Irwin Ultimate Tradesman wins new truck, $20,000

To be the ultimate anything is quite a feat, as Bruce Quigley found out this past weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.

Quigley bested two other finalists to win the Irwin Ultimate Tradesman Challenge national championship, and in the process won a Roush Performance Supercharged Ford F-150 painted in blue and yellow Irwin colors and a check for $20,000.

Drilling the competition

It could have been a check for $1.26 million, had Quigley picked the right Irwin tool bag from among the 26 lined up on a table. Quigley picked bag No. 13, one of 13 which contained $20,000 checks. Twelve bags had checks for $10,000, and one -- bag No. 14 -- had the big check tucked inside.

That's pretty cool, especially since he topped more than 9,000 other tradesmen to win it.

Here's how it works. A series of events were set up in which tradesmen would battle head-to-head to qualify for three regional competitions at Lowe's Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway and California Speedway.

The three winners then went to Phoenix for the finals.

"It definitely would not be possible for us to do this without a vehicle like NASCAR," said Eric Rich, Director of Motorsports & Event Marketing for Irwin Industrial Tools. "We are a fairly new brand, just four-and-a-half years old now, and NASCAR has given us an audience among people who use tools every day, for a living.

"We've been able to take our assets that we use at the track and have been able to mobilize those out to regional events around the race schedule, and we really had a phenomenal event this year."

Of the 145 events the Tradesman Challenge has conducted in 30 states, some of them have followed the race schedule and some have been stand-alone, and more than 50,000 people attended those events, Rich said.

The finalists, using Irwin tape measures, chalk reels and the Speedbor Max spade drill bit, had to measure and drill holes in specific spots, and the winner was the tradesman who was the most accurate and completed the task in the least amount of time.

Quigley, who owns Bruce A. Quigley Construction Co. in Clarkston, Mich., completed the task in 20.40 seconds in the finals, topping Marc Williams from Seattle and Zach Snider from Charlottesville, Va. Snider's time (18.54 seconds) was disallowed because the holes he drilled did not line up.

Jamie McMurray, driver of the No. 26 Irwin Ford for Roush Fenway Racing, was on hand as one of the emcees. Former crew chief Jeff Hammond was the other, and he and McMurray competed against each other as part of the pre-competition program.

"There's a lot of pressure competing in front of everyone," McMurray said. "There's so much enthusiasm and excitement. ... I was thriving on the competition part of it. I was literally shaking when I competed against Jeff Hammond in front of that large crowd."

Quigley, who does this sort of thing for a living, would likely be nervous doing what McMurray does, in front of 100,000-plus spectators, so it all evened out.

"It's been amazing," Quigley said. "Not only do I make my living with my hands, I use the tools all the time. I'm a home builder and I do a lot of renovations, bathrooms, kitchens and decks. I use a lot of Irwin tools, the clamps, the drill bits, the saw blades, it goes on and on."

Bruce Quigley

After being the fifth driller in the regional at California Speedway in Fontana, Quigley was the first driller at Phoenix. "It was a little nervous because I had to wait through the other two."

Quigley terms himself a "newbie NASCAR fan."

"I'd never been to a race before I went to Fontana, so I guess I'm a newbie fan," he said.

That's what Irwin wanted: to bring its NASCAR marketing program to its end users.

"Irwin is really focused on the professional end user, so we are at traditional supply houses across the country as well as Home Depot and Lowe's," Rich said. "We have everything from Vice-Grips, which are one of our strongest brands, to more professional brands like Marathon, which is saw blades and cutting accessories. We have Speedbor, another professional brand that's known for wood boring and metal drilling accessories."

Rich said the success of the first Ultimate Tradesman Challenge means there will be another one in 2008.

"We're going to increase our events from 145 to 200, we'll have three regionals and the championship event," Rich said. "We want to have the same kind of energy, because there are people all over the country applying for this, and we can't believe how successful it has been."

Rich said that the event blew away the metrics he had in the beginning.

"We would have been happy to have 2,000 people come out and participate; to have 9,000 come out and more than 50,000 attend ... it was something we didn't expect."

Quigley said his new supercharged Ford F-150 would see a lot of time inside his garage.

"It's for marketing," he quipped. "That's too nice a truck to use for work. I haul a trailer, so I don't want to beat it up like that."

For further details on the Ultimate Tradesman Challenge, go to www.Irwinchallenge.com, and you, too, could drive away a millionaire!