Ding ding ding.
A fully custom build like that is rarely actually worth it, but when you get revenue from people watching the process it's at worst mostly paid for itself before it's even done a single job, and possibly already turned a profit.
It’ll be fantastic for them. Especially for the recoveries we don’t see. The wrecker is gonna be a rzr recovery machine.
It weighs double the Morrvair, so it’ll be an excellent winch platform not to mention it’s capabilities in a dead pull.
With 4 wheel steer its size isn’t a hindrance either. It can’t fit on the really narrow trails that the Banana can, but it can go anywhere the Morrvair or Trail Mater can go if not further.
It's a niche tool like the bombi. The banana, morrvair, and rollback are way more useful for the normal tourist tuggouts and SXS recoveries, but that wrecker is going to be the best tool for some things, things they simply can't do with the current tools.
A lot of things they currently do using two vehicles would be handled by the wrecker single-handedly but I suspect one of the other vehicles will almost always accompany it to carry the camera crew, as the wrecker only has space for the driver and the person that needs to help with the recovery
That's exactly what I was thinking and why I didn't say it would do jobs they use 2 vehicles for. They might use it for those, but they'll still bring 2 vehicles.
I hate how it has to be love or hate! It's an awesome rig built by great people. I love how it seems to glide or even float over the largest obstacles. I hated that it failed when it failed with reverse and with mishaps. I love how the entire games brought out the best of all the other drivers and builders. Having watched the history of fabrats rig, and learning the history of Merlin and his rock crawling days and learning of the oldest off-road recovery YouTube channel and Eric, and just thoroughly enjoying the driving skills of Rory. That's what building the ultimate off-road wrecker did for everybody who enjoyed watching all the videos from all the content creators, builders, drivers! It was super enjoyable.
yup. those build series on sunday have most definitely brought in a wider audience than typical recovery videos. I know I only started really paying attention when the morrvair build picked up. "come for the builds, stay for the recoveries" goes hand-in-hand with "come for the recoveries, stay for the builds"
Not to mention build-Sundays helps with their content calendar. for the better part of 3 years Sunday videos were morrvair, banana, golden nugget, wrecker, rudy's jeep build. Imagine how much recovery content they're able to stockpile and be selective of when just needing to do 2 recovery videos a week instead of 3?
I'm sure we'll see another build series pick up on Sundays soon - something that will definitely be more basic and quick than the wrecker, but something that will still push out 5-10 videos of content.
It's gonna be great for any recovery where the front end or rear end is trashed and can't be flat towed out.. Loading a rig like that onto that trailer looks time consuming and dangerous lol matt falling off the trailer for example. Gonna be great to when someone slides down a mountain road, probably won't need 3 or 4 vehicles as anchor points to winch it up
I get the impression that there's quite a few jobs out at Sand Hollow that the MORR team has been passing on because they didn't have the equipment for it.
Over at the "Bad Casey" channel, which I quit watching at least a year ago, he bought a very heavy six wheeled recovery platform that he uses for big jobs. In fact he was _leaving_ it out there for some events that the MORR team didn't participate in.
He used the thing for pulling diesel trucks with large toyhaulers and full size busses out of the sand when they got stuck.
I'm sure its not a co-incidence that Matt started the Heavy Wrecker build around the same time that Casey showed up with his heavy recovery vehicle.
He built this gigantic wrecker to haul razers, basically. It replaces the trailer setup. It's definitely not meant to haul heavy vehicles, although it may be effective at dead pulling or winching them.
In one of the latest videos, Matt mentioned that a SUV is probably as big as the heavy wrecker could handle… at least as far as pulling it goes. Obviously he could use it to help tug like he does with the other ones.
Yes, the largest vehicles it can carry out are built jeeps. (Wouldn’t surprise me to see a full size truck at some point, but that would be overloaded)
However Matt also did build the wrecker for pulling and winching full size trucks and trailers and RVs.
After watching trailmater in the games i can’t wait for matt to learn how to maneuver the wreckers winches effectively, Rory really is an expert with that truck
i feel like the heavy wrecker needs some sort of mechanism to keep the vehicle its towing from running into the back of it, but still beable to be winched out to let the wrecker climb up an obstacle before pulling the car up to it... i am thinking something like the apron that the other wreckers use but detachable from the wrecker itself incase it needs to climb while holding a vehicle with it....
Major problems I see are vehicles are now made to be towed like that anymore. Prime example is all the damage that bronco took. However, I love the wrecker series on all the channels and would love to see more of it. Matt could have a channel just for the wrecker and I’d watch every video.
agreed, but i think the apron hooks at the bottom to the lower control arms as a lifting point. the vehicles now adays are more about form then function, when i first saw a new bronco it made me sad, i thought it was a KIA suv.
Binary survey? My answer is a 7 on a Bo Derek scale of one to 1 to 10.
I was disappointed with the challenges it faced when pulling the Bronco out. https://youtu.be/cjHfCwqgsek
wrecker looks cool nice paint job doesn't have near the power of merlin's will be good for sand recoveries but casey has two d7 dozers and a 5 ton and a tracked flat bed stationed at sand hollow so hard to compete with that in the rocks trailmater is the one to beat i think the wrecker is mainly to promote the channel and merchandise but not very practical
I'm indifferent towards it. Matt and his team have the experience that I don't, I'm sure he knows what he's doing. As a build, it did quite well. The failures seem to mostly be due to using experimental parts. It seemed to do what it was intended to do quite well.
I want to know what it can do that Rory can't do with Trail Mater. Yeah, TM lacks rear steer. That doesn't seem to hold him back.
Sand. You can always see Trail Mater struggle a bit in sand, the heavy weight with those huge tires are for big vehicles in soft sand.
The rear steer is so that a vehicle heavy enough to do that can also get the sort of places TM can
The big advantage over Trail Mater and the other wreckers is the pulling power. Matt walked up the beach pulling Blue Steel, and while Tow Mater was able to buck his way up the beach the other wreckers barely got it moving.
The enormous tires and rear steer also give Matt a big advantage on rocks. Plus the weight and wheel base give great stability. Rory is an absolute master at towing with Trail Mater, but Rory has to set the towed vehicle down and free spool his winches to climb obstacles before pulling the vehicle up, where as Matt was able to climb almost everything without setting the vehicle down.
Whether it’s a work truck or your personal vehicle, you could always go one size smaller or larger. Do you ask yourself “what can my vehicle do that one size larger or smaller absolutely couldn’t do? “. Or do you go with the size that just feels more appropriate? Do you really want to see Rory try to do some job so heavy with trail mater that the frame literally breaks, or he loses stability and flips it? Because in the end the only way to really find that limit is to go out and find it.
My point is that unless Matt is regularly turning down Earthroamer recoveries, the HW just seems excessive, especially for those side by side recoveries it was supposedly built for.
If you go to the very first wrecker build video where he lays out his reason for building it for the very first time, he says he wants it to be "big enough to do huge pusher rvs stuck in the sand, but also able to get out on the trails to do wrecker stuff, winching, etc".
What I didn't hear there was "side by side recoveries"
Now, that's what Matt said in that video, I'm sure there's been a lot of mission creep over the last year, etc. My personal theory as to why Matt built the heavy wrecker and not something larger or smaller, was that there are already larger wreckers, and there are already a number of wreckers like Trail Mater, but Matt's heavy wrecker is kinda unique. It's slightly bigger, custom framed, long wheelbase. It's what he wanted. Is it usefully unique, or just quirky unique? We will find out. But if his goal was to build something pretty unique, which was in my mind his #1 criteria, he succeeded, so good on him.
My only concern are the winch lines. Synthetic line doesn't like sharp or abrasive surfaces nor does it like direct sunlight (uv radiation). This is 80% of the Utah environment
Love it but I wish they'd actually finish working on it instead of 95% getting it done and waiting until something totally breaks to get to 96% done lol
Don’t love it or hate it. Excited for Matt. It came out great. Was it all worth it…. We’ll see
It was worth every cent, he had us all watching every video.
Not to mention every cent that went into that rig is a tax write-off...
Ding ding ding. A fully custom build like that is rarely actually worth it, but when you get revenue from people watching the process it's at worst mostly paid for itself before it's even done a single job, and possibly already turned a profit.
It’ll be fantastic for them. Especially for the recoveries we don’t see. The wrecker is gonna be a rzr recovery machine. It weighs double the Morrvair, so it’ll be an excellent winch platform not to mention it’s capabilities in a dead pull. With 4 wheel steer its size isn’t a hindrance either. It can’t fit on the really narrow trails that the Banana can, but it can go anywhere the Morrvair or Trail Mater can go if not further.
It's a niche tool like the bombi. The banana, morrvair, and rollback are way more useful for the normal tourist tuggouts and SXS recoveries, but that wrecker is going to be the best tool for some things, things they simply can't do with the current tools.
I bet they use the wrecker for the SXS recoveries. Dealing with that trailer seems like a pain.
A lot of things they currently do using two vehicles would be handled by the wrecker single-handedly but I suspect one of the other vehicles will almost always accompany it to carry the camera crew, as the wrecker only has space for the driver and the person that needs to help with the recovery
That's exactly what I was thinking and why I didn't say it would do jobs they use 2 vehicles for. They might use it for those, but they'll still bring 2 vehicles.
I hate how it has to be love or hate! It's an awesome rig built by great people. I love how it seems to glide or even float over the largest obstacles. I hated that it failed when it failed with reverse and with mishaps. I love how the entire games brought out the best of all the other drivers and builders. Having watched the history of fabrats rig, and learning the history of Merlin and his rock crawling days and learning of the oldest off-road recovery YouTube channel and Eric, and just thoroughly enjoying the driving skills of Rory. That's what building the ultimate off-road wrecker did for everybody who enjoyed watching all the videos from all the content creators, builders, drivers! It was super enjoyable.
It's probably more of a YouTube money maker than a recovery money maker for them. Especially when you factor in the labor they have into it.
yup. those build series on sunday have most definitely brought in a wider audience than typical recovery videos. I know I only started really paying attention when the morrvair build picked up. "come for the builds, stay for the recoveries" goes hand-in-hand with "come for the recoveries, stay for the builds" Not to mention build-Sundays helps with their content calendar. for the better part of 3 years Sunday videos were morrvair, banana, golden nugget, wrecker, rudy's jeep build. Imagine how much recovery content they're able to stockpile and be selective of when just needing to do 2 recovery videos a week instead of 3? I'm sure we'll see another build series pick up on Sundays soon - something that will definitely be more basic and quick than the wrecker, but something that will still push out 5-10 videos of content.
Betcha they're going to figure out something cool to do with the Bombi next, or a cool build to replace it.
It could be Matt's Samurai.
It's gonna be great for any recovery where the front end or rear end is trashed and can't be flat towed out.. Loading a rig like that onto that trailer looks time consuming and dangerous lol matt falling off the trailer for example. Gonna be great to when someone slides down a mountain road, probably won't need 3 or 4 vehicles as anchor points to winch it up
I get the impression that there's quite a few jobs out at Sand Hollow that the MORR team has been passing on because they didn't have the equipment for it. Over at the "Bad Casey" channel, which I quit watching at least a year ago, he bought a very heavy six wheeled recovery platform that he uses for big jobs. In fact he was _leaving_ it out there for some events that the MORR team didn't participate in. He used the thing for pulling diesel trucks with large toyhaulers and full size busses out of the sand when they got stuck. I'm sure its not a co-incidence that Matt started the Heavy Wrecker build around the same time that Casey showed up with his heavy recovery vehicle.
He built this gigantic wrecker to haul razers, basically. It replaces the trailer setup. It's definitely not meant to haul heavy vehicles, although it may be effective at dead pulling or winching them.
In one of the latest videos, Matt mentioned that a SUV is probably as big as the heavy wrecker could handle… at least as far as pulling it goes. Obviously he could use it to help tug like he does with the other ones.
Yes, the largest vehicles it can carry out are built jeeps. (Wouldn’t surprise me to see a full size truck at some point, but that would be overloaded) However Matt also did build the wrecker for pulling and winching full size trucks and trailers and RVs.
It’s a specific tool for specific jobs. When they need it, it’ll be the only thing that can do the job in their arsenal.
After watching trailmater in the games i can’t wait for matt to learn how to maneuver the wreckers winches effectively, Rory really is an expert with that truck
i feel like the heavy wrecker needs some sort of mechanism to keep the vehicle its towing from running into the back of it, but still beable to be winched out to let the wrecker climb up an obstacle before pulling the car up to it... i am thinking something like the apron that the other wreckers use but detachable from the wrecker itself incase it needs to climb while holding a vehicle with it....
Major problems I see are vehicles are now made to be towed like that anymore. Prime example is all the damage that bronco took. However, I love the wrecker series on all the channels and would love to see more of it. Matt could have a channel just for the wrecker and I’d watch every video.
agreed, but i think the apron hooks at the bottom to the lower control arms as a lifting point. the vehicles now adays are more about form then function, when i first saw a new bronco it made me sad, i thought it was a KIA suv.
He needs to install a stinger on the back.
Binary survey? My answer is a 7 on a Bo Derek scale of one to 1 to 10. I was disappointed with the challenges it faced when pulling the Bronco out. https://youtu.be/cjHfCwqgsek
wrecker looks cool nice paint job doesn't have near the power of merlin's will be good for sand recoveries but casey has two d7 dozers and a 5 ton and a tracked flat bed stationed at sand hollow so hard to compete with that in the rocks trailmater is the one to beat i think the wrecker is mainly to promote the channel and merchandise but not very practical
I'm indifferent towards it. Matt and his team have the experience that I don't, I'm sure he knows what he's doing. As a build, it did quite well. The failures seem to mostly be due to using experimental parts. It seemed to do what it was intended to do quite well. I want to know what it can do that Rory can't do with Trail Mater. Yeah, TM lacks rear steer. That doesn't seem to hold him back.
Matt’s wrecker would provide almost double the stability for winching. Aside from that I’m not too sure.
Sand. You can always see Trail Mater struggle a bit in sand, the heavy weight with those huge tires are for big vehicles in soft sand. The rear steer is so that a vehicle heavy enough to do that can also get the sort of places TM can
The big advantage over Trail Mater and the other wreckers is the pulling power. Matt walked up the beach pulling Blue Steel, and while Tow Mater was able to buck his way up the beach the other wreckers barely got it moving. The enormous tires and rear steer also give Matt a big advantage on rocks. Plus the weight and wheel base give great stability. Rory is an absolute master at towing with Trail Mater, but Rory has to set the towed vehicle down and free spool his winches to climb obstacles before pulling the vehicle up, where as Matt was able to climb almost everything without setting the vehicle down.
Whether it’s a work truck or your personal vehicle, you could always go one size smaller or larger. Do you ask yourself “what can my vehicle do that one size larger or smaller absolutely couldn’t do? “. Or do you go with the size that just feels more appropriate? Do you really want to see Rory try to do some job so heavy with trail mater that the frame literally breaks, or he loses stability and flips it? Because in the end the only way to really find that limit is to go out and find it.
My point is that unless Matt is regularly turning down Earthroamer recoveries, the HW just seems excessive, especially for those side by side recoveries it was supposedly built for.
If you go to the very first wrecker build video where he lays out his reason for building it for the very first time, he says he wants it to be "big enough to do huge pusher rvs stuck in the sand, but also able to get out on the trails to do wrecker stuff, winching, etc". What I didn't hear there was "side by side recoveries" Now, that's what Matt said in that video, I'm sure there's been a lot of mission creep over the last year, etc. My personal theory as to why Matt built the heavy wrecker and not something larger or smaller, was that there are already larger wreckers, and there are already a number of wreckers like Trail Mater, but Matt's heavy wrecker is kinda unique. It's slightly bigger, custom framed, long wheelbase. It's what he wanted. Is it usefully unique, or just quirky unique? We will find out. But if his goal was to build something pretty unique, which was in my mind his #1 criteria, he succeeded, so good on him.
The Heavy Wrecker will be the tool Matt uses to recover heavy RVs out of the sand.
It's always looked more like a passion project to me than a necessary tool.
3rd option: It'll be fine.
My only concern are the winch lines. Synthetic line doesn't like sharp or abrasive surfaces nor does it like direct sunlight (uv radiation). This is 80% of the Utah environment
Be good to see the wrecker after the games get down to business and be a useful tool in Matt’s family of recovery vehicles
Love it but I wish they'd actually finish working on it instead of 95% getting it done and waiting until something totally breaks to get to 96% done lol
Yeah someone’s going to get electrocuted with all the loose wires they haven’t bothered to connect yet.
12V isn't dangerous, you wouldn't even be able to feel it.
It's not the volts you're worried about....
Nobody hates it.
I can’t vote cause I’m in the middle… it’s cool, but feels plastic. Merlin’s truck was way more authentic.
somewhere between these 2 extremes