The Master-Pull 4405 Team             

Not finishing the 4405 Phoenix rebuild until right before the 2011 King of the Hammers, The 4405 team ran the race in a totally untested rig. At the King of the Hammers, the team spent several hours running the buggy and tuning the shocks, but then the vehicle developed several leaks. As the "land-use" vehicle, we are the LAST rig that should be leaking any fluids onto the desert floor, so hours where spent working on the rig to insure that not a single drop of oil, ATF or gear fluid would leak.

Becuase of the prep for the buggy, we were not able to pre-run the race at all like many of the other competitors. This was very important in that we needed a shake-down run to make sure everything worked well, and that didn't happen.

 The start of the race was very emotional for many of the 4405 team. It was 9 months since the orginal 4405 had burned to the ground, and it took 9 months of stress and hard work to finally get to the 2011 King of the Hammers. this could not be done with the help of our sponsors and indiviual people who donated time, parts and funds to put this vehicle on the starting line.

 Starting in 89th place, Travis blasted away from the start line...every single mile he completed, the donations for land-use racked up through the 4405 "race-a-thon"  By the first check point, Travis passed 18 cars and was on a screaming pace. So much so that Dustin Webster announced over the radio and loud speaker that Travis had one of the fastest times through the first whoops section.

 Unbeknownst to Travis and Trout, heat from the engine melted the shifter cable, and suddenly Travis could not shift gears in the 4405. Co-Driver Dan Trout had to literally get under the car and manually shift. This really slowed down the 4405 thru the rock sections as there is a lot of backing up.

 Travis made 98 miles of the race before calling it. We may not have won the race, but land-use won big thru our efforts, generating nearly $20,000 a second year in a row for land-use...

The majority of these pictures were taken by our sponsor 4130 clothing. Please check out their webpage at www.4130clothing.com