Tory Schutte was not only a pioneer in the world of demolition derby, he was an internet pioneer.Tory started WeCrash in 2003.Although there were already many derby sites with forum boards, they all lacked organization and leadership or were trying to charge for information. Tory originally started the message board off his personal racing team’s webpage, but WeCrash quickly grew and became much bigger than Tory thought possible.The community needed a place to get information and hang out with other derby drivers and fans.Tory gave them that place on WeCrash.

As the site grew, it needed its own identity and better organization.Tory started wecrash.com as a home page and linked it to the message board, chat room, tips section etc. In the years that followed, it grew very quickly, reaching its peak at over 90,000 members. During this time, Tory’s promoting business, Derby Icons, was growing as well and taking more and more of his time and attention.Along the way the community chipped in and helped.Tory got a lot of help from family, members, moderators, promoters and product manufactures.

Summer 2011 brought a big change to WeCrash.The hosting service used for the message board became problematic and eventually crashed and shut down.This caused a loss of over 7 years of information.Tory was increasing focused on Derby Icons, but wanted to find a way to rebuild WeCrash and protect it for the future.Taking WeCrash to the next level would require a custom built site and private hosting that didn’t rely on free message board providers.Tory turned to Sam Williams and his company, Ultimate Derby.

Ultimate Derby is focused on improving the sport of demolition derby and taking it to the next level.Taking over WeCrash and building a great new site is exactly the kind of thing UD wants to do to move the sport forward.UD worked to build a new site that had all the information and interaction of the old message board and added some new, cool features to help drivers and fans be better able to find information on events, parts and what’s going on in the industry.The new site was launched in January 2012.

Before handing over the keys to WeCrash, Tory was very clear on a few things.WeCrash will always be free for the drivers and fans to use.It was originally build for drivers and the drivers are its roots.Additionally, Tory insisted on staying involved with the management of the site as the founding member and head moderator.Tory remains a key part of WeCrash.

As Tory has said, WeCrash is and always will be about the drivers.Thanks Tory for having the vision to build something great for everyone in demolition derby.