NW Diesel

Ethan Olsen, owner of NW Diesel (NW), has his roots on the dealership level. “I worked for Ford for a long time,” recalls Ethan. “There are some things this particular dealership did really well, and others that I feel that could be improved upon. It just got to the point where I saw customers throwing money good after bad, and I decided… it was time to make a change.”

In the few years that they’ve been in existence, NW Diesel has doubled in size from a 4,000 sq. ft. building gobbling up the spaces next to it growing to a 10,000 sq. ft. that they now have already completely outgrown. The future is indeed bright for NW Diesel.

When Ethan opened the doors for business in April of 2017, he was the sole employee. He and his one lift shop gathered steam to become the now five lift/five tech shop. They specialize in repair and maintenance, but don’t shy away from performance upgrades. Being that NW is the only shop in town with a dyno it adds another feather in their cap as they take pride in making old trucks run like the new ones. “Take the 6.0-liter Power Stroke for instance,” says Ethan, “We take the cab off, remove the parts, work the heads (we actually have all the milling equipment in-house to O-ring the heads), put them back together again with all of the upgrades needed to make the engine rock solid.”

While the engine is apart and the cab is off, NW offers other upgrades like upgraded injectors, turbos and the like. And performance is something they can do well. “We have a 7.3-liter Power Stroke that’s putting down in the high sixes! That’s pretty good for that old girl!” But performance doesn’t just stop at the upgrade component level for Ethan. “A growing part of the business is conversions. We play a lot with the Cummins 2.8-liter crate engine, and we’ll put them in everything from Jeeps to… believe it or not… F-150s. We also swap Cummins 5.9- and 6.7-liter engine in things. That’s grown substantially since we opened our doors.”