Where The Cast Of American Chopper Ended Up
Losing it in a mediation session, trying to keep the family together with jokes, and spreading the gospel of 3D printing. Viewers loved the ups and downs of "American Chopper," but now that it's over, we went looking for where the cast ended up.
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00:00 "Losing it in a mediation session, trying to keep the family together with jokes, and
00:04 spreading the gospel of 3D printing."
00:06 Viewers loved the ups and downs of "American Chopper," but now that it's over, we went
00:10 looking for where the cast ended up.
00:12 "American Chopper" returned to TV in 2018, a beneficiary of a television-wide reboot
00:17 craze in which a variety of old, familial favorites shot new seasons of episodes.
00:22 It's amazing that even happened for "American Chopper," seeing as how the previous attempt
00:25 to revive the show, "Orange County Chopper as American Made," was mired in lawsuits.
00:30 According to Page Six, in April 2017, Thomas Derbyshire filed suit in Delaware State Chancellery
00:35 Court, arguing that his business partner and star of the show, Paul Tuttle Sr., used the
00:39 money Derbyshire poured into "Orange County Chopper as American Made" for personal use.
00:44 In simpler terms, Derbyshire accused Paul Sr. of committing fraud.
00:48 Things also soured when Tuttle attempted to change his ownership deal with Derbyshire
00:51 from $51.49 in favor of Derbyshire to a $50.50 split.
00:56 Derbyshire also said in his filing that Tuttle delayed production by taking a long fishing
01:00 trip, and when he did show up to shoot, he wouldn't do scenes with Hells Angels' higher-up
01:04 Rusty Coons, which was contractually obligated.
01:07 Derbyshire says Tuttle also made product placement deals without his approval.
01:11 That wasn't the only lawsuit Tuttle had to deal with.
01:13 JTM Motorsports alleged that Tuttle had promised to promote their business, and in exchange,
01:18 they'd work on his Corvette for free.
01:20 Tuttle apparently didn't keep up his end of the bargain, and the two sides met in a mediation
01:23 hearing in July 2018.
01:26 According to a source at Page Six, the mediation session fell into chaos.
01:30 The source claims that Paul grew agitated and screamed at JTM to give him back his car.
01:34 He also apparently tried to lunge over the table before court officers were summoned
01:38 and escorted him from the premises.
01:40 "Just, you know, saying things that you would never really want people to hear you say."
01:47 Despite his outburst, AOL.com reported that the case eventually resulted in a settlement
01:51 deal, where Tuttle was to pay JTM $30,000.
01:54 When the deadline to make payment passed, Tuttle was found in contempt by a federal
01:58 bankruptcy judge and was ordered to immediately pay JTM just under $17,000.
02:04 In what could be considered odd timing or some bizarre guerrilla marketing, Paul Tuttle
02:08 Sr. filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, just a day before the American Chopper reboot premiered.
02:14 According to Chapter 13 legal paperwork obtained by Page Six, Tuttle admitted to owning nearly
02:19 50 creditors a total of more than $1.07 million, against a net worth of around $1.8 million.
02:26 Tuttle also claimed a monthly income of $15,000 and expenditures of just over $12,600.
02:32 While that technically means Tuttle makes more money than he spends, he wouldn't have
02:35 enough to pay off his crushing debts.
02:38 According to the filing, his past due payments included a $32,000 judgment, $151,000 in taxes
02:44 to the town of Crawford, New York, $21,000 in credit card debt, and $2,000 in medical
02:49 bills.
02:50 It seemed as if Tuttle would receive some legal protections with bankruptcy status,
02:53 but the story wasn't over.
02:55 In April 2019, the trustee in charge of Tuttle's case asked the court to dismiss the bankruptcy
03:00 petition, on the grounds that Tuttle never supplied the right documentation that indicated
03:04 a negative cash flow for his financial situation.
03:07 About four months before he filed for bankruptcy and the whole world suddenly knew about his
03:10 daunting financial problems, Paul Tuttle Sr. tried to get out in front of his cash flow
03:14 issues by putting his enormous Montgomery, New York, estate on the market.
03:18 The October 2017 listing touted the 38-acre property's enormous garage, waterfalls, stocked
03:24 pond, wooded areas, not to mention the many outbuildings designed to house farm animals.
03:29 All of this in addition to the main house, the large pool, gazebo, hot tub, and volleyball
03:33 court.
03:34 The asking price was listed at about $2.9 million, more than enough to get Tuttle out
03:39 of a few money jams.
03:40 When no viable buyer emerged within three months, Tuttle cut the price to $2.49 million.
03:46 He eventually sold it in early 2019 for a total of $1.9 million.
03:51 No stranger to lawsuits at this point, Paul Tuttle Sr. was wrapped up in yet another sticky
03:55 legal matter in February 2020, though this time he wasn't alone.
03:59 The previous June, a professional photographer named Scott Gunnels filed a lawsuit against
04:03 Orange County Choppers, broadcaster Discovery, Inc., production company Pilgrim Media Group,
04:07 Paul Tuttle Sr. and his son, Mikey Tuttle.
04:10 He alleged that he owned the copyright on a photograph of the younger Tuttle that had
04:13 been used on two pieces of American Chopper merchandise without authorization or compensation.
04:18 Gunnels also claimed that a different shot he took of Mikey Tuttle was used to promote
04:21 an art exhibition, and the Tuttles went so far as to remove his business' logo from the
04:25 image.
04:26 A Southern District of New York judge ruled in favor of Gunnels, ordering the Tuttles
04:30 to pay the man a little over $258,000 in damages.
04:35 With American Chopper winding down, Paul Tuttle Sr. began looking for some new ways to generate
04:39 income, especially methods that could benefit from his celebrity.
04:42 In November 2020, Paul Tuttle Sr. partnered with Keith Overton to develop the Orange County
04:47 Choppers' roadhouse and museum.
04:48 Part restaurant, part monument to the Tuttle family business, the establishment was conceptualized
04:53 to feature a wide variety of memorabilia from American Chopper, rare items from the elder
04:57 Tuttle's personal collection, and of course, a few of the bikes that made him famous.
05:01 "This is the original pilot that was done in 2002.
05:07 I still have that."
05:09 Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Tuttle and Overton audaciously projected their opening
05:13 date around the summer of 2021.
05:15 And sure enough, they held a packed grand opening event on June 25th and have stayed
05:19 in business ever since.
05:21 What sets the roadhouse apart from similar restaurants like Planet Hollywood and Hard
05:24 Rock Cafe is the spacious outdoor pavilion setup that gives the area the feel of a permanent
05:29 bike show.
05:30 As far as tourist attractions go, the OCC Roadhouse appears to be firing on all cylinders.
05:35 In 2019, following the completion of the 12th and final season the year prior, the Discovery
05:41 Channel arranged for a special to be shot that would cap off the series as a whole and
05:44 help the Tuttles ride off into the sunset.
05:46 Unfortunately, it went over as smoothly as you'd expect for a show built on a uniquely
05:50 volatile father-son relationship.
05:53 American Chopper The Last Ride aired on August 4th, 2020.
05:56 The episode ostensibly follows Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. deciding to put aside their
06:00 differences to build one final bike before their original shop is demolished.
06:03 "If we were able to do it in this space, it would be the perfect opportunity to build
06:08 a bike together because we're never gonna get another chance."
06:12 During this endeavor, however, Sr. continued to undercut and belittle his son.
06:17 Real or reality TV, this old dynamic struck a sour tone that didn't sit right with fans
06:21 as the final send-off to Orange County Choppers.
06:23 Devoted audience members took to the American Chopper subreddit to voice their displeasure
06:27 at the series' ending.
06:29 One moment in particular that several fans took umbrage with was Paul Sr. going out of
06:32 his way to point out that Jr. apparently did such unacceptable work on a bike that it cost
06:37 the shop $90,000.
06:39 All those fights between Sr. and Jr. were apparently not staged for the benefit of reality
06:44 TV cameras.
06:45 They've had their share of explosive arguments on the show, and tensions ran so high at Orange
06:49 County Choppers that in 2008, Paul Tuttle Sr. fired Paul Jr. from the shop, even though
06:53 he co-owned it.
06:55 Paul later told Fox News that his dad giving him the axe ended up being a good thing, because
06:59 it set him on a path to starting his own business away from his father's critiques.
07:03 "What are you building, a wheelie bar?
07:05 Do you even know what a wheelie bar looks like?"
07:08 During his year-long non-compete clause, Paul Jr. got to work on other projects, including
07:12 designing a dog park in Montgomery, New York, and performing a top-to-bottom overhaul of
07:16 Coleman's Road Trip Grill.
07:18 Once the clause expired in 2010, Paul Jr. Designs opened, though it wasn't the smoothest
07:23 of starts.
07:24 Tuttle Sr. tried to legally force Paul Jr. to sell him his 20 percent share of the company,
07:28 a matter that had been put on the back burner when father and son had to make amends.
07:32 It turned out that getting rid of Jr. represented a breach of contract with the Discovery Channel,
07:36 and it could have led to the show's cancellation.
07:38 This all led the network to start to adjust American Choppers so that it could feature
07:42 both Tuttle's businesses, and called a quasi-spin-off American Choppers Sr. vs. Jr.
07:47 After that series concluded in 2012, Paul Jr. went back to Paul Jr. Designs, and in
07:52 2015, he celebrated the birth of his first child.
07:55 In September 2021, Paul Jr. launched the self-titled Paul Jr. Podcast, and only lasted five episodes.
08:02 Jr.'s reason for ending the series isn't officially known, but the episodes that remain available
08:06 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify exclusively explore his desire to help veterans struggling
08:11 with severe mental health problems.
08:13 It's also possible Paul ended the podcast because he found more fulfilling avenues to
08:16 share his perspective, as the Paul Jr. Podcast appears to just be part of the titular designer's
08:21 mission to express himself post-American Chopper.
08:24 In addition to offering his services at speaking engagements nationwide, Jr. wrote a book
08:28 titled "The Build, Designing My Life of Choppers, Family, and Faith."
08:32 The faith aspect of that title takes center stage in the book, as Paul chose to use the
08:35 book to discuss his relationship with religion for the first time ever.
08:40 American Chopper fans came for the bikes but stayed for the fights, as Paul Tuttle Sr.
08:44 and Paul Tuttle Jr. frequently argued over just about everything.
08:47 That makes for great, addictive reality television, but things still had to get done around the
08:51 shop at Orange County Choppers.
08:53 And so fabricator and mechanic Vinnie DiMartino tried to keep his head down and get to work,
08:57 always trying to remain dedicated to his craft.
08:59 In 2007, DiMartino left American Chopper and OCC out of professional boredom and the need
09:04 to grow.
09:05 DiMartino founded his own shop, V-Force Customs, and explained his decision on V-Force's now-defunct
09:10 website,
09:11 "I had gone as far as I could there.
09:12 I really didn't have any chance for advancement, and I had always wanted to have my own shop.
09:16 So the natural progression was to leave and start my own place."
09:19 He ran V-Force for five years, even working as an outside contractor for Paul Tuttle Jr.
09:24 In 2013, DiMartino abandoned bikes for cars and opened DiMartino Motorsports, a car and
09:29 truck repair company in Walden, New York.
09:33 Rick Petko from American Chopper took a job as a builder and fabricator at Orange County
09:36 Choppers not long after cameras rolled on the show's first season, and he happily built
09:40 all kinds of interesting rides.
09:42 Even when the Paul Tuttles split up to run separate shops and attempted to keep as many
09:46 OCC employees on their sides, Petko was able to stay on everyone's good side.
09:50 Everyone could agree on Rick.
09:52 Paul Tuttles attended his wedding in 2012 to the former Brittany Cockeram.
09:55 By the end of 2015, Petko was a dad to two young daughters.
09:59 He was still working at OCC by then, but he eventually grew tired of his 90-minute commute
10:03 going each way from his home in northeastern Pennsylvania to the shop in southern New York.
10:08 He eventually took a job as the chief fabricator at the Pocono Mountain Harley-Davidson Complex
10:12 in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, roughly a mile from his house.
10:16 And when he's not working with metal, Petko works with metal.
10:19 He runs a small knife-forging company out of his home called R.P.D. & Co. and frequently
10:23 shows off his designs on the company's Facebook page.
10:27 Paul Tuttle Sr. and Paul Tuttle Jr. frequently and loudly disagreed throughout their years
10:31 together on American Chopper.
10:32 Fortunately, there was a third member of the Tuttle family around to maintain a tenuous
10:36 peace.
10:37 Mikey Tuttle was hired at first to do entry-level work around Orange County Choppers, emptying
10:41 the garbage, answering the phones, things of that nature.
10:43 A funny and friendly guy, he did his best to keep things chill in the shop and in his
10:46 bloodline.
10:47 "You know, Mikey was always a funny kid."
10:50 "What time are you supposed to be here?"
10:51 "It's Paulie's fall!"
10:53 But a man can only take so much.
10:56 According to the Discovery Channel, he walked away from the Chopper franchise in 2012 so
10:59 that he might, quote, "seek some peace of mind and work on my relationship with my dad."
11:04 He did come back to work, however, pitching in at both OCC and Paul Jr. Designs.
11:09 Also a budding artist, Tuttle used part of his time off to open an art gallery in Montgomery,
11:13 New York, which featured his paintings.
11:15 It closed in 2014, but Tuttle shifted gears to a web series.
11:19 Launched in 2016, "Bummin' Around" aimed to shine a light on New York City's homelessness
11:23 problem, but only two episodes were made.
11:25 The youngest of Paul Sr.'s sons also started a comedy talk podcast with Al Franco, an OCC
11:30 worker who didn't feature on the hit television series.
11:33 Titled "Mikey & Al," this weekly catch-up of the Choppers comic relief premiered May
11:37 11, 2023.
11:39 Since its release, it's managed to cover a wide variety of topics relating to Michael's
11:42 experience shooting "American Chopper," growing up as a Tuttle, and how his life has changed
11:46 now that the show is over.
11:48 Even as raw as the Tuttles were on the Discovery Channel and TLC, Michael's presence on his
11:52 podcast is somehow more relaxed than vulnerable.
11:55 On an episode where he tries to recount where some of his friends from the shop have ended
11:58 up over the years, he casually admits that he sees his own story as tragic, presumably
12:02 because he hasn't broken out on his own in the biking industry.
12:05 On the other hand, he also bears it all about lighter topics, such as how he and his family
12:09 got pulled into an episode of "King of the Hill," or how he showed up drunk to an interview
12:13 with Conan O'Brien.
12:14 Cody Connelly was but a boy when he got his foot in the door as a motorcycle-loving 14-year-old
12:20 intern at Orange County Choppers before "American Chopper" came to pass.
12:24 After finishing school, he put the skills he learned to work at the shop, fixing up
12:27 and designing bikes until 2007.
12:29 That's when Vinnie DiMartino amicably left both the business and the show to start his
12:33 own company, V-Force Customs, and Connelly followed him.
12:36 He kept doing what he'd been doing at OCC at V-Force for a few years before returning
12:40 to the world of the Tuttles in the form of a job at Paul Tuttle Jr.'s design shop.
12:44 "I agreed to work with Junior because, you know, there's never been an issue between
12:47 me and Junior.
12:48 I've always had nothing but good things to say about him.
12:49 I love working side by side with him."
12:51 Today, he's out of the professional bike game altogether and currently works for a utility
12:56 company.
12:57 In 2009, Connelly made tabloid headlines for taking legal action against some of his former
13:00 employers.
13:02 According to The Suit, Connelly claimed that he was paid for only around a third of the
13:05 episodes in which he actually appeared, and nothing for public appearances at promoted
13:09 OCC.
13:10 He also alleged that the show used his image in American Chopper merchandise after he'd
13:13 left the show in 2007.
13:15 Even worse, Tuttle Sr. never gave him a chopper he'd worked on that he'd been promised.
13:20 Connelly saw $250,000 in damages, and the case was eventually settled out of court.
13:24 Though you may not be able to spot Mike Rowe by face, his voice will surely catch your
13:28 attention if you're a longtime fan of American Chopper.
13:31 A prolific Discovery Channel host who has hosted or narrated such classics as Deadliest
13:36 Catch, Dirty Jobs, and even Shark Week, Rowe has also developed a close relationship with
13:40 the Fox network over the past decade or so.
13:42 This began in earnest in 2013, when he made his debut on Huckabee.
13:46 While Mike Huckabee never made it back to Fox after effectively canceling his own show
13:49 for a second failed presidential bid, Rowe remains with the network as the host of his
13:53 very own Fox business program, How America Works.
13:56 Over the past three seasons, Rowe and his crew have explored the economics and labor
14:00 behind a wide range of jobs, including wheat production, pipeline construction, concrete
14:04 manufacturing, and firefighting.
14:06 The TV host has also launched a podcast, The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe.
14:10 But his career may not end with broadcasting.
14:12 In 2024, he revealed that he had been interviewed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s team as part of
14:17 the presidential candidate's VP selection process, though RFK ended up picking Nicole
14:21 Shanahan as his running mate.
14:24 As it did with Paul Jr. and Michael, American Chopper seems to have shown Jason Poole that
14:28 he has a unique perspective that the world is interested in hearing.
14:31 However, Poole isn't just offering personal insights and behind-the-scenes stories from
14:35 his time as a reality star.
14:37 He's trying to inspire his fans all across America by showing them the wonders of 3D
14:41 printing, as well as how they might use it to take their creative passions to new heights.
14:45 For the past several years, Poole has worked as a brand ambassador for the 3D design company
14:49 SolidWorks, which creates software that helps professionals interface with printers and
14:53 integrate them into their businesses.
14:54 Judging by his Instagram, Poole has taken a characteristically vehicle-focused interest
14:58 in printing, as his posts prominently feature 3D-printed monster trucks and race cars.
15:03 Clearly, the end of American Chopper hasn't brought about an end to his passion for creativity
15:07 and design.
15:08 While much of the Orange County Chopper's alumni remains devoted to designing the wildest
15:12 motorcycles ever seen, Brendan Thompson has taken a different, yet somehow even wilder
15:17 path.
15:18 These days, Thompson can be seen working on unique, four-wheeled all-terrain buggies used
15:21 in the niche sport known as rock racing.
15:24 The National Rock Racing Association hosts events where folks like Thompson can race
15:27 a sort of vehicle you'd never see in NASCAR.
15:30 With a skeletal exposed frame and massive tires made for crawling through almost any
15:34 environment, these cars make up for what they lack in traditional OCC-style flair with how
15:38 durable they are under pressure.
15:40 From mountainous outdoor arenas to muddy tracks populated by dense foliage, rock racers are
15:45 designed to withstand harsh elements in even harsher competition.
15:48 Based on Thompson's Instagram, he works regularly in this space with competitive tire manufacturer
15:52 Maxxis Tires.
15:54 [music]