Meet the diesel performance world’s biggest predator: Alligator Performance

The odds are good that if you own a diesel truck and you plan on modifying it, you are going to be making a call to Alligator Performance at some point. Alligator Performance is one of the biggest diesel performance specialists in the country, which is remarkable for a company that is just this year celebrating ten years of doing business.

Owners Chad and Jayme Hall started the company in 2005 in Las Vegas, NV after Chad tired of his previous jobs in construction. He had been working on diesel trucks, specifically Duramax-powered Chevrolets for several years and decided that this would be the perfect business to get into, and eventually started the business out of the back of Chad’s truck. In 2005 they bought into Bully Dog and in 2006 built their website. Shortly after founding the company, Chad and Jayme decided that they would move from Las Vegas to a more wholesome environment for their kids. Jayme had lots of family in Coeur d’Alene, so that’s where they settled.

Setting up shop in Coeur d’Alene had other benefits as well. The Pacific Northwest is a huge market for diesel performance, with Washington State currently being one of Alligator’s largest markets. This combined with lots of available land and shop space as well as a relatively low cost of living compared to Las Vegas allowed Alligator to quickly grow roots and flourish. Alligator Performance currently has two shops; one 6500 square foot fabrication shop and another 8400 square foot shop that houses their call center, warehouse, and chassis dynamometer. There is also room to grow, which is good since they have been in the top 500 several times on Inc.’s 5000 Fastest Growing Companies.

The diesel performance industry, even in the mid-2000’s, was already filled with online parts stores, though Chad felt that many of these companies’ sales staff and customer service was lacking. When he started Alligator, he made a point of only hiring people who were die-hard diesel enthusiasts with years of personal and professional knowledge. Everyone on the eight person sales/customer service staff at Alligator drives a diesel and many have modified their personal trucks to produce astronomical levels of power and torque. The “techs” at Alligator (so called because Chad feels that calling them salespeople would be drastically underselling their considerable skills) have direct experience with the vast majority of the products that they sell, giving them a serious edge on their competitors on all of the big three diesels: Duramax, Cummins, and Powerstroke. Another way in which Alligator Performance operates a little differently is the way their sales techs interact with customers. Hall has taken the normal sales mentality and thrown it out stating that, “Our guys don’t just push parts. They are more concerned with selling the right part for the right application. We want our customers to feel like they’re talking to an expert when they call us, and not some guy from Guitar Center.”

The staff at Alligator Performance also likes to play as hard as they work, and this is exemplified by the extremely popular Hunting4Horsepower event that they put on every year. This huge celebration of diesel horsepower always manages to bring some wild trucks out of the woodwork, including Chad’s own Duramax which put down nearly 1200hp at last year’s event. All together, the trucks that showed up put down around 60,000 collective wheel horsepower last year and this year’s event will in all likelihood be even more impressive. All these dyno shenanigans benefit the customer as well. Chad and his team run what they sell, and if a component can stand up to multiple dyno pulls in a 1200hp system, then it’s probably going to work just fine in your tow rig!

Alligator Performance has been a MagnaFlow dealer almost from the start and Chad and his crew run MagnaFlow systems on many of their vehicles. “The MagnaFlow stainless stuff is great and their decision to start selling aluminized steel systems has been a huge success for us. Most of our customers are younger guys, 18-25, and investing in a full stainless system can be financially out of reach of some of them, especially if they’re trying to do an intake and tune at the same time. This gets them in the door and we’re thrilled about that,” says Hall.

The diesel market presents a unique set of challenges that are always changing due to engine designs and emissions technologies. MagnaFlow and Alligator Performance will continue to work with enthusiasts throughout the diesel community to stay on the leading edge of exhaust technology. It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a Cummins, a Duramax, or a Powerstroke; Alligator Performance is there to make sure that your oil burner is realizing its full potential.