In a sea of reality TV stars, Dave Kindig surely stands out from the others for his talent at creating the most marvelous builds and restorations. As seen in shows such as “Bitchin’ Rides” and “Best Of Top Gear”, Dave’s popularity as one of the most innovative and risky designers in the car industry is more than well-earned, gaining him not only huge international recognition, but also quite a good fortune.

So while we know money isn’t the most interesting thing about Dave’s decades-long career in the automotive field, it’s never not interesting to know how much he has earned from his career on TV and his business.

Do you want to know all about Dave’s earnings from TV and businesses, on top of other interesting details about his career? Then stay with us!

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How Rich Is Dave?

Considering how long Dave Kindig has been in the automotive business and his status as an internationally famous TV star, it’s not shocking to know he has accumulated a small fortune from it. According to online reports, Dave Kindig has an estimated net worth of $3 million, resulting from his several businesses, television personality career and brand sponsorships.

Although it’s also often questioned how much he earns for his show “Bitchin’ Rides”, the truth is that MotorTrend keeps this information in secrecy. While the average salary for the network’s common employees is around $98,483 according to Salary.com, the only hint of how much MotorTrend’s stars get paid comes from a 2016’s Business Insider article which stated that docu-series type of shows, usually starring non-celebrities, pay stars around ‘$1,500 an episode, to $3,000’, fitting to Dave’s show description. This is of course solely an estimation, but it’s enough to get an idea of what the actual financial situation of people in the reality show industry might be.

How Much Do Dave’s Cars Cost?

While many reality stars often show off their luxury lifestyles and how much they make, it’s evident that Dave Kindig is different from them even when it comes to revealing the cost of his restoration jobs. As he affirmed on his Twitter back in 2017, ‘we never tell how much a build costs, we keep (them) confidential with our customers!’ he wrote in response to a fan addressing the subject.

While we can’t obtain a real cost estimation of specific restorations done in “Bitchin’ Rides”, it’s for certain that Dave’s customizations are meant for deep pockets clients due to the level of dedication required, as he told Street Trucks Mag in 2020: ‘we have one level of quality and operate on one speed, and that’s perfection’.

When you're talking about Dream Cruise highlights, it's got to be all about the cars. Thanks again to everyone that parked it with us on Saturday. Until next year!#AkzoNobel #WoodwardDreamCruise @OfficialWDC @Kindigitdesigns @davekindigit pic.twitter.com/uLCKdVbKG4

— AkzoNobel Refinish (@AkzoNobel_AACNA) August 21, 2019

Besides money, Dave insists that patience is a necessary trait his Kindig-it Designs’ customers must have: ‘a good majority of (them) have the budgets for rather expensive cars, but they also have a good understanding of how this all works’.

With that cleared up, his business’ website also offers their most impatient clients a limited variety of originally designed and restored autos, though the price range of these is as high as expected.

His Business

Dave Kindig’s main source of income is definitely his business Kindig-it Design. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, the company was established by Dave in 1999 using his 401k savings.

Although not everyone is bold enough to risk their life’s savings to start a business, Dave was rightfully convinced that starting his own design agency was the right choice. After quitting his 60-hours-a-week job and having the approval of his wife Charity, a 28 years old Dave followed his dreams by putting his whole energy on growing his career: ‘I figured that I could spend more time doing that at home as well as peddling parts I was making for friends’, he said to Street Trucks Mag in reference to the extra works he did on his garage before starting his business.

Soon enough, Dave’s designs and skillful restorations took people’s attention, but the real work was done behind closed doors as he continually put all the money back on the business to make it bigger: ‘I honestly didn’t start noticing the light at the end of the tunnel until I stopped spending so much money on growing’, he admitted. His efforts and business-wise nature were well compensated in the end, as nowadays Kindig-it Design is internationally renowned for all the good reasons.

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Academy & Other Projects

Unlike many other experts, Dave Kindig is actually interested in passing down his knowledge to other professionals in the field. That’s why in January 2022 he launched the Kindig Academy at Lincoln Tech, which offers study programs for car builders who wish to learn the advanced techniques used by Kindig-it Design’s workers.

The academy offers a weekend introductory course meant for beginners in the area with no previous experience, while the advanced Custom Design and Fabrication course is meant for those who are already experienced in the car building industry but want to further their knowledge in the Kindig style.

Of course, given the nature of the course and the fact that Kindig Academy is the first of its field in the country to lead such a project, the courses are in no way cheap.

Other than that, Dave usually puts in a big effort to bring his work closer to people. Not only can his fans visit his shop’s showroom in Utah and online through the 360° vision room, but his exclusively-designed auto parts selling division is available as well. His company also sells apparel and distributes Modern Classik, his carefully curated automotive paint brand.

All in all, Dave has too many projects in his hands but somehow he makes it all work in the end.

Dave’s Beginnings

Unlike most masters and pioneers in the automotive industry, Dave Kindig surprisingly didn’t think he would dedicate his life to cars when he was a young child. As it happens, design was his earliest love, one he pursued by catching bugs and drawing them.

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Despite not being surrounded by real cars, he always loved them as well, so as soon as he realized that insects weren’t for him, he fully embraced that second love: ‘I loved Legos and Hot Wheels cars, and that morphed to putting together plastic model cars. I loved drawing, too, so I went from drawing bugs to drawing hot rods’, he told Fuel Curve in 2019.

Although Dave apparently never enrolled in a professional school, he acquired enough skills to work for High Performance Coatings and obtained his first experiences in the automotive industry there. However, the work was extremely demanding time-wise there, leaving him scarce time to pursue his designing and car-building aspirations for eight years.

Nonetheless, Dave knew what his talents were as soon as independent clients started paying him for his rendered designs. The next big step was opening his own shop, for which he used his life savings: ‘The way I went about it may not be the exact method I’d recommend to everyone out there, but if I had to, I would do it all over again’, he told Street Trucks Mag.

TV Debut

Years before “Bitchin’ Rides” came alive, Dave Kindig and his business were already featured on TV. Although it’s unclear when exactly Dave made his TV debut, making a ‘media blitz’ for his shop back in the early 2010s inevitable took the attention of executives in the now-disappeared Speed Channel, who asked him to film a five-minutes video about his shop: ‘We did it and I guess we must have checked off all their boxes because they loved it’, he told Fuel Curve.

That short video eventually landed them a special feature in a 2013’s “My Classic Car” episode, but Dave wasn’t quite ready to become a TV star back then. Accepting to have his own show wasn’t the kind of attention he was looking for given all the risks it implied, as he confessed: ‘I went through all this, built this team, had everything set into place and if something went wrong, I’d lose it all because we’re filming a TV show’.

Being cautious definitely set his path to success. Wanting to keep his business’ reputation, Dave made sure that the focus of his show would be what he really wanted when he signed the deal: ‘We’re not building cars for a TV show, we’re building them for our customers’, as he confessed. In the end, “Bitchin’ Rides” indeed became known for the work its crew does and not for personal dramas or scandals, which is a feat in itself.

Work Process on TV

One of the biggest challenges for car builders on TV is to make their work processes fit the small screen in a compelling way. Knowing this very well, Dave Kindig agreed with the show’s producers about making “Bitchin’ Rides” a show completely focused on what’s most important in a car shop: ‘they’re here to capture that process and be a fly on the wall. We don’t start and stop for sake of TV, which makes us different’, he told Fuel Curve.

Given the format of “Bitchin’ Rides”, 44 minutes are clearly not enough to show in detail what really happens in the Kindig-it Design garage when its crew puts their hands on a project. As Dave affirmed in an interview with Take To The Road, on average a car takes his team around 4,000 to 5,000 hours of work, so the show’s priority is to feature the interesting parts of that process. As well, there’s a whole planning phase that we never see on screen but it’s evident after seeing the final work: ‘it’s almost like a patient race to get to the end and finally see the results of what we dreamed about maybe 14 months earlier’, he admitted and the analogy couldn’t fit better.

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Who Works With Him?

Clearly enough, “Bitchin’ Rides” not only shows us a small part of the work processes done in Dave’s shop, but also only introduces us to a couple of his main collaborators and team members.

Starting with his wife Charity, as Kindig-it Design’s Vice-president and co-owner, the company owes lots of its success to her business wisdom. Just as Dave told Take To The Road, he’s a ‘go go go’ type of person, while Charity is more of a ‘wo wo wo’ one, as the voice of reason: ‘She’s a wonderful person and Charity and I have been married 28 years this year. She’s awesome and we do everything together’.

Dave and Charity’s daughter Baylee is all about keeping the family business alive, taking care of the apparel line and website, while their son Drew’s love for metal building made him the right guy to go when it comes to door handles. Then it comes Kevin Schiele, Kindig-it Design shop foreman and the guy overlooks the job done in it. Other important crew members are the business manager Valerie Gillies and Will Lockwood, the expert engineer who has known Dave from his years as an full-time employee. All in all, Kindig-it Design has around 34 employees nowadays and they make sure that each one of them is appropriately credited.

His Dream Car

Dave Kindig can proudly say he has put his hands in a wide variety of cars from all around the world and knows more about those than the common folk. However, while his website states that his favorite build is always ‘the next one’, even an extremely experienced guy such as Dave admits to having his preferences when it comes to the cars featured in “Bitchin’ Rides”: ‘if I have to pick it would be the ’55 Mercedes Gullwing’. (…) ‘Everything about that car is exactly what I would build for myself’, he admitted to Fuel Curve.

That being said, Dave has also confessed what other cars he wants to work on in the future. For starters, some of the European models he has in mind are old Jaguars, Ferraris, Pontiac GTOs and the 1969 Lamborghini Miura S: ‘They are not necessarily tangibly in reach at the moment but yeah… long time fan but not a player just yet!’, he told Take To The Road.

Knowing that Dave is a man of action, you shouldn’t be surprised if one of the aforementioned cars gets featured sooner than later in “Bitchin’ Rides”.

What Happened To “Bitchin’ Rides”?

It’s well known that reality shows aren’t necessarily a stable TV niche, but given the huge success of “Bitchin’ Rides”, it’s understandable how long it has run on TV.

While the show hasn’t been renewed yet since wrapping up its seventh season in 2021, Kindig-it Design website states that new information regarding its new season would be released in 2022’s summer. Although to date no further information has been said about it, it’s for sure that we haven’t seen the last of “Bitchin’ Rides” yet and that makes us inevitably happy.

As the population grows bigger and bigger in cities, some people have opted out of having a common lifestyle in order to adopt more simple lives in less populated areas. However, it’s never easy to just adapt and get used to a life off the grid, but that’s when the “Homestead Rescue” cast comes to help.

By helping out troubled homesteaders, the Raney family puts their expertise into helping people all around the US to make their dream of having an alternative lifestyle a reality.

Nonetheless, we know it’s been some time since “Homestead Rescue” was renewed, leaving us with many questions regarding the show’s future, and its stars’ whereabouts.

So where is the Raney family now? Are they coming back to TV and what about their life off-screen? Take a seat and discover it here!

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What Is The Cast Doing Now?

Up until the fourth season wrapped up in late 2021, “Homestead Rescue” has regularly premiered at least one season per year on Discovery. However, seeing that it’s been a while since new episodes aired, it’s a good time to wonder what the Raney family is doing nowadays.

Marty Raney

When we watch a show centered on homesteads, the least we expect is to see some country-style people in it. While Marty Raney certainly fits said description, he’s definitelymore than just a guy who wears fine cowboy hats and has a nicely trimmed mustache.

As an experienced survivalist and master of everything that is needed to bring back to life even the most battered homesteads, the family’s patriarch Marty Raney is definitely the right man for a show as special as “Homestead Rescue”.

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Whether it’s because of his charismatic personality, dedicated work ethic or enthusiasm for helping people in need, there’s no doubt that Marty gained the audience’s heart since appearing in the show for the first time. His charm hasn’t faded in the least though, as his social media has accumulated almost 100,000 followers combined, on top of being featured on big platforms such as Fox News or the Alaskan-based KXD News 13.

Regarding his future in the show, in mid-2022 Marty was announced to be busily filming the fifth “Homestead Rescue”s season. Other than that, he’s apparently just living a normal Alaskan life, often sharing pics on social media of the local wintery landscapes, and of his recently-adopted Siberian wolf puppy whom he named Maggie May.

Misty Raney

Unlike her father, Misty Raney is unfortunately not as active on social media as her followers would like her to be. Although by mid-2022 it’s assumed our favorite farmer is working alongside her family in making the fifth season of “Homestead Rescue” a reality, there’s not a lot to say about her professional whereabouts outside that.

While it seems there’s no way to know what Misty has been up to in recent times until she eventually comes back to TV, her posts from early 2022 hint she was having a good time vacationing with her husband Maciah Bilodeau, and son. Hopefully, Misty will be more active online once “Homestead Rescue” returns.

Misty Raney is always up for a challenge.

Stream your favorite #HomesteadRescue episodes anytime on #discoveryplus.

➡️ https://t.co/rcnbSdvGho pic.twitter.com/VOKg5y26bH

— Discovery (@Discovery) March 19, 2021

Matt Raney

Fortunately for “Homestead Rescue”s most dedicated fans, Matt Raney isn’t shy from telling his followers what he’s been up to. As seen on his social media, Matt enjoys the simple pleasures of living in Alaska, by attending fairs, local events, hiking, skiing or simply taking pics with puppies.

His wife Katie is also quite open on the internet, letting us see that she and her husband spend quality time harvesting honey, and improving their natural photography skills. Regarding their children, the birth of their youngest baby Ruby in late 2021 was featured in the fourth season of “Homestead Rescue”, taking Matt away from working in the season’s final projects to take care of their baby girl.

Despite his brief absence in the previous season, in July 2022 Matt was also confirmed to be filming the new season of “Homestead Rescue”, much to the joy of his fans.

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What Is “Homestead Rescue” About?

Even if its name is self-explanatory, “Homestead Rescue” is certainly more than just a show about painting walls and nailing some wood together.

While making the best out of the Raneys individual skills, “Homestead Rescue” is first and foremost a show about family unity, and working together as a team. Even so, introducing the audience to the lifestyle of many people who choose to live off-the grid independently, also delivers an important message about modernity, and appreciating what’s most important, or at least that’s what Marty believes: ‘I think about things that are ostentatious, things that lack substance, things that fall under what people call the American dream. For a lot of us, it doesn’t bring happiness’, he said in an interview with Hollywood Soap Box.

The show’s goal is not only to ease people’s struggles at adapting and making their homesteads work, but also to explore the proprietors’ stories. and their reason for leaving behind their common city life in order to live off the grid, according to Marty: ‘I admire anyone that does it, and I’ll help most that ask me to come assist them in succeeding’, he affirmed, making clear that “Homestead Rescue” is about people, their stories and their lives.

How Was It Created?

Considering the fact that “Homestead Rescue” is not your usual property flipping show, it’s natural to assume that making the project a reality must have been a difficult task. However, it apparently wasn’t that way.

Prior to “Homestead Rescue”, Marty Raney was already familiar with the entertainment world, having appeared in other Discovery projects, written TV treatments for the network, and pitched a couple of shows for them as well.

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Having already created the show’s concept and contacted Raw Productions, then Discovery offered the surprised Marty to be a star in it, quickly convincing him to say yes due to the compelling, innovative concept of the show: ‘I was like, man, this is too good to be true: I get to build, I get to help people, real people, with real needs’, he told Reality Blurred in 2016.

It became a family affair when after a month of broaching the subject with his four children, he finally convinced Matt and Misty to join the show. Marty also argues that making “Homestead Rescue” as authentic as possible was his priority all along, sealing the deal when the producers finally accepted his terms.

How To Get Onto The Show?

While people who dream of stardom sometimes never get the lucky chance to appear on TV, for some other less ambitious people, that opportunity just presents itself in their life.

The latter is the case of Wren and Ini, a young couple featured in “Homestead Rescue”s second season. Based in Ozark County in Missouri, Wren and Ini never intended to appear on TV, so they were quite skeptical when the offer to do so came to them through Instagram’s direct message.

Although the couple admittedly laughed it off at first, they later researched the show’s name, and found good opinions about it. That’s how they ended up frequently visiting their town’s library to be interviewed through video call, given that their homestead didn’t have internet access: ‘We treated it all like a joke, honestly, but all along Ini said we’d be chosen. This all happened in the span of a month’, said Wen to Ozark County Times in 2020. Only a couple of weeks afterwards, scouts visited their place to verify details, and less than a month later, Marty Raney and his children were ready to repair and improve their homestead.

Now that the show is evidently more famous and successful than when Ini and Wen were in it, the selection process has surely become more strict. Even so, that shouldn’t stop people from trying.

Production Process

According to second season homesteaders Wen and Ini, the production process starts just a couple of weeks after being accepted into the show by Discovery and Raw TV. In their case, site managers and directors were the first ones to ever visit their property, also checking out the general area in order to plan where the resources for the project and possible business deals could possibly come from.

Some weeks afterwards, a 20-person crew arrived at their place to set the filming equipment in place, on top of securing some other commodities for the staff. The last ones to arrive at Wen and Ini’s homestead was the Raney family, who inspected the place before giving their approval, and letting the magic finally take place.

Apparently, Wen and Ini’s description of the show’s process is the usual way of approaching every project for the Raneys. As Marty told Reality Blurred in 2016, these prolonged inspection processes are necessary to avoid choosing homestead they wouldn’t be able to improve in 10 days: ‘If you’re there to assist them to live off-grid or be a successful homesteader, you see areas immediately that we can address’, he affirmed. If given the green light by both producers and the Raneys, it’s for sure that the homestead will be in the show.

Who Helps With The Builds?

Besides determining if a project is viable to appear in the show, the extensive inspections led by “Homestead Rescue”s staff are done in order to determine costs, and find resources for it.

By looking out for constructors and businesses located within reach of the homesteads, the show’s staff lower costs of production and building. Such was the case of Scout Construction LLC, a small company which offered to help the Raneys to lead a project for the show in Mansfield, Ohio.

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According to the business’ owner Josh Mobley, he was initially contacted by “Homestead Rescue” producers through Facebook: ‘they needed a general contractor with at least four carpenters. I told them we could accommodate that’, he told RichlandSource.com, but also admitting that he doubted the legitimacy of the project, after knowing it was for a TV show.

Weeks later he was contacted again, and soon enough they were the leading contractors to repair the Broadheads’ homestead, featured in the show’s fourth season. However, Mobley himself affirmed that while his team’s help was needed for labor and providing tools, the Raneys worked alongside them all along: ‘(they) do a lot of their own work. It’s surprising how much of their own stuff they do’, he affirmed.

Even though it’s unknown if the projects’ costs are covered by the show itself, or by sponsored business, it’s relieving to know that everything we see in “Homestead Rescue” is so carefully planned.

Marty’s Career & Controversies

One of the things we love the most about the Raneys, is how multi-talented they are, especially when it comes to Marty. As seen in the show, the family’s patriarch is not only an experienced homesteader, but also knows his way with carpentry and construction.

However, most people don’t know that prior to “Homestead Rescue”, Marty was already well involved with the entertainment industry. In 2013, he debuted in the show “Ultimate Survival Alaska” during its three seasons. The fame he obtained through that show allowed him to start the “Ultimate Adventure with Marty Raney”, a touristic service in which Marty himself guides his customers through some of the most extreme but wonderful destinations in Alaska.

That being said, Marty’s career as a musician is actually well known, but not for good reasons. As it happens, back in 1997 he released an album entitled “Strummit From The Summit”, which became a topic of discussion in 2020 after online users noticed that the album’s song “Adam & Steve” included some messaging deemed as homophobic.

Seeing the controversy caused by it, “Homestead Rescue’‘s production company, Raw TV, denied having any knowledge about the song, and affirmed that it didn’t represent the company’s ideals. However, while some people feared that the controversy might cause the show’s cancellation, not long afterwards, “Homestead Rescue” was renewed for a fourth season.

Is The Show Real?

When it comes to “Homestead Rescue”, there are mixed testimonies from former homesteaders, who either testify the show’s authenticity or outright deny it. While in the case of Wen and Ini from Missouri, they reaffirmed the show’s genuineness for the positive impact it had in their property, other cases such as that of Kim and Josh Zabec from the first season make us believe some things aren’t what they seem.

According to the Zabecs, they regret ever letting the show feature their homestead Revolutionary Roots Farm, feeling they were unfairly portrayed in it, on top of allegedly setting up some situations to create drama. For these reasons, the Zabecs filed a lawsuit against “Homestead Rescue” and even though it’s unknown what happened to the case, the couple’s animosity towards the show hints that not everything is as rosy as we thought. Nonetheless, no matter which scandal they’re involved with, it doesn’t seem that the Raneys will be taken away from TV anytime soon, to the obvious relief and enjoyment of loyal fans.