Provocative car content creators WhistlinDiesel inspired to rebuild ‘Killdozer’ for 20th anniversary

WhistlinDiesel’s official YouTube channel joined the platform on Jan. 6, 2015. Since joining nine years ago, the channel now has over 6.8 million YouTube subscribers as of January 2024. Their YouTube videos alone have garnered over 815 million views in total.

The videos are chaotic, erratic and have a distinct boyish charm to them. The WhistlinDiesel team take vehicles to their limits in order to test durability, typically destroying them in the process. Fires are also common in their videos.

The group is based out of Tennessee and is made up of a team of seven. However, the face most people associate with WhistlinDiesel is Cody Detwiler.

Cody Detwiler stands by a billboard while in Granby.
Cody Detwiler/Courtesy photo

On Jan. 11, Detwiler and the rest of his crew paid Granby a visit. Their visit was brought on by none other than the story of Marvin Heemeyer’s rampage through the town with a bulldozer that took place on June 4, 2004. The event was quickly coined simply as “Killdozer.”

Detwiler learned about Heemeyer and his story during his youth. His parents were familiar with the town, and they even had a dog named Granby.

The WhistlinDiesel team spent just one day in Granby and Detwiler spent his time in the small mountain community looking for people to interview. It was his first time in the town and he only had kind words to say about the people that he had met and talked to.

“I would definitely live here if it was warmer,” Detwiler said.

He shared that many of the people they managed to speak to either weren’t around during the incident or were too young to say anything about it.

The WhistlinDiesel team had been searching for years for the same bulldozer that Heemeyer used to drive through the town in 2004, which is a Komatsu D355A.

Last year, the team found a Komatsu D355 in Montana being sold by a farmer for $100,000. The bulldozer was sitting unused in the woods before the team traveled more than 1,500 miles from Tennessee to Montana to unearth the machine. Detwiler said that they had only found one other similar bulldozer located in South Korea.

WhistlinDiesel uploaded a video on Thursday, Jan. 18 of their experience in Montana seeing the bulldozer in person and getting the machine started. After uploading the video, it shot to the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

The old bulldozer was then loaded onto a trailer to be transported back to Tennessee. However, the group and bulldozer took a detour to drive through Granby.

The WhistlinDiesel team posing with the previous owner of the Komatsu D355 in Montana.
Cody Detwiler/Courtesy photo

“We went a little bit out of the way to have the dozer come through here, just because it’s like, the same exact dozer coming through town,” Detwiler explained. “Not to make anybody worried or anything but it’s just something that’s interesting for the video.”

What’s next for this Komatsu bulldozer?

The WhistlinDiesel team shared some tentative plans they have for the bulldozer.

Over the course of 18 months, Heemeyer welded steel plates around the bulldozer, filled the space between the plates with concrete and outfitted the vehicle with cameras. The WhistlinDiesel team plan on replicating Killdozer’s armor with their newly acquired Komatsu in the same conditions Heemeyer did.

“So, we’re going to build the exact same Killdozer. We’re gonna put all the armor on it and then, we’re gonna build the same little shop that he built it in, and we’re gonna put the little cameras inside, some windows in there and cover it in grease. I mean, we’re gonna build the same one,” Detwiler said.

I mean, we’re gonna build the same one

Cody Detwiler

This plan fits in well with their other content. On Aug. 18, 2023, the channel posted a video of Detwiler driving a $400,000 Ferrari F8 through a cornfield before it promptly caught on fire and eventually melted.

A particularly controversial video, posted on Jun. 14, 2023, shows Detwiler driving and destroying an original Ford Model T, one of the first mass production cars. However, provocative content can bring in viewers and the men behind WhistlinDiesel are well aware of the controversy surrounding Killdozer.

“I think, I think drama drives views and we do grow that way,” he said.

WhistlinDiesel’s audience

According to Detwiler, many of the channel’s viewers are other Midwestern men. Detwiler currently lives in Tennessee, but is originally from Indiana.

“They’re just hardworking guys that work with their hands and support their family to make ends meet and I think that it (Killdozer) resonates with them,” Detwiler said.

Marvin Heemeyer’s twisted legacy

On the internet, Heemeyer’s story has been circulated throughout all corners. As the story spread, it gained sympathy from people who share his ideologies – anti-government. Among these groups and individuals, Heemeyer has achieved martyrdom status.

Detwiler acknowledged that Heemeyer is a controversial figure, calling him both a “superhero” and a “supervillain.”

“He was defending himself against a government that’s encroaching on his rights. And that’s kind of the word that’s spreading to everybody else,” Detwiler said.

Despite endangering lives and bulldozing a town, Heemeyer’s rampage through Granby became a symbol of resistance for people who had felt wronged by government entities.

Detwiler said that he has experience with government agencies “causing problems that don’t need to be caused.” So naturally, Heemeyer’s story resonated with Detwiler and the rest of the WhistlinDiesel crew.

However, others disagree with this version of Heemeyer’s story. Some residents who lived through the experience and the events leading up to Killdozer have different thoughts and feelings from internet denizens.

Living through the ‘Killdozer’

Patrick Brower, the former editor and publisher of Sky-Hi News in Granby, followed the story of Heemeyer from beginning to end. He says that he does not agree with the narrative that Heemeyer was a victim of the town’s government.

“What sticks with me the most is the way in which the Town of Granby, its town board and the people of Granby are mischaracterized in the majority of the online, YouTube and social media postings. Granby is characterized in general as a town that somehow conspired against Heemeyer and stabbed him in the back, somehow warranting his rampage; when in fact Heemeyer was treated fairly and with deference by the town and local business people. It was Heemeyer who instigated the entire event because he failed to sell his property off at inflated prices to his neighbors, prompting his anger,” Brower said.

Brower added, “Believe me, people weren’t sitting around in secret meetings or the corner café trying to scheme up ways to ‘get’ Heemeyer.”

The Killdozer rampage of destruction was estimated to have cost the town $7 million, however Brower says that number should be higher.

Miraculously, the single fatality of the incident was Heemeyer himself when he shot himself inside of the bulldozer. Supporters say that he did not want to hurt anyone during the event. Brower would disagree.

“He fired his weapons at a state trooper, at least one sheriff’s deputy and at Cody Docheff. He destroyed buildings in town and almost managed to kill or injure children in the Granby Library (the children escaped before the dozer made contact), he almost got me,” Brower said.  

Brower continued to push back on the idea that Heemeyer was not attempting to hurt anyone, mentioning how he unsuccessfully shot at propane tanks stored next to a neighborhood.

“If he had succeeded in piercing and ‘lighting up’ just one tank, the explosions and tanks flying around the neighborhood would have been catastrophic and perhaps fatal. If he had lived I think he would have been charged with attempted murder in connection with several instances during the rampage.”

On June 4, 2024, the 20th anniversary of Killdozer will take place. As Heemeyer’s story of destruction continues to take on a life of its own, morphing him into a martyr, a question remains; will he be remembered as a villain with a vendetta against those who disagreed with him or a hero fighting against injustice?

Documentary about Killdozer rampage now on Netflix

The documentary film “TREAD” is now on Netflix.

The film is about Marv Heemeyer and the killdozer rampage that took place in Granby on June 4, 2004. Heemeyer built a homemade tank out of a Komatsu bulldozer and armed it with three rifles and remote viewing cameras. The rampage damaged or destroyed 13 buildings in Granby and resulted in $10 million in damage.

The film uses source material from the book “KILLDOZER: The True Story of the Colorado Bulldozer Rampage,” by Patrick Brower, a Granby resident and former managing editor and publisher of the Grand County newspapers.

The film premiered at the South by South West film Festival in March of 2019 to good reviews. It was released in theatres in early February of 2020 and then on most streaming platforms in early March.

The COVID epidemic cut short many of its full screen showings in March so its appearance on Netflix will offer an opportunity for those who missed the film in theatres.

An intro: Marvin Heemeyer and his bulldozer that destroyed Granby

It was a date that put Granby on the national and international map: June 4, 2004, when Marvin Heemeyer, a disgruntled business owner in Granby, hunkered down into an armor-plated bulldozer and took out multiple buildings in town, ending with his own suicide.

Heemeyer, a local auto muffler shop owner, outraged over the outcome of a zoning dispute, went on a rampage through the town of Granby, driving an armored Komatsu D355A bulldozer with layers of steel and concrete.

Several buildings were damaged in the rampage, including a bank, a hardware store, a concrete company, a utility service center, the town hall, the police department, and a former mayor’s home.

The rampage lasted two hours and seven minutes, ending when the bulldozer got stuck attempting to go through the alleyway of Gambles Hardware Store.

Heemeyer then killed himself with a handgun. No other deaths occurred, but an estimated $7 million in damage was done.

Heemeyer had been feuding with Granby officials, particularly over fines for violating city ordinances and a zoning dispute regarding a concrete batch plant constructed opposite his muffler shop.

AUDIO: Hear from Marvin Heemeyer himself in recorded ‘manifesto’

DISCLAIMER: The content contained on these audio recordings may be sensitive for some listeners. The following contains foul language and disturbing content.

These audio recordings were made by Marvin Heemeyer only a few months before he killed himself after going on a destructive rampage through Granby in an armored bulldozer on June 4, 2004. The recordings were widely considered to be Heemeyer’s unofficial “manifesto.”

HOURS OF HORROR: Former Sky-Hi News editor goes behind-the-scenes of Granby bulldozer rampage in new book, ‘Killdozer’

Long-time Sky-Hi News Editor and Publisher Patrick Brower was hard at work on a bright early June day when sheriff’s deputies suddenly appeared at the newspaper office with news that would shake the nation, and turn the small community of Granby upside down.

Someone was driving an armor-covered bulldozer, slowly, eastwards across town, destroying buildings and businesses as it went. After running west to snap some pictures of the dozer lumbering towards him, and noticing a young man cheering the dozer on, Brower headed back to his office with a somewhat misplaced sense of safety.

The hour of the rough beast had come and it was slouching towards infamy. It was June 4, 2004 and Marvin “Marv” Heemeyer was making history.

Before the dust from the attack had even settled Brower was already trying to make sense of the chaos and over the past decade that desire to better understand something that destroyed businesses, ruined livelihoods, and nearly killed innocent people drove Brower to write book. “Killdozer: The True Story of the Colorado Bulldozer Rampage” was finally published in late November and while it tells the unique story of Heemeyer’s domestic terror attack it also seeks to understand how and why Heemeyer’s became a sort of folk hero to many, not despite but because of his actions.

FURTHER READING: Read the entire accounts of Marvin Heemeyer’s rampage on June 4 and listen to him recording his “manifesto and see a photo gallery of the devastation only on Sky-Hi News.

“My initial motivation was simply to write a book about a wild and crazy event,” Brower said. “But over time it became clear one of the most surprising aspects of it all was how many people, whether they knew the facts of the story or not, on a gut level assumed Marv was somehow wronged by government and society and that he was righteous in fighting back against the town, people and businesses of Granby.”

Killdozer shows the way Heemeyer acquired folk hero status, even amongst locals, before the attack was even over. From a young man cheering Heemeyer on as he watched the destruction unfold, to a woman who called Heemeyer a teddy bear on the radio has he was crushing a community beneath his vengeful treads, to the man who gave Brower a ride to his home that day who told him he had asked for it, as the scraping metal sounds of the killdozer ground away in the background.

Throughout his book Brower weaves the complex narrative and convoluted backstroy that help precipitate the incident, from Heemeyer’s purchase of a small plot of land in Granby at a foreclosure auction in 1992 to a political battle about legalizing gambling in Grand Lake that drew Heemeyer’s ire towards the paper. Brower also works to humanize the man who has since become something of a caricature.

“I did not set out to make Marv look like a demon,” Brower said. “I think people that read it will find it is fairly balanced.”

Brower recounts Heemeyer’s business acumen, his skillful workmanship, and his love of snowmobiling, including an avalanche rescue of a friend, but through it all the same emotional countenance and personality that drove Heemeyer to attack a community he felt slighted by is evident.

“Marv really had no objectively justified reason to do what he did,” Brower said. “He invented this whole conspiracy against him. But there is a gut appeal to the story at a simple telling. People want to believe he was somehow right.”

Photo gallery: Inside the bulldozer’s devastation

When Marvin Heemeyer made the decision June 4, 2004 to plow through Granby, toppling buildings, destroying vehicles then killing himself, he did so with much devastation for the town of Granby and the region.

(Photos from Sky-Hi News and the Grand County Sheriff’s Office.)

Granby ‘happy’ with $500K grant from state in wake of devastation

(Originally published June 24, 2004 in the Sky-Hi News)

The town of Granby has acknowledged receipt of a pledge from Colorado to give the town $500,000 from state grant funds.

During the Granby Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday night Granby Town Manager Tom Hale said the state has sent paper work that allows the town to claim $500,000 promised to the town by Gov. Bill Owens. The money is set to come from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs Energy Impact Fund, which gains its revenues from the federal mineral leasing funds.

The money was promised to the town after state officials saw the damage caused June 4 when Marv Heemeyer went on a rampage in Granby with an armed and armored bulldozer. He drove the bulldozer into many buildings and completely destroyed the Granby Town Hall and the Granby Library.

He also completely destroyed the Granby Gambles building, the home of Thelma Thompson and buildings located at the Mountain Park Concrete operation in western Granby.

The town’s board of trustees gave Hale the authority to respond to the pledge, but more time was spent by the town figuring out how to spend the windfall.

While the town has an insurance policy that pays for the replacement value of the town hall, its insurance doesn’t pay for street or sidewalk repairs caused by the rampage.

Hale said it’s been estimated that the town incurred $60,000 in damages to streets and sidewalks because of the Heemeyer bulldozer rampage in Granby June 4. The board agreed that $60,000 of the $500,000 should be set aside for street and sidewalk repairs.

The remaining funds would probably be directed to pay for costs of buildings replacement above and beyond whatever the insurance would cover, Hale said.

The Grand County Library District received $100,000 from the same fund to help with its efforts to replace the Granby Library, which was also lost in the dozer attack. The library was located in the basement floor of the Granby Town Hall.

Marvin Heemeyer’s pickup found in Omaha, Neb., parking lot

(Originally published June 24, 2004 in the Sky-Hi News)

What was Marvin Heemeyer doing in Omaha, Neb., about 10 days before his June 4 “tank” rampage in Granby, and why did he rent a van from Omaha and leave his own vehicle parked there in a longterm parking lot?

Those are some of the questions that law enforcement officials are trying to answer after Heemeyer’s 2002 GMC Sierra pickup was found parked at an Omaha airport last week. Inside, Omaha police detectives found several items including a weapon, bullets and hand-written notes.

What led authorities to the finding of Heemeyer’s pickup in Omaha was the discovery of a rental car with Nebraska license plates in a metal shed that Heemeyer had rented on the west side of Granby. It was in that shed that Heemeyer had built his “tank” and from which he had launched his June 4 rampage.

Investigators were able to trace the rental car back to the Hertz Rent-A-Car office located near Omaha’s Eppley Airfield. Colorado law enforcement authorities had also asked the Omaha police to search for Heemeyer’s GMC Sierra pickup which they had not been able to locate in either Granby or at his residence in Grand Lake.

According to a June 19 article in the Omaha World-Herald newspaper, Hertz officials searched their own lot for Heemeyer’s vehicle but were unable to find it there. However, they then called the airport security police at nearby Eppley Airfield and asked them to conduct a search of their parking lot for Heemeyer’s pickup

The pickup truck was finally discovered by the Eppley security police in the airfield’s longterm surface parking lot on top of its rental garage. Records showed it may have been parked there since May 27.

After obtaining a search warrant, Omaha police detectives searched Heemeyer’s pickup and found the following items inside: disposable camera, checkbook, hand-written note, four pages from a phone book, Colorado vehicle registration card, one wooden-handled .22-caliber handgun, one .50 caliber bullet, two bags of bullets and five LC 53 bullets.

Heemeyer’s June 4 rampage, which was made in an armed and armored bulldozer that he had secretly fabricated in the metal shed, resulted in 13 buildings damaged or destroyed. Local law enforcement officers did everything they could to stop it, but were unable to do so because of the vehicle’s thick steel-and-concrete protection. The rampage finally ended when the engine of Heemeyer’s “tank” became stuck in the basement of the Gambles store. He was later found dead inside from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Gambles rebuild requires some finagling

(Originally published June 24, 2004 in the Sky-Hi News)

The owners of the Granby Gambles Store have a few regulatory hoops to jump through before they can start to rebuild a similar building on their lot in Granby.

Casey and Rhonda Farrell, the owners of the Gambles store that was demolished by Marv Heemeyer in his bulldozer rampage June 4, want to rebuild in the same footprint on their land on Granby’s main street, Agate Avenue.

But to do so the new building would end up in violation of town zoning laws that have been passed since the original building, now completely gone, was built.

While the old building was “grandfathered” in, meaning it could retain its historic use despite new laws, any new building would end up in violation of town codes. The town wants to work with the Farrells so they can rebuild and get around the new zoning restrictions.

Granby Town Manager Tom Hale reported to the Granby Board of Trustees Tuesday night that when more than 50 percent of a building has been demolished, and when it’s rebuilt, it must conform to all new and current codes.

That puts the proposed Gambles replacement store in trouble in two areas: parking requirements and in total area covered on the lot, or its footprint.

The Gambles Store as it existed did not have enough parking to accommodate current codes. And its footprint exceeds that currently allowed.

But there’s a way around these potential problems.

Hale said the town’s goal is to help people affected by the Heemeyer bulldozer attack in any way possible. Therefore, Hale and Mayor Ted Wang said they wanted to get around those regulatory problems.

“I think we could make the case where this is a problem not created by the property owner. This is an outside hardship,” Hale said.

What Hale and Wang had in mind was allowing the new building to be built by getting it through the town’s zoning variance board. That board can grant exceptions to town codes on a case-by-case basis.

But before a variance could be granted, the official request for the new building that would be like the old one had to be turned down. Which the town did Tuesday.

With that done, the administrative process could be started whereby the case can be heard by the town’s zoning variance board where the town trustees hope an exemption would be allowed for the Farrells for the both parking and the building footprints.

Once the action was taken, members of the board of trustees wondered out loud if there wasn’t more flexibility in the town codes that would allow the town to simply modify its code on an emergency basis rather than going through the variance process.

The board instructed town staff to explore that idea.

Mike Rosen: Granby madman no hero

(Originally published June 24, 2004 in the Sky-Hi News)

“Gadflies feel for Granby attacker.”

So proclaimed a recent headline in The Denver Post. To drive home the point, two subheads intoned: “Rage understood” and “Local critics say although they may not agree with his actions, they can empathize with his frustration.” The story’s lead proceeded to paint Marvin Heemeyer as some kind of backwoods folk hero.

I wonder how many of his sympathizers would feel the same way if it were their property bulldozed. Or if one of Heemeyer bullets had succeeded in exploding the propane tanks he fired at, killing their spouse or child in the process.

Personally, I’m pickier about my heroes. I don’t romanticize rampaging, suicidal psychotics. It was only sheer luck that one was killed. Heemeyer’s deranged behavior was only different in degree and no more justified than that of the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorists or Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski.

When asked, point blank, if they agreed that his actions were unjustified, some Heemeyer apologists resort to the Yeah But Gambit: “Yeah, he was wrong, but…”

A yeah but isn’t really a “yeah,” it’s usually a convoluted “no.”

One such equivocator described Heemeyer as “a man done wrong who done wrong in return.” By this twisted reasoning, the Columbine killer struck a commemorative blow for antisocial, high school misanthropes everywhere. Heemeyer was flat out wrong — period! Our compact with fellow citizens in this constitutional republic includes the understanding that we can’t all have our own way all of the time.

So Heemeyer was irritated and frustrated over some public policy beefs with town officials, businessmen and journalists. My, how unusual. He didn’t like the construction of a concrete plant next to his muffler shop. This is called NIMBY dispute: “Not in my backyard.”

It happens every day.

If it were built in some other place, someone else might have been unhappy. Welcome to life. He fought it through civic channels and lost. His remaining options were to grin and bear it or sell the business. He picked the latter and got $400,000 from a buyer. But that didn’t satisfy him. He wanted revenge. So he committed the remainder of his tortured life to a vendetta against his “enemies,” building a makeshift tank as his instrument of destruction — his own included.

The rest is bizarre and tragic history.

This is not the stuff of historic injustice. It’s not on par with American revolutionaries rebelling against the tyranny of King George, a Civil War fought to end slavery, or the Holocaust. It’s a petty squabble taken to absurd lengths by a madman.

Incidentally, simply because Heemeyer didn’t like the outcome of a dispute to which he was a party, that doesn’t make it, objectively, an injustice. But even if it were, injustices — in one form or another — are an inevitable reality of life. From bad calls in a basketball game, to the boss’s son beating you out of a well-deserved promotion, to zoning decisions.

Two-year-olds throw temper tantrums when they don’t get their way. Rational, civilized adults get on with their lives.

In his defense, Heemeyer empathizers have invoked everything from the arrogance of public officials to meddlesome homeowners associations. I won’t hold my breath for the coming of a society in which arrogance will be forever removed from the manner of public officials and bureaucrats. Government is an imperfect institution populated by imperfect beings. We tolerate it only because it’s better than the alternative: anarchy.

If Heemeyer weren’t the rare, demented exception, every Department of Motor Vehicles office in the country would have been long since bulldozed by irate citizens. If ever a man were treated unjustly by a homeowners association, it was Jerry Seinfeld’s father at the hands of the autocrats who ran the De Boca Vista HOA. But Morty was a mensch — he didn’t armor plate his Cadillac and lay waste to the neighborhood, he rolled with the punches.

We tolerate imperfect homeowners associations’ restrictive covenants and imperious board members because it’s better than the alternative of leaving our next-door neighbor free to raise pigs in his front yard or paint his house shocking pink. Heemeyer was a violent, self-style democracy of one.