According to Darryl Moseley, folks in his neck of the piney woods have two options come Friday evenings in the fall: High School football, or the race track.
For most every weekend for 36 years, Darryl has chosen the latter.
Darryl started his career in the office equipment industry in 1982. Without coincidence, he started dirt track racing (currently in the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA)) the very same year, where he was most recently crowned the Texas State Champion in 2015. Over the decades of bumps, crashes and checkered-flag victories, the Service Manager for Datamax Longview has learned just how relevant the paths to success are in both ventures.
“I’m amazed at how relevant that racing, copier repair and life are. I have learned that in all three, you have to keep up with the progress…. Or you will be left behind,” Darryl said.
The 'Poor Boy' Racer
Darryl grew up on the track watching his father race throughout the late 50s and early 60s. On weekends, he’d tag along with his dad to tracks in Marshall, Longview, and surrounding East Texas cities and since the time he was five or six, he dreamed of having his own car.
“He had a race car behind the shop that was stripped down. I would take parts and put them together, enough to make them look like a race car, and I’d do pretend laps inside the car,” Darryl said. “It was all I wanted to do.”
Just as he does at Datamax, Darryl Creates Raving Fans on the track by being one of the few self-dubbed “poor boy” racers. While most competitors on the track are professional with a four or five man pit crew, he does at all himself: No pit crew, builds his own motors and does all the repair work. While most his competitors roll out a new high-dollar car every year, Darryl’s had the same one for 12 years.
“When I won that Texas State Championship Race, I was the only one who qualified who wasn’t a professional. To be congratulated on the race by my competitors, that was the biggest thing that happened to me in the sport. There wasn’t a spectator out there that wasn’t rooting for me that night,” Darryl said.
Darryl went to work at Office World in Longview in 1982 as a Canon Service Technician, and advanced to the role of Parts Manager. In 1990, Darryl became a Field Service Manager. In 1998 Darryl took the job as Field Service Manager for Precision Copiers, which was ultimately acquired by East Texas Copy Systems in 2002.
Shifting Gears On the Fly
When he isn't working on copiers, he's in the garage on his race car. The two have combined to create a life for Darryl he wouldn’t trade for anything. More importantly, the skills he’s obtained – commitment, ongoing training, responsiveness and the ability to shift gears on the fly – have interconnected on the race track as well as the office.
“In both, you’ve got to be patient and you better learn how to trouble shoot extremely well. You’ve got to evolve with the changes in our industry, and cars are the same way… I’m constantly experimenting with different shocks, different spring packages, just a new way of setting up the car. I’m excited about this experiment I’m working on right now.”
He’ll fill everyone in on the results of his latest modification after the next race. But in the meantime, he’s still after more Raving Fans.
“Ya never know,” Darryl says with a half chuckle. “Maybe I can turn some of my new Datamax co-workers into dirt track racing fans of mine.”
