It took decades for Bill Carlton to build up the stellar car customization reputation, which eventually landed Ekstensive Metal Works the Texas Metal show in 2017.
Bill Carlton’s car customization show, Texas Metal may have become an instant hit on MotorTrend, but the Ekstensive Metal Works shop actually had much humbler beginnings when this third-generation welder was just starting out.
Even the ground on which the Ekstensive Metal Works shop is built contains a wealth of Carlton-family history.
Carlton’s father purchased this property all the way back in 1976, but the family welding business never really aligned with Carlton’s automotive passions.
Carlton revealed in a 2021 interview with Randy Kerdoon from Talking About Cars, that he actually started out specializing in air suspension before he registered Ekstensive Metal Works as a legitimate business in the ‘90s.
How Texas Metal came about
As the story goes, Texas Metal only came about because Carlton and the Ekstensive Metal Works team had been building up such a strong presence doing car shows and various magazine shoots, over the decades.
They were then eventually spotted and approached by a friend-of-a-friend, who was looking for a new show for Discovery’s Velocity network (which is now known as MotorTrend).
Texas Metal started filming its first season in 2017 and the show has now gone on to reach more than 72 million viewers in 183 countries all over the globe.
This makes Carlton and the rest of his team local reality stars in their own rights.
Texas Metal from then until now
Bill Carlton and the rest of the Texas Metal team have come a long way since the show was first picked up by Velocity (now MotorTrend) in 2017.
The show was even able to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and has now aired a total of six seasons, as outlined below:
| Texas Metal season | First air date | Last air date | Number of episodes |
| Season 1 | November 7, 2017 | December 26, 2017 | 8 |
| Season 2 | November 7, 2018 | January 9, 2019 | 10 |
| Season 3 | January 21, 2020 | April 7, 2020 | 12 |
| Season 4 | March 2, 2021 | June 8, 2021 | 12 |
| Season 5 | January 19, 2022 | June 30, 2022 | 12 |
| Season 6 | January 18, 2023 | May 3, 2023 | 12 |
Longtime fans will be happy to hear that the filming for the next season of the show is already underway, so it should not be too long until a seventh season is added to this lineup.
Why does Ekstensive Metal Works focus on trucks?
Although Ekstensive Metal Works and the “everything’s bigger in Texas” nature of Texas Metal has placed a lot of focus on Carlton and the team’s more outlandish truck builds, the shop does actually work on a vast array of vehicles.
Carlton believes that “For 99 percent of cars, there’s always something you can do to make it a little cooler”.
This is why the Ekstensive Metal team tackles everything from old classics and modern muscle cars, to electric trucks, both on and off the show.
How did Bill Carlton get into car customization?
Even though Carlton comes from a family of welders, he has mentioned that his father was never into restoring and building custom cars.
However, this did not stop Carlton from, in his own words “just destroying” his first car and the cars of all of his friends once they started driving.
Carlton, who received a three-year-old 1983 Chevy Silverado truck from his father when he turned 16, had always had a keen interest in cars (and taking things apart) and simply could not resist the urge to tinker on his own car and get out behind the desk of his father’s business.
Though it is worth noting that it did take a few years for this tinkering to turn into full-fledged car restoration and customization, like what is done at the Ekstensive Metal Works shop, today.
What does Bill Carlton do when he is not filming for Texas Metal?
It is difficult to imagine that Carlton has any free time at all, between running Ekstensive Metal works and filming for Texas Metal (and the show’s spin-off series, Texas Metal: Loud and Lifted).
But his personal Instagram account confirms that he always makes time for the thing that is most important to him – his family.
Bill has been married to his wife, Jennifer, for over two decades, and the couple has three children together.
It seems like Carlton’s children are all very excited to follow in his automotive tracks.
Carlton proudly posted about his daughter, Presley attending the Texas Drift Academy back in 2022 and his son, Corbin, learning to drive cars around the shop at just 10 years old.
