This time on Rad Rat Video, we're learning
all about Grind King the brand, and Grind
King the dude. Let's get into it.
Welcome back to Rad Rat Video, the channel
where you can learn something new about
skateboarding three times a week, every
Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I do a video
about skateboarding history,
skateboarding culture, skateboarding
video games, answering your questions on
Ask Rad Rat, and this newer series
called "brand breakdowns." The original
idea for this series was to do Grind
King, and I ended up getting the Seek one
done first. I'll talk about why at the
end, but the Grind King system was
something really interesting that came
up in my research before. What a lot of
people probably don't know is that grind
King was originally just a kingpin. It
was not an individual truck. So the
founder of Grind King, Donald Cassel, he
took the kingpin design as it was,
inverted it, had a rounded off edge that
had an Allen wrench hole in the top, and
it was smaller. It was lower profile and
it was a lot heavier duty steel, and it
was not its own truck for a couple years.
That was kind of interesting. I've got a
quote about it, so, "since what I created
was a grinding kingpin, I shortened the
two words to name my product Grind King."
And Donald, from another article I found,
was later called the Grind King in the
industry in the 90s. So back in 1988, the
year I was born,
Donald Cassel was 26 years old, and he
was going to be a land developer, and he
never did. Although, hold on to that
little nugget for a second. And he came
up with this idea of doing that inverted
kingpin and he went to a trade show in
1988, started showing them around to some
people. Next thing he knew, he had sold a
thousand of them. And this was going to
be a little part-time thing he did out
of his garage or his basement or
whatever, but he ended up turning it into
a real business just because he couldn't
keep up with orders. The Grind King bolts
were expensive to make.
"I used the best steel alloy I could find.
Originally the washer was machined and
the bolt was partly machined and partly
cold headed. Cold heading is the process
of forming something to shape under
extreme pressure.
I sold the kits for like 12.95,
although people warned me I wouldn't be
able to do it. Regular kingpins were
selling for less than a couple of bucks."
So that is a regular skateboard branded
kingpin, but if you were to just go to a
hardware store, I found from another
source, it was more like 60 cents. So $12.95
in 1988 is 27.37 in today's money.
Imagine spending that much on an
accessory for your truck. You could
almost buy a full set of trucks for that
much, but that wasn't the problem. He did
have some other problems though. First
one was that it wasn't compatible with
every single truck. Being a third-party
accessory, you know, other truck companies
weren't designing their trucks around
his kingpin so it didn't always match
perfectly. But the other big problem was
having counterfeits. So what other brands
would do, they would make something of
cheaper steel. They would steal his
design, but not the quality of it, and
they would break really easily and it
kind of gave him a bad name in the
marketplace. So what did he do? He decided
to make his own truck. He started in 1990,
making some clay models and figuring out
exactly what it would do, and in
September 1991, he released his first
model. "I started out with a pretty different
looking truck. The kingpin, the funky
curved baseplate. it was only mildly
successful." Funky how? Well, it had a
hollowed out, curved baseplate and the
axles would slip pretty much immediately.
It didn't sell all that well, so he
rushed to get a second model out within
only a few months. "It was really a [wild]
one. I had all these innovations. I went
overboard.
I had a floating axle that would slide
back and forth, and it had the threads on
the inside instead of on the outside.
Allen screws went in the end to hold the
wheels on, and they had these funky
bushings with, like, corrugation. It was
either ahead of its time, or out in
left-field too far." The second model also
bombed pretty much immediately, but he
had another big problem around this time.
In 92, the truck companies all switched
to the new bolt pattern. Except for him.
And the problem with his curved base
plates is that he couldn't just drill
new holes into it and adapt to the
newest style. And he also had this other
insert that he made that would go -- I'm
not sure, I wasn't able to find a picture
of this, but it was able to protect the
bolts. So the reason why they switched to
the new bolt pattern, it
was the same size, but the holes were
further in, and that protected the bolts
and the nuts from hitting the ledge if
you do a nose slide. Noseslides were still
pretty new, so he was left with all these
trucks and also with his inserts that he
made that were no longer compatible with
what anybody had. So he had to rush to
make a third model. "I went back to a more
conventional design. People dug them
because they were really light. I think
as wild as skaters are portrayed, they're
really conservative in their buying
habits. They don't want to stray too far
from the norm." So the lightness was a
good thing for a lot of skaters, but for
a lot of pros, they didn't like it. So
they had gotten up to this point in
their careers with big heavy trucks, and
they didn't want to make a huge change.
There would be time that it would take
to adapt to them and everything like that,
and they weren't as popular with the
team as they were with regular skaters.
This is from an interview, "'They're too light,'
he tried to assure the skater that light
was better.
'No,' the pro had said, 'I'm used to heavy. I
want heavy.'" Although this lightness was
generally a good thing, this particular
design that he made was a little bit too
weak, and so hardcore skaters, he said,
would be able to break them. But
regardless of that, they were finally
successful and his company started to
take off. In 1992, he made $100,000 in
profit, and was starting to hire people
and get a warehouse and really get
things going. This is when he took on
the name of 'the grind King,' although that
was from a newspaper article, and not a
skate magazine. So who knows how much
that actually was used, but that's what
they call them. And around that time, he
started to diversify and start new
companies.
He started hazmat skateboards with Eric
Dressen, and I was not able to find much
about this brand.
There's another brand
that's more recent that's also called
hazmat. I don't think it's related to it.
That doesn't seem like it stayed around
for that long, but he did start hazmat
snowboards, which was relatively
successful until that also got pirated.
People would make fake copies of it, call
it 'haz-mate,' and kind of put him out of
business because they are making cheaper
snowboards with that same name. But one
of the reasons why the trucks were
getting to be more and more successful
was the style of advertising that they
would use. So for most brands, both in
trucks and in
anything else, they would always talk
about their team. You know, 'this guy uses
my truck, therefore it's the best.' They
wouldn't really advertise the truck
itself, and that's what he did. He worked
with a marketing guy, and he would talk
about the actual features of the truck
and advertised the truck itself. And Don
worked on continuing to make the product
better and better.
In 1994 the gk4 was released, which
solved a lot of these strength issues that
the gk3 had. In 1996, the GK 5 came out as
a very small change where they moved the
center nib of the base plate a little
bit in. Not a big deal, but they released
the high version of the truck, and he
said that that was a really great seller.
In 1999, the gk6 came out. This was a
complete redesign. It had a brand new king
pin and bushing setup. It had a lot beefier
axle, although it was also lighter. It was
a pretty big upgrade at that time. But
all throughout the 90s, up until this
point, he had started a lot of other
brands through the 80s and the 90s in
fact. Because he was also responsible for
bridge bolts. I've talked about them a
few times on the channel, like the weird
gimmicks video I made that's right here.
I finally figured out what the reason
for these were, and in theory, it was just
to have fewer parts. So yeah, the board's
gonna be heavier because you had this
extra bit of metal that connects the two
bolts, it's also gonna get in the way of
trying to do tricks, but it simplifies
the amount of parts that are in your
skateboard box or whatever. So that was
the point of that, but he started those
and he had a lot of other companies like
society skateboards, Grind Queen apparel,
belladonna women's clothing, underdog
shoes, Von Dutch, termite kid-sized
skateboards. These were not only smaller
in size, but they actually had fewer
plies to be lighter, so just a
scaled-down beginner kids' skateboard. You
may remember those from back in the day.
He also started Kre-per trucks. You may
remember these. These are very heavy-
looking. They were glow-in-the-dark. They
were shaped like a spiderweb, and had a
skull in them. They came out with a skate
video. Apparently they were very
heavy-duty, and really tough. I always
thought that there was some kind of
outsider joke brand, or like, maybe
something you'd put on a cruiser.
Not really a performance truck, you know,
but people who skated them at the time --
I've seen some reviews they said that
they were really good. They were really
heavy-duty and tough. So I don't know, I
had no idea that they were related to
grind King at the time, but those were
something that he did. He had so many
brands, in fact, that he had to start Dark
Horse distribution as a parent company
that went over all of these different
brands. Next in 2002, grind King released
the GK AXL, which was their high-end
premium type of truck. It solved a lot of
problems with trucks in general, like
slipping axles. So if you started skating
after this point, you've probably never even
seen this axle slip before. I never had
it personally happen. I've seen it once.
It's where the axle actually kind of
slipped, so that there's more more axle
sticking out on one side than the other.
But he finally solved it with this truck.
So what he did was take the axle, flatten
it out a little bit, and then had it bend,
and then put holes in it to save weight.
And that way, there is no way that that
thing could move at all. But there was a
major problem with the tooling. So, if you
cast a truck, and you had the axle, and
it's turned a little bit, it makes no
difference, right? If it's just a straight
line. But if it has a shape and you turn
it a little bit, then it'll stick out of
the metal. So he had to get people from
the outside to come in. Different kinds
of engineers, and work on solving this
problem. And he would never say exactly
what they did, but they were able to
finally figure out how they did that, and
that was a pretty cool advancement. On
top of that, it also had a locking bolt
under the base plate that let you swap
bushings without having to take the
truck off. Very small thing. I don't know
how many people use that, but that was
another option. Next up was the gk7,
and that came out in 2004. And it had a
redesigned hanger shape, a kingpin sleeve
nut for stability, a lower kingpin, new
bushings, and he also launched the
Thunderbird, a long board truck. And then
after that, was the AXL II, which was the
peak of innovation in skateboarding
trucks once again. It was lighter and
stronger than the original AXL. It had a
hardtop bushing that had no break-in
period. They were so good that he sold
them separately because people wanted
them so much. It had a concave bushing
seat where they meet in the middle which
made it more stable and more durable. A
smaller kingpin head,
radial shaped hanger that curved for
better grind control, stronger base plate,
which was redesigned for nose slides. Now,
I see all this stuff, and I think, 'who's
really doing that today?
what truck brand still in business is
really doing new things?' Tensor's going
really low and really light. and they had
slider plates and all that kind of stuff.
and the nibs that dig into your board/
But who else is really doing new things
like these guys were back then? I can't
really think of anyone. So it's pretty
cool, and it's weird that they're the
ones that went out of business, but they
also did some really weird stuff, such as
the velvet series. I remember seeing
these back in the day, and I did not
understand the point. So it had this
textured paint job on it, and you would
think that that would interfere with
grinds. That's not gonna make it
grind smoother, right? I was never brave
enough to try them. Where I grew up, there
were no skate shops. I couldn't go feel
what they were like or anything, but I
never got the point of those. But one
thing that I did get the point of,
stupidly, it was the grind King dubs
series. So these came with these axle
nuts that had a rim on them. The point of it
was to keep dirt out of your bearings,
and I bought these back in the day. I
think I just bought the nuts separately.
But back in the day, rims were the
coolest thing in the world.
You know, even on your cars and
everything. Every rapper was talking
about, you know, their twenty-fours and
all that kind of stuff. And looking back
on it, it's so stupid that anyone cared
about that. But that's what they had for
trucks. They're doing velvet, they were
doing dubs, neither of these things
really made a lot of sense for
skateboarding, but they still lived on
for a few more years. The last news
article I was able to find about
grind king at all was in 2008, when Joey
Brezinski and Danny Supa left the team.
So what happened after that? I don't know.
There's no press releases, there's no
news articles there's really nothing
that talks about where grind King went
and how it died out. They had an official
blog, and it stopped updating in july
2010, and there are comments on there.
People were asking about why they're not
getting answers, why they can't find them
anymore, why they aren't getting replies
to their requests for replacements or
warranties and things like that. And they
just kind of fell off the map. So I think
it's really weird that you can't find a
news article. You would think Transworld
or Thrasher, somebody would have reported
on it, but they just haven't. So to look
it up, I figured I would look up Don
Cassel today, and see where he is. Maybe
try to talk to him. And I was able to
find him. So there's a lot of people with
that name on Facebook, but one of them is
actually still using an @grindking.com
email address. So I was able to find
him, and he's actually doing land
development. So something he wanted to do
way back in the day. He was posting to a
local group in LA about finding an
architect. So I don't know exactly what
he's doing, but I think he's finally into
the field that he originally thought he
was going to be going into 30 years ago.
But since he posted his email address
publicly on Facebook, I decided to send
him an email and ask him what happened
to grind King. What about all these other
brands? Where are you today? What's going
on? And this is what he said: "..." Yep, that's
it. He never answered. Most people I reach
out to do not answer. And I gave him a
lot of time. This is why this video came
out so much later, even though this was
the original idea for the series, because
I was waiting for an answer that never
came. Ao I don't know a lot about the
exact details of how grind king closed,
but it's pretty clear that they're gone.
Interesting fact though, while I was
researching this video, the grind King
website was still up. You could go there,
you go to the team page and you can see,
you know, they post YouTube videos of the
different pros on their team, and all that
stuff. And I think I had copyright 2009
on the bottom as the last time it was
updated. But after I email him, I checked
back on the site for something and it's
down now. So it's kind of weird. I don't
think I had anything to do with it, but I
did say I'm doing a YouTube video about
grind King, and suddenly the website goes
down. Again probably nothing to do with
me. Maybe they, I don't know, didn't renew
it finally or something, but it's kind of
weird. So there's not a lot of
information left to find at this point.
But if you know anything else about
grind King and where it went and what
the problem is in the end, let me
know below.
I'd be very interested to find out more
about that. But until next time, here's
more videos I did recently. I have a lot
more different series. I do this, brand
breakdowns one, I do a lot of other
different stuff. You can learn more about
skateboarding three times a week. Tap my
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subscribe so you can stay up to date
with all that stuff, and I'll see you
next time. Thanks for watching.
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