SkunkTech spawned from the partnership of long-time friends Rob McKendry, international downhill longboard racer and Kerry Dunn, championship winning race mechanic. We are a new company dedicated to building the lightest, fastest and most technologically-advanced racing longboards on the planet. It is our hope to take skateboarding – especially longboard racing – to the next level with designs that are at once highly practical, comfortable to race and engineered to win.

But to understand SkunkTech now, you have to know where we've been.

SkunkTech was first conceived back in 2001 when then-budding downhill racer Rob McKendry got together with childhood friend Kerry Dunn to build a board – the "board I wanted to ride," according to McKendry. At the time, Dunn was intensely focused on winning the 2001 Indy Lights open-wheel championship as chief mechanic on the #30 racing car of Townsend Bell. While McKendry began explaining to Dunn what he wanted the board to do, Dunn began to get familiar with the basics of skateboard building and the shapes inherent in the design of a longboard.

The two ended up going separate ways for several years, but eventually picked right up where they left off. The idea of building a carbon fiber board was previously tossed around, but plans never came to fruition. This time, however, they got serious. Dunn went about learning the proper ways of fabricating carbon fiber parts, which was a step further than all of the trackside repairs and one-off parts he made over the years for Indy racecars. McKendry set about figuring out exactly what he wanted in a board, and how to translate those ideas into engineered plans.

As word started leaking out about SkunkTech amongst longboard racers, McKendry headed off for the summer '08 European downhill race circuit. The plan was for him to receive a board Dunn was finishing, and make a name for SkunkTech by taking it to the podium throughout Europe. However, it wasn’t to be. Dunn ran into a few setbacks with the design, so McKendry ended up racing on yet another stick of wood while Dunn sorted out the problems he had run into.

But practice makes perfect, right? Fast forward to early '09 when SkunkTech proudly introduced the Project One at the GMR Cali Outlaw Series downhill race in April. The carbon fiber board is the lightest, most responsive and best-handling board McKendry has ever ridden.

Now it's all about turning the rest of the world on to boards built in the same manner as every proper racing car on which Dunn has ever worked: an aluminum honeycomb core wrapped in carbon fiber, with hardpoints built in for mounting the suspension pieces (trucks, in this case). We figured if this formula could go 200 mph+ and do what racing engineers wanted – even with all of the different and massive forces created by that kind of speed – then it ought to be just as good under a downhill longboard racer's feet at speed.

So far, so good...and it's only going to get better. SkunkTech had two racers at Paskapoo in Calgary in July, we'll be at Maryhill in September and we're making boards as fast as we can.

The only thing left to do now is ask the question...how does it feel to want?