No wonder Nate Hunt is so good at what he does for Jackson Motorsports and Events, he had work ethic drilled into him from a young age. Listen in as Nate tells us how he landed the job, what life was like between naps and where he likes to spend his time now. Great listen, good stories, good people – our favorite kind of podcast!
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3:06 – meet farm boy Nate
12:21 – third in my class, on the podium
18:10 – You’re only as good today as your practice
25:06 – those tires been sitting on a concrete barn floor
28:56 – “I got seven trailer loads of tires coming in that need unloaded”
38:15 – I thought I was being hazed or something
52:28 – the people who made my career
1:08:11 – mapping the Baja 1000 race course
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:41.950] – Big Rich Klein
On today’s episode of Conversations With Big Rich, we have Nate Hunt for any of you guys that are running BFGs. You know Nate, but for those that you don’t, Nate is the Motorsports Race Operations Director at Jackson Motorsports and Events. And Nate has been around for quite a while, and he’s just a super great guy and helpful. And Nate, I want to say thank you so much for coming on board and sharing your story with us.
[00:02:12.490] – Nate Hunt
Of course. Glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
[00:02:15.060] – Big Rich Klein
Yeah, no worries. So let’s find out how you got to be part of Jackson. But to do that, we need to start at the beginning and let us know where you were born and raised.
[00:02:29.170] – Nate Hunt
Well, I was born and raised. I was born in Cooper’s Town, New York.
[00:02:33.880] – Big Rich Klein
Oh, wow.
[00:02:34.620] – Nate Hunt
Baseball hall of Fame, Little League, World Series, all that kind of stuff. Upstate New York. My dad owned a dairy farm in Carlisle, New York, and we had about 100 milking head. And then we have, of course, all the heifers and calves that come along with that and some beef cattle and did all our own oats and hay and corn and silage and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I was born and raised in upstate New York.
[00:03:06.280] – Big Rich Klein
So a farm boy.
[00:03:08.530] – Nate Hunt
Yes, but only a farm boy until I was I think we moved when I was about seven.
[00:03:17.870] – Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:03:18.330] – Nate Hunt
So I was on the farm long enough to learn how to push the manure into the gutter, push the silage up to the cows, sweep, did some milking, but I wasn’t quite tall enough to do milking on my own at that time on my dad’s farm, but, yeah, just that farm kid that go down there and do whatever he could at the early ages, before school and after school and get the ride on tractors. And my dad would put the tractor in gear, let the clutch out, jump off, and I would steer the thing back to the barn and just switch it off when I got there because I couldn’t reach the pedals. Whatever we needed to do, we were a long way away from any neighbors and there wasn’t any traffic, so it was just kind of that farm life in a remote area and out in the country in New York.
[00:04:17.510] – Big Rich Klein
That’s awesome. So that’s probably what created the good work ethic that I’m sure that Jackson Motorsport saw in you.
[00:04:29.930] – Nate Hunt
Yeah, I would definitely say I definitely learned some work ethic from being on the farm. My dad was a Cornell graduate. He wrestled in high school, won state Championships in wrestling, went to Cornell on a full ride for wrestling, was a farm kid. This is a family farm that he bought from my grandfather and his father before him. So it was a family farm for a long time and my dad grew up in that environment. And of course, his parents were survivors of the Depression, Great Depression. So it was a very stingy, if you will, I guess, or however you want to call that, where you’re squeezing every little bit of toothpaste out of the tube and adding water to the liquid soap to make it last longer and saving all the slivers of bar soap until you had another bar that you could use just that kind of really conservative lifestyle and pinching everything. I remember when I earned my first dime and of course, I had to put half of that in the savings and you had to work for everything that you got. So, yeah, definitely from that. My dad was also a Vietnam vet, so he had a little bit of that military in him and then bought the farm from my grandfather.
[00:05:57.130] – Nate Hunt
So, yeah, I think with all that tied in, I got quite a bit of work ethic from my dad, both on the farm and then what he went on to do after that, which I can get into that if you want. READ MORE
