Northland man's restoration work connects him to famous football brothers

HIBBING — A fridge, a football star and a fateful call propelled Hibbing’s Dustin "Dusty" Soyring into a new career.

He made the move from Minntac mechanic to full-time antique refrigerator restoration a year ago after a brush with fame involving famous football brothers sent his social media into the stratosphere.

Restoring vintage refrigerators started as a hobby for Soyring, who lived in Oulu, Wisconsin, until the age of 14, moved to Barnum, Minnesota, and graduated from Carlton High School in 2008.

“I used to restore a car and then do a refrigerator to match,” Soyring said.

The connection between the two? Beer.

“Everyone liked to have a beer fridge in their garage, and I happened to know paint and body work,” Soyring said.

In high school, his first job was as a parts hauler for an air-conditioning business. Soyring then served in the U.S. Navy for five years as an engineman second class before a seven-year stint at Minntac.

One of his first fridge restorations to gain notice was car-themed.

“I decided that I would paint one up like a Chevy Nova to match their car and people loved it,” Soyring said.

As requests started coming in, Soyring said he realized he was one of only four people in the country who work on antique refrigerators.

“I’ve restored everything from 1920s belt-drive sulfur dioxide units to 1970s big, giant double units,” he said.

He started sharing his work through social media, showing before-and-after photos as well as educational videos on how the work was done.

“When I finally downloaded TikTok and Instagram , some of my videos started getting traction, and then it snowballed into a full-time business,” Soyring said.

The biggest break came when he got a phone call asking for two restored refrigerators for the newly launched Garage Beer brand. The man on the phone said it was for Garage Beer co-owners Jason and Travis Kelce.

“And the thing is I don’t watch football, so I didn’t know who those people were. So I told him, I’m like ‘Yeah, OK, whatever, I’ll give you a call back when I get home and see what I have for inventory,’” Soyring said.

After hanging up, he used his phone to look up the Kelce brothers and asked his 13-year-old daughter if she’d heard of them.

“She looked at me like I was crazy and that’s when I knew I kind of messed up,” Soyring said.

The brothers are both professional football players — Jason played 13 years as center for the Philadelphia Eagles; Travis is a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. Travis Kelce is also dating global superstar Taylor Swift.

Soyring called the agent right back and took an order for two refrigerators. He offered to deliver the appliances himself and ended up walking into a photo shoot.

“They put the microphone on me and I had the trailer, I opened it up and Jason, he comes walking out and he’s a massive individual and he says, ‘Wow,’” Soyring recalled.

Once the appliances were installed, Kelce brought out a bucket of beers and they drank and talked.

“If you follow Jason Kelce’s podcast — the 'New Heights' podcast — you’ll see a refrigerator in the background that says Garage Beer on it. I did that. That is his 1956 GE lazy Susan fridge. He’s got another one in his garage that’s a 1951,” Soyring said.

The order led to a second request from the Kelces — a restored antique tube television for Travis Kelce’s birthday present. Soyring focuses on refrigerators but also restores televisions.

More orders followed, sending Soyring around the country to deliver refrigerators with Garage Beer logos on the doors to Los Angeles for comedian Bert Kreischer and Ohio for retired Dallas Cowboys player Bobby Carpenter.

He now keeps a stock of restored 1949-1951 refrigerators on hand for the next celebrity order.

“I picked that (era) because they’re very reliable, they’re super basic, and I call them the workhorses,” Soyring said of the model.

About half the people who reach out to Soyring’s company, Dusty Old Stuff, want restored appliances that look like they just came off the showroom, in baby blue or white. Others are seeking candy-colored metallic exteriors that make the appliance look like a brand-new show car.

His business went global with a refrigerator that he recently shipped to Italy.

Another current project is a 1938 Crosley Refrigeradio with a built-in radio. The rare model was only made for two years and less than a dozen are known to exist, Soyring said. He lugged it out of a friend’s basement in Aurora, Minnesota.

He also created a custom refrigerator for a recent Garage Beer and White Castle giveaway.

The cost for refrigerator restoration runs between $3,000 and $5,500. A showroom model that Soyring sourced himself can cost up to $12,000.

The work is extensive. The wiring is replaced. The cabinet gets painted inside and out, chrome is replated, aluminum shelving is powder-coated, and steel shelving is chrome-plated. Soyring does most of the work himself, but he has the powder-coating done at Powderall in Embarrass.

Refrigerators were overbuilt for decades, according to Soyring.

“They didn’t plan on having them run and last as long as they did,” he said. “Typically, they don’t get thrown away because they don’t work; they get thrown away just because they’re old and people don’t want them anymore.”

About three-quarters of his work is restoring antique refrigerators that people ship to him.

“Every month, I get about a half dozen or so in the shop that come from across the country that people own. It was their grandparents’ or their great-grandparents’, and they can’t find anybody to work on them. So I’ve got them coming in from California, Texas, all over the place,” Soyring said.

Others, like the Kelce brothers, ask for refrigerators that Soyring has sourced. His goal is for each customer to have a response to the one had by Jason Kelce.

“I want people to say ‘wow’ when they get it,” Soyring said.

The brush with fame was nerve-wracking at first, he said, but the Kelces were so down to earth and friendly that now it’s just another job.

“Now, whenever I get a call or a text that Jason needs this or he wants something else, it’s not that big a deal anymore, but you never know who the next person’s going to be,” Soyring said.

He doesn’t expect to get a call from Swift anytime soon, but “you never know.”