Dave 'Heavy D' Sparks

His first build was a 1976 Yamaha YZ80.

One of his most well known creations was the Mega Ram Runner, which he designed and created based off a Dodge Ram 3500 and had a Ford 4R100 transmission.

Dave Sparks also known as Heavy D, (born January 5 1985) is an American internet personality, custom vehicle builder, entrepreneur, producer and author.

He is most known for his role on the reality TV show Diesel Brothers, which aired on Discovery Channel.

Dave Sparks was born in Layton, Utah, USA to a military family.

He is the fourth child of his family and his father passed away when Dave was 21 years old.

He is of German heritage.

He showed an interest in vehicles from a young age, with Auto mechanics being his favorite subject in high school.

He began his tertiary education at Webster University at age 21, where he studied welding, mechanics, and fabrication.

He withdrew after having spent a semester to kick off his own business.

He started his career operating heavy machinery for his uncle and mentor's construction firm before launching his own excavation business.

He began as a car enthusiast, kicking off his vehicle customization and fix-it shop for all types of vehicles business; which was the beginning of his career and those of his three other friends who take part in Diesel Brothers show.

He brought on his friend Diesel Dave and two others, to assist with equipment operations at his construction business.

After posting several videos on YouTube, an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno was fixed and after the show, he was contacted by Discovery Channel for the commencement of the Diesel Brothers.

The show is filmed mostly in Woods Cross, Utah, where his studio is located.

Some episodes have also been filmed in Salt Lake City and Wendover, Utah.

As an internet personality, his Youtube channel has over 3.7 million subscribers and over 800 million views.

He has over 10 million followers and over 2 billion views across all social media platforms.

During the course of filming Diesel Brothers, he has also worked with actor, Chuck Norris, amongst others.

The Mega Ram Runner was displayed at the 2014 SEMA Show.

Kanye West sold Sparks his customized Ripsaw EV2, following West's relocation from Wyoming.

He became a brand ambassador and partner with New Holland Construction & Agriculture, and was involved in a collaboration with MLB Network for the Father's Day of 2017.

He was hired by Nikola to design the Nikola Badger truck, of which they delved into an attempt at creating a Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

He participated in 2 episodes of motorsport event Monster Jam; in seasons 16 and 17, alongside Adam Anderson and Grave Digger.

He published the book The Diesel Brothers: A Truckin' Awesome Guide to Trucks and Life in 2017, alongside Diesel Dave.

He hosts the annual Heavy Academy conference, where he lectures participants about business strategies and how to inculcate them into their ventures.

His companies DieselSellerz and Diesel Brothers were sued by an umbrella body of Utah doctors for air pollution and were fined $851,000.

His fashion and lifestyle company, Diesel Power, was sued by Italian fashion line Diesel, over trademark infringements and was fined $11 milion.

The board of Nikola Corporation was opposed to the nomination as board member of Dave Sparks by its former CEO Trevor Milton, after the company was sold to the former.

Around that same period, stocks of the company suffered a loss.

Sparks was also sued by the Nikola Corporation.

He also suffered a backlash for crushing dozens of scrapped Datsun and Nissan Z-cars.

He helped provide resources and his helicopter in the search for the corpse of teenager Dylan Rounds.

He acquired the Fremont Island as a potential location for his show filming, customization and vehicular activities, however, he resold the island in 2020 after being unable to secure permits to carry out these activities.

He has a world record monster truck jump.

Some of his other stunts are using a flamethrower to thaw a helicopter, and an attempt at jumping a truck from plane; which was canceled due to safety concerns.

Also on his show, he converted a Tesla Cybertruck to have snow tracks.

He co-founded and serves as CEO of 2 automobile companies, DieselSellerz and Sparks Motors.

DieselSellerz has its diesel truck classifieds community website, DieselSellerz.com.

His third company, Diesel Power, is a lifestyle brand, was sued by Italian fashion line, Diesel, and was fined $11 million.