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.
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.
“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?
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