About the Podcast

Merchants of Dirt Podcast Showart - Title with a shovel sticking out of a mountain on a green field

Recreational Engineering (Reckoneer)

My journey towards creating the Merchants of Dirt podcast started with Reckoneer. Reckoneer was a blog I started several years ago to record all the lessons I had learned about race promotion. After years of volunteering, hosting my own races, supporting other race directors, and building my own racing company — Reckoneer — I used Reckoneer.com as my resource to share my knowledge with others.

Then I Discovered Podcasting

I discovered podcasting in 2016 and made the effort to transform all my Reckoneer.com blog posts into audio. This was the birth of Merchants of Dirt (MoD). MoD started as repurposed lessons from my race promotion library but became its own platform for teaching others the business of off-road racing.

Mr. Murphy and the Law Firm of Murphy, Murphy, and Murphy

The addition of Mr. Murphy as my co-host started as a joke. I was a big fan of Murphy’s Law and how whatever can go wrong will go wrong, but thought having him as a silent partner on my podcast would make a great foil. Turns out, that Mr. Murphy is also the name of my Black Lab which made his addition to the show that much more entertaining - especially when Mr. Murphy (the dog) would interrupt a recording session or chew through a microphone cable. All pure Mr. Murphy-type behavior!

Merchants of Dirt was the name of my fictional band whenever we would pretend to be rocking out. I also thought that Merchants of Dirt would be the name of an opening act for someone like Metallica or AC/DC. It just has a very metal ring to it. When I decided to call the Reckoneer podcast Merchants of Dirt it took on another meaning as if it was referring to off-road race promotion as the art of selling dirt to people. Maybe even renting it to racers for an hour or two. Either way, the logo of a shovel sticking out of a pile of dirt came naturally from that description. In a lot of ways, that is exactly what off-road racing is: finding a way to sell a very specific outdoor experience! When you build a race you truly are a merchant of dirt.

End of the Show

I stopped creating episodes for MoD in 2020 during the pandemic. As a podcaster, I was pulled away to produce other shows like War Yankee - Overland, PAUSE for Dramatic Effect, Podwrecked, and Not Easily Squished. However, after an MoD fan and fellow race director reached out to me in 2024, Oncetold provided me a way to share Merchants of Dirt once again!

Will there be any new episodes of MoD?

For now, no. Once I have all of the original MoD episodes back up on Oncetold I do not plan on making any new episodes. I have thought about a book. What do you think?

Get in Touch

Meanwhile, would you like to hear new episodes of Merchants of Dirt? If you’ve made it this far then you might just be a true fan of the show. If so, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to reach out to me about a topic you would like me to cover or get more specific about. You never know. I just might make a new episode just for you!

Go Build Better Races!