‘Ready to go racing.’ Graham Trucking hydro team set to get back on the Columbia River

Rob Graham said the plan has always been to race the U-12 Graham Trucking boat this year, in both the Tri-Cities and Seattle.

“We never really stopped getting ready to go racing,” said Graham in a phone conversation earlier this week.

“There has always been a small group of guys who have been in the shop since March. (Racing in the Northwest this year) was the plan from the start. But we knew it was too late for us to make it to Guntersville and Madison,” he said.

This weekend will mark the U-12 team’s return to racing after taking two of the last three years off.

There was no racing in 2020 thanks to the pandemic, and some team members moved over to the Strong Racing team in 2022.

So the last time the U-12 raced was 2021, with J. Michael Kelly as the driver.

Kelly, of course, has been driving the U-8 Beacon Electric for Strong Racing.

Rob Graham has a core group of crew members who want to get back out on the water.

“It’s a chance for us to get our new driver qualified and see how he does,” said Graham. “I wanna do I what my stable of crew guys want to do. If they want to race, we race. If they don’t want to race, we don’t.”

These next two races will determine if there will be more racing in 2024 for the U-12 team.

“I don’t have a crystal ball. But if things go as planned, then that puts us in a position to race next year,” said Graham. “It truly is about all these guys and what they want to do.”

Leading the way will be crew chief Tom Anderson, who has been running the crew on this boat back in the days when Ted Porter owned not one, but two boats.

Graham, the owner of Graham Trucking, has always been an enthusiastic sponsor of these boats. But a few years ago, he decided he wanted to be an owner, and he bought Porter’s equipment.

Anderson came over with the equipment, as did many crew members.

“Tom is the crew chief,” said Graham. “He’s awesome, and he is really sort of a calming effect when the rest of us get that high-pitched voice when things get tense. Then he’ll say in that calm voice, ‘Here is what we’re going to do.’”

Racing in your blood

Anderson says the boat is race ready.

“We had most of the major repairs done before we decided last year to not go racing,” said Anderson, who has reassembled much of the old gang for his crew. “I’ve got some guys back who stepped away years ago. I’d say five of them.”

It’s hard to get racing out of their blood, including Anderson’s.

“I guess so for me too,” he said.

Graham Trucking has had its share of success in racing, winning a couple of times on the Columbia River. It’s still a fast boat, says Graham.

“We don’t think there will be any problems with the boat,” he said. When we didn’t race, we took time to refurbish things. We’ve done a ton of stuff you don’t do in the offseason.

“Little stuff was found. We fixed those things. It’s all on the trailer and loaded, and ready to go.”

As for rookie driver Bobby King, “He has kind of put it out of the park in the limited division. But there is always a transition to an unlimited. I want him to be comfortable. I want to get him dialed in to see how he feels.”

King will have to run 15 laps of at least 130 mph this weekend in order to qualify as a race-ready unlimited driver. He can get that done in Friday morning testing, and Friday afternoon qualifying.

Whatever happens, hydro race fans are happy to have another boat added to the fleet.

And a fast one at that.