09/28/2026
Johnny Products Update!🔔 We’re Still Here
First off, I want to apologize for falling short on keeping the Johnny Products family in the loop these past few months.
To give a bit more context, we have always been a small company at most ever having 2 full time employees, and currently operated by only myself(Mitch). While I grew up working in the shop on my own hobbies, it wasn’t till a year and a half ago that I actually came on board full time to save and solidify the legacy, so Johnny’s great Products and revolutionary bucket can live on for many generations to come. My first order of business was creating a new website and generating sales, as the Forum Days were coming to end and with that the discovery traffic it once drove. After creating a new website we started to have a different problem, too many sales! It sounds great at first, but here was the problem:
WE DIDN’T OWN THE CAD!!
See, when my Dad Johnny started this business CAD was expensive(still can be) and had a huge learning curve. So instead he designed in Cardboard Aided Design instead, and then would bring those into a local CNC shop that at the time was more than happy to help. Over the years the designs were improved and the model list grew, and so did the CNC shop making the parts, just in a different direction aimed at servicing much larger businesses. This lead to the big issue: 3 month lead time from when I sent the parts order to when it arrived!! Nowadays companies like SendCutSend deliver in under a WEEK, but without the files from the previous manufacturer we were dead in the water. I tried negotiating the release of our files but came up unsuccessful which lead me to two options:
Reverse engineer Gen 1 which was last mechanically redesigned in 2006, or set off on a journey to imagine something completely new and unique. I chose the latter, and that is when the concept of Gen 2 was announced.
In setting off on this journey I had 3 Major goals:
• High lift as the new standard
• Lift capacity that matches machine capability
• Ease of install and removal
I’m happy to announce I have solved all 3!! (Individually, now working to combine them into a single easy to use product)
This was accomplished not by one large leap, but MANY small hops. In the beginning of Gen 2 development I made frequent updates to pre-sale buyers, but quickly learned that what I was showing off isn’t what you’d be getting, and it became a challenge to present something when I knew it was only a stepping stone to the next big finding/breakthrough. I stopped posting frequently and as time went on I’d get more emails looking for an update, but no final product to show for it.
That brings us to present day September 28th, which is farrr longer than I could have ever imagined it would take. At the same time though, I have arrived at a product that I never could have even imagined if I had accepted the first attempt at something new. It is only through failure that new knowledge can be found, and here’s just some of the designs that made it to real steel parts and had lessons either carried forward or removed depending how it improved the product.
Thank you all for your patience and support, especially the pre-sale buyers that have put their faith in Johnny Products as well myself to deliver the next generation of yard equipment!
(There will be more updates very soon, but want to let yall know I’m still alive and we are still pushing ahead)
