A small business owner got in a series of fights with city hall and other business owners, largely his fault. After a long series of self-inflicted hardships, he took a bulldozer, armored it with layers of concrete and metal plates and guns, and went on a rampage through town, destroying buildings of everyone who he thought wronged him, most while they were still occupied (everyone escaped safely). Eventually the killdozer got stuck in a ditch and he committed suicide.

The whole story became famous after someone posted an entertaining SomethingAwful thread valorizing the guy as a hero of the people. (Which I can't find, wtf Google)

[–] HumanBehaviorByBjork@hexbear.net 10 points 4 months ago

i mean the story was already famous. it was national news at the time.

[–] Midnight1938@reddthat.com 7 points 4 months ago

Oh that fun joyride

[–] booty@hexbear.net 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

some guy got big mad over some small business owner drama shit and (very calmly and rationally of course) turned his bulldozer into a shitty tank with a bunch of concrete armor, sealed himself inside it, and then went and smashed up some buildings before getting stuck

[–] egg1918@hexbear.net 18 points 4 months ago

Least aggressive small business tyrant

[–] Diuretic_Materialism@hexbear.net 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

A guy in Colorado turned a bulldozer into a tank and ran over a bunch of shit over a small town real estate dispute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer?wprov=sfti1

There's been like 10 different accounts of his story at this point, some sympathetic, some not. Idk which is the most true.

[–] Black_Mald_Futures@hexbear.net 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm inclined to disbelieve the "killdozer was an asshole" stories because they're basically the opposite of the original story framing as him being fucked over and like, yall, he's dead and they've had literal decades to work on a narrative where everyone who isn't dead is the good guys!

Hexbear just falling for Colorado State Department lies 😔 wake up to the corruption of big local government!!

[–] Diuretic_Materialism@hexbear.net 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I recently got like halfway through a like 3 hour YT doc on the guy that goes way more into detail than Rozc from WTYP does in his 30 min one(which is where I assume most people here got their info). Granted the YT channel seems to be run by some Christian dude who lives out west so demographically he's more inclined to sympathize with Killdozer than a Succ civil engineer podcaster from Philly, but regardless he did seem to cite his sources a bit better.

I got really bored with it because the main issue seems to be that nobody still alive involved in this incident can seem to get their story straight. The whole thing happened over the course of a fucking decade and it seems nobody really remembers the lead up to the rampage very well.

From what I could gather before I passed out from too many beers, Marvin was a small business Kulak libertarian, but it does seem he stepped on the toes of some local townies when he bought that property at auction. I don't think there was a conspiracy of any sort but I do think they jerked him around a bit. Also previously Marvin had been a rather successful small business Kulak, so much so he essentially retired early to go grill in some mountain town before getting talked back into being a Kulak by a buddy but then that new business started going bad right around the time he was getting jerked around by these townies.

Long and short, seems he did get fucked over but he overreacted cuz he was an entitled small business AnCap douche. Least that's what it seems.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The mistake he made was thinking that 'everything is for sale' especially in small towns. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your perspective), in these small towns you have to earn friendship through years of casual sexism and racism, and if someone comes in and starts buying up property but not interacting with the community, they will find themselves having all kinds of 'trouble' very quickly. The real key is to buy something in the dilapidated downtown, then renovate it completely, make it look nice, and sell, idk, 'antiques' out it. Then the city won't care if you use your property outside the town as a hazardous waste site or whatever.

[–] Diuretic_Materialism@hexbear.net 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

From what I gathered, his buddy talked him into opening another muffler shop in Granby (he already had one in Boulder, but he had handed off the day to day operations to some guy so he could grill (well actually snowmobile, he was really into snowmobiling apparently)), and he bought the land for it at auction. The land had belonged to some local guy but the guy had defaulted on a government small business loan or something, and that guy had managed to find some dude last minute to front him the money to re-buy it back at auction, but Marvin showed up and dropped way more cash on it than anyone was expecting. So, technically Marvin didn't do anything wrong, he showed up at an auction and out bidding some dude, but that apparently pissed some locals off who felt the original owner was being screwed. Other locals tho apparently thought the original owner was a dick and liked Marvin better shrug-outta-hecks

Oh yeah and apparently Marvin's buddy backed out of the new muffler shop deal last minute so Marvin had to run the whole thing himself which was more than he agreed to.