Where Is The Cast Of American Chopper Today?

"American Chopper" premiered on the Discovery Channel in 2003, relatively early in the reality TV era, and the show's unique mix of human relationships and workplace drama really helped solidify the format followed by countless other reality shows set in interesting and unusual places of business. The action on "American Chopper" went down at Orange County Choppers, a top-notch motorcycle customization shop in southern New York state. Audiences became transfixed with not only the motorcycle miracles made from metal and paint, but with the real-life employees of OCC, chief among them impressively mustached (and often contentious) shop boss Paul Teutul, Sr. (or just "Senior"), his son Paul Jr. ("Junior"), Mikey Teutul, Vinnie DiMartino, and Rick Petko, among others. 

"American Chopper" rode off into the sunset in 2010 (and its spin-off, "American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior," departed in 2012), only to return to TV in 2018. Here's what Senior, Junior, and the rest of the OCC staff got up to in the meantime.

"American Chopper" returned to TV in 2018, a beneficiary of a television-wide "reboot" craze in which a variety of old, familial favorites shot new seasons of episodes. It's amazing that even happened for "American Chopper," seeing as how the previous attempt to revive the show, "Orange County Choppers: American Made," was mired in lawsuits. According to Page Six, in April 2017, Thomas Derbyshire filed suit in Delaware State Chancery Court, arguing that Teutul (his business partner) used the money Derbyshire poured into "Orange County Choppers: American Made" for personal use. (In other words, fraud.)

Things also soured when Teutul attempted to change his ownership deal with Derbyshire from 51/49 (in favor of Derbyshire) to a 50/50 split. Derbyshire also said in his filing that Teutul delayed production by taking a long fishing trip and when he did show up to shoot, wouldn't do scenes with Hells Angels higher-up Rusty Coones, which was contractually obligated. Derbyshire says Teutul also made product placement deals without his approval.

In July 2018, Paul Teutul, Sr. arrived in a Poughkeepsie, New York, courtroom for a mediation hearing in another lawsuit. Teutul and lawyers representing the bike builder and Orange County Choppers attempted to reach an agreeable outcome with attorneys for JTM Motorsports. That company alleged that Teutul had promised to promote their business, and in exchange, they'd work on his Corvette for free. Teutul apparently didn't keep up his end of the bargain, and had to pay JTM $50 a day to store the car until this legal matter could be settled.

Teutul apparently didn't understand the meaning of the word "mediation" — two sides maturely and peacefully "mediate" their disagreement so as to come to an agreement without the costly, timely ordeal of a full court case. "While both lawyers were verbally discussing the mediation, Paul was getting agitated," a source close to the case told Page Six. That's when Teutul tired of the process, stood up and screamed at JTM to give him back his car (along with a profane epithet) and then "basically leaned over the table and lunged." While Teutul didn't make contact, a JTM attorney "requested that he be restrained and three court officers came upstairs." Security then removed Teutul from the immediate premises.

In what could be considered odd timing or some bizarre guerrilla marketing, just a day before the "American Chopper" reboot premiered in March 2018, Paul Teutul, Sr. filed for bankruptcy. According to Chapter 13 legal paperwork obtained by Page Six, Teutul admitted to owing nearly 50 creditors a total of more than $1.07 million, against a net worth of around $1.8 million. Teutul also claimed a monthly income of $15,000 and expenditures of just over $12,600. While that technically means Teutul makes more money than he spends, he wouldn't have enough to pay off his crushing debts. Among his past-due payments, according to the filing: a $32,000 judgment, $151,000 in taxes to the Town of Crawford, New York, $21,000 in credit card debt, and $2,000 in medical bills.

It seemed as if Teutul would receive some legal protections with bankruptcy status, but the story wasn't over. In April 2019, the trustee in charge of Teutul's case asked the court to dismiss the bankruptcy petition on the grounds that Teutul never supplied the right documentation. According to that filing, Teutul "failed to provide" the trustee "with copy of a federal income tax return or transcript" for 2017 and 2018 and more proof that his financial situation "indicates a negative cash flow."

About four months before he filed for bankruptcy and the whole world suddenly knew about his daunting financial problems, Paul Teutul, Sr. tried to get out in front of his cash flow issues by putting his enormous Montgomery, New York estate on the market. The October 2017 listing touted the 38-acre property's waterfalls, stocked pond, wooded areas, not to mention the many outbuildings designed to house farm animals. Which is to say nothing of the main house — a log and brick palace — or the pool, gazebo, hot tub, and volleyball court. Asking price: about $2.9 million, more than enough to get Teutul out of a few money jams.

When no viable buyer emerged within three months, Teutul cut the price to $2.49 million. By early 2019, the retreat was available for just $1.65 million. The trustee in charge of his bankruptcy case said Teutul seemed assured that his home would sell and solve all his money woes, but it doesn't seem to have worked out that way, at least not yet.

"American Chopper" fans came for the bikes but stayed for the fights. Paul Teutul, Sr. and Paul Teutul, Jr. frequently argued over just about everything. That makes for great, addictive reality television, but things still had to get done around the shop at Orange County Choppers. And so fabricator and mechanic Vinnie DiMartino tried to keep his head down and get to work, always trying to remain dedicated to his craft. In 2007, DiMartino left "American Chopper" and OCC — out of professional boredom and the need to grow. DiMartino founded his own shop, VForceCustoms.

"I had gone as far as I could there," DiMarino wrote on VForce's now-defunct website. "I really didn't have any chance for advancement, and I had always wanted to have my own shop, so the natural progression was to leave and start my own place." He ran VForce for five years, even working as an outside contractor for Paul Teutul Jr. In 2013, DiMartino abandoned bikes ... for cars. He sold off all his bike stuff, bought some car shop stuff, and opened DiMartino Motorsports, a car and truck repair company in Walden, New York.

If you've been wondering what happened to Rick Petko from "American Chopper," he took a job as a builder and fabricator at Orange County Choppers not long after cameras rolled on the show's first season, and he happily built all kinds of interesting rides. Even when the Paul Teutuls split up to run separate shops, and attempted to keep as many OCC employees on their sides, Petko stayed on with Senior but stayed amiable with Junior. Everyone could agree on Rick — both Paul Teutuls attended his wedding in 2012 to the former Brittany Cockeram. By the end of 2015, Petko was a dad to two young daughters. He was still working at OCC by then, but, tired of his 90-minute commute (each way) from his home in northeastern Pennsylvania to the shop in southern New York, he took a job as the chief fabricator at the Pocono Mountain Harley-Davidson complex in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, roughly a mile from his house.

And when he's not working with metal, Petko ... works with metal. He runs a small knife-forging company out of his home called RPD & Co.

Paul Teutul Sr. and Paul Teutul Jr. frequently and loudly disagreed throughout their years together on "American Chopper." Fortunately, there was a third member of the Teutul family around to maintain a tenuous peace: Mikey Teutul, hired at first to do entry-level work around Orange County Choppers — emptying the garbage, answering the phones, things of that nature. A funny and friendly guy, he did his best to keep things chill in the shop and in his bloodline. But a man can only take so much — he walked away from the "Chopper" franchise in 2012 so that he might, according to the Discovery Channel, "seek some peace of mind and work on my relationship with my dad." He did come back to work, however, pitching in at both OCC and Paul Jr. Designs.

Also a budding artist, Teutul used part of his time off to open an art gallery in Montgomery, New York, which featured his paintings. It closed in 2014, but Teutul pursued another artistic project: A web series. Launched in 2016, "Bummin' Around" aims to shine a light on New York City's homelessness problem.

Cody Connelly was but a boy when he got his foot in the door as a motorcycle-loving, 14-year-old intern at Orange County Choppers, before "American Chopper" came to pass. After finishing school, he put the skills he learned to work at the shop, fixing up and designing bikes until 2007. That's when Vinnie DiMartino amicably left the business and show to start his own company, VForce Customs ... and Connelly followed him. He kept doing what he'd been doing at OCC at VForce for a few years before returning to the world of the Teutuls in the form of a job at Paul Teutul Jr.'s design shop. Today, he's out of the professional bike game altogether — he currently works for a utility company.

In 2009, Connelly made tabloid headlines for taking legal action against some of his former employers. According to the suit (via TMZ), Connelly claimed that he was paid for only around a third of the episodes in which he actually appeared (and nothing for public appearances that promoted OCC). He also alleged that the show used his image in "American Chopper" merchandise after he'd left the show in 2007. Even worse: Teutul Sr. never gave him a chopper he'd worked on that he'd been promised. Connelly sought $250,000 in damages.

All those fights between Senior and Junior were apparently not staged for the benefit of reality TV cameras. They've had their share of explosive arguments on the show, and tensions ran so high at Orange County Choppers that in 2008, Paul Teutul Sr. fired Paul Jr. from the shop, even though he co-owned it. Junior later told Fox News that his dad giving him the axe was "a big favor" because it allowed him to get "out from under my dad's controlling nature" and set him on the path to starting his own business. Paul Jr. Designs opened in 2010, after Teutul's one-year non-compete clause expired.

Paul Sr. then tried to legally force Paul Jr. to sell him his 20 percent share of the company, a matter that had to be put on the back burner when father and son had to make amends — getting rid of Junior represented a breach of contract with the Discovery Channel, and it could have led to the show's cancellation. This all led the network to start an "American Chopper" spin-off/continuation featuring both Teutuls' businesses called "American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior." After that series concluded in 2012, Paul Jr. went back to Paul Jr. Designs, and in 2015 celebrated the birth of his first child, a son named Hudson.

There's a lot of money to be made in the fields of motorcycle design and reality television. Paul Teutul, Jr. is successful in both fields, co-founding Orange County Chopper with his father in 1999, and then co-starring on "American Chopper." In 2010, Teutul left the family business to strike out on his own, opening Paul Junior Designs.

However, he had to wait a year to build any bikes due to a one-year non-compete clause, so he got to work on other projects, including designing a dog park in Montgomery, New York, and performing a top-to-bottom overhaul of Coleman's RoadTrip Grill, making the metal meat-cooker look a lot like a sweet chopper in what the company's marketing manager said was the first time it had hired an "outside celebrity designer." Between all of those irons in the fire, Teutul is worth a cool $2 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

No stranger to lawsuits, Paul Teutul, Sr. was wrapped up yet another sticky legal matter in February 2020. The previous June, a professional photographer named Scott Gunnells filed a lawsuit against Orange County Choppers, broadcaster Discovery Inc., production company Pilgrim Media Group, Paul Teutul, Sr., and his son, Mikey Teutul. He alleged that he owned the copyright on a photograph of the younger Teutul that had been used on two pieces of "American Chopper" merchandise without authorization or compensation. The merch in question: a $19.95 T-shirt and a $39.99 hooded sweatshirt. Gunnells also claimed that a different shot he took of Mikey Teutul was used to promote an art exhibition, and the Teutuls went so far as to remove his business's logo from the image.

A Southern District of New York judge ruled in favor of Gunnells, ordering the Teutuls to pay the man $258,484.45 in damages.

Have you ever thought Planet Hollywood would be better with fewer celebrities and more motorcycles? Then we have some good (and admittedly surprising) news for you!

With "American Chopper" winding down, Paul Teutul, Sr. began looking for some new ways to generate income, especially methods that could benefit from his celebrity. Similar to how the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas from "Pawn Stars" became a tourist attraction after being featured on TV for years, Teutul aims to make Orange County Choppers a fan destination. In November 2020, Paul Teutul Sr. partnered with Keith Overton (a local Flordinian businessman who made a name for himself by working with TradeWinds Island Resorts before branching out on his own) to develop the Orange County Choppers Road House and Museum. Part-restaurant, part-monument to the Teutul family business, the establishment was conceptualized to feature a wide variety of memorabilia from "American Chopper," rare items from the elder Teutul's personal collection, and — of course — the bikes that made him famous.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Teutul and Overton audaciously projected their opening date around the summer 2021 — and sure enough, they held a packed grand opening event on June 25 and have stayed in business ever since. What sets the Road House apart from most Planet Hollywoods and Hard Rock Cafes is the spacious, outdoor pavilion set-up that gives the area the feel of a permanent bike show. As far as tourist attractions go, the OOC Road House appears to be firing on all cylinders.

In 2019, following the completion of the 12th and final season the year prior, the Discovery Channel arranged for a special to be shot that would cap off the series as a whole and help the Teutuls ride off into the sunset. Unfortunately, it went over as smoothly as you'd expect for a show built on a uniquely volatile father-son relationship.

"American Chopper: The Last Ride" aired on August 4, 2020. The general plot (for lack of a better word) of the episode ostensibly follows Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. deciding to put aside their differences to build one final bike before their shop is demolished. During this endeavor, however, Senior continues to undercut and belittle his son. Real or reality TV, this old dynamic struck a sour tone that didn't sit right with fans as the final send-off to Orange County Choppers.

Devoted audience members on the r/AmericanChopper subreddit described the special as "garbage," "painful to watch," and "a terrible way to end the series." One moment in particular that several fans took umbrage with was Paul Sr. going out of his way to point out that Junior apparently did such unacceptable work on a bike that it cost the shop $90,000.

While some of the old OOC crew have fully retreated from the limelight or are satisfied with working on bikes in peace, Michael Teutul seems to have found something of an entertainer within himself after being on "American Choppers." The youngest of Paul Sr.'s sons has since started a comedy-talk podcast with Al Franco, an OOC worker who didn't feature on the hit television series. Titled "MikeyNAl," this weekly catch-up with the Choppers' comic relief premiered May 11, 2023, and has managed to cover a wide variety of topics relating to Michael's experience shooting "American Chopper," growing up Teutul, and how his life has changed now that the show is over.

Even as raw as the Teutuls were on the Discovery Channel and TLC, Michael's presence on his podcast is somehow more relaxed and vulnerable. On an episode where he tries to recount where some of his friends from the shop have ended up over the years, he casually admits that he sees his own story as "tragic," presumably because he hasn't broken out on his own in the biking industry (like, for example, Vinnie DiMartino, a close friend of Michael's who appears as a guest on one episode of the podcast). On the other hand, he also bares it all about lighter topics, such as how he and his family got pulled into an episode of "King of the Hill" or how he showed up drunk to an interview with Conan O'Brien. For any fans of the original reality series, "MikeyNAl" is must-watch entertainment.

Mikey isn't the only Teutul son who took a ride on the airwaves — his older brother Paul Jr. launched the self-titled "Paul Jr. Podcast" in September 2021. It also just so happened to end in September 2021, after a short but focused five-episode run. Junior's reason for ending the series — whether due to his waning interest or lack of time, given his commitment to his shop — isn't officially known, but the episodes that remain available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify exclusively explore his desire to help veterans struggling with severe mental health problems.

It's also possible Paul ended the podcast because he found more fulfilling avenues to share his perspective, as the "Paul Jr. Podcast" appears to be just part of the titular designer's mission to express himself post-"American Chopper." In addition to offering his services at speaking engagements nationwide, Junior wrote a book titled "The Build: Designing My Life of Choppers, Family, and Faith." The "faith" aspect of that title takes center stage in the book — Paul chose to use the book to discuss his relationship with religion for the first time ever.

Though you may not be able to spot Mike Rowe by face, his voice will surely catch your attention if you're a longtime fan of "American Chopper." A prolific Discovery Channel host who has hosted or narrated such classics as "Deadliest Catch," "Dirty Jobs," and even "Shark Week," Rowe has also developed a close relationship with the Fox network over the past decade or so. This began in earnest in 2013, when he made his debut on "Huckabee" (for those under the age of 65, "Huckabee" was a political entertainment news program that ran on Fox until 2015).

While Mike Huckabee never made it back to Fox after effectively canceling his own show for a second failed presidential bid, Rowe remains with the network as the host of his very own Fox Business program — "How America Works." Over the past three seasons, Rowe and his crew have explored the economics and labor behind a wide range of jobs, including wheat production, pipeline construction, concrete manufacturing, and firefighting. The TV host also launched a podcast, "The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe."

But his career may not end with broadcasting. In 2024, he revealed that he had been interviewed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s team as part of the presidential candidate's VP selection process. He didn't give away whether or not he'd been offered the job.

As it did with Paul Jr. and Michael, "American Chopper" seems to have shown Jason Pohl that he has a unique perspective that the world is interested in hearing. However, Pohl isn't just offering personal insights and behind-the-scenes stories from his time as a reality star — he's trying to inspire his fans all across America by showing them the wonders of 3D printing as well as how they might use it to take their creative passions to the new heights. 

For the past several years, Pohl has worked as a brand ambassador for the 3D design company SOLIDWORKS, which creates software that helps professionals interface with printers and integrate them into their businesses. Pohl has taken a characteristically vehicle-focused interest in printing, judging by his Instagram, which prominently features 3D-printed monster trucks and race cars. Clearly, the end of "American Chopper" hasn't brought about an end to his passion for creativity and design.

While much of the Orange County Choppers alumni remains devoted to designing the wildest motorcycles ever seen, Brendon Thompson has taken a different, yet somehow even wilder path. These days, Thompson can be seen working on unique, four-wheeled all-terrain buggies used in the niche sport known as rock racing. (No, we're not talking about Rocky, the reigning champ of the Bikini Bottom Snail Race).

The National Rock Racing Association hosts events where folks like Thompson can race a sort of vehicle you'd never see in NASCAR. With a skeletal, exposed frame and massive tires made for crawling through almost any environment, these cars make up for what they lack in traditional OCC-style flair with how durable they are under pressure. From mountainous outdoor arenas to muddy tracks populated by dense foliage, rock racers are designed to withstand harsh elements and even harsher competition. Based on Thompson's Instagram, he works regularly in this space with competitive tire manufacturer Maxxis Tires.