Strutmasters Driver Timothy Peters Riding Momentum with New Team

ROXBORO, NC – You might think Strutmasters.com driver Timothy Peters would be ready for a break after five straight weekends of hard racing in NASCAR’s truck series. Instead, he can’t wait for the series to resume July 18th at Kentucky Speedway.

“I’m ready to get back behind the wheel of the Strutmasters.com Toyota right now,” said Peters, fresh off a seventh-place run at Memphis Motorsport Park on June 27. “There is nothing like momentum and Red Horse Racing has it right now. We’re running a little better every week and I really feel like I’m starting to gel with the team.”

It was the fourth top 10 run of the season for Providence, NC, native Peters, one of NASCAR’s biggest Cinderella stories of the season. “Last Christmas, I was wondering just how merry things would be for me,” Peters recalled. “Things were not coming together the way I wanted. I thought I might be done racing at this level.”

A few close friends and business owners in his adopted hometown of Danville, Va. pulled together and formed Premier Racing in January with a four-race sponsorship from Strutmasters, the leading experts in Lincoln air suspension parts and conversion kits. Peters made the most of the chance and was ninth in standings when Strutmasters.com extended sponsorship for the remainder of the season.

“It was a pretty incredible story if things stopped right there,” said Peters, a multi-time champion in NASCAR weekly Late Model competition. “But the story got even better.”

Red Horse Racing owner Tom DeLoach parted ways with truck series champion Johnny Benson on June 8 due to lack of sponsorship. Strutmasters owner Chip Lofton agreed to allow Peters to carry the Strutmasters.com banner to Red Horse Racing a couple of days later.

“I feel so good about the move over to Red Horse Racing,” said Peters. “Tom DeLoach and Chip Lofton have given me an awesome opportunity. I went from stressing about whether I was going to even get to the race to driving for a championship caliber team. I feel so incredibly blessed.”

Peters said he has made one sacrifice with the move to Red Horse Racing.
“The race shop of Premier Racing was five minutes from my house in Danville,” Peters said. “Now, I get up about 4:30 every morning and drive two hours to Mooresville, NC, where Red Horse Racing is based. My guys at the shop work so hard. I am willing to do whatever it takes to be right there with them. Besides, I’d go nuts just sitting at the house. Racing is my life. I want to be there.”

TIMOTHY PETERS AND STRUTMASTERS.COM JOIN RED HORSE RACING

MOORESVILLE, N.C.(June 9, 2009) – Red Horse Racing is pleased to announce NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driver, Timothy Peters and his sponsor, Strutmasters.com will join the RHR family.

Peters will be joined by crew chief Chad Kendrick at Red Horse Racing, with their first race being this weekend’s event at Michigan International Speedway. Peters has participated in all eight races this season for Premier Racing. Sponsor Stutmasters.com has been with Peters since Daytona and recently announced they would stay on board for the remainder of the year.

Strutmasters, which started in owner Chip Lofton's converted dairy barn in 1999, provides consumers an affordable alternative to expensive and problematic
air ride suspension systems found on luxury vehicles. The company ships suspension conversion kits to thousands of auto repair shops, parts stores and dealers across North America. Retail customers can order by visiting the Strutmasters.com website.

“We are excited Timothy and Chad have this opportunity to show their true talents, said Lofton. “We all appreciate the efforts of Premier Racing who kept Timothy out there in a very tough economy”

“I am thankful for the opportunity to come over to Red Horse Racing,” expressed Peters. “I really appreciate my opportunity at Premier Racing and all the support Strutmasters.com has given me. Obviously all our hard work paid off because we were able to get Tom DeLoach’s attention. I am thankful that he is taking a chance on me and I look forward to the future with RHR and Stutmasters.com.”

Red Horse Racing recently ceased operations of the #1 Toyota Tundra driven by Johnny Benson due to a lack of sponsorship funding. This partnership with Peters and Strutmasters.com allows Red Horse Racing to continue to field two trucks while providing the sponsorship backing they need to do so.

“We’re really looking forward to this chapter,” said Team Owner Tom DeLoach. “I’ve watched Timothy on the track and it’s evident that he is a talented driver with impeccable attention to detail and a deep seeded passion to perform and we are pleased to have him join the Red Horse Racing family. Combining the personal characteristics of both driver and crew chief with and the resources of RHR, we can’t help but believe it won’t be long before you see Timothy in the winners circle.”

CK Motorsports and Strutmasters.com, LLC Join Forces in Pro Modified Drag Racing Venture

(5-28-2009) Roxboro, NC -Strutmasters.com is joining MWP Contractors and PMS Excavation in sponsoring CK Motorsports’ “Mean Green Machine”.
Chip Lofton, owner of Strutmasters.com, and CK Motorsports owner, Chip King have a long history in the development of innovative products in their respective industries. This makes Lofton and his Strutmasters.com organization a perfect match for King’s CK Motorsports team.
Founded by Lofton in 1999, Strutmasters.com is your one stop shop for all air suspension parts and suspension conversion kits. They build automotive struts and springs for cars and provide affordable alternatives to air suspension repairs.

Lofton has been a big supporter and sponsor of racing over the years including NASCAR and USAR, formerly the Hooters Pro Cup Series. “I have had a strong connection with drag racing since my teenage years”, said Lofton. “I am excited to bring the Strutmasters team to Pro Modified, which is home to the most powerful and exotic door slammers in drag racing today.”
Strutmasters.com General Manager, Will Ansardy, was impressed by King’s racing accomplishments, such as his multiple Top 10 points finishes in every major sanctioning body, including the NHRA and IHRA. He is the 2002 Valvoline ProHeadsUp National Champion, and in 2008 finished in the Top 4 for the prestigious IHRA $100,000 Pro Mod Shootout.

King, a drag racing fan favorite for over 13 years, is known for his ‘all out’ racing style. He currently pilots a one-of-a-kind 1969 Dodge Daytona, powered by a 526 cubic inch supercharged Hemi engine producing 2600+ horsepower. Known as the “Mean Green Machine”, King’s car runs the quarter mile in under 6 seconds and at over 240 miles per hour.

Lofton and King are excited about this new partnership and look forward to giving race fans something to talk about this season. For more information please visit www.strutmasters.com and www.hemipromod.com.

Strutmasters.com extends NASCAR Truck Series sponsorship of Timothy Peters for the rest of 2009 season

ROXBORO, NC – Strutmasters.com announced it will continue sponsorship of driver Timothy Peters and Premier Racing’s Toyotas for the rest of the 2009 season in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series.

“I think Strutmasters and Premier Racing is a perfect match,” said Peters, a resident of Danville, Va. “The Strutmasters organization and our race team are both great Cinderella stories in their own right. We have both worked very hard to get this far. Big things lie ahead for the both of us.”
Strutmasters, which started in owner Chip Lofton’s converted dairy barn in 1999, provides consumers an affordable alternative to expensive and problematic air ride suspension systems on luxury vehicles. The company ships suspension conversion kits to thousands of auto repair shops, parts stores and dealers across North America. Retail customers can order by visiting the Strutmasters.com website.

Peters said keeping the Strutmasters.com logos on his Toyota Tundra trucks ”comes at the perfect time” because the series returns to one of his favorite tracks Friday night, Dover’s Monster Mile. He qualified fourth and came home a career-best sixth there in 2006.

“I am really stoked about going back to Dover,” said Peters, who opened the season sixth at Daytona and followed up with a ninth at California Speedway. “We’re so tickled to have Strutmasters as the final piece of the puzzle to run the whole season. Some of my best tracks are coming up and I am so glad to know we’ll be there to take advantage of it. We were there in the top 10 in points (ninth) until some bad luck dropped us back (to 16th).”

Peters was a 10-time national champion in the World Karting Association, where he forged a life-long friendship with another Danville racer, Steve Stallings. Peters, Stallings and fellow Danville businessmen Scot Jones and Philip Hudgins formed Premier Racing late last season. The team switched from Dodges to Toyotas for 2009.

“Chip Lofton and Strutmasters have always been big supporters of grassroots local racing back home,” said Peters, a champion of weekly Late Model racing at South Boston Speedway in 2004 and Orange County Speedway in 2002-2003. “Chip had helped me in the past and he promised to help us get through the first four races this year. We got off to such a good start, he agreed to two more races. Now he has really stepped up to the plate.”

Peters added: “As a racer, all you want is a chance to go racing. I can’t thank Strutmasters enough for giving us that chance. We have a great sponsor and a great relationship with Toyota. I think we’re really going to be a force to deal with the rest of the season. I know we can get the job done!”

Air Suspension Conversion Kits: Giving You Quality and Savings in the New Economy

Recently, at Strutmasters.com, the demand for our air suspension conversion kits has grown significantly. This caused us to rethink our entire production department. For several years we have run as a "Lean Manufacturing" business.

This approach keeps you as close to zero inventory as possible. You can predict from your sales history, your growth pattern and order inventory for production that will keep you as close to zero inventory as desired. This worked very well for us until this year. With the impending economic downturn, our sales have skyrocketed and predicting future requirements has become almost impossible. Ultimately, we had to rethink our entire operation.

First, we decided to ramp up our suspension inventory. But before we went there, we invited all of our vendors in to make sure that they could fully understand our new goals. We wanted to make sure that our vendors were really our partners. We had to get them to ramp up in a time when they are usually ramping down. Once we had all of our vendor-partners on board, we looked at what it would take for us produce a lot more product. We began interviewing the many applicants that recently came our way because of local area layoffs. Since we were already lean and mean, we couldn't ask our present employees/team members to do much more. We were very fortunate to hire several very good folks.

With some extra help on board, we set out on a plan to completely revamp our entire production department. Initially we hired a "Quality Control Manager" who has been informed that our goal is to quality control our product all the way to the customer's door. So as we were redesigning our suspension production operation, we kept quality control as the top priority. This meant that we not only looked at how we build our product, but how we package the product, how we store it, how it was stacked on pallets, and how it was loaded on UPS trucks for deliver.

Previously, our assembly area had been very adequate but under the new plan we would need a much larger area to store our suspension solutions. We changed the assembly area to become a "boxing the product" room. It's a clean climate controlled area and is where the final quality control inspections will be made.

Product will then be placed on palletized on plastic in house pallets for uniformity and neatness. Because we are going to greatly increase our suspension production, we had to separate the raw goods and finished product storage area. We more than tripled our shelving and pallet racks. We cleaned out a 40,000 square foot area for receiving product. We relocated our cardboard baler and compactor near the doors to the docks.

Our plan is to un-box raw goods after they are received in inventory, then get all the empty boxes ground up and bailed for recycling. We have contracted with our local sheltered workshop to come in and take care of the un-boxing. Raw goods will be removed from the boxes and put into plastic bins. We are also using the workers from the sheltered workshop to build boxes and assemble some small suspension components that are well within their range of function. Supervisors accompany them to insure quality.

The large strut machine that handles 24 at a time had to be relocated to handle more traffic. Everyone has been cross trained in all areas and then placed where they are happy and productive. Instead of building for two weeks out, we are now building two months at a time on each product until it's boxed, wrapped in plastic, palletized and shelved. The result is increased production that allows us to be prepared for the increased orders in this economy when folks are keeping their cars and looking for a fair deal on suspension solutions and great service.

Our project is a work in progress as we find things everyday we can improve on. We meet almost daily with our teams and discuss better ways of keeping our operation efficient so we can continue to make sure that our suspension products are available at affordable prices and most of all that it is quality controlled all the way to the customers door.

It's the Strutmaster way...