Celebrity News

Dallas' Richard Rawlings gets into hemp with Gas Monkey Garage collaboration

Whatever Richard Rawlings is selling, we're buying.

Generation Hemp

A Dallas company has collaborated with famed car guy Richard Rawlings on a handy new product made from hemp. Called Gas Monkey Spill-Jack, it's a plant-based item made from magical hemp that you use to absorb oil and other spills, named for Gas Monkey Garage, Rawlings' acclaimed hot-rod car shop.

The product is made by Generation Hemp, Inc., whose regular business is to dry, clean, process, and store hemp. They recently started getting into the consumer field when they launched an animal bedding item in 2021. Called Rowdy Rooster Hemp, it's animal bedding made from hemp hurd, which a release helpfully explains is the woody inner portion of the hemp stalk.

Hemp hurd animal bedding is more than twice as absorbent as wood shavings, is low dust, and its natural properties are resistant to bacteria, mold, and pests, making it one of the healthiest materials for bedding. It's also super soft on the little roosters' feet.

Spill-Jack is their second consumer goods offering, and was discovered at the company's own processing facilities, where they were dealing with hemp oil spills that seemed similar to oil spills you'd find in an automotive garage. They started to use hemp hurd to soak up those spills, and found it worked faster and better than kitty litter, which is what most garages use.

A brief treatise on spill absorbers
Spill absorbents fall into three categories: mineral based, animal or vegetable based, and synthetic or organic polymers.

The challenge is finding a material that does not pose a threat to health or the environment, whether that threat occurs with how the material is procured or whether it shows up during use.

For example, a widely used spill absorbent material in products is Bentonite Clay. But it's very dusty; has warnings of containing unsafe levels of lead; and has been associated with a number of health complaints in humans.

And now, back to hemp
Hemp hurd is preferable to products that contain chemicals, says Generation Hemp chairman and CEO Gary Evans.

"Most of the current products used are not the best environmental options, and other eco-friendly options just don't perform as well," Evans says.

The company brought their magical hemp stalks to Richard Rawlings' Gas Monkey Garage for a demo. Evans says everyone was "somewhat stunned" at how well Spill-Jack performed.

"Our team was very excited to collaborate with Richard and Gas Monkey," he says. "Getting the stamp of approval from such a well known automotive brand is one thing, but to then have the founder put his brand behind our product was just unexpected. In fact, it was our visit to Gas Monkey Garage that inspired our product's name, Spill-Jack. If you can jack up a car, you can jack up a spill!"

The initial products in the Gas Monkey Spill-Jack line will come in three sizes:

large 20 pound bag that can absorb approximately 24 gallons of oil
medium sized bag that can absorb approximately 9 liters of oil
mini-bag singles sold individually or in six-packs and can be kept in the purse or glove box to clean up any spills on the go, including pet messes

The mini-bag singles cost $1.99 each. Put one in your purse!

Rawlings is busy these days: He's opening two locations of his restaurant and live music venue, Gas Monkey Bar & Grill, and he's also about to sell off nearly his entire collection of classic restored cars in a big auction taking place in September.

transportation

Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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