Aaron — Chad's Lifelong Best Friend — Finally Speaks on the Hardest Thing He Witnessed at the Shop

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Through every fight, every departure, every announcement that shook the shop, and there's been one person who never left, Aaron. Chad's been building cars his whole life, but Aaron's been there for all of it. And what he's seen, and what he's chosen to say publicly about the hardest parts, is a story that doesn't get told enough.

[00:00:20]Most people who watch Bad Chad Customs walk away thinking about Chad, which makes sense because Chad Hilts is the kind of builder who demands your full attention.

[00:00:31]His method of constructing custom hot rods from scrapyard metal and salvaged parts, working on a budget that most fabricators would laugh at, became the engine of an entire reality television series on Discovery Channel. Jolene ran the business side, Colton was learning the trade from his father in real time, and Alex kept the machines breathing.

[00:00:54]Those are the names that dominate fan discussions, comment sections, and every where are they now video on the platform. And yet, there's a figure who passed through every single frame of that show without once demanding credit for it. A person whose presence, once you actually start tracking it, tell you more about who Chad Hilts is than any interview ever could. That person is Aaron Rand. Aaron and Chad didn't meet on a casting call. Their friendship predates the show by decades, rooted in the same small town Nova Scotia world that shaped Chad's entire approach to building. When Discovery introduced viewers to the Green Goblin Customs crew in January 2019, Aaron wasn't introduced as a new hire or a colorful addition to the cast.

[00:01:45]He was simply already there, already trusted, already doing the work, and that distinction matters more than it might seem.

[00:01:52]Reality television loves a good origin story, a dramatic introduction, a moment where someone earns their place.

[00:02:01]Aaron skipped all of that because by the time cameras arrived, his place had been earned years before anyone thought to film it. And this part of Aaron's background almost never comes up, even among people who followed the show closely since season 1.

[00:02:17]Running parallel to his work with Chad, Aaron co-owns Up Country Builders along with its offshoot Up Country Builders Apparel, and the range of craft that operation covers stops most people cold when they actually look into it.

[00:02:32]Automotive upholstery, custom leather work, cabinetry and wooden furniture, steel fabrication. The man lays brick.

[00:02:40]He builds doors and finishes countertops.

[00:02:43]Up Country Builders isn't a side project born from the show's exposure. It's a standalone creative identity built and maintained on its own terms.

[00:02:53]None of that stops Aaron from directing serious portions of his skill toward Chad's shop, and that choice, deliberate, sustained, unannounced, says everything about what the friendship actually means.

[00:03:07]On the show itself, Aaron's contribution locked into the finishing layer of what made Bad Chad Builds feel complete.

[00:03:15]Chad's mind runs at full speed on concept and structure, on the silhouette and the impossible detail, on the thing nobody else would think to try.

[00:03:25]And what Aaron brought was the interior realization of all that vision.

[00:03:30]His upholstery work gave the builds their sense of completion.

[00:03:34]A car can look extraordinary from 20 ft away and feel unfinished the moment someone opens a door, and Aaron made sure that never happened.

[00:03:44]Across the season, two builds, the chromed-out '57 Cadillac roadster, the '34 Oldsmobile dump truck, the ambitious 71 Pinto transformation.

[00:03:56]Aaron moved through the shop with a quiet efficiency that reality television doesn't typically reward because the format gravitates toward conflict and confession.

[00:04:06]Aaron gave it neither. He gave the shop competence and he gave it consistently, every build, every season.

[00:04:13]Now, here's where it gets interesting because there was one moment, and if you watched season 2 closely, you know exactly which one, where Aaron's reaction said more than any speech could.

[00:04:25]That second season carried weight from its opening episode.

[00:04:29]The rebranding from Green Goblin Customs to Hit's Automotive had already shifted the energy inside the shop.

[00:04:37]Jolene was still present, but fractures were forming beneath the surface, the kind that don't announce themselves loudly, but show up in how people move around each other in a shared workspace.

[00:04:48]Colton's relationship with his father carried years of complicated history, limited contact through childhood, summer visitation, and then suddenly full-time apprenticeship under a television spotlight where every mistake gets archived. The pressure inside that shop during season 2 wasn't just about deadlines. Personal and professional tension had fused together, and the cameras caught the atmosphere even when they didn't catch the specifics.

[00:05:15]Aaron was inside all of it. Not as someone who fed the drama or positioned himself within it, but as the one constant presence who watched every piece of it develop and came back the next morning to keep working.

[00:05:30]When the shop got heavy, and anyone who sat with season 2 could feel it moving through the footage, Aaron kept his hands moving and his opinions to himself.

[00:05:40]That restraint held under genuine pressure over an extended period is one of the more striking things the show documented without ever framing it as something worth documenting.

[00:05:52]The full scope of what Aaron witnessed across this show's run deserves to be said plainly.

[00:05:58]He watched his lifelong friend build something extraordinary from almost nothing, a national television platform, a business with real momentum, a reputation that traveled well beyond rural Nova Scotia. And alongside that ascent, he watched the personal cost accumulate. Jolene MacIntyre had been the one who first recognized what Chad could do and put it on camera, whose belief in the work made the show possible before any network ever entered the conversation.

[00:06:29]That relationship eventually came apart and Aaron was close enough to the center of things to watch it unravel, probably long before any viewer had any sense that something was wrong.

[00:06:40]The father-son dynamic between Chad and Colton, which the show handled with more honesty than most reality television would risk, also played out in front of Aaron across both seasons with all its tension and all its genuine moments of progress.

[00:06:56]None of that happens at a comfortable distance from someone who's been in the shop that long. And through all of it, the rebranding, the personal upheaval, the cancellation after season 2 wrapped in October 2020, the continued life of the shop after the cameras left, Aaron stayed. No exit announcement, no public statement, no comment that gave anyone a sound bite.

[00:07:19]Just continued presence.

[00:07:22]What Aaron staying tells you about Chad, this is the most underrated thing in this entire story.

[00:07:28]Loyalty that performs for an audience isn't really loyalty, it's content.

[00:07:34]Real loyalty shows up in whether someone walks in the next morning when the circumstances are hard and the cameras are gone. Aaron's unbroken presence through everything that shop has been through, and it has been through a great deal, is a character reference that no quote could match.

[00:07:52]It communicates something specific.

[00:07:54]Whatever narrative has formed around Chad Hilts the public figure, whatever version of events circulates in comment sections and fan forums, this man who has known Chad longer than almost anyone, who watched the best and worst of it from inside the building, still chooses to be there.

[00:08:13]That is not a casual thing. That is the most honest endorsement one person can give another.

[00:08:19]With momentum building around what a return to screens could look like for Bad Chad, Aaron's role in that next chapter becomes a genuinely interesting question.

[00:08:30]Because if Bad Chad Customs comes back in any form, Aaron doesn't return as a legacy cast member brought in for continuity.

[00:08:38]He comes back as part of the foundation that made the shop what it actually is.

[00:08:43]The craft is still there. Up Country Builders is still running. The friendship is still intact. Whatever Aaron has been building since season 2's final episode aired, he built it without needing anyone to notice, and that's exactly the kind of person who tends to matter most when something real is being made.

[00:09:01]The quiet version of this story, the one that never trends, is that Bad Chad Customs wasn't just a show about one man's vision.

[00:09:10]It was about the infrastructure of people who made that vision possible week after week, build after build. And one of those people never asked for recognition in return.

[00:09:21]Aaron Rand's side of this story gets told through presence, through consistency, through a friendship that outlasted a television run, a breakup, a cancellation, and everything that came after. He just never needed you to to it. Aaron doesn't get enough credit in this community. Drop a comment if you think he's one of the most underrated people on the whole show, and subscribe.

[00:09:44]We've got more deep dives on every cast member coming soon.