The old saying “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure” takes on a new meaning when applied to the Long brothers of Tyrone. University alumni Brian Long (’90, Ag Engineering), Gregory Long (’80, Ag Mechanization), and their brother Terry teamed up to win TV’s Junkyard Wars—and they say they owe it all to their agricultural roots.

“Junkyard Wars” is a popular series on The Learning Channel. In the show, three-person teams from across the country are dropped into a junkyard outside London, England, where they must build a variety of high-tech machines—from off-road racers to working rockets—using whatever they can find in the yard. They compete against other teams as well as the clock, and the war’s not over until the teams test their new creations in head-to-head competition. The programs follow the teams through a daylong scramble that’s part scavenger hunt, part engineering face-off, and part science lesson. It’s “MacGyver” meets “Survivor” with humorous play-by-play and no shortcuts—and may the best mad scientist win.

The Long brothers emerged from this season’s tournament of eight teams as the winners, besting animatronics experts, aircraft mechanics, stockbrokers, and musicians to win the title of “2001 Titans of Trash.” Their assignments included building an off-road racer, a hovercraft, and a rocket that could fly an ostrich egg hundreds of feet into the air and back without breaking it. Greg Long explains that growing up together on a dairy farm gave the brothers a special edge in the competition.

“We’re not geniuses,” Long says. “We’ve just been doing this since we were kids. Growing up on the farm, we’ve been welding since we were seven or eight years old. Mechanical drive systems, hydraulics, pneumatics—you name the technology, and you have to deal with it on a dairy farm. Some of the other teams had lots of credentials, but they didn’t have the hands-on experience that we did—our get-the-hay-in-before-it-rains mentality.”

Long says the competition format didn’t allow for preplanning or intricate designs. They just arrived at the scrapyard in the morning, received their assignments, and started scrounging. The show’s producers provided an expert who could explain basic principles and suggest strategies, but the real work was up to the brothers: walking through the junkyard, grabbing parts, and finding ways to assemble them.

The toughest challenge came when they had to make their creations work in actual competition. “That’s where our experience and farm background came in: knowing what will work and what won’t,” Long explains. “We won, primarily, because of simple designs and good workmanship. In all three competitions, the other team could have won if their machines had held together. The other teams’ machines almost always failed mechanically—they couldn’t just look at them and know that some things wouldn’t work. Our machines held together because we’re used to putting together machines that have to work and hold up.

“The other thing that helped us is that, as brothers, we’ve been working together for years. So we didn’t spend a lot of time sorting out who was good at what—we went straight to work. Brian was the captain because he got us on the show, but we all know how stuff works. We did all of our own repair work on the farm. If something didn’t work the way we wanted it to, we just redesigned it and rebuilt it.”

As the reigning U.S. junkyard champs, the Long brothers got to compete against the British champs for the world championship; that program will air in July, and Greg’s not revealing the results. He does confirm, however, that you don’t get rich and famous doing this exercise.

“We won a medal made of an old bearing with some ball bearings that rattle in it, and a trophy made from an old crankshaft,” he says. “There’s no financial gain. It’s strictly for bragging rights. Overall, it’s fun to say that we did it, but I can’t say it was fun while we were there. It was a lot of hard work.”

Not included in Long’s equation, however, are the admiration the brothers receive from gearheads worldwide. Their TV appearances also have made them minor celebrities in Tyrone—heroes to a very diverse audience. “I’m talking to doctors and lawyers who follow the show,” he says. “And lots of kids—eight- to twelve-year-olds love us. The show is really hands-on and mechanical, and the kids love to see the welder’s sparks fly. The races at the end are dramatic, too—it’s a fun show to watch.”

—Gary Abdullah