Dust N Diesel
Interview by Alice Armitage Photography by Lillie Hamblin
“My parents don’t own a farm, they have a contracting business and there was no room for me. Dust n Diesel was the first thing that ever worked out right for me.”
When you first walk into Tristan Petty and Jamilah Kidd’s house there is one thing that immediately draws your attention – Tinny’s impressive collection of model tractors. Which is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone who knows him as the man behind the brand, Dust n Diesel. While Tinny & Mil prefer to stay behind the scenes of this very well known business, they’ve given us a rare insight into their lives and how they’ve built Dust n Diesel to what we know it as today.
When Tristan Petty [ affectionately known as Tinny ] first started thinking about the idea for what is now Dust n Diesel, he was working for an Earthmoving contractor. Spending long, hot and lonely days on machines, where a day off only happened when it rained, which wasn’t often in the middle of the drought. Nights were spent drinking too much at the pub and getting up at the crack of dawn to do it all again the next day. It was far from a glamorous time for Tinny but a few things were playing in his favour, he had plenty of time to think and decent service.
It was 2015 and instagram was starting to take off, with a couple of general farming accounts popping up that were showcasing all the aspects of farming, Tinny thought it would be especially cool to see an account that just highlighted the things he had a strong passion for – machinery and cropping. Two years later, after much contemplation, Tinny took the leap and started a page for himself. “I had finished my apprenticeship as a heavy diesel fitter and was at a stage of wanting to travel and do a few different things so I went contracting to make some money. It was all good fun, but I just kept thinking, okay, what’s the bigger picture here? I kept looking on Instagram – I loved Instagram and couldn’t stop thinking about how cool it would be to have an account that was just machinery. I actually started notes on my phone thinking of names way back in 2015.”Time went by and he found himself on a holiday in Bali with a few mates. “I told them the day I get back is the day I actually start this thing. So I hooked in and haven’t looked back.”
Simply wanting to show people what it was like farming crops and working with big machinery, Tinny started posting. Initially photos of his own and the photos of his friends. Momentum slowly but surely grew, other people started sharing their photos with Tinny too and the blueprint for what Dust n Diesel is, still carries through today, seven years later. You’ll never see Tinny miss a day of sharing content or connecting with all the people that get in touch with him, and his success is a testament to his consistent dedication to this endeavour.
Things grew pretty rapidly from there and after two years the account had grown to over thirteen thousand followers. It was around this time that the idea of making a couple of hats came about and Tinny’s partner Jamilah [ affectionately known as Mil ] started to get involved as well. “I remember the first conversation we had about hats so clearly, Tinny told me how much he wanted to try and do hats, I knew I could figure out how to make it work. There was a lot of youtubing, we had a few test hats made, shared them with our friends for feedback and eventually started selling them by promoting them through the Dust n Diesel instagram page.”
In the first week of launching those original hats a few hundred were sold and since then, the merch aspect of the business has continued to skyrocket. At the time, the pair were living in a tiny cottage on a farm out of town and Mil would pack all of the orders, load up her little car and head to her full time job where she worked in community services. In her lunch breaks she’d duck to the post office in an effort to keep all the balls she was juggling in the air. “It got to the point where I was going to the post office and my whole car would be filled with orders. We were walking a pretty fine line for a long time as far as our capacity went,” shares Mil. “For three years we both worked full time and were trying to stay on top of the business. It was really taxing, on us individually, on our relationship, on our house. Everywhere you looked there was stock!”
Eventually, something had to give and Mil moved into the business full time while Tinny kept his job working for a Machinery retailer. “It was really hard for me because I hadn’t grown up around farming, I hadn’t done anything in farming or machinery before. I fully let go of my own interest in my job to dedicate time and effort to something that my partner loved so much – it was huge for me.” But over time Mil has found her own passion for Dust n Diesel, and while that might not be a deep devotion to all things tractors, she has settled into a keen passion for running an incredibly efficient business. Arguably that’s what is so great about partnership, differing interests and skill sets, working towards a united goal.
This transition wasn’t all sunshine and roses for Tinny either. “I was so scared, I’d had so much control over how everything was done for such a long time but I needed to take that leap and to let someone else have some ownership. I’m a real perfectionist, it’s something I struggle with and it can be really crippling at times but Mil really stepped up and slowly made me feel like I could give her the reins a bit.” With Tinny’s full time job getting busier and busier throughout this time with a couple of bumper seasons, it was time to let Mil share the driver’s seat.
It might seem unusual to some that the original man behind something like this wouldn’t be the first to transition into the business full time, but for Tinny his day job fuels his passion for agriculture too – allowing him to contribute to the industry in different ways and to keep some of the financial pressure off the business.
Over the years there have been plenty of accounts like Dust n Diesel but none that seem to have the same staying power. Now with over eighty two thousand followers, the community engagement and dedication to the brand is unrivalled. Consistency is surely a major contributing factor to this ongoing success. “I think the day you take your foot off the throttle, the day your motivation wanders, is the day your start-up starts to die. I haven’t taken my foot off the throttle with Dust n Diesel yet,” shares Tinny. There’s also something powerful in the simplicity of how Dust n Diesel shares and creates its content that really opens the door for anyone to feel like they can contribute, and can be a part of something. Tinny has never tried to share serious news or information about agriculture through Dust n Diesel, you can easily go somewhere else for that, instead opting for a fun approach to starting conversations. Conversations that often turn into deeper conversations.
While Dust n Diesel is undeniably a raging success, finding his own way in this industry he’s so passionate about has been a rocky ride for Tinny. It’s a love that runs deep, the one he holds for all things farming but for Tinny, the traditional pathways to becoming a farmer wasn’t one that lay before him. “I grew up on thirty thousand acres, my parents didn’t own it but it instilled that love of the land in me. The older I got the more I realised that we didn’t own it. Dust n Diesel became a way for me to share that love of farming in my own way.” Knowing that a lot of other young country kids also have to navigate this reality is why it’s so remark- able that Tinny continues to be such an important role model for doing things differently and finding alternative ways to be involved with the things that you love.
“I’ve been through some pretty rough times. I know how lonely it can be sitting in that tractor for days or weeks on end with no-one around. It’s why I try to get back to all the messages I get so many of these guys just need someone to talk to,” shares Tinny. “I felt useless at a lot of things. I failed all through school, I didn’t feel any love through my apprenticeship, I was told I wasn’t any good, I got sacked from the two jobs I had after that. I just wanted to be a farmer, but it wasn’t an option for me. My parents don’t own a farm, they have a contracting business and there was no room for me. Dust n Diesel was the first thing that ever worked out right for me.”
You often hear the term ‘impact driven’ used to describe a modern day start-up and that label usually comes with a list of fancy boxes being ticked by its founders to prove their ‘wokeness’ but having reflected on the way Tinny and Mil have chosen to build Dust n Diesel, it’s hard to think of a better example of what it truly means to create an impact driven business that really means some- thing to people – especially for the young men across regional Australia who a searching for a way out of their own isolation.
It’s been a big year for this pair and a few things have happened that’s really changed their outlook on the trajectory for Dust n Diesel, starting with them opening a new commercial space in Narrabri for them to run the business and to manage the distribution of all merchandise. “We had a baby for a start, and we took our merch to the Henty Field Days. We went all out – we came home very satisfied but very burnt out. I called the real estate agent the next day and signed a lease on a new space in town,” shares Mil. “It’s been such a privilege to be able to work in this business as a mum with a new baby at home. I come from a background in education and being at home with Harriet never would have been an option if I was still working in that space. I can work around her and I’ve been given this time with her that’s so special.”
Continuing to grow a business such as this, with all the competing aspirations and desires that come when having a young family enters the mix can be complex, but Tinny and Mil’s willingness to just keep going and to make a difference doing something they really care about just can’t be matched.
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