Back in November, Steinbach's Trev Esau accidentally flipped a tractor in his garage, caught the whole thing on camera, and went viral online.
Esau started the tractor before realizing the clutch was broken. In the process of ‘jamming the clutch’ from reverse to forward trying to find neutral, the tractor took off. The handle of Esau’s floor jack acted as a ramp and the whole thing tipped backward with Esau holding onto the steering wheel, laughing hysterically.
According to Esau, the video has racked up between 6 and 7 million views across a few TikTok pages. He says it was cool to see those numbers climb, but he really started to get attention locally when we told a story about the viral video on PembinaValleyOnline which alerted a lot of his friends and family to it.
“Everywhere I went, Canadian Tire, 'hey, I saw your video!' Or I got lots of text messages saying, 'you're famous!' People would drop in and say, 'hey, can I get your autograph now?' So yeah, I got a lot of attention."
In fact, the tractor flip ended up being one of the bigger stories we told on PembinaValleyOnline in 2023.
The viral video even caught the attention of the Jimmy Kimmel Live show, though Esau says nothing has come of that so far.
Having licensed the video with a company called Viral Hog, Esau says it has made him a little bit of money which should cover the minor damages his garage suffered in the accident.
“It will be paid off by this video, yeah. At this point, it looks like I'll net about $500 Canadian out of it, who knows what happens in the future, but yeah, so that's not so bad.”
Laughing, Esau says he wishes all of his mistakes paid for themselves. He notes maybe he just needs to record everything he does.
“I'm a clumsy guy, so I just need to have a camera running all the time and hope something blows up and then I can catch it on video.” He adds “I've done tons of dumb things that haven't been caught on video.”
Since November, Esau says the views have slowed down.
“It went really fast, really quick and then it's just kind of been tinkering along, kind of like me just puttering around, it's gaining some views, not a lot of views, some sales, not a lot of sales, so I guess the sensation is kind of worn off.”
And Esau is fine with that. He notes the whole thing was fun while it lasted, adding “It's been a very enjoyable experience.”
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