Personal History
To Whom it May Concern,
My Name is Zach Sawatzky and I live in Winter Park, CO with my wife, Kacie, and 6 year old son, Parker. I have been involved in the powersports industry since mid-2008 when I moved to Winter Park and started working at a local BRP/Arctic Cat/Kawasaki dealer in Granby,CO. After a couple of years there I left and started working at Spirit Lake Motorsports (Polaris) in Grand Lake, CO. This was where my true introduction to UTV’s began. I ran the parts department, and also helped in sales, service and our rental program. I was fortunate enough to be at the Polaris Dealer show in the fall of 2013 when they unveiled the first RZR XP1000. Total gamechanger. My experiences working at Spirit Lake gave me an incredible, hands on education to working with customers and manufacturers. Many of those relationships continue today as true friendships.
At the end of 2015 my son was born and life was calling for a change. I began working for the town of Fraser as a wastewater plant operator, the job I still currently hold today. Many people asked how I could leave an industry I loved and change career paths to something that initially sounds very unappealing. It wasn't easy, I certainly missed the powersports world and business. But the luxuries of having a blue collar government job has afforded my family and I many perks that I could have never gotten from working at a dealership. Plus, I always knew that someday, if it was meant to be, I would be given the opportunity to get back into the game.
Jump ahead to the summer of 2018… Our small family had always been involved in offroading, but primarily through Jeeps. We decided to try out a UTV, a RZR 900S to be specific. We were instantly hooked. My jeep buddies, not so much. So we began trying to find a good group of like minded folks to enjoy our weekends camping and riding with. That's when we were introduced to the Taylor Park UTV Rally. We knew of Taylor Park, CO but had never been ourselves, so I signed us up. The result was something I could never have expected. I quickly became friends with Alan Yoder, the organizer of the event and was introduced to Dan and Chase from Hypoxiq in Larmaie, WY. Things immediately snowballed from there. I attended my first Ultra4 King of the Hammers in the winter of 2020 with Hypoxiq and Champ Racing and was immediately hooked. Long story short, those relationships have turned into incredible opportunities. The last 4 years I have been helping organize the Taylor Park UTV Rally side by side with Alan. From event setup/cleanup to organizing the raffle give away portion of the event to vendor relations, it is easily my 2nd favorite week of the year. That leads me to my most favorite week of the year, King of the Hammers.
In 2020 I was invited to help support and pit for Champ Racing. They told me that there were two kinds of people in this world… those that come to KOH for the once in a lifetime chance and probably never return, and those that are hooked and show up every year after. I didn't even make it through the welcome gate and I knew which one I was! 2021 KOH provided the opportunity to help a couple of additional teams. We pitted for Champ Racing in the #1954 Can-Am, Robert Taylor in the #9227 Honda Talon, and Josh Smith in the #1948 Polaris RZR Pro XP. After the 2021 KOH we attended the Ultra4 Moab race and ran support for all three teams again. After Moab my good friend Hopper Becker and I started trying to figure out how we could make this a regular thing, pitting and supporting folks at races like this. Well another good friend was also looking at how to get involved in Ultra4 and he came to us with the opportunity to build a one of a kind RZR Turbo S and the chance to take it racing. This turned into Rocky Mountain Speed and Fab. Hopper and I helped the team owner Joe Gould cut a brand new 4 seat Turbo S in half and shorten it 12”. It was ridiculous, but we recorded it all and started posting on social media as much as we could throughout the build. In August of 2021 Hopper joined me at the Taylor Park UTV Rally and that is where the idea of “The Pit Guys” podcast was born. A podcast seemed right up our alley, and we were quickly becoming immersed in the family of Ultra4 4900 UTV racers. We started off slow with friends as guests but quickly built up the nerve to start calling up bigger names. We realized in a very short time that all you had to do was ask. The show really started to take off as we lined up guests like Ultra4’s Dave Cole, JT Taylor, Miles Hassliquist, Pam Hall and Courtney Prost. We also got to sit down with Kyle Chaney, Paul Wolf, Scott Lasage, and our good friend Josh Smith. By the time we rolled into KOH 2022, we were all in with the podcast and the team support. We ran pits and supported 5 teams this last year. That included 60 people, 18 trucks, 16 campers, and 20 UTV’s. It was a blast. Shortly after KOH, Ultra 4 was sold to new owners and we decided to pivot our podcast from being primarily UTV based to covering all of the Ultra4 classes. This has given us even more opportunity to represent the UTV community while working with different types of racers and events. Our next and final race of 2022 will be at the Legends of the Fall event in Jay, OK in October and will also serve as our National Finals event for the year in Ultra4. Currently Joe Gould is sitting in 2nd in the UTV Open Class in both National and West points. Josh Smith is currently leading the UTV Stock Class in National points and is 2nd in West points. We will also be pitting for two other UTV teams, a 4800 Legends team, and helping in two 4400 Unlimited class pits.
I’m a Rocky Mountain based guy. My family and I love to ride all of the local trails Grand County, CO has to offer and we can access many of them right from our driveway. We also ride areas like Moab and the Black Hills of South Dakota several times a year. I’m heavily involved in the Colorado UTV world - I’ve worked with several communities and our county to pass ordinances to make riding on local streets legal so that we can access the local forest service trails. This has led to several opportunities to work with organizations like Stay the Trail and COHVCO (Colorado Off Highway Vehicle Coalition). I’m still very involved with the Ultra4 4900 UTV classes (currently trying to put together a trip to the Baja 1000 this year to run pits and supports, and starting planning for KOH 2023), and our podcast has gotten us invitations to both the SEMA show this year and the PRI show in Indianapolis in December. I think that with our growing social media presence we can cover a segment of your customer base in several areas, the Rocky Mountains being a major one.
I’dlove to be a part of the team that gets to show your awesome products off. At the end of the day, I’m just a guy that lives in the mountains and loves being a part of an incredible UTV family. I’m passionate about the UTV industry and I’d love to be a part of your family. Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you!
Zach Sawatzky
Winter Park, CO