Even the best mechanic shops get bad reviews on Google and Yelp. Mistakes get made that rub individual customers the wrong way, but that alone doesn’t make a business bad—so long as it’s rare. But what happens when one person after another speaks up about their horrible experiences and the shop ignores the growing fury? We’re seeing that play out right now with 1 Way Diesel Performance in Nacogdoches, Texas. The truck tuner with its own TV show that went viral by building a Cummins-swapped Lamborghini Gallardo earlier this year is currently being pounded into oblivion by a widespread public campaign warning everyone to steer clear.
Before we get into it, let me say plainly: This situation is a mess, full of one-sided accounts from aggrieved clients, endless finger-pointing, at least one lawsuit, and a 50-foot billboard ad calling out 1 Way Diesel. Sadly, the shop failed to respond to my repeated requests for an interview, a comment, or any sort of defense against these allegations. I can honestly say I tried everything short of driving to Texas myself to get them on the record, but here we are.
There are a few key players in this story. First is Chase Wells, owner of 1 Way Diesel Performance and star of the MotorTrend TV series Texas Metal’s Loud and Lifted. Second is Brad Ekstam, owner of FASS Diesel Solutions and leader of the campaign against Wells and 1 Way over a botched promotional truck build. And third is Diego Singleton, one of several customers who commissioned 1 Way for a big-money job and claims the shop took his $50,000 and left him with a broken pickup to show for it.
“We can survive this. But you know some people, that’s their main ride. That’s a lot of money to them, and I’m going to put [1 Way] out of business so they don’t do this to others,” Ekstam said in a YouTube video explaining the situation.
As the shop’s owner, Wells has always been the face of 1 Way. He’s everywhere on the company’s social media channels, not to mention the MotorTrend TV show. Many customers, including those I talked to for this story, report speaking with Wells directly while planning their build. He seems like a charismatic guy, but again, I can’t say for myself since I haven’t been able to reach him.
Ekstam, on the other hand, has plenty to say about Wells. Anyone who has modified a diesel pickup in the last 10 to 15 years has heard of his company, FASS. Either you have one of their lift pumps on your Cummins or you’ve seen their branding at drag racing events, sled pulls, and so on. In fact, you might have seen their logo on the side of a yacht that fell off a transport truck in a viral video a few years back. FASS is big on marketing, and that’s actually how the relationship with 1 Way began.
Ekstam hired Wells and his crew to build a six-door Ford Super Duty for personal and promotional purposes more than a year ago. The F-450 Platinum was delivered to 1 Way Diesel with approximately 300 miles on the odometer, but when Ekstam first attempted to pick up the truck from the shop months later, he left without it because he was unsatisfied with the quality of the work.
“That wasn’t too disappointing because of it being a TV build,” Ekstam told me. Indeed, such is often the case—shops rush a project so it can go to air and finish it later. You can actually see the truck in season two, episode four of Loud and Lifted which originally aired back in March. But it was even worse when Ekstam eventually went back to pick up the truck for a trip to Colorado.
“We had a seatbelt fall off while going down the road,” Ekstam said. “We had a door that wouldn’t open, windows that stuck.”
He says 1 Way replaced some of the truck’s new parts with used ones, including mismatched interior components that were tan instead of black like the rest of the cab upholstery. Other gripes included sheet metal screws used to fasten panels on a truck that cost more than $90,000 from the factory, not to mention the $70,000 Ekstam agreed to pay 1 Way for the work performed. Peeling back the carpet and inspecting the Ford’s undercarriage revealed more concerns about the build’s structural integrity, so they sent it back.
This one Super Duty has traded hands between Ekstam and 1 Way Diesel four times. They filmed the final delivery with both Ekstam and Wells present, posting the nearly hour-long video to YouTube for the public to see. It’s admittedly hard to watch as they walk through the problems slowly, from minor interior gripes to more serious concerns about frame welds and suspension hardware.
Notice Wells’ body language here as he’s taken around the truck. It’s clear that he’s uncomfortable, and it seems that he genuinely regrets that the debacle made it this far. He provides some answers for Ekstam when questioned on certain issues, but in some cases, there is no response. Wells concedes that there are problems and occasionally explains how he would correct them.
The truck is now being paraded around with FASS branding on the doors and “beware1waydieselperformance.com” stickers on the bed cap, complete with a QR code that promptly redirects passersby to the website. Ekstam is using it as a rolling billboard by taking it to car and truck shows, as well as featuring it in a handful of videos on the company’s social media channels that boast hundreds of thousands of followers. It’s undeniable that this truck has snagged more attention as a broken heap than it ever would have as a polished build.
And if that wasn’t enough, Ekstam rented out an actual billboard near 1 Way’s shop in Nacogdoches. It reads, “WARNING: Beware of 1 Way Diesel Performance” with the six-door Super Duty behind caution tape and a plug for FASS in the bottom right-hand corner. Ekstam notes that Wells has to “look at it every day going to and from [his child’s] school,” and it’s being seen across the internet too with the original Facebook post getting a little more than 300 shares so far.
Ekstam filed a lawsuit in Texas that was served and quickly responded to with a letter from Wells’ legal defense at Fairchild, Price, Haley & Smith. The document called out allegations Ekstam has made on social media about the Wells family, including claims that Chase’s father Tommy is a felon with past bankruptcies and citing hearsay from “former friends” that they were kicked out of their church for stealing musical equipment. It closes by saying, “It is my hope that you will take serious note of the legal exposure you face due to this extra-judicial ‘pressure campaign’ that you choose to initiate.”
You can view the document below, embedded as a .pdf file. In addition to the letter written by Wells’ attorney, it includes screenshots of text messages from Ekstam as well as a Facebook post where he asked Tommy Wells, “How do you like being on the receiving end of getting crapped on?” Each one shows Ekstam calling for action with one text saying, “If you don’t [make it right] it will only get worse for you and your families.”
Ekstam-Letter-As you can tell, Ekstam is putting a lot of money into this, and he can afford to. But as he said earlier, most people can’t. There’s no shortage of customer complaints citing the high cost of work at 1 Way that the quality just doesn’t match.
Among the many angry customers coming forward with their story about 1 Way Diesel is Diego Singleton, who I found through Ekstam.
Singleton hired 1 Way Diesel to perform a comprehensive rebuild on his 1979 Ford F-250. His parents bought the truck for him when he was in high school and he made the decision at 28 years old to make it his dream rig. That meant swapping in a tuned 7.3-liter Power Stroke diesel engine, a six-speed manual, a totally revamped interior, and upgraded suspension with wheels and tires to match. The truck that originally cost his parents $3,000 was set for a high-dollar makeover.
Singleton went all-out and got a loan for $85,000 to bankroll the build. He told Wells that his budget was strict, and he claims he was given a timeline of six to eight months as Wells already had a donor truck to swap parts with. Wells allegedly assured Singleton that being on the TV show would get him compensated for some of the parts, and he instructed him to be ready to film the drop-off.
“When I got there, there wasn’t a camera crew for a TV show,” Singleton explained. “He then told me that the TV crew comes in September or early October to film, so he had two guys there filming with their iPhones and said that the show can use that footage later, but we’d re-shoot some stuff if we needed to.”
This is when Singleton claims that Wells said that 1 Way required a 60 percent deposit. “With the loan secured and the money in the bank, I trusted him, his word, and his show, and I wrote a check for $51,000 and signed a quote for $85,000,” Singleton recounted. “I rode back to Houston thinking I was finally going to accomplish what I’d set out to do for years.
“This turned out to be the worst decision of my life.”
Singleton claims he called and emailed multiple times the following week with questions for Wells but got no response. He chalked it up to the long build time and moved forward. But over the next few months, Singleton says he called them 10 more times and sent more emails but could never reach Wells. He says a receptionist would take his call, write down his information, and promise to have Wells call him back. That never happened.
As Singleton’s anxiety grew, a video popped up on his social feed. It showed Ekstam with the botched six-door Super Duty. Singleton says this was “the final straw” and on Sept. 27, he drove three hours to make an unannounced appearance at 1 Way.
“When I got there, I was shocked to find out that my truck was in the exact same parking space as when I dropped it off,” Singleton said. It had been five months since he left his ’79 Ford and as he captured on video, there were cobwebs in the truck’s wheelwells. “Chase came out to meet me and told me he was still waiting to hear back from the TV show. He told me that MotorTrend ‘isn’t doing well right now’ so they had ‘big things to come’ and something working with Netflix, but urged me I had to keep quiet about it.”
According to Singleton, Wells then said that while they hadn’t started on his truck, 1 Way had ordered all the necessary parts. No receipts or proof were provided, but Singleton was shown the donor truck in question, which he says was a “beat up” early-2000s Ford F-250. He left that day feeling incredibly uneasy with no clear path forward.
Over the next week, Singleton obsessively read dozens of other online complaints about 1 Way and finally had enough, returning on Oct. 3 to retrieve his truck. Singleton says he showed up with a friend at 3 p.m. and this time, Wells refused to meet with him and instead sent a manager to speak with him. The manager allegedly explained that Singleton’s $51,000 deposit was non-refundable, citing documents Singleton didn’t recall signing, and said that he was free to leave with his ’79 and the donor truck. Singleton says he was never shown confirmation that parts had been ordered despite asking multiple times.
To make it even worse, Singleton found that the orange Ford wouldn’t start. It had to be towed to another shop nearby, and the tow driver allegedly shared a handful of horror stories about past customers and 1 Way. Singleton’s pickup has been parked at Scott’s Auto Service in Nacogdoches ever since as he works on settling the situation and returning it to Houston.
“I put all of my finances, time, energy, and hope into this project, and it’s turned into my worst nightmare,” Singleton said. “It will take me years to recover financially from this if I don’t get any money back and I’ll have to sell my truck. Not to be cliché, but some of my favorite memories, my heart, and my soul are in that truck and I don’t want to lose it.”
In the end, Singleton expressed the same sentiment as Ekstam: “As far as I’m concerned, 1 Way Diesel are lowlife thieves and should be shut down as a business before they can rob any more innocent people.”
You could spend hours reading through the complaints against 1 Way on social media, Google Reviews, and Yelp. And while a handful of customers with positive experiences have come forward since this started, they’re far outweighed by the voices of those with a bone to pick. There are many more that I didn’t speak with directly, including the Crooks family who says 1 Way jerked them around on an expensive Power Wagon build. That one is especially dramatic as they posted photos and video of them picking up a truck in pieces, leaving a voicemail for Wells to assure him they’re “just getting started.”
All of this has shaped a narrative that paints 1 Way Diesel Performance as public enemy number one in the truck tuning scene. I wish I could have spoken with them to get their side of the story as that remains the biggest missing piece. I’m still open to it, and if they decide to share it with me after reading this story, I’ll be sure to provide an update. But as of right now, it’s like I said before: Just a huge, huge mess.
Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com