About
Why This
Exists
The origin story behind IBB. Two founders, one community, and a challenge coin built for the Ford Bronco herd.
The Bronco community is one of the most devoted groups of vehicle owners in the country. First-gen classics from 1966. Bronco IIs. Full-size trucks through the '80s and '90s. The sixth-gen revival that launched in 2021 and hasn't stopped since. Hundreds of thousands of owners spread across every state, every kind of road, every generation of the same truck.
And for a long time, even that community could feel surprisingly small.
The forums were there. The Facebook groups were there. The events were there. But you could show up to something like Super Celebration and realize the lot was full of Broncos from your own backyard that you'd never once crossed paths with. Many didn't know how many others were out there.
I've Been Bucked was built around that feeling. Not with an app or a sticker. With a challenge coin, the same format used in military and first responder culture since World War I to recognize the people who show up, who go further, who don't leave anyone behind. It's a format chosen deliberately, by someone who understood its weight. Because this community runs on the same code.
The coin is the handshake. It says you're part of the herd, whether you've been wheeling since the Carter administration or picked yours up last year.
Here's where it came from.
The Origin Story
Brian LaFluer has been part of the Ford community since 1994, when buying a Ranger as an act of rebellion against his GMC-loyal father put him on a path he never really left. But it was the Bronco that got him good.
His first was a 1969 he found on Craigslist in July 2015, while his wife was presenting at a work conference a few hours away. He rented a truck and a trailer. By the time she was done presenting, it was loaded up and heading home. Six months after that, he had three first-gen Broncos and more questions than answers. Sourcing parts. Tracking down people who'd done the work before. Figuring out what he didn't know, mostly on his own.
Brian's first-gen Bronco or one of the four in the driveway
That's the thing about getting deep into a build. You can spend months hunting a solution that someone three states over already solved. You just don't know they exist.
Then came Bronco Super Celebration in Townsend, Tennessee. He trailered his '72 down expecting to be one of the few Georgians there. He wasn't. There were hundreds of Georgia-tagged Broncos spread across that field. None of them had known the others existed. On the four-hour drive home, he turned to his wife and asked where all of them had been when he was buried in the build.
Bronco Super Celebration field — rows of Broncos with Georgia plates visible
Wide shot, warm light, sense of scale
Georgia Broncos meetup or trail run — people and trucks together
Candid, community feel, not posed
By the time they unloaded, Georgia Broncos had a Facebook page.
What started as a question on a drive home became one of the largest Bronco enthusiast communities in the country. Five hundred paid members. As far as Brian knows, the only state-level Bronco community formally sanctioned by Ford Motor Company. He served as its president for years, showed up at every event, helped people through their builds, and kept the herd together.
"We are all part of the same herd. Our herd is small enough as it is. Why not know everyone in it."
Brian LaFluer
In July 2024, he handed the presidency to someone he trusted and started thinking about what the community needed at a national scale. Not just Georgia. Not just one event. All of them. Every generation. Every state. Every Bronco that had ever been driven by someone who cared about it.
I've Been Bucked was the answer.
Founders' Edition
The First 100
Every idea has a moment when it stops being a conversation and becomes something you can hold in your hand. For I've Been Bucked, that moment was the First 100.
Before a single coin went on sale, before the website, before any of it, one hundred Founders' Edition coins were struck. Black onyx finish. Made once. The mold retired after production. There will never be a hundred and one.
Those coins didn't go in a store. They went directly to the people who'd help carry the brand into the community it was built for: launch partners, trail community leaders, voices the Bronco world already trusted. Each one placed by hand, by the people who built this.
Every single one accounted for. They're out there now.
The Founders
One built the biggest state-level Bronco community in the country. The other spent two years on a moped saving for his first one. This is who's behind I've Been Bucked.
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Co-Founder
Brian LaFluer
Brian has been getting his hands dirty with Ford for thirty years. He's rebuilt them, trailered them, sourced parts for them at odd hours, and spent more weekends than he can count helping other people do the same. He founded Georgia Broncos, grew it to five hundred members, and ran it until he was ready to hand it to someone else and think bigger.
He chose the challenge coin format for IBB the same way he makes most decisions: because it made sense and felt right. The coin has been used in military and first responder culture to recognize the people who show up. Brian spent enough time in that world to know what it means when someone hands you one. The Bronco community, he figured, had earned that kind of recognition a long time ago.
Today he has two restored first-gen Broncos, two second-gens in restoration, and a sixth-gen Wildtrak.
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Co-Founder
Sean Jones
Sean has spent his career building brands and telling stories for nonprofits, a national home improvement retailer, healthcare companies, and a rock band he toured with for years, running gear and logistics out of whatever Ford was available. An '80s conversion van. A Focus hatchback packed floor to ceiling with equipment. A 15-passenger Club Wagon with a custom TV console where the middle seats used to be.
Ford kept finding him.
He got obsessed with the sixth-gen Bronco when it launched in 2021. Couldn't afford one, so he saved. Sold his Escape for parts. Bought a moped. Biked or walked everywhere else for two years. In spring 2025 he flew to St. Louis and drove home a 2-door Cactus Grey 2023 Wildtrak, V6, Lux. From old vans to Broncos, his favorite things combine a classic soul with modern tech. Since then: a few lighting mods, Big Bend, Rocky Mountain National Park, Palo Duro Canyon. The Bronco lives happily in his one-car garage a few blocks from downtown Austin, complete with a pulley hoist to raise the roof (its own adventure to install).
He did all of that before he really knew the Bronco community existed.
Now he's helping build it.
What We Believe
We believe the Bronco has always attracted a certain kind of person. Doesn't matter if it's a first-gen from 1966 or a sixth-gen that rolled off the line last year. The truck changes. The people who choose it don't, really.
We believe the community is stronger when it knows itself. Brian's build taught him that the hard way — months of work, questions with no easy answers, and somewhere out there, someone who had already solved every one of them. The next person shouldn't have to find out alone.
We believe a coin means something when it's earned, and something different when it's given. The format comes from a tradition Brian understands firsthand. This community already lives by the same code. IBB just gave it something to carry.
We believe every Bronco has a story. Every coin proves you were part of one.