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Rawlings and bearded colleague Aaron Kaufman star in Fast N’ Loud, a top-rated reality car show on the Discovery Channel.
Each week, the show captures the antics at Gas Monkey Garage as they buy, modify and resell everything from old Fords to radically shortened VW buses and late-model Ferraris.
But the show — a dream Rawlings doggedly pursued for years — is growing into a vehicle for much bigger fame and fortune.
“I want to leave a mark,” the tattooed Rawlings said, dressed in his signature black T-shirt, black sunglasses and blue jeans. “I want Gas Monkey to be around long after Aaron and I are gone.”
Rawlings, a former cop, constable and firefighter, began “building the brand” about 18 months ago, opening the Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill off Technology Boulevard in northwest Dallas.
He has a Gas Monkey live-music venue across the street, as well as another bar and grill at D/FW Airport.
In addition, Rawlings owns an interest in a Gas Monkey fuel dragster, a 300-mph vehicle that can burn through thousands of dollars in one afternoon.
In what little spare time he has, he does commercials and endorsements for Dodge, O’Reilly Auto Parts and Miller Lite.
As he spoke, a half-dozen tourists picked through neat stacks of black Gas Monkey T-shirts in the front of the shop on Merrell Road west of Stemmons Freeway.
Rawlings, whose father worked in the produce department of a grocery store, regularly strolls out front to shake hands with admirers.
“The people who want to come up and shake my hand put steak on the plate,” he said. “Sometimes, people show up with a six-pack of Miller Lite since they know that’s my beer, and I’ll go out and have a beer with them at the picnic table outside.”
Tough childhood
Actually, Rawlings figures his wild journey over the last 30 years was probably always pointed toward Gas Monkey, a term he coined to describe tinkerers and enthusiasts.
He and his sister grew up hard in Fort Worth, the children of teenage parents.
When he was 2, he said, his mother deserted them, leaving his high school dropout father to raise him and his older sister.
Besides working full time at the grocery store, Rawlings’ father had morning and evening newspaper routes, tossing papers rolled by young Richard in the back seat of their car.
“I suppose there’s no question where I get my work ethic,” Rawlings said in his fast-moving, 200-page book.
After graduating from Eastern Hills High School, Rawlings took a job delivering Miller beer, later becoming a police officer in Alvarado, a part-time constable in Tarrant County and a firefighter in Coppell.
But cars always seemed to figure in his pursuits.
Ever the salesman, Rawlings found work with a commercial printing company when he was in his late 20s, pitching various products to Dallas-area businesses on commission.
He was so successful — earning as much as $400,000 a year — that he ultimately was able to buy his own commercial printing business. He got a Small Business Administration loan to start Lincoln Press of Carrollton and build it up.
By 2004, though, he was looking for other challenges.
“I like the art of making money more than the money,” said Rawlings, who owns “seven or eight” cars, including a Rolls-Royce Wraith Coupe and a classic 1929 Packard. “After I’ve done it, I get antsy.”
Plus, cars never quit tugging at him. Even in high school, Rawlings bought and resold cars.
At first, he planned to take the proceeds from the sale of his print business and open a shop called the Gas Monkey Garage that would build custom vehicles and hot rods.
Then he got fascinated with some of the early car and motorcycle shows on cable television, wondering if he could put a show together based on the builds at his small shop off Harry Hines Boulevard.
“I finally knew how I was gonna reach my goal of living the fun, free-wheeling, rich-and-famous lifestyle that I knew I wanted to live,” Rawlings said.
Racing and winning
To draw attention to the garage, he and Kaufman — the head builder at Gas Monkey — assembled a ’31 Ford “rat rod” that they planned to drive in the 2005 Bullrun USA, a secretive and notorious “rally” that started in Los Angeles.
Although the rusted, bare-bones Ford had a chopped top and sat just a few inches off the ground, it rode on a solid chassis and relied on a giant fire-belching, old-school Cadillac V-8 for power.
“We are not only going to win, we will leave a trail of black marks, sparks and broken hearts everywhere we go,” Rawlings predicted at the time.
And they did. But the boisterous, semi-crazy guys from Texas still couldn’t catch the attention of the big producers at Discovery.
For another seven years, he and Kaufman spent months at a time criss-crossing the U.S. to enter races and attend car shows, handing out Gas Monkey T-shirts wherever they could.
“We were able to pay the rent, and I made sure Aaron and the other few guys at the shop got paid, but things were really tight for a while there,” Rawlings said. “In the last 11 years since I started this, I went broke twice — as in I was sleeping on my sister’s couch.”
Once Discovery agreed to give Fast N’ Loud a chance about three years ago, the show quickly gained viewers, surprising some Discovery executives.
“We had some failed car shows,” said Craig Coffman, executive producer for Fast N’ Loud and vice president of production at Discovery. “Fast N’ Loud is one of the top-rated car shows on TV, and it has become our crown jewel among car shows.”
Besides being popular in the U.S., the show has gained a huge following in South America, Mexico and Europe, Coffman said.
“Richard’s appeal is he is sort of a used-car salesman that you love to be annoyed by,” he said. “Aaron is the purist. The two of them together create an interesting dynamic.”
The businessman
Some hard-core hot-rodders have questioned Rawlings’ commitment to cars and dismissed some of his claims, but his show’s popularity continues to grow.
“I’m a car/motorcycle guy through and through,” he asserted. “But the entrepreneur part is a key element.”
Especially now. Rawlings formed a holding company for his various businesses, and while he does not divulge their revenue, he says they are profitable.
“More than I ever dreamed,” he said. “I’m very proud to be where I’m at.”
That changes daily, fueled by Rawlings’ “aggressive entrepreneur” spirit, as Coffman describes it.
Rawlings, for instance, plans to open new bar and grills at casinos in Nevada and Connecticut, as well as in other vacation destinations.
He also may offer a line of parts for muscle cars and hot rods.
And he is considering “going after” Sonic Drive-Ins with a chain of hot-rod-inspired hamburger joints. Several illustrations of possible car-themed exteriors for the drive-ins were spread on a table outside his office.
“I want people to come to town and come by the shop and buy a T-shirt, then go by the bar-and-grill and have a hamburger or go hear some music,” Rawlings said. “I want to be a destination — the destination.”