I generally can get along with anybody. There's a list of people who would disagree for various reasons but for the most part, if you deal square with me, we're going to get a long just fine.
I first spoke with Nikola Motor founder and then-CEO Trevor Milton in 2016. I had no idea who he was other than somebody that wanted to bring to market a Class 8 tractor with 2,000 horsepower and 3,700 ft. lbs. of torque. I'm a truck guy. Those numbers got my attention.
We spoke for an hour in that initial conversation. He comes off affable enough; a bright guy, full of optimism and big ideas, even if some of it felt unrealistic. Why the hell would anyone need or want 2,000 horsepower to tug around less than 70,000 pounds of freight?
Nevertheless, that's what he said, so that's what I quoted. For the record, I did ask that very question and Milton told me that was simply the max output of the motors themselves, and that actual production models would be software limited.
Remember, this was in 2016 – six years before the first Nikola truck went into production. Actual production models looked nothing like the model Milton spoke of then, nor did most of Nikola's business model – both common pivots for startups over the course of more than half a decade.
Most of my conversations with Milton had a very Elon Musk vibe to them, a man Milton admitted he aspired to be like. Trevor Milton checked a lot of those same boxes: Crazy claims. Wild deadlines. Big numbers. Ideas that seemed to lack a lot of critical analysis.
When he spoke of the development of Nikola's Coolidge, Ariz., manufacturing plant, it was to be almost like a city center, bringing jobs and employee housing all around – something almost like Hershey, Penn., the model town founded by Milton Hershey for his chocolate factory employees and their families.
As it turns out, running fast and loose with reality and an "act now and ask questions later" approach to business works for only a few people: Elon Musk and Willy Wonka, and Willy Wonka nearly killed five kids.
I caught some heat personally for my coverage of Nikola from a then-fellow journalist, challenged on the grounds that it was my job to expose Milton for a carnival barker. The irony being this same journalist, who is no longer a journalist and hasn't been for a number of years, had the same opportunity to do that very thing but elected not to take it. No one did, until a forensic financial research firm went all in.
I asked Milton similar questions to those that I have asked of the heads of Daimler Truck North America, Volvo and Mack Trucks, Peterbilt and Kenworth, and International Trucks, and Isuzu Motors, and Hino, and... You get the idea. I reported those answers. If those answers were non-answers, or if they were crazy or weird, I reported those too and let readers draw their own conclusions.
I had no reason to believe in my early coverage of Nikola that Trevor Milton was anything more than blinded by optimism, a little too proud of himself, and at least slightly out of touch with the realities of the trucking market he was attempting to crash into.
Did I think all of Trevor Milton's bravado would lead to the actual manufacturing of a truck? Lord, no, but I never wrote that. With the lone exception of my op-eds in CCJ's Perspectives space (where this article is posted), I keep my opinions out of my reporting. Maybe no one was more surprised than me when Nikola rolled a truck down the assembly line and actually delivered it.
Did I think Trevor Milton would be sentenced to prison and charged with financial crimes? Again, no. There's a line between being full of shit and lying criminally.
As federal charges mounted against Milton in the early 2020s, my former peer relished in "I told you so." I guess I was supposed to know in 2016 that Trevor Milton would be indicted for something that wouldn't happen for two more years. My history book doesn't work like that.
I covered the negative Nikola news too, right up to the company's pending demise. And the truck fires. And the recalls. And Milton's kayfabe turn.
I saw the truck that now infamously wasn't running, but rolling down a hill in 2018, actually move under its own power in 2019. Two of them. I not only saw it, I recorded it, put it on the internet, and almost 90,000 people have seen it.
The 2020 report that unofficially kicked off Nikola's death spiral, Nikola: How to Parlay An Ocean of Lies Into a Partnership With the Largest Auto OEM in America, was not compiled by a journalist or published by a news outlet. Bloomberg was the first news agency to my knowledge to report (almost four years later) that the truck shown at the 2016 debut was not an actual working model, rather it is was basically just holding up the sheet that covered it. The ironically named but equally explosive Hindenburg report came out three months later.
CCJ was at that 2016 debut in Utah and you couldn't get close enough to the truck to tell what it was or what it wasn't. There were many fleet owners and executives and owner operators at that event, and where Milton stepped on the rake was saying of the truck then-behind him, "This is a real truck. This is not a pusher."
I'm fortunate that I get to drive new models as they come out across all OEMs, and that included the Nikola Tre and the electric dune buggy that was never manufactured. We broke an axle on that drive.
I get asked all the time by readers, "What's the best truck?" Or, "What truck is your favorite?" I give the same answer every time, and I have for years: "Everybody makes a good truck." I don't get to pick winners and losers, nor do I want to. I hope everyone sells every truck they can possibly manufacture. That means our industry is healthy and, personal opinions aside, I want all of us to be successful.
The legacy of Trevor Milton, himself equal parts Elon Musk and Willy Wonka – with a little P.T. Barnum mixed in – is complex, but I doubt you'll find "square dealer" in any of his biographies. I didn't hear it mentioned in the Chasing Tesla episode of the CNBC series American Greed that was devoted to him.
I take no personal pleasure in Nikola's demise, and I don't know why anyone would. A lot of good and smart people lost their jobs. Some of them left very successful roles at legacy OEMs for the chance to be part of something new and special. They'll catch on somewhere else eventually. The world moves on regardless. Electric trucks will keep rolling down the assembly line at other OEMs, and Nikola will be another page in trucking history between Diamond T and REO Motor Car Company.
