The great chemical hijinks! Throttle Muscle formulations.

One of my favorite days every quarter that I have the pleasure of teaching at Cal Poly is sharing the story of Throttle Muscle with the class.  Actually, my favorite days are all the “story days” from the success and failures with Jiffy Lube to our small self-funded startup.  Students are easily engaged with real life stories even if I am not a PHD!  One quarter in 2015 was particularly fun as I brought in a guest speaker and we discussed the possibilities of a joint venture between Throttle Muscle and another company for the purpose of manufacturing a line of synthetic oil filters.  For many in the class, the concept of private labeling and outsourced manufacturing was new and exciting.  But one thing that sticks out in my mind about that particular class session was the discussion around our engine and fuel treatment line for Throttle Muscle.

The fun started when one of my undergraduate students asked me: “how did you come up with the formulas for your fuel and engine treatments, I can’t really imagine you sitting in your garage with a chemistry set and big plastic goggles.”  When everyone, including me, was done laughing, I embarked on my ten minute tangent of how we landed on a private labeler for Throttle Muscle and how we committed to creating unique blends of products that would provide installers with new revenue and profit possibilities extending beyond the “typical” engine and fuel treatment markets.  This started of course with a bit of history.

Back in the early days of my Jiffy Lube career I was opposed to using engine and fuel treatments in our business.  Like many others, I had heard all of the stories of “snake oil” and felt that offering these sorts of products would diminish our credibility in our local markets.  Until one day I was walking through a tradeshow in Las Vegas.  I was passing by a booth with my badge intentionally turned backwards and intentionally not making eye contact with any of the “snake oil” vendors when a jovial woman jumped out of her booth in front of me stopping me dead in my tracks.  She grabbed my badge and turned it around so she could know who she was attacking.  Before I can even figure out what is going on, she chirps out “SEAN, I have been looking all over this tradeshow for you, I am Ellie Pentland with Heartland Manufacturing”. 

Ellie (who is still a family friend to this day), as it turns out, worked for Dave Prange and Cricket Killingsworth and together the trio turned me onto the Chemical business.  They shared the history, research and “truth” about fuel and engine treatments and what they could mean not only to our business but to our customers and the longevity of their vehicles.  They shared the story of the three chemists they had on staff and how they blended truly unique products that brought benefit to not only the installer but the end consumer! Shortly after that trade show, we began offering Heartland products in our service centers and quickly found ways to be successful with the packaging of fuel and engine treatments as a part of our oil change services and options.  Everything was going great, until one day I was in my Arroyo Grande Jiffy Lube and was helping the store receive some inventory.  We were opening boxes of our Heartland fuel treatments when something very interesting happened, I came across several Johnsen’s Fuel Treatments in boxes mixed with the Heartland Fuel Treatments.  Interestingly enough, they were the same exact bottles you could find down at the local dollar store!

After several phone calls between Cricket, Ellie and myself it was confirmed that indeed the Heartland product we were told was a unique special concoction dreamed up by Heartland’s three chemists was just a private label product from the makers of Johnsen’s products who actually employed those three chemists.  I was young and na?ve and had no idea what all this meant.  I just felt cheated and misled and vowed to change to a different product.  Little did I know that a decade and a half later I would use that information to help get our start in the chemical business.

During one of our first brainstorming meetings at Throttle Muscle, we were talking about different options for fuel and engine treatments and finding a company that we could work with.  I recalled my experience with Heartland with our team and suggested that Cody give the makers of Johnsen’s products a call and see if we could discuss with them possibilities for launching Throttle Muscle.  It was also that meeting where we vowed to never go down that same path.  If we were going to bring products to the market, they were going to be unique to our brand.  Obviously there is a fine line between credibility and launching a new brand with new product formulations.  For this reason, our first two products were based solely on proven formulations in the Technical Chemical portfolio.  We chose those based on our desire to introduce our company to the market place with a solid and proven product formulation.

From our first two fuel treatments forward, we have stuck true to our commitment to creating new, original and unique product blends.  From our FX805 Synthetic Engine Treatment with PTFE to our newest FX805 Synthetic One Step Fuel System Cleaner, our formulations are designed to give the end consumer the best product performance while giving the installer a unique and profitable product offering.  Using Throttle Muscle in any automotive shop is a win/win!  Not only is the installer able to offer a profitable and performance based add-on, they are also giving back to the community with the built in support for the Muscular Dystrophy Association!

So why did I call this post the great chemical hijinks? The reality is that anyone with a little money can walk into a private labeler and say “hey can you put my label on that?”  In fact one of our most recent, yet legacy competitors has a catalogue full of products that are simply their label photoshopped onto bottles of existing products. I presume they’ll actually order the products if anyone is desperate enough to purchase them.  We prefer to do things differently!  We prefer to have a unique brand with unique, high quality products.  If you own a shop and would be interested in any Throttle Muscle product, let us know today! We'd greatly appreciate your business!