EDITOR’S NOTE
WHAT’S NEW AT DIESEL WORLD
I’m not someone who can sit still for very long. Something I said to my dad when I was a kid that still holds true today: “I like to keep my life in a constant state of chaos.” Sounds bad, but it isn’t. I need to keep growing things. Whatever I’m involved with, be it professionally or in my free time, must keep growing and getting better at a pretty quick rate, else I get bored. Basically, I love to bite off more than I can chew and then find a way to chew it.
When I first started at Diesel World four years ago, my number-one goal was to drastically expand the brand into something larger, something that could really help grow the diesel industry, the industry I’ve been involved with since just after high school, the industry I love. I wanted to take Diesel World from being just a magazine and make it into an allencompassing brand with a much further reach than a magazine alone could ever have. After all, there’s only so much you can fit into a magazine, and videos don’t really work so well on print.
A big part of this plan was to make sure
Diesel World as a brand was covering everything in the diesel world. To make sure that no matter what you needed or wanted, you could find it via DW. The plan was to cover the continent with contributors so that no area was left untouched, and then find more ways to share what we found with other like-minded enthusiasts. We’d be the number-one source for information and entertainment for diesel enthusiasts. Four years later, we’ve met that goal in many areas, with others well on their way. Heck, we’ve even got a slew of international contributors letting us know what’s up in Europe and other places with healthy diesel markets.
Another part of the plan was to make our website into a real tool. A page you could go to and find anything you could ever need as a diesel enthusiast. In ’14 we had no real web presence; today, we have a site that’s updated daily with diesel news, vehicle reviews, product tests, how-to’s, new product releases, event info and more. I think we’ve succeeded. The traffic to it has straight blown up, doubling every six months. Dieselworldmag.com also has live feeds to more than 30 events around the country, including Ultimate Callout Challenge, and recently we released our new shop directory. The shop directory is something that never existed anywhere else before, a dedicated place for people to find diesel performance or repair facilities across the country. We’ve got over 5,000 shops listed, and you can search via your GPS location or by entering a city name, state or zip code. Oh, and how can I forget? We’re now hosting the Diesel Podcast on Dieselworldmag. com! Really stoked about this one. If you haven’t been listening to the podcast you’re really missing out. It’s a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the world of diesel.
Another part of the puzzle: We’ve been doing a newsletter for the last year or so. If you’re a fan of the new news section in the magazine, there’s even more in the newsletter every week, including event coverage, new vehicle releases, news regarding EPA restrictions, OEM news and so much more. You can subscribe at Dieselworldmag.com.
And one of my favorite parts of the plan, one that definitely keeps me in a state of constant chaos because there’s just so much to them: events. In ’15 through ’16 I helped get Ultimate Callout Challenge off the ground. That success opened my eyes more than ever to the importance of events. They’re the best way for all of us enthusiasts to get together and have some fun doing what we love— playing with diesels.
Diesel World now sponsors more than 40 events across the United States and Canada. You can see coverage from every one of those events on our social media pages or on Dieselworldmag.com.
Following the success of UCC, I’ve been looking for a new game-changing project to add to the DW brand, and I think this will be huge. The next big thing from DW is gonna be the Engine Builders Challenge. More on that to come very soon.