Crane Cams’ Ross Shelton has made a living in the performance world for nearly four decades

Words: Dan Hodgdon

Thanks to his rural East Tennessee upbringing, Ross Shelton jokes he is a “true hillbilly.” However, the director of sales at Daytona Beach-based Crane Cams has had a career that has taken him to points far and wide from his humble upbringing in the Volunteer State’s small southern town of Rockwood.

“I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of great people, historical people that you read about in magazines and that set records,” Ross says.

Ross may be selling himself short. He has been an important part of the performance landscape for close to 40 years. In his current role, he jokes that he is part firefighter, part accounting expert, part logistics expert, and part shipping expert. He particularly enjoys working with wholesale distributors (WDs), especially the smaller ones who sometimes struggle, but more often thrive in an industry increasingly reliant on the internet and large warehouses.

Ross comes by his relationship with smaller WDs honestly enough. He began his career out of high school at the parts counter at a shop in his hometown.

“I’m old enough that when I first started on the counter, man, we used 3×4 cards to keep inventory. There were no computers then,” he remembers. “I’m 58 years old, so I’m not that old, or at least I don’t feel that old, but I’ve went through everything. When I was growing up, I basically relied on the traditional hot rod magazines.”

Much of Ross’s family was made up of civil engineers and architects, so his introduction to the performance world was not handed down in the traditional sense. But, his uncle had some old Oldsmobiles, and his grandfather had some Chevrolets.

“I started taking things apart to see how they worked,” he says.

After graduating from high school in 1978, Ross began his career in the automotive industry by working at the aforementioned local parts store for three years. Then, in 1981, he and his high school sweetheart, Brigitte (a fellow gearhead who owned a ’69 Camaro Z/28 when they got married), moved to Houston after Ross got a job at Texas Performance. He had some friends in the area, and saw there was more opportunity in the performance world in the major Texas city than in East Tennessee.

Ross began his tenure in the warehouse and within just a couple of weeks, was the warehouse manager. A back injury in 1987 forced him into a sales role, and he has now been in a selling position for nearly 28 years, moving to Florida to work with Crane in 1997.

While having never raced competitively, Ross has been involved in a wide variety of motorsports and other performance endeavors through the years. He has long been heavily vested in motorcycles and currently serves with the Daytona Beach Chamber of Commerce, as the chairman of the Daytona Bike Week task force. He has been on the force for 18 years and served as the chairman for the past five. He also was crew chief on a Super Comp team in the late 1980s, owned a 1976 Mustang King Cobra, served on the board of directors at Crane Cams, and has been involved in off-roading and rock crawling.

He also participated in a lot of lowered truck builds in the early ’90s.

“The last one was an ‘82 short wheelbase; at the time, you couldn’t find a lowering kit, so you had to cut the coils off and kind of guess and hope that you’d done the right thing,” Ross remembers about his truck-building days. “I got quite good at that, so that’s why I ended up helping a lot of friends do their projects, too.”

Ross continually returns to the theme of people, mentioning he’s been privileged to meet industry icons like Vic Edelbrock and Mickey Thompson, Top Fuel legends Joe Amato and Eddie Hill, and witnessed racers breaking the 300 mph barrier. Through his work with Bike Week, he also met one of America’s greatest showmen and biggest personalities.

“I got to meet Evel Knievel; that may not sound great to a lot of people, but Evel Knievel was my hero growing up,” he says. “I was really impressed with [him] because he was a cool guy.”

Yet it’s not the automotive celebrities Shelton enjoys working with most; instead it’s the down-to-earth folks in the performance industry who are looking to make their cars faster or to make a living selling parts.

“What I see out there is a lot of good people willing to help everyone, and that’s what I want to do also,” he says. “I want to help people. It seems like the guy that’s struggling, that can’t figure it out, those are the guys you want to help.”

Source: Crane Cams; cranecams.com