Kevin Moranz knows better than most that often it is the little things that make the biggest difference. Four years ago the Founder and CEO of Champion Tool Storage sat on his couch, reacquainting himself with a sport he’d loved his entire life when he became aware of an up-and-coming rider, Moranz, who recently graduated to the 450 division.
“I was watching Supercross, probably four years ago, and noticed (a rider) I hadn’t heard of,” Garin Buckles, told NBC Sports midway between Round 7 in Arlington, Texas, and Round 8 in Daytona Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know who this was. I had taken a break for a while and was getting back into it and kept seeing (Moranz’s) name pop up, so I started following him.”
In the age of social media, everyone is only a click away. So Buckles sent a direct message to Moranz introducing himself.
Buckles was a little surprised to quickly hear a ding alerting him to a response.
“He was interesting and I learned a little about him and reached out on Instagram, actually,” Buckles said. “We connected, started chatting.”
At the time, Moranz was qualifying for a handful of night shows on a limited budget. Buckles wondered what he could do with a few more resources.
Feld Entertainment / Align Media | Kevin Moranz has made four of the first five standard-format races in 2025.
“The first conversation was that I just wanted to help his program and see him keep going, so we worked together on a small-level sponsorship and we did that for two seasons,” Buckles continued. “And then when he finished up with the team he was with, a hauling service, (Moranz knew) it wasn’t going to work for the following year.”
Moranz was racing with Next Level Racing and they were in a transitional phase, moving to a common bike to best utilize their resources. Moranz was committed to the manufacturer KTM and didn’t want to change, so the risk of going fully on his own was offset by the potential for greater reward.
“So I threw the idea out that at the end of that season, that we should do something ourselves and at the Two-Stroke Nationals at the Washougal Nationals in July, (2023), which was a home race for us, and said if you want to do this I’ll facilitate (the hauler portion of the program), provide the asset.”
Bigger and Better
There wasn’t much time to take the next step.
Buckles found the rig Moranz currently uses and worked to outfit it as a SuperMotocross hauler — something he was uniquely qualified to do through his company, Championship Tool Storage.
Buckles’ company creates custom storage solutions for garages and technicians with some of the largest companies in the United States including Tesla, Fastenal, and Grangers out of their Hood River, Oregon, facility.
And the hauler had its own story to tell.
The rig Buckles found was being retired from an amateur, family-owned Motocross team. They were using it for shows and events in an attempt to break into the big leagues, but that dream was coming to an end.
As Buckles dug a little deeper, he found the transport had a much richer pedigree.
The hauler Moranz is using for all 17 rounds of the Monster Energy Supercross series began its life with Harley Davidson.
Kevin Moranz has improved one position in each of the 450 Mains for which he’s qualified.
Best Laid Plans
“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men | Gang aft agley, | An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, |For promis’d joy!,” Robert Burns wrote 230 years ago about a mouse whose nut he overturned while plowing a field.
Moranz began the 2024 season with a ton of enthusiasm, but a concussion early in the year contributed to his making only two Supercross features at the end of that season.
“Last year being the first one with (the new rig), it was unfortunate because I didn’t get a chance to prove what this was really capable of,” Moranz told NBC Sports. “So that’s the gameplan in 2025, to try and prove what we can do with the marketing (aspect of the more professional hauler).”
The dream was deferred; it did not disappear.
During that season when racing was held to a minimum, the relationship between Moranz and Buckles grew. Gradually as trust developed between the two, Buckles became an integral part of the team, which in 2025 numbers a half-dozen members.
In a team this size, roles overlap and shift. Buckles functions as team manager. Juggling responsibilities with his company, Buckles uses his connections in his business-to-business company to bring additional sponsorship to the team.
“We have a good little crew,” Buckles said. “It’s better this year; we learned a lot last year and we all swing above our average. That pretty common in a startup business, you have to live that way, so it was common for me. I don’t know any other way.”
Entering Round 7 of the Supercross season, Moranz qualified for four of the first five standard-format races. He failed to advance out of the Last Chace Qualifier in Arlington when a rider crashed in front of him on the starting straight and mired him too deeply in traffic to overcome the deficit in a mere five minutes.
This week, the series is back in action in another standard-format race on the frontstretch of the Daytona International Speedway. It is every SuperMotocross rider’s dream to make the night show and Moranz believes he has the team to make it happen.
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