Meet the Arizona-born repo man who became a YouTube star

When you think of a repo man, you might picture a guy just like Matthew Pitman.

Pitman is known as RepoNut on YouTube, he made a name for himself on line for showing what it’s really like to be a vehicle repossession agent.

“Keys in it. That should be pretty easy. Just got to get the truck out here,” Pitman says in a clip.

His original mission in broadcasting his work was to show the mundane side of the job. But, of course, the more wild interactions got all the views — and pretty soon he was wracking up millions of them.

Then, in 2016, his wife died of cancer, and he said he didn’t handle it well. He spiraled into addiction and filmed much of it on his YouTube page before disappearing from the public eye.

But now, he’s back — featured in the New Yorker and working on his own podcast about his recovery, called Know Good.

The Show caught up with him in his truck early one recent morning, before he hit the road for the day to talk about his life in the public eye and coming back from the edge. The conversation started with growing up in Phoenix.

Full conversation

MATTHEW PITMAN: It was totally different. We were literally on the edge of the city, and just it was all west. We had Luke Air Force Base out there, always watching the F-16s go overhead and stuff, and just a lot of farm community growing up in the area I was in.

LAUREN GILGER: So tell me about the first time you ever kind of went on a repo job. This was with some, some friends of friends, it sounded like?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Yeah, buddy of mine, his older brother owned a company down there called Southwest Vehicle Recovery for many years. And we would just hang out down there at the lot and stuff. And I just remember seeing the trucks coming and going. I was more down there because I was installing stereos and stuff.

But I just was always fascinated, you know, these guys coming in 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning with different vehicles on the back, or they coming in on a like a Harley-Davidson or something. I loved the hours because it was all hours of the night. And so the kid in it just thought it was totally fascinating.

It was like all these guys that are up, and a lot of them are like, you know, look like bodybuilders and stuff. And I was like, “Who are these young guys? And what are they doing?” And you just see them all coming all hours of the night, and I just thought, wow, what a you know, what’s going on here?

LAUREN GILGER: But it sounds like they did the repo work in a way that you probably would not support anymore, right? Like they were kind of pretending like they were stealing or breaking into the cars?

MATTHEW PITMAN: It was just a very different time frame, and this is, you know, late ’70s, early ’80s and stuff, and it just when we’d go out there, you know, us kids, you know, we would ride in the back of the trucks. They’d have us carry, you know, things of soapy water, and they would drag the vehicles out of like an apartment complex. They’d have us pour the water in front of the tire so they wouldn’t make loud screeching sounds and stuff. And that was like one of my first early memories was, they’d be like, “Grab these milk jugs full of soapy water and just pour them.” That’s all they tell us to do.

And we, and I realized what we’re doing is we’re making it so that it’s silent as they drag these vehicles out and stuff. And it was a lot of stuff like that. And you’d see them do things like take bolt cutters and cut locks off of a fence. And you they’d drive by and they’d throw the chain back into the, you know, the front yard. Just it was just a totally different, very Wild West kind of a feeling.

LAUREN GILGER: Was there like an adrenaline rush kind of thing?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Very much so. I mean, the very first repo I went out on, after it happened, I puked. I was so excited. I was, I was, and they were all laughing because I was they’re like, “Oh, he threw up,” you know. I was just so excited. I was like, that was amazing.

LAUREN GILGER: So this is how you kind of got hooked, it sounds like. You you thought it was too much fun to not do?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, sneaking up to a boat at 1:00 in the morning and they had you watching, you know, “If anybody comes running out of that house, you let us know,” you know, and you’re just and you’re staring the other way while you hear them hooking chains up and and all these guys just, “Get this, get that,” and you’re, and you’re kind of like watching over your shoulder to see what they’re doing, but you realize you’re the person watching the house. They’re like, “Any lights turn on, you yell immediately and tell us if anyone’s coming.” And you’re just waiting for something to happen.

Then when something did happen, someone comes running out of the backyard with a shovel in their hand screaming and hollering, you know, and nothing but a pair of boxers. You’re like, “Oh, here he comes, here he comes!” Totally different than, you know, what we do today and stuff. But I remember as a very young kid being like, this is insane what these guys are doing.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. But I mean, we should say like it’s not illegal. You’re working for the bank essentially, right? That’s what repo companies do.

MATTHEW PITMAN: Yeah, you know, everything is done absolutely aboveboard. It’s what’s called self-help repossession. And we are basically going out, and it’s one civil party working with another civil party to secure collateral that’s been secured against their financial lenders.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. You owe money, your car might get repossessed, your boat might get repossessed, that kind of thing, right?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Anything that can have a title on it, absolutely.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And I mean, it’s an interesting industry to be involved in, not because it also was sort of the Wild West back in the day, but also because it’s like such an economic bellwether, right?

Like what was this like during the Great Recession? What’s it like now as we’re seeing, you know, so many people have trouble making ends meet?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Well, unfortunately, it is a recession-proof industry. As things start to topple and get worse, we get busier. And, you know, going through a number of recessions and watching that happen, and seeing the increase year over year, we always pick up more and more collateral, and the collateral always is evolving and changing.

LAUREN GILGER: So when you first started your YouTube channel, right, which has become so popular, and, you know, spun off in in many directions. You kind of did it to prove that repo could be very mundane, right? That it wasn’t sensationalized, that it could be civil, right?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Absolutely. I mean, day after day, we aren’t having a bunch of crazy stuff happen, and the stuff they show on TV shows and stuff might happen every once in a while. But they sensationalized it to make it seem like every time you go out, there’s a fight or something’s happening crazy.

And it’s not like that. It’s it’s a lot of talking and communicating with people and dealing with people that, for the most part, are understanding. I mean, you’re going to have situations that are going to happen. But it’s really more communication than anything, and most people are, you know, levelheaded and, a lot of again a lot of cases very deflated.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. How did you kind of change your approach though? Because when you began doing this, like you said, like it was kind of the Wild West. You kind of loved those adrenaline rush moments, it sounded like. How did you realize, you know, it didn’t need to be that way?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Well, you know, I grew up. I became an adult. I, and, and dealing with people, you start to realize that that’s, you know, a very childish way of thinking and, and that this is a business, and it needs to be more professional. And that’s what a lot of us veterans are working on doing is changing the industry and changing that perception of this industry and what we’re doing, and make people realize that it doesn’t need to be that way because all that other stuff is just garbage.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So we talked about how you began your YouTube channel kind of showing the mundane and kind of civil way that this should be done. But I mean, of course, crazier stuff, you know, those those wild interactions get more views. And you and you kind of played into that, it sounds like as well.

MATTHEW PITMAN: It happens. I mean, I, you know, I wouldn’t say played into it, but it you get to where you notice that one video gets millions of views, and that video is an absolute crap show. And I always would be like, it’s unfortunate that people want to see the fails. They want to see the the hype and all that stuff.

And I did everything I could to turn that around and make people understand. And I would rather get the lower views and get the education out there than get the hype and the and the millions of views. But it shows you where the the pulse is on humanity in that that’s what people like to see.

LAUREN GILGER: It certainly is what what gets the views, yeah.

So I want to ask you about a few years ago when your wife passed away and you kind of fell into addiction, some of this was broadcast on your channel, and it and it really seems to have spiraled. This was a a really rough time for you, and I know you’re kind of coming out the other side of it. Can you talk a little depth about what that was like to, you know, be in the public eye while your life felt like it was kind of imploding?

MATTHEW PITMAN: Yeah, I mean, I kept the camera rolling and I didn’t deal well with the grief, and I, you know, got into the heavy drugs and stuff. And I mean, I went completely full homeless, lost everything, lost my business, lost my home.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

MATTHEW PITMAN: Kids, all of it. And when you come through that and come out the other side, I mean, not many people survive that. It’s given me a shift in perspective of what I want to do with my life and take my platform and convert it into something that’s not even about repossession.

You know, and it’s interesting because we call our industry the recovery industry, and now the word recovery has a dual meaning for me.

LAUREN GILGER: Absolutely.

All right. Well, congratulations on finding the other side of it. Matthew Pitman, creator of the YouTube channel RepoNut joining us. Matthew, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for telling us your story. I really appreciate it.

MATTHEW PITMAN: Yeah, appreciate your time.