Thomas Meiser is a rock buggy fabricator and off-road enthusiast from Magna, Utah. Once a competitive baseball player coached by his father, Thomas shifted to fabrication after discovering the Suzuki Samurai at age 16—a pivotal moment that redirected his passion entirely.
Early Career Path
Thomas worked under influential mentors including Casey Beach (Beaches Off-Road) and Ben Hanks Racing, where he learned welding fundamentals and tubing work. After Caterpillar’s internship program and structural steel fabrication, he found his true calling at Midnight 4×4 with JC, working with CNC burning tables and tube cutters.
Building Fab’n 801
In 2018, Thomas launched Fab’n 801 (named from his habit of saying “I’m fab’n” in the garage, plus Salt Lake’s 801 area code). He’s built over 5,000 chassis for customers worldwide—in Australia, Canada, Mexico, Italy, and even Guam—and designed 15+ unique chassis platforms for Toyotas, Samurais, and Jeeps.
Future Vision
Thomas recently invested in 5 acres near Parowan, Utah (surrounded by BLM land and six canyons), where he plans to build a new fabrication shop. He’s exploring RC rock crawling innovations to inform real-life buggy design and actively seeking a business partner to help scale operations. His YouTube channel (Fab’n 801) showcases builds and off-road adventures.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:12.930] – Big Rich Klein
My guest this week is a fabricator of rock buggies, an off-road enthusiast, rock crawler, part-time competitor with a great reputation for building lightweight buggies with a popular design called The Rock Lizard. My guest is Thomas Meiser. Hello, Thomas Meiser. So good to have you on the podcast. Been looking forward to this and finding out more about you.
[00:01:37.800] – Thomas Meiser
Right on, Big Rich. Uh, super excited to be on here and, uh, go forward with this.
[00:01:43.660] – Big Rich Klein
Yeah, so let’s, uh, let’s start at the very beginning. And I asked the same question of everybody, all 700 and For 321 episodes now, I think it is 7 years of doing this.
[00:01:57.630] – Thomas Meiser
Where were you born and raised? So I was born and raised in Salt Lake City, um, and that’s in Utah, um, in 1986. So I am a ’90s baby, which is pretty cool.
[00:02:13.860] – Big Rich Klein
Definitely miss those years, but And were in that Salt Lake area, were you like in Salt Lake or were you out in the outskirts, suburbs? What, where was it?
[00:02:27.270] – Thomas Meiser
Um, so specifically I was raised in Magna, Utah, which is on the west side of Salt Lake. Um, I was born in Salt Lake in a hospital in Salt Lake, but my parents lived in Magna, Utah. Um, and I ended up doing elementary school in Magna and all the way up into uh, middle school. And at that time, my parents have transitioned and moved to Herriman, Utah, which is farther south but still on the west side of the Utah Valley there.
[00:03:01.640] – Big Rich Klein
And that was in the ’80s. Yeah, that was probably pretty— still pretty rural, wasn’t it?
[00:03:08.130] – Thomas Meiser
Yeah, it was. Um, it was kind of funny growing up in Magna. It was right at the bottom of Kennecott Mine. Um, kind of funny enough, a lot of people always made fun of like the water. People in Magna, if you drink the water, you were kind of, kind of different. So I made sure to drink a lot of water so you would be different, huh?
[00:03:30.740] – Big Rich Klein
Yes, sir. Is that— is that for people that don’t know, Thomas has a nice set of dreads. Um, I appreciate that. And, uh, Amongst my friends, I always say, you know, yeah, he’s— Thomas is our resident Rastafarian. So, yep. And so when trying to be different, was that really a conscious effort back when you were— READ MORE
