Had no idea he was ever on venture, woulda never thought. I just assumed he was always on Indys. I love finding out weird gear trivia facts like this, like finding out Cardiel skated 7.5s with 129s all the way up until the mid 2000s, or that Greco skates 129s on an 8.5, it’s always just so interesting to me. It’s not often you see transition/bowl dudes with ventures, they’re usually always on indys, or aces more recently, so it’s cool to see an outlier here n there.
Also, I had no idea 5.8s even existed back then. I thought the widest they went was 5.2 for the longest time and they just recently introduced trucks wider than 5.2 in the last few years? At least that’s what I always just assumed since you could never find anything wider than 5.2s anywhere and they didn’t advertise a truck wider than 5.2 anywhere up until the last few years, which is why I thought dudes like duffel who skated 8.5s used 5.2s for the longest time, cuz that’s the widest they used to go up until recently.
I don't know when truck production stopped for the wider versions from the 80s into the more narrow 90s - 00s Ventures, but there were not that many around by the time some of those guys who were still on the team wanted them, which might have been in part why people like Dan Drehobl went to Indy.
A good pic showing the Ventures with six hole baseplates and 59mm Spitfire wheels (from about 2004-2005 from the deck):
Also I did a little digging and found this article pretty good:
https://skateandannoy.com/blog/2009/03/venture-innovated/The OG Venture team was stacked - so many big name dudes were all on Venture back in the day, including Ray Barbee, Mike Carrol, Sean Sheffey, John Cardiel, Phil Shao and Wade Speyer, who was an all terrain destroyer, street, transition, vert, etc.