being around the race teams, going to the races, and doing that support. I've been here for 11 or 12 years and run the U.S. side of it myself with a gentleman named Edo here in the U.S. It works out well.

Vital MX: When that opportunity to go to Athena came up, were you nervous that you had the skill set to do what they needed?

Dan: Yeah, at first. They were pretty open about what I was going to do at first. I have a lot of relationships in the sport, and I didn't burn many bridges going through the sport like many people do. I tried to be honest, and they liked that about me. So, at first, I was hired to do trade shows like Parts Unlimited would do at all the Supercross races. It was more about building brand awareness, which I started to do. On the technical side, I picked up more and more. I'm not an engineer, but I work alongside several engineers. It's a little less complicated on the dirt bike side than in a car or other things. I learned a lot pretty quickly. As I said, by no means am I the smartest guy here, and I respect a lot of the guys, especially electronic guys in our sport. They're super smart, but I know many of the basics.

Vital MX: When you look at Athena USA's website, there are endless parts such as gaskets, seals, throttle tubes, and big bore cylinders. What is your role as far as marketing for Athena in the US? 

Dan: There are six of us here that handle the U.S. side. We're our own entity, but Athena, as a global group, is a very large company. We have over 850 employees worldwide with warehouses in many different countries. We make many OEM parts for many brands that people may have never heard of, such as Hero motorcycles. They are the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world, but most people don't even know that they exist. So, our main focus at Athena is OE and aftermarket, but not just on the racing side, which is what a lot of people see. Marketing-wise, in the U.S., I have a big input on whether I work with Vital MX, PulpMX, or someone else we advertise with. As a group, we distribute the budget worldwide to see what markets we need to spend money on for marketing. Then, on the technical side, I help develop new products from information from the race team. The reason you sponsor race teams is they help you develop new products. We have a new ECU coming out in November that we've been working on for a number of years which has a lot of new technology with information from the racing side.

Vital MX: On the GET Data side, the advancements have come so far since the early days when you guys were with JGR and Pro Circuit. I know Chad Reed did a lot of development in the early days, also. 

Dan: Yeah, it's come a long way. Chad Reed and James Stewart were two of the first ones in the U.S. to use it at L&M Yamaha, and Larry Brooks was an original believer in the GET product. Of course, a new product, especially electronics on fuel-injected bikes, comes with tons of hiccups. The Pro Circuit era did not have great results and had tons of issues. Not only from the GET side, but some also came from other things as everybody on the teams was learning as they went. Unfortunately, with it being an electronic part, even to this day, it's always blamed, right? It's like, "Oh, my ECU is bad", just because it's an aftermarket ECU. We'll never get past that, but one thing that was awesome this year was Factory Honda using GET with the Lawrence brothers, and they came to us to use it because they had used it in Europe. We didn't go to them and say, "We want to sponsor you." It was more of them saying, "We want to try the product, and if it's good, we want to use it." With that, it's a different relationship because the Lawrences are younger. They never experienced the hard times early on. They only knew it worked for them, and the results were great. We won almost every championship that we could win with those guys this year. The relationship has grown, and more people are joining because Factory Honda believes in you. I think that the product has shown that it's pretty good.

Vital MX: Do you see a massive uptick in sales and requests for the product now?

Dan: Not so much in sales. It's brand awareness even going back to Star Yamaha in the Cooper Webb and AP (Aaron Plessinger) days. Of course, people are buying more products. We don't sell retail, so it's hard to see direct sales numbers, but we are selling more products, especially for Honda bikes. Again, it's more about brand awareness, right? You're kind of building that credibility back up. It's hard because our sport is such a niche sport. You'll never get everyone who loves one engine builder or loves one brand. It's like the McDonald's versus Burger King scenario. People love one thing or love the other, and I think other ECU companies make great products, too. We are trying to be better and trying to advance the technology with what we have. We have a Wi-Fi com that allows you to tune your ECU from your phone, and you can run diagnostics of your bike if you have an issue. Just this weekend, I had a guy at the track saying, "Hey, my bike doesn't work. What can I do?" I said, "Run a diagnostic," and his air temp sensor was unplugged from when he did something with his subframe. So, we're trying to stay ahead with the technology as well.

Vital MX: You're at almost every race and always busy. What does your week look like?

Dan: Usually, Monday through Thursday, I'm in the office here at Athena, and then I travel on the weekends to the races. I'm mainly there to support the privateers that buy the product. The race teams, such as Factory Honda and the other race teams that we work with, have a guy who can do the ECUs for the most part. They have questions here and there that I may have to help them with, but those teams have somebody in-house, but I'm there. I base myself out of Honda, and then I'm there to help the Grant Harlan's of the world who spend money, buy products, and want some assistance. Harlan, at the first SMX race, was just looking for a little bit more bottom, so I made a quick mapping change. I run around and do that. Most of my work is done on Friday and Saturday mornings, and I try to enjoy the race. Most of the time, I'm flying out on a red-eye back home. I've been to enough races, so I no longer have to stay.

Vital MX: A few years ago, you were helping run the 83 Compound for the Lawrence brothers. Is that the Dog Pound now? 

Dan: Yeah, it's called the Dog Pound because every rider has at least 1 or 2 dogs. So, it's like a dog kennel there. A gentleman named Mark bought it from Chad Reed, and then the Lawrences own it now, and I still look after the facility. I use it as a GET and Athena testing facility. If we need to test new cylinders, ECUs, new bikes, or something else, and we'll have our off-road guys test there. Whoever needs to do some testing with me, it's easy to go there. I have a computer set up and all the stuff needed. 

Vital MX: You have a lot going on.

Dan: We joke sometimes about how many hats I wear. My main focus is obviously Athena and GET, but they allow me to do other things like the Dog Pound. Being there and being associated with the Lawrences brings awareness to the brands. The recent ESPN article wrote something about us working with them and that exposure alone helps. Even when I worked with Chad Reed, certain teams he was on didn't always use GET and Athena products, but people still associated me with Chad and the brand just because we were always together.

Vital MX: Speaking of Chad, in 2018 and '19, when it was Team CR22, you were the team manager. You were very involved with that team. 

Dan: (Laughs) I don't know what I was. It was a little of everything. I was booking flights, hotels, and coordination stuff. We ran a VIP program in 2018, '19, and '20; it was awesome. I've been good friends with Chad for a long time, pretty much since he got here in '04. We've always been close, returning to my relationships with people. I try to be neutral; you know what I mean. I work with tuners that tune other ECUs. Obviously, it's not a personal thing; I would love them to use our product, but it is what it is.

Vital MX: Let's close this out with our love/hate relationship with PulpMX Fantasy, which you are a big part of. I know you helped set some of the handicaps. Talk about fantasy.

Dan: It's a lot harder than people think. Previously, there were a couple of fantasy leagues eight or ten years ago, and I won three in a row. I won three bikes in a row on that site, and Paul Perebijnos won the one prior to that. So, between Paul and I, we won four in a row. Then PulpMX started this fantasy site, having the following he has, and we got involved. Paul does most of the handicaps because he has a formula that we work off of. It's tough in motocross because there has to be that human factor, right? For instance, Jed Beaton jumps into Washougal, and we can't just make him a handicap 18 because he's never raced the U.S. National before. We have to use some human factor, and if you just go straight off of a formula, it's hard because everybody will pick them. So, you have to consider pick trends, points scored at previous rounds, results, and everything else. You'll never make everybody happy. It's like going on the Vital Forum. It is super frustrating, but man, it's a fun game. I think we have gotten some nice emails from people saying, "Hey, I would have never followed Bryce Shelley or Alex Ray, but because of fantasy, I'm a big fan." Then, they get some of these privateer stories, bringing light to the field's back half.