By day, Scott Haslam runs Kingbee Work-Ready Vans, a $100 million commercial fleet company. By night, he organizes (and often performs at) RANGER Sound Car dance parties — large-scale rave events centered around a 1989 custom-refitted HEMTT military truck. So which one of these high-intensity alter egos tires him out the most?
Obviously, the one that requires him to be a bit more buttoned up.
“Closing a $5 million deal is a thousand times more exhausting than a 3 a.m. set,” Haslam says with a laugh.
It’s an almost unsurprising admission, given how busy Haslam has been in the business world. In 2013, he launched a commercial upfitting company that converted vehicles to run on natural gas and grew it into a $20-30 million dollar business.
Haslam then launched Kingbee in 2021, a fleet-rental startup that promised to deliver work-ready vans faster and more efficiently than anyone in the market. Within a year, the company scaled from $2.6 million to $18.8 million in revenue; by 2025, it was approaching nine figures.
Music remained his passion.
“Starting a business in the commercial vehicle space went well, but I never stopped loving music,” says Haslam, who grew up playing guitar and once even toured on an album he recorded with his friends. “Eventually, I wanted to do something creative again — something to share the music and the spaces I love.”
Turns out, his dream just needed a set of wheels.
Same values, different venues
The seed for RANGER was planted when one of Haslam’s friends put on a pop-up music festival by a river in the woods near Mackay, Idaho.
“It was one of the coolest experiences I’d ever had,” Haslam says. “I thought, Utah has all these beautiful places. What if we could just pop up and create an experience like that here?”
The key, he realized, was mobility. So, Haslam went on a mission to find the biggest truck he could find at a military surplus auction. He struck gold when he came across an eight-wheel-drive HEMTT truck with only 5,000 miles for just $50,000.
Then the work began.
“We drew up plans — big sound, big lights, a deck people could dance on — and just started fabricating,” Haslam says. His commercial vehicle shop became the perfect lab for the new side hustle.
RANGER now boasts custom-built framing, light arrays and high-end speakers. Each show since has added a new layer — lasers one month, projection mapping the next.
“It’s my creative outlet and a way to give back,” Haslam says.
Three years in, RANGER has hosted roughly 30 events, usually once a month during the summer. Attendance ranges from 300 to 1,000 people, with international DJs headlining, often alongside Haslam himself. Lately, his go-to track has been “Lover’s Walk” by Kino Toto.
Haslam is proud of the local clout his events carry, and is even more proud of the positivity that flows through the crowd. That’s what PLUR — Haslam’s mantra, which stands for Peace, Love, Unity, Respect — is all about.
“I’ve never had a fight, never an overdose. Everyone’s there to disconnect and enjoy themselves,” Haslam says. “When people hear ‘rave,’ they imagine chaos, but ours are intentional and respectful.”
That mindset carries into Kingbee’s culture.
“My primary motivation in running a business is building community and opportunity,” Haslam says. “I love creating spaces where people can grow and see their potential. That’s true whether it’s on a job site or a dance floor.”
Bass drops > boardrooms?
At first, Haslam was doing most of the heavy lifting for RANGER — literally. He has since passed off the talent booking, event planning, marketing and logistics to his team.
“Now, I just make sure it makes enough money to fund the next one, and I can actually enjoy the shows,” Haslam says.
He also ensures party-goers are able to enjoy the show by capping attendance at around 400 people. After testing the limits with a 3,000-person event in Salt Lake City, Haslam decided bigger wasn’t always better.
“I hated it,” he says. “Too much liability, too many drunk kids, not enough respect.”
The smaller scale allows Haslam to remain hyper-focused on experience over volume, something that’s been challenging to apply to Kingbee as its grown. The pressure of C-suite life can be enormous; Haslam perhaps half-jokingly shares that his blood pressure has gone up considerably over the years. For that, the best medicine seems to be loud music, bright lights and late nights. Who would have guessed it?
“As you scale a company, you spend more time raising money and managing deals. The creative part of your brain gets buried,” Haslam says. “RANGER brings that back. You build something, people show up, and you watch them enjoy it. It’s instant feedback.”