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How Did Monster Trucks Become a Thing? · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Let's hear it from our super producer,
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Speaker 1: mister Max Sunday Sunday Sunday.
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Speaker 2: Williams Sunday Sunday, say so, I've been your goal.
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Speaker 1: It's it's It may be Sunday while someone's listening to this,
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Speaker 1: but there's never a bad time to check out a
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Speaker 1: monster truck show. Have you ever seen one?
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Speaker 2: You guys? Not in person? They do what is it
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Speaker 2: called monster Jam here in Atlanta. It's a big thing,
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Speaker 2: very popular event. I was invited to go once and
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Speaker 2: I couldn't make it, but I want to go. I
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Speaker 2: want to see what is it? Truck Osaurus? Is that
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Speaker 2: a thing?
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Speaker 1: Truck Osaurus is? We mentioned this in our previous episode, Right,
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Speaker 1: truck Asaurus is in the Simpsons. It's a truck dinosaur
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Speaker 1: created by Professor Frink.
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Speaker 2: Right, and it like it shoots fire and stuff. Right,
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Speaker 2: isn't it based on something real? I swear it is.
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Speaker 1: There's like Robosaurus is the real life versions Okay, dinosaur
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Speaker 1: robot created by Doug Mulliwiki. I want to say, and
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Speaker 1: got it?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but monsters, I mean it's just you know, I'm
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Speaker 2: obviously I'm not a I've made no secret that I'm
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Speaker 2: not the biggest sportsman on the planet. And it's weird
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Speaker 2: because like monster truck it's not really a sport. It's
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Speaker 2: more of a spectacle kind of. It's more like going
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Speaker 2: to see an air show or something. Wouldn't you say,
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Speaker 2: is there a competition element involved? I don't think so.
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Speaker 2: I think it's all kind of. It's also not like
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Speaker 2: a demolition derby and that that has like a you know,
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Speaker 2: or someone wins, but I don't think anybody wins. It's
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Speaker 2: a rally, so it's not necessarily like a competition unless
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Speaker 2: I'm mistaken.
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Speaker 1: Well, it's a heck of a good time as long
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Speaker 1: as you're not in a truck that recks.
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Speaker 2: We always, i.
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Speaker 1: Think, associate monster truck rallies with a sort of halcyon
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Speaker 1: era in the nineteen eighties, you know, WrestleMania was a
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Speaker 1: thing people tuned into and if you are unfamiliar with
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Speaker 1: monster trucks, if you've never been to a show before,
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Speaker 1: you might be surprised to learn just how popular this
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Speaker 1: stuff was. Just a few years before, Hogan and Andre
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Speaker 1: the Giant conducted WrestleMania three at the Pontiac Silver Dome
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Speaker 1: in Pontiac, Michigan. About four years before that happened, sixty
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Speaker 1: eight thousand people poured into the same Silver Dome to
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Speaker 1: watch a converted Ford F two fifty with oversized wheels
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Speaker 1: crush other vehicles, just smashing them the way you walk
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Speaker 1: on water bottles.
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Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
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Speaker 2: And that scene setting comes courtesy of Jake Ross and
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Speaker 2: at Mental Floss, who really kind of likened the whole
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Speaker 2: wrestling phenomenon with monster trucks. It really is kind of
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Speaker 2: the same bread and circuses spectacle of professional wrestling, but
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Speaker 2: instead of wrestlers, you've got these insane converted trucks. And
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Speaker 2: when we say converted, we're basically referring to you know
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Speaker 2: how it all kind of started with an Afford F
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Speaker 2: two fifty truck. YEP, that's just one whole hundred bigger
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Speaker 2: than the F one fifty, which is already pretty massive.
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Speaker 2: You know, it's converted by by being given massive wheels
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Speaker 2: and obviously all of the gack that goes along with that,
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Speaker 2: you know, the what do you call it? The you know,
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Speaker 2: I'm sure it's got a modified suspension and all of
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Speaker 2: that you know, with hydraulics, and maybe the hydraulics like lyft,
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Speaker 2: but something that allows the shock of literally running over
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Speaker 2: cars to be absorbed to the point where the driver
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Speaker 2: is not gonna get jostled out of their seat right exactly.
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Speaker 1: And this this is a huge moment for a huge truck.
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Speaker 1: The crowd is looking at this thing called Bigfoot, owned
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Speaker 1: by a guy named Bob Chandler, and they love it
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Speaker 1: so much that they swarm the field. They want to
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Speaker 1: get closer to Bigfoot. And the guy who owns it, Bob,
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Speaker 1: he rolls up the windows and stops the show and
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Speaker 1: drives off because he's afraid his monstrous truck will take
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Speaker 1: some monstrous damage. This is the story of the monster trucks. Now,
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Speaker 1: we want to be clear with you folks. Like any
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Speaker 1: amazing origin story, there are some differing narratives, so you're
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Speaker 1: gonna hear different sources saying different things about who invented
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Speaker 1: the quote unquote first monster truck. We'll stick with Bob
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Speaker 1: Chandler for a moment here. He's got a really interesting story.
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Speaker 1: He was a carpenter by trade, and he used to
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Speaker 1: be in the Navy, where he works as a mind
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Speaker 1: sweeper when he was about thirty five years old. He
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Speaker 1: wasn't dreaming of making monster trucks. He just liked pickups.
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Speaker 1: You know, if you're a carpenter, a pickup is a
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Speaker 1: great vehicle. You can haul lumber, you can haul tools,
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Speaker 1: you can go camping if you want, like a friend
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Speaker 1: of the show Alex Williams, who is eternally camping, it seems.
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Speaker 1: And let's let's go back here. Let's get some help
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Speaker 1: from our friends at haggarty dot com Cameron neviuw who
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Speaker 1: has a great article on the brash disputed birth of
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Speaker 1: the American monster truck. Nolan, can you paint the scene here?
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Speaker 1: What was going on with the origin of the trucks?
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Speaker 1: Do we have to go back to the nineteen sixties
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Speaker 1: to understand?
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Speaker 2: We do. We don't have to, but we choose to
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Speaker 2: because that's that is where it started. The big three
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Speaker 2: auto companies you've heard of these. I believe Chrysler was
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Speaker 2: one of them, Ford was the other. What's the third
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Speaker 2: big American auto company? GM? GM? Of course General Motors,
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Speaker 2: you know, back back in the in the golden era
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Speaker 2: of of of of American manufacturing of cars, because obviously
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Speaker 2: the car was an American invention. But then, as we know,
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Speaker 2: a lot of these communities really got rocked when overseas
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Speaker 2: manufacturing became more cost effective and a lot of foreign
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Speaker 2: auto makers began to you know, flood the market with
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Speaker 2: affordable vehicles. So, you know, places like Flint, Michigan, for example,
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Speaker 2: really you know, got hit super hard when this happened
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Speaker 2: and they lost a lot of their infrastructure. But in
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Speaker 2: the sixties things were booming and the Big Three started
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Speaker 2: to kind of build and put out vehicles that emphasized
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Speaker 2: the idea of the open road, or rather the off road,
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Speaker 2: being able to just take your car wherever your little
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Speaker 2: adventuring heart may lead you. For it had the Bronco,
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Speaker 2: which was kind of stuff smiling on a previous vehicle model,
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Speaker 2: the Jeep, which we know, but it kind of combined
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Speaker 2: the off roadiness of the Jeep with something more akin
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Speaker 2: to like a family car, you know, so you have
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Speaker 2: kind of the best of both worlds. And this did
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Speaker 2: very well. You know, consumers were all about this idea
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Speaker 2: of freedom, even if they never took the thing off row,
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Speaker 2: they liked to think that they could if they wanted to.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is kind of the birth of the sport
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Speaker 1: utility vehicle or SUV, and you have doubtlessly seen many
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Speaker 1: of these, especially if you live in a city. You
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Speaker 1: might have been a little aggravated seeing one slow down
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Speaker 1: at a speed bump or a pothole, and you're wondering,
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Speaker 1: why'd you pay so much for the four wheel drive.
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Speaker 1: Off Roading was booming at this time or mudding, whatever
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Speaker 1: you want to call it, especially on the West Coast.
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Speaker 1: People would go onto the dunes and they would build
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Speaker 1: these tube frame contraptions with balloon tires, which are exactly
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Speaker 1: what they sound like. They were originally designed for Arctic
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Speaker 1: exploration in this miliu. In nineteen seventy four, Bob and
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Speaker 1: Marilyn Chandler of Missouri purchased their brand new Ford F
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Speaker 1: two fifty. Now my car stuff's coming out here, guys.
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Speaker 1: I don't think anybody should buy a vehicle brand new
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Speaker 1: unless you get a really really good deal.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, because there's that whole like, you know, depreciation the
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Speaker 2: moment you drive it off the lot scenario.
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Speaker 1: Right, even worse than a boat.
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Speaker 2: It's the number. It's a shocking number.
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Speaker 1: It's it changes over time. It's been a while since
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Speaker 1: I looked at it. But it could be significant. You know,
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Speaker 1: I've seen numbers like fifteen percent, et cetera. And it
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Speaker 1: also to be proud of me, I bought a certified
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Speaker 1: pre own.
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Speaker 2: I know we.
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Speaker 1: Talked about it. I remember, I remember making these schemes.
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Speaker 1: And that's been a really good car to you man.
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Speaker 1: That one's held up right, dude.
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Speaker 2: I haven't had to have any major work done on
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Speaker 2: it at all, and it's still kicking along beautifully. It's
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Speaker 2: a great car. Highly recommend not not an F four
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Speaker 2: two fifty. I wouldn't be going off roading in this guy,
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Speaker 2: Although maybe I could do some modifications to put some
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Speaker 2: bigger wheels on it. But I don't think I don't
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Speaker 2: help good.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a rabbit hole, and it's a
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Speaker 1: wallet vortex and a time vampire. But if you have
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Speaker 1: a mod so okay, this is the thing. They want
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Speaker 1: to mod their vehicle too. They want to be part
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Speaker 1: of this off roading boom. But Bob and Maryland have
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Speaker 1: a problem. They say, we can't find four by four
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Speaker 1: parts in our home state of Missouri.
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Speaker 2: So if you would put your car stuff on again
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Speaker 2: for a second to explain to me and the listeners
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Speaker 2: what is four by four referring to So four.
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Speaker 1: X four is short term or for four wheel drive,
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Speaker 1: and that means that you have a two axle vehicle
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Speaker 1: drive train that can provide torque to all of the
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Speaker 1: wheels simultaneously, as opposed to something like front wheel drive
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Speaker 1: where or rear wheel drive where it's just that one pair.
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Speaker 2: I know what four wheel drive is. Never until this
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Speaker 2: moment did I know that four x four was referring
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Speaker 2: to that. But that makes sense. So this is obviously
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Speaker 2: a feature that would be very helpful in getting enough
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Speaker 2: torque to say, launch your modified F two fifty over
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Speaker 2: a sand in right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's also all wheel drive, which is very similar.
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Speaker 1: It's a little bit different. All wheel drive is always
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Speaker 1: going to be active, and four wheel drive you have
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Speaker 1: to turn it on. It has to be engaged.
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Speaker 2: By the driver, and part of it is also about
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Speaker 2: helping getting you unstuck yeah yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and helping you navigate you know, uneven terrain. So
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Speaker 1: they want to get in on this, and they call
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Speaker 1: a friend in nineteen seventy five, shortly after they buy
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Speaker 1: this Ford, and it's a buddy of theirs who loves
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Speaker 1: going off road. His name's Jim Kramer, and they say, look,
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Speaker 1: let's start our own business. We found an opportunity. Let's
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Speaker 1: sell for by four parts. And they say, okay, we're
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Speaker 1: gonna call the business Midwest four wheel Drive, and we're
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Speaker 1: going to supply people. We're gonna be based in Saint Louis.
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Speaker 1: So this guy, then, while he started to do business,
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Speaker 1: he's still doing his off roading right without without all
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Speaker 1: these modifications just yet, and he is wrecking his poor
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Speaker 1: forward often like tearing up engines, axles, you name.
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Speaker 2: It, and you know. So he was putting these big
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Speaker 2: oversized wheels on his f two fifty forty eight inches
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Speaker 2: to be precise, and that would also involve modifying the
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Speaker 2: axles so that they could support that. And I was
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Speaker 2: just doing a little digging, and it seems that because
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Speaker 2: of that lack of four by four parts and maybe
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Speaker 2: no one not even really considered doing this yet, these
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Speaker 2: wheels were really only available from like farm equipment and
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Speaker 2: more industrial equipment, you know, like backos and things like
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Speaker 2: that that would backos are more tread based, but like
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Speaker 2: you know what I'm talking about, like certain tractors would
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Speaker 2: be it would be sure, that's exactly right, because they
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Speaker 2: need to, you know, go over rough terrain by their very.
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Speaker 1: Nature, or wheels on a harvester. Yeah, yeah, it makes
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Speaker 1: total sense. And this is this is funny because the
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Speaker 1: guy starts this shop because he wants to have a
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Speaker 1: shop like this selling things to him. It's kind of
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Speaker 1: like someone who starts a restaurant because they're hungry, you
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Speaker 1: know what I mean. He's dipping into his own supply
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Speaker 1: pretty quickly. He gets easy access to all sorts of parts.
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Speaker 1: The Mental Floss article you mentioned earlier has some quotes
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Speaker 1: from him as his cabin begins to loom over the road.
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Speaker 1: This is a gradual process building up to those forty
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Speaker 1: eight inch oversized wheels because it's advertising for the shop.
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Speaker 1: But he says, I never really had the thought to
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Speaker 1: build a monster truck. I had a stock for two
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Speaker 1: fifty and I kept putting bigger and bigger tires on
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Speaker 1: it that I broke the so I put bigger axles
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Speaker 1: under the truck. Then I didn't have enough power, so
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Speaker 1: I put a bigger engine in there. It was quote
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Speaker 1: just kind of a vicious circle for about three or
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Speaker 1: four years. The truck gradually got to be its own star,
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Speaker 1: I guess, And so he would zip around town. I mean,
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Speaker 1: this is great. He's a rolling billboard for his company now,
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Speaker 1: and this is a fast vehicle, like once he gets
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Speaker 1: the engine in there. This is cartoonish on the road totally.
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Speaker 2: And Ben correct me if I'm wrong here again, if
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Speaker 2: you could put on your car stuff, Helmut. The idea
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Speaker 2: of stock cars. This that refers to using stock like
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Speaker 2: consumer available cars, and modifying them, right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, A stock car is an ordinary car that's
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Speaker 1: been modified in some way, usually for racing. The other
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Speaker 1: version would be a stock car in the world of trains,
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Speaker 1: that would be like a railroad car.
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Speaker 2: So this is a stock truck. It's being modified not
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Speaker 2: necessarily for racing, but for trucking, for monster trucking.
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Speaker 1: Right yeah. And we know how he got the nickname too.
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Speaker 1: His buddy Jim Kramer, who helped start the business. He
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Speaker 1: joked about how Chandler at kind of a lead foot.
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Speaker 1: He said, Bob Taylor's big foot is always on the
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Speaker 1: gas and people started calling him Bigfoot. And Bob Jaylor
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Speaker 1: strikes me as a pretty cool guy to hang out
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Speaker 1: with because he leans into the nickname. He says, Oh,
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Speaker 1: people are calling me Bigfoot on the streets. I'll just
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Speaker 1: paint it on the truck. And he was.
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Speaker 2: Also bigfoot in the sheets.
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Speaker 1: Hey right, Uh, locals loved this and he got people
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Speaker 1: coming out of the woodwork trying to buy his unique truck.
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Speaker 2: Now, I'm not trying to be a pill here, but
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Speaker 2: I have a I suspect that not all locals love
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Speaker 2: this because I don't know if you've ever seen anyone
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Speaker 2: driving one of these things around like Atlanta, trying to
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Speaker 2: squeeze into parking spaces or cutting you off of traffic.
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Speaker 1: Don't love it?
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Speaker 2: No, it's not great. These things really are designed. I
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Speaker 2: would not make this my daily driver, you know. So
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Speaker 2: maybe you know it led to like okay, well, it's
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Speaker 2: trying to take this thing off the road literally and
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Speaker 2: into something more contained, you know, or we can really
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Speaker 2: see what it's made of.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the car does become a celebrity.
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Speaker 1: I for the record, one hundred percent agree with you
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Speaker 1: about not having big vehicles in densely packed urban areas
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Speaker 1: that's not off road, you know what I mean. And
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Speaker 1: I'm speaking from personal experience when I when I say
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Speaker 1: seeing somebody in a huge offer vehicle slow down at
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Speaker 1: a speed bump, I try not to judge people. But
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Speaker 1: if it was a video game, they lose like ten
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Speaker 1: points of respect easily, very least negative xcipede. Yeah, and
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Speaker 1: these vehicles are very expensive. Look, let's play inflation calculator
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Speaker 1: a little bit. So the Ford in its factory version,
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Speaker 1: the four to two f two fifty that he bought
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Speaker 1: it sold for about forty four hundred dollars straight in
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Speaker 1: the mid seventies. And that would be if we could get.
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Speaker 2: A boop and a boop and a boop and a
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Speaker 2: boop and a boop and a boom and a.
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Speaker 1: Boop, sixteen thousand dollars in today's money. But once he
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Speaker 1: got it modded up and it became the Bigfoot truck,
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Speaker 1: people would try to buy it for fifty grand, which is,
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Speaker 1: if we inflation calculate and.
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Speaker 2: A boo, boop, a boopeee beep, one hundred.
16:37
Speaker 1: And eighty five grand today.
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Speaker 2: Dude, Okay, I mean, and that makes sense because not
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Speaker 2: only I mean, I'm sure that the parts and labor
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Speaker 2: and all of the you know, modifying that went into it,
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Speaker 2: you know, added some of the price tag. But I
16:52
Speaker 2: don't think that is sherely what this figure is referring to.
16:55
Speaker 2: This is also just the the wow factor of it all,
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Speaker 2: the fact that this thing did not exists outside of
17:02
Speaker 2: what this guy created, right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and the story goes national. The Los Angeles Times
17:08
Speaker 1: interviews the couple, and Marilyn Chandler says, when we go
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Speaker 1: out at night, it looks like lightning because so many
17:14
Speaker 1: people are taking flash pictures. Pretty cool.
17:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is. And speaking of you know, Hollywood
17:22
Speaker 2: come in a calling, you know, in the form of
17:23
Speaker 2: the La Times. It really did come a calling in
17:26
Speaker 2: a much more you know, palpable way that you know,
17:29
Speaker 2: created what we now know as the Monster Truck Rally.
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Speaker 2: In the summer of nineteen seventy nine, when Chandler was
17:37
Speaker 2: thirty eight years old, he met a guy by the
17:39
Speaker 2: name of Everett Jasmer, which is a really great name,
17:43
Speaker 2: Everett Jasmer, who is a drag racer and also a
17:48
Speaker 2: fan of trucks. And that, you know, there would have
17:51
Speaker 2: been rallies and things, or you know, not rallies like
17:54
Speaker 2: what we know is the Monster Truck Rally, but you
17:56
Speaker 2: know meetups, let's call them, like little car meetups. Yeah,
18:00
Speaker 2: stuff like that. So there was a circuit, you know,
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Speaker 2: and this was a relatively somewhat to some degree burgeoning
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Speaker 2: kind of thing. I mean, I'm sure you know off roading, well,
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Speaker 2: I mean no, we talked about that. That was really
18:11
Speaker 2: kind of more a phenomenon of the sixties, so this
18:14
Speaker 2: is but still that's relatively that's only you know, about
18:18
Speaker 2: ten years at this point that we've been having this,
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Speaker 2: so it's still a relatively nascent kind of a hobby,
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Speaker 2: I guess. So the circuit would have been pretty small,
18:26
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it would have been something that you were aware
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Speaker 1: of if you were involved with this, if you were
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Speaker 1: a quote unquote car guy. But it wasn't. It wasn't
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Speaker 1: getting what's the best way to say it, It wasn't
18:39
Speaker 1: getting the same level of recognition that say, like a
18:43
Speaker 1: NASCAR would be getting. It was prominent enough in the
18:46
Speaker 1: American zeitgeist that it did make national news. And this guy,
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Speaker 1: Everett Jasper, I'm so glad he introduced him. He was
18:56
Speaker 1: a Chevy guy. He had a nineteen seventy Chevy K
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Speaker 1: ten and he had bought it used in nineteen seventy four.
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Speaker 1: Good job, Everett. And he has a lot in common
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Speaker 1: with Bob Chandler. He's named his truck and he this
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Speaker 1: is the funny story. This comes to us from history
19:12
Speaker 1: dot com. Everett was mowing his lawn one day and
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Speaker 1: he had a vision vision.
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, he was. He was visited by the
19:23
Speaker 2: ghost of Monster Truck Future. Exactly.
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Speaker 1: The ghost of Monster Truck Future said Everetts, you need
19:32
Speaker 1: to make red, white and blue license plates, and you
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Speaker 1: need to put USA dash one on them. And Jasmer
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Speaker 1: made it. So Everett had one of these hanging on
19:43
Speaker 1: his wall. He put the plate on his Chevy and
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Speaker 1: then that became the name of his truck USA.
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Speaker 3: These things I say to thee and they will come
19:52
Speaker 3: from far and wide fortune to spectate the spectacle which
19:57
Speaker 3: you would be at the center of if you read it,
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Speaker 3: they will come.
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Speaker 1: There was no such thing as a monster truck yet
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Speaker 1: there's still like in the first part of Field of Dreams.
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Speaker 1: Here and their friendship between Bob and Everett. These guys
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Speaker 1: create a national phenomenon that leads to a billion dollar industry.
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Speaker 1: And it all starts with a phone call to Bob
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Speaker 1: Chandler's after market four by four shop in nineteen seventy nine.
20:27
Speaker 1: Hollywood comes calling.
20:29
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we tease the call, but really quickly, I've
20:31
Speaker 2: got a backtrack for two seconds Field of Dreams. I
20:33
Speaker 2: think a superior name for that movie would have been
20:36
Speaker 2: Baseball Ghosts. What do you guys think?
20:37
Speaker 1: I agreed one hundred percent it is yeah cool.
20:40
Speaker 2: So Chandler gets a call from the pic Jazz, from
20:43
Speaker 2: a movie producer who's working on a comedy. This is
20:47
Speaker 2: also you got to remember this was like in the seventies,
20:50
Speaker 2: there were a lot of like big rig type movies,
20:53
Speaker 2: you know, like every which Way but Loose, if I'm
20:56
Speaker 2: not mistaken, which is the one where involves no, there's wait,
21:00
Speaker 2: there's bj and the Bear I think is one where
21:03
Speaker 2: there's like a rangutan or a chimpanzee, and like what's
21:08
Speaker 2: his name? Burt Reynolds driving a four by four and
21:12
Speaker 2: if I'm not wrong, every which way but Loose might
21:15
Speaker 2: have to do with a four by four. Definitely there's
21:16
Speaker 2: a monkey in that one too, sorry, and Ape But yeah,
21:19
Speaker 2: truck movies, you know, even like the film from the
21:21
Speaker 2: seventies Sorcerer, which is you know, a fabulous you know,
21:25
Speaker 2: kind of like adventure rollicking, kind of like very complex
21:30
Speaker 2: character study by William Friedkin involves driving a big rig
21:34
Speaker 2: across a like rope bridge and the rig is loaded
21:38
Speaker 2: with like nitro glycerin, and it's really one of the
21:40
Speaker 2: most tense sequences in film. So it makes sense that
21:43
Speaker 2: Hollywood would have caught wind of this, like, how can
21:45
Speaker 2: we bake this in to like, you know, our truck pictures,
21:50
Speaker 2: you know. So he's working on a comedy with a
21:52
Speaker 2: fabulous title called Take This Job and Shove It from
21:55
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one, very irreverent. And he had seen Chandler's
21:59
Speaker 2: truck in one of these kind of magazines that would
22:02
Speaker 2: have been, you know, featuring this kind of stuff, these
22:04
Speaker 2: kind of you know, DIY sort of motorist mags.
22:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this this is a golden opportunity. They say,
22:12
Speaker 1: we want to have your truck, just make some appearances.
22:16
Speaker 1: So Bigfoot shows up in the movie Take This Job
22:19
Speaker 1: and Shove It, starring Art Carney, Robert Hayes, Barbara Hershey,
22:24
Speaker 1: David Keith. People, I'm not really familiar with. It's named
22:27
Speaker 1: after that country song Take This Job, barsh of It.
22:30
Speaker 1: Barbara Hershey had a really sultry voice.
22:33
Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken.
22:35
Speaker 1: Cool, all right, I'm into I love a sultry voice.
22:38
Speaker 1: So this monster truck, Bigfoot shows up as a big
22:43
Speaker 1: time participant in a pickup truck race in the film.
22:47
Speaker 1: Initially the studio wanted to use stunt drivers, but no
22:51
Speaker 1: one really knew how to drive the truck as well
22:53
Speaker 1: as Bob Chandler because he literally built it, and so
22:57
Speaker 1: he was behind the wheel for filming. And when he's
23:00
Speaker 1: going to go film, he calls up his buddy Everett Jasmer,
23:04
Speaker 1: the Chevy guy USA one, and he says, hey, come
23:07
Speaker 1: hang out with me on this movie shoot. And Jasmer says,
23:12
Speaker 1: this is a great opportunity. So he shows up and
23:15
Speaker 1: after that they get invitations to these events around the country.
23:19
Speaker 1: They keep making their trucks bigger and bigger. We have
23:22
Speaker 1: a quote from Everett where he says it was like evolution.
23:25
Speaker 1: I liked the joke. We both crawled out of the
23:27
Speaker 1: mud and became monster truckers in the early nineteen eighties.
23:30
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's so fun. And then of course they
23:33
Speaker 2: eventually evolved into things like truck Zilla, truck Asaurus, whatever
23:39
Speaker 2: you want to call it. It did become kind of
23:41
Speaker 2: like a Transformer Z the kind of vibe. Right, it's weird.
23:45
Speaker 1: They like evolved into the mud. If you think about it,
23:48
Speaker 1: it's weird.
23:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's also the lesser known monster truck, the
23:51
Speaker 2: mud Skipper.
23:52
Speaker 1: Right, and so okay, So back to Chandler. He's watching
23:57
Speaker 1: TV one Saturday morning. He's already filmed Take This Job
24:00
Speaker 1: and Shove It, and he sees a show called Wide
24:03
Speaker 1: World of Sports, and he says, I saw these trucks
24:05
Speaker 1: driving around a muddy area, and there was a body
24:08
Speaker 1: of a car in the mud, sticking up six inches
24:11
Speaker 1: out of the ground. And this Toyota starts pushing it
24:14
Speaker 1: and puts its front tires on it. And he says,
24:16
Speaker 1: my pal Jim Kramer was with me, and I said
24:19
Speaker 1: to him, I bet Bigfoot would drive clean over a car.
24:24
Speaker 1: So Jim Cramer goes to one of his friends who
24:28
Speaker 1: has a farm, and they take the truck there they
24:32
Speaker 1: set out some cars. I guess they knew someone who
24:34
Speaker 1: just had some broke down cars. Max is shaking his
24:37
Speaker 1: head like, yeah, you get in situations.
24:39
Speaker 2: Oh well, I mean think about all any of those
24:41
Speaker 2: any number of these junk yards you see in sort
24:43
Speaker 2: of rural areas. I mean, the things are just they're
24:45
Speaker 2: lousy with them. They're stacked, like the point where they're
24:48
Speaker 2: like towering over the fences. So certainly there would have
24:51
Speaker 2: been plenty of opportunities to get some like beat he
24:54
Speaker 2: kind of parts cars to just line up and make
24:57
Speaker 2: a real big showing up.
24:59
Speaker 1: And it's it's so weird because they videotaped this. It's
25:02
Speaker 1: literally in some guy's yard on a farm, and his
25:06
Speaker 1: wife has a little bit of a problem because she says,
25:09
Speaker 1: this is kind of destructive.
25:10
Speaker 2: Bob.
25:11
Speaker 1: We're trying to make a good clean name for our truck,
25:13
Speaker 1: a family oriented thing. But a promoter sees the video
25:17
Speaker 1: and says, I want you to do that in front
25:19
Speaker 1: of a crowd.
25:21
Speaker 2: So they say.
25:21
Speaker 1: They'll try it one time in a place called Jefferson City, Missouri.
25:25
Speaker 1: The crowd went crazy. Bob Chandler says, from that point on,
25:29
Speaker 1: anytime he went anywhere with Bigfoot, people wanted to see
25:33
Speaker 1: him drive over other cars. She's got to be awkward
25:36
Speaker 1: at the grocery store.
25:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. We have kind of an exchange here between Jasmer
25:40
Speaker 2: and Chandler. Should we just do it real quick?
25:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's just go that's right.
25:45
Speaker 2: Let's just let's just make it. Make a scene of
25:47
Speaker 2: who do you want to be? Ben?
25:48
Speaker 1: I'll be Bob if you want to be Everett.
25:50
Speaker 2: Jasmer got it? Okay, I'll be Jasmer because he's my
25:53
Speaker 2: favorite name. Okay. By nineteen eighty three, Bob had another
25:56
Speaker 2: opportunity to do that That's Incredible show. He already had
26:00
Speaker 2: sixty six inch tires. I was getting ready to put
26:02
Speaker 2: them on my truck. He called me one day and
26:03
Speaker 2: told me about the TV show, and I wasn't ready.
26:06
Speaker 2: I had just a few weeks to get the truck
26:07
Speaker 2: rebuilt and get the sixty six inch tires on so
26:10
Speaker 2: we could compete on the show.
26:12
Speaker 1: We just stepped up to the sixty six inch tires,
26:14
Speaker 1: and our trucks weren't really set up for that size tire.
26:17
Speaker 1: They're massive things, thousand pound tires. For the show, there
26:20
Speaker 1: was going to be fifty something cars in a row
26:22
Speaker 1: for each of us to drive over. They wanted a
26:25
Speaker 1: race that would be somewhat.
26:26
Speaker 2: Competitive, which answers my previous question. There is you know,
26:30
Speaker 2: even if it's the illusion of competition, there is like
26:32
Speaker 2: a little bit of built in competition carrying on as
26:35
Speaker 2: Jasmer I was out of time. We literally didn't have
26:38
Speaker 2: time to put the sixty six inch tires on the
26:40
Speaker 2: truck and try it out. We were down to the
26:41
Speaker 2: last second, so we loaded the truck on a trailer
26:44
Speaker 2: and loaded the tires and went to Saint Louis. We
26:47
Speaker 2: unloaded and put the tires on for the first time
26:48
Speaker 2: at the racetrack. I discovered in the process that the
26:51
Speaker 2: steering wasn't working very well with those big tires, so
26:53
Speaker 2: I was having a difficult time steering the truck during
26:56
Speaker 2: the competition. I've never said this to anyone before. I
26:58
Speaker 2: think Bob knew I was having and steering problems, and
27:01
Speaker 2: I think he slowed down to make me look less bad.
27:04
Speaker 1: Well, as I remember it, I had a speakerphone in
27:07
Speaker 1: the truck and the producers were yelling at me to
27:09
Speaker 1: let Everett catch up to me, to keep it interesting.
27:12
Speaker 2: It was a fantastic time. Of course, we got a
27:14
Speaker 2: lot of exposure out of him. There were a few
27:16
Speaker 2: other guys building trucks at the time, but we were
27:18
Speaker 2: three or four years into what people were calling monster trucks.
27:22
Speaker 2: But That's incredible was a trigger and people started building
27:25
Speaker 2: trucks all over the place. The promoters made hay out
27:28
Speaker 2: of him. That was a major step in promoting the
27:31
Speaker 2: whole monster truck sport.
27:33
Speaker 1: So I love how you could tell these guys are
27:35
Speaker 1: have become really good friends, and they were packing arenas
27:41
Speaker 1: across the country. By the mid eighties, the monster truck
27:44
Speaker 1: phenomenon took over tailers, telling people, I can't believe how
27:48
Speaker 1: the crowd loves to see destruction. And he earned about
27:52
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars a pop every time he did his show,
27:55
Speaker 1: which was pretty great money considering how many shows they did.
27:59
Speaker 1: And then he started building more Bigfoot trucks. They were
28:02
Speaker 1: all Fords, and sometimes he would send them to events
28:05
Speaker 1: if he couldn't be at two places at once. This
28:07
Speaker 1: is where we saw other trucks coming in, like the
28:09
Speaker 1: ones Everett mentions, right, we see King Kong out of Wisconsin.
28:14
Speaker 1: This is where the narrative differs. The owner of King Kong,
28:17
Speaker 1: a guy named Jeff Dane, would later say, hey, King
28:20
Speaker 1: Kong was the first to crush cars, but it again,
28:24
Speaker 1: it depends on who you ask. We know that there
28:26
Speaker 1: was the Barefoot from Illinois, not to be confused with
28:30
Speaker 1: Bigfoot and Taylor's Bigfoot one. Going back to our history
28:33
Speaker 1: dot Com article is monster truckings quote Muhammad Ali the
28:38
Speaker 1: biggest name in the business, the one everybody wants to beat,
28:43
Speaker 1: and they got tired from having to do this constantury.
28:47
Speaker 2: Sorry, but I have to add I can't remember if
28:49
Speaker 2: it was Chandler or Jasmer that said it, but the
28:52
Speaker 2: idea that they were surprised that people were into watching
28:56
Speaker 2: this kind of destruction. You'll remember, Ben, we did an
28:59
Speaker 2: episode in the past on Ridiculous History about staged train crashes.
29:05
Speaker 2: Do you remember this, how dangerous they were? The crash
29:09
Speaker 2: and Crush was I believe the episode that took place
29:14
Speaker 2: near Waco, Texas where people were actually injured, and these
29:19
Speaker 2: these train crashes were maybe basically they staged these collisions
29:23
Speaker 2: and people would watch them, you know, from Afar, and
29:25
Speaker 2: the crash of Crush ended up being such a disastrous
29:29
Speaker 2: kind of explosive collision that people were injured by flying debris.
29:34
Speaker 2: So this to me is just kind of an extension
29:36
Speaker 2: of that. And we're talking this crash a Crush was
29:38
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety six, So people's thirst for motor vehicular
29:43
Speaker 2: mayhem I think was pretty well established already. Maybe they
29:48
Speaker 2: just didn't realize that there was that connection and that
29:50
Speaker 2: it was something that kind of had already proven out
29:52
Speaker 2: historically that people would really pay attention to.
29:55
Speaker 1: They kind of just stumbled upon it. Yeah, people loved
29:58
Speaker 1: crazy spectacles. I mean that love of vehicular destruction is
30:02
Speaker 1: a big part of why Mad Max Fury Road is
30:05
Speaker 1: just so unflinchingly awesome.
30:07
Speaker 2: It's an incredible, incredible movie. It's also a great story
30:10
Speaker 2: and really re acting and just wonderful world.
30:13
Speaker 1: Bill eate for Furios to come out, so we see
30:18
Speaker 1: some prescients here. When Bob Chandler tells his wife, we
30:21
Speaker 1: got to get what we can because it's not going
30:24
Speaker 1: to last. And as the eighties progress, more and more
30:29
Speaker 1: monster trucks enter the fray. You got Monster Vet, Frankenstein,
30:33
Speaker 1: Blue Thunder, Crimson Crusher with two k's, King Crunch with
30:39
Speaker 1: two K's, and a lot of these start getting custom made.
30:44
Speaker 1: They get a roll cage, they get ex military gear
30:49
Speaker 1: on them, ex Military components or custom made stuff. Also,
30:54
Speaker 1: although it sounds like it's a bunch of people having
30:56
Speaker 1: fun playing the adult version of Hot Wheels cars, we
31:00
Speaker 1: have to remember that as this becomes a business, as
31:03
Speaker 1: this becomes a sport, people aren't always super friendly. They
31:08
Speaker 1: argue over who did what first. Everybody wants to be
31:11
Speaker 1: the king of the hill, to be the largest, the fastest,
31:14
Speaker 1: to get the most events under their belt.
31:17
Speaker 2: Well, and it's a classic example of like, you know,
31:20
Speaker 2: you can trademark a name, you can trademark technology if
31:24
Speaker 2: it has if it just you know, displays a certain
31:27
Speaker 2: amount of originality, right, or like, you know, kind of innovativeness.
31:31
Speaker 2: But I think popping big wheels on a truck does
31:35
Speaker 2: not fall under that perview, right, So you could very
31:39
Speaker 2: easily kind of mimic you know, this stuff and make
31:43
Speaker 2: your own monster truck. And unless you were you know,
31:46
Speaker 2: ripping off a name or like a branding or a logo,
31:49
Speaker 2: you would not be in danger of infringing on anybody's
31:52
Speaker 2: intellectual property. But again I'm teasing here because the name
31:55
Speaker 2: was everything that's the brand Bigfoot, right.
31:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the you know, it's like the invention of
32:02
Speaker 1: the baseball cap kind of you can't tell other people
32:05
Speaker 1: what they can or can't put on their own hat.
32:08
Speaker 1: And so this this leads us to one of the
32:11
Speaker 1: great rivalries of monster trucking, Bob Chandler and a guy
32:15
Speaker 1: named Fred Schaeffer. Fred lives out in Granite City, Illinois,
32:20
Speaker 1: about twenty five miles from Chandler's shop as the monster
32:23
Speaker 1: truck drives, and in the seventies, Schaeffer was also a
32:28
Speaker 1: car guy, but he was drag racing. He said, I
32:32
Speaker 1: wasn't fast enough. I didn't have the financing to become
32:35
Speaker 1: a professional drag racer, but locally I was the man
32:39
Speaker 1: to beat.
32:40
Speaker 2: So we talked about We talked about King Kong. We
32:43
Speaker 2: talked about Bearfoot. Right, this is not Barefoot like no Shoes,
32:47
Speaker 2: is like Bearfoot, which also, you know, obviously Bigfoot conjures
32:51
Speaker 2: images of the Sasquatch. You know, so Barefoot being a
32:56
Speaker 2: very similar sounding name and conjuring a very simil image
33:01
Speaker 2: potentially a little problematic.
33:03
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, this so we know there's gonna be
33:07
Speaker 1: a rivalry.
33:08
Speaker 2: Right.
33:08
Speaker 1: We talked about Fred Schaeffer and Bob Chandler. Yeah, one
33:13
Speaker 1: day Fred Shaffer, the locally famous drag racer, visits Midwest
33:18
Speaker 1: four wheel Drive and he says, I want to see
33:21
Speaker 1: this Bigfoot one in person. And Shaeffer would later say,
33:25
Speaker 1: I don't want to knock his truck, but it looked
33:28
Speaker 1: pretty rough, And he said, after I saw Bigfoot, I
33:33
Speaker 1: thought I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna build me a
33:35
Speaker 1: Chevy truck because I don't like Fords. I never did. Yeah, Fred,
33:40
Speaker 1: really feel if you have Fred seems like the kind
33:43
Speaker 1: of guy who thinks Ford stands for found on road
33:46
Speaker 1: dead right, Yeah exactly.
33:47
Speaker 2: Oh, I forgot about that one. So by nineteen seventy
33:50
Speaker 2: nine he got some help from his buddy Jack Willman,
33:53
Speaker 2: and he did just that. He you know, took his
33:56
Speaker 2: automotive know how and essentially mutated a nineteen seventy nine
34:01
Speaker 2: Silverado into a monstrous creation with a blown four fifty
34:08
Speaker 2: four engine and barefoot with no spaces just like Bigfoot
34:14
Speaker 2: painted across the side. He wasn't necessarily throwing shade at
34:19
Speaker 2: our hero of the story today. He was in referring
34:23
Speaker 2: this guy seems to go large. He was referring to
34:26
Speaker 2: his pets, of which he had two American black bears
34:31
Speaker 2: named Sugar and Spice. I find it very difficult to
34:35
Speaker 2: believe that Barefoot was not in some way a ploy
34:39
Speaker 2: to create some brand dilution.
34:42
Speaker 1: He would have known.
34:43
Speaker 2: He had to.
34:44
Speaker 1: He's a smart guy. It works because he gets offers
34:55
Speaker 1: to exhibit his truck and his pet bears, Sugar and
34:58
Speaker 1: Spice at local t shows for five hundred bucks a pop.
35:03
Speaker 1: And he says, back then there were only a few
35:05
Speaker 1: trucks in the US, we would be booked for months
35:07
Speaker 1: and months and months, and things come to a head.
35:11
Speaker 1: At a nineteen eighty two truck show in Wisconsin, a
35:14
Speaker 1: local paper says there are only three monster trucks in existence, Barefoot, Bigfoot,
35:21
Speaker 1: and King Kong, And uh, that's probably that's not true,
35:26
Speaker 1: probably at this point, but it is true that they've
35:28
Speaker 1: become a big three all their own. They're known for
35:31
Speaker 1: putting on the best shows.
35:33
Speaker 2: Well, and those kinds of statements are sort of like
35:35
Speaker 2: world's best cup of coffee.
35:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it.
35:37
Speaker 2: Looks good on a flyer, but pretty hard to quantify,
35:41
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, there certainly were other tinkerers that
35:43
Speaker 2: were doing something that could be akin to a monster truck,
35:46
Speaker 2: but whatever. So Chandler and Schaeffer at this point we're
35:51
Speaker 2: trying to desperately to meet the demands because they're you know,
35:55
Speaker 2: relatively at least in terms of the world of monster
35:57
Speaker 2: truck racing. There weren't that many of these things that
36:00
Speaker 2: had reached the level of prominence as Bigfoot, Barefoot, and
36:04
Speaker 2: King Kong. So you started to see kind of additional
36:07
Speaker 2: trucks being put out by these makers.
36:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have to meet spectator demand. So Schaefer, Fred
36:15
Speaker 1: Schaeffer builds Little Barefoot. Huh cut, it's a nineteen eighty
36:19
Speaker 1: two Chevy S ten, And we can get into some
36:23
Speaker 1: of the specifics, the nuts and bolts of the modifications
36:26
Speaker 1: they made, but I think maybe we we'll keep.
36:30
Speaker 2: It like this.
36:31
Speaker 1: So one of the cool things about Little Barefoot is
36:35
Speaker 1: that he uses planetary axles. They're coming from a military
36:40
Speaker 1: front end loader, and so he can do stuff like
36:45
Speaker 1: haul off a pillar of an inner state. He can
36:50
Speaker 1: light the tires on fire because of the strength of
36:52
Speaker 1: the engine, and people love again, they love the spectacle
36:57
Speaker 1: of it. Chandler, Bob Chandler eventually says, Hey, Fred, why
37:02
Speaker 1: don't you come out meet me at my bigfoot appearance.
37:04
Speaker 1: It's a tractor meet in Ridgefield, Ohio. And Chandler drives
37:08
Speaker 1: his truck out. First, he grabs the mic and he
37:11
Speaker 1: introduces He introduces Fred Schaffer in the Chevrolet Barefoot, and
37:16
Speaker 1: then Fred says, when I came out and that's Chevy,
37:19
Speaker 1: there were a whole lot more cheers, which sounds a
37:21
Speaker 1: little petty.
37:22
Speaker 2: Uh, it does sound petty, and he seems like a
37:25
Speaker 2: petty guy. But for by all accounts, his truck was better.
37:30
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing. You know, he comes later in
37:33
Speaker 1: the game so he can benefit from That's true, the
37:36
Speaker 1: lessons that Bobbler. Anyway, they keep beefing up. In nineteen
37:43
Speaker 1: eighty four, zz Top said, hey, can you guys, can
37:46
Speaker 1: we use your trucks in a music video. Chandler names
37:49
Speaker 1: his price, and then Schaefer undercuts him and gives them
37:53
Speaker 1: a much lower price so he can get in the
37:56
Speaker 1: music video. And then Fred Schaeffer's truck bear Foot also
38:00
Speaker 1: appears on an episode of night Rider. Then it's in
38:04
Speaker 1: a TV another TV show, it's an Evolvo commercial, It's
38:07
Speaker 1: in a tour's beer ad, just like Ridiculous History.
38:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so at this point, Barefoot is literally eating
38:16
Speaker 2: bigfoots kibble, you know, or whatever bigfoots eat. And it's
38:20
Speaker 2: starting to really get to Chandler to the point where
38:24
Speaker 2: he has decided, you know, maybe he wasn't gonna do
38:26
Speaker 2: this at first, because obviously he was trying sort of
38:29
Speaker 2: maybe not make nice but to sort of, you know,
38:32
Speaker 2: encourage a little healthy rivalry. But at this point he
38:35
Speaker 2: feels like, you know, Barefoot is starting to overshadow Bigfoot,
38:41
Speaker 2: so he decides he's gonna do something about it.
38:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because Barefoot is all over TV. Bob Chandler
38:51
Speaker 1: sues Fred Schaeffer and he says, the name of our
38:54
Speaker 1: trucks is too similar. This is a civil action, but
38:58
Speaker 1: it ruins their relationship ship, and Fred Schaefer himself says,
39:02
Speaker 1: it's been ugly ever since then.
39:05
Speaker 2: Ugly exactly, gotta double down the ugly. But you know,
39:10
Speaker 2: this actually did kind of that beef that we were
39:13
Speaker 2: describing that at first was kind of a controlled beef
39:16
Speaker 2: and now it's an absolutely out of control, wildfire beef.
39:21
Speaker 2: It really does kind of create that same vibe as
39:25
Speaker 2: you see in professional wrestling, oh, you know, with like
39:28
Speaker 2: the heel wrestler, you know, the bad guy and and
39:31
Speaker 2: you know obviously all that stuff's hey, sorry, kids, wrestling
39:34
Speaker 2: is not real manufactured exactly, wait, elaborate. I always forget
39:40
Speaker 2: what that means. K Fabe is the.
39:42
Speaker 1: Idea that one will never give away the illusion or
39:47
Speaker 1: show like, you'll never let the audience know that the
39:51
Speaker 1: staged performance is indeed staged.
39:54
Speaker 2: God is it an acronym or is it a word?
39:56
Speaker 2: What is that? I don't know, I don't know what it's.
39:59
Speaker 1: Supposed to Apparently originate from pig Latin the forma like
40:05
Speaker 1: in pig Latin for fake, you would say a fay yeah,
40:08
Speaker 1: but no one's quite sure.
40:10
Speaker 2: I think that's interesting. Okay, so it's sort of yeah,
40:13
Speaker 2: got it, poor Bento.
40:14
Speaker 1: But it's it's Carney slang.
40:16
Speaker 2: Mm hm, no, that makes sense. So now you really
40:19
Speaker 2: do have this kind of you know, pro wrestling level
40:23
Speaker 2: rivalry that at least between these two guys was very real.
40:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, one hundred percent. And it comes to a head.
40:32
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty eight, T and T Motor Sports announces
40:36
Speaker 1: the Monster Truck Challenge. This is called the Most Powerful
40:40
Speaker 1: Sport on Earth. It's going to be on ESPN, and
40:45
Speaker 1: it's going to show you the original monster trucks, Bob
40:48
Speaker 1: Chandler versus Everett Jasper, Bigfoot versus USA one, Ford versus Chevy.
40:55
Speaker 1: And I got a note here, Noel Max in this arena,
40:59
Speaker 1: particularly having one car named USA one, feels like you're
41:04
Speaker 1: kind of stacking the deck, right, mm hmmm, Like we
41:09
Speaker 1: know the audience votes for it.
41:10
Speaker 2: Wasn't that part of his vision from the Monster Truck
41:13
Speaker 2: gods USA one putting that like on the on the
41:16
Speaker 2: the license plate of the very least. So I guess
41:18
Speaker 2: he's he's still carrying that that that the divine instruction forward.
41:24
Speaker 1: Huh oh yeah, and we could uh you know what, Actually,
41:27
Speaker 1: we have another pair of interviews with these guys. So
41:31
Speaker 1: we returned to Everett and Bob.
41:34
Speaker 2: Already in progress. This was a dream come true for
41:37
Speaker 2: me because I came out of drag racing in motorsports,
41:39
Speaker 2: but I committed the new truck to auto shows for
41:42
Speaker 2: the first three months. Of course, I probably got sick
41:45
Speaker 2: to my stomach. I had to sit back and watch
41:47
Speaker 2: the TNT Monster Truck Challenge For the first three months.
41:50
Speaker 2: Everyone was running in it, including Bigfoot. I told my
41:53
Speaker 2: crew that we have to get in there for April
41:55
Speaker 2: and do the best we could.
41:57
Speaker 1: And here's Bob. I think we had big Foot four's
42:00
Speaker 1: part of that series. There were quite a few trucks competing.
42:03
Speaker 1: I had a driver named Rich Hosier in that series,
42:07
Speaker 1: which ended up being probably the best business decision I
42:09
Speaker 1: ever made since I started in the monster truck business.
42:12
Speaker 1: I put the driving into the hands of one of
42:13
Speaker 1: my younger crew named Rod Litzau. We proceeded to go
42:17
Speaker 1: from nowhere in April to second place behind Bigfoot by
42:20
Speaker 1: the end of the season, and we were right on
42:22
Speaker 1: his tail. It came down to the last weekend and
42:25
Speaker 1: this is a true story. He's not blowing smoke. The
42:29
Speaker 1: Monster Truck Challenge Final had these trucks which all weighed
42:33
Speaker 1: more than ten thousand pounds, running over cars. They were
42:37
Speaker 1: crashing into each other. They were cartwheeling end over end
42:40
Speaker 1: in the dirt. The two rivals go head to head
42:44
Speaker 1: at the very end in the TNT National Championship. They
42:48
Speaker 1: run at high speeds over rows and rows of cars.
42:51
Speaker 1: As they get near the finish line, USA one loses control.
42:56
Speaker 1: The truck knowses forward. It crosses the line first just
43:00
Speaker 1: as it flips on its side and technically wins. The
43:05
Speaker 1: driver that Everett mentioned jumps out, and a huge crowd
43:09
Speaker 1: again rolls around their cheering form raw Rah Muster trucks.
43:13
Speaker 1: Someone in the back probably is doing USA USA. That's
43:18
Speaker 1: the vibe, and we know that there are again more
43:22
Speaker 1: trucks of notes that enter the freight. But now we've
43:25
Speaker 1: got people thinking beyond movies. Now we've got people thinking
43:29
Speaker 1: of sponsorships and merchandising.
43:31
Speaker 2: Oh it does just add TNT Motorsports, which was kind
43:34
Speaker 2: of the premiere. I guess the league at this Point.
43:36
Speaker 2: TNT stands for Trucks and Tractors and it was founded
43:40
Speaker 2: in Owensboro, Kentucky by Billy Joe Miles. These events were
43:45
Speaker 2: broadcast on ESPN and another network at the time called
43:48
Speaker 2: Power Tracks. And this would have aired on what was
43:53
Speaker 2: then called TNN, which I think stood for the Nashville Network,
43:57
Speaker 2: which ran from nineteen eighty three to two thousand and
44:00
Speaker 2: then it became what you guys might remember as Spike TV,
44:04
Speaker 2: the men's Network.
44:07
Speaker 1: It's getting a hard thumbs down from Max. There not
44:10
Speaker 1: a fan of the Mint's Network, but Corporate America is watching.
44:15
Speaker 1: The streets of Wall Street are watching. So Chandler gets
44:19
Speaker 1: a lot of money from Ford and Mattel. Everett Jasmer
44:23
Speaker 1: gets money from Chevy and a plastic model company called AMT.
44:27
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety two, Fred signs another high dollar deal
44:31
Speaker 1: with Dodge. This is incredibly important because it's not cheap
44:36
Speaker 1: to build these vehicles. They build more versions of their
44:39
Speaker 1: existing trucks, They send out more trucks to shows. Eventually,
44:43
Speaker 1: Bigfoot Alone has a huge fleet of Bigfoot offsprings, and spinoffs,
44:49
Speaker 1: all paid for by Ford. A lot are basically carbon
44:53
Speaker 1: copies of the original Bigfoot, while others have different gimmicks,
44:58
Speaker 1: you could call them different modification, their unique projects, like
45:01
Speaker 1: the Bigfoot Shuttle, which was a mini.
45:03
Speaker 2: Van, Yeah, a mini van with forty eight inch rubber
45:09
Speaker 2: tires and a lift an aerostar minivan specifically, thank god,
45:14
Speaker 2: not a Honda Odyssey. That would be a nightmare fuel
45:18
Speaker 2: for all of us, not just you, Ben.
45:20
Speaker 1: And be inappropriate and unfair to the audience.
45:22
Speaker 2: I think that's right. And all of these you know,
45:25
Speaker 2: all of these modifications were expensive, so you know, I
45:28
Speaker 2: mean a lot of the money they were taking in
45:30
Speaker 2: was going into just kind of upping the ante right
45:33
Speaker 2: every time, Yeah and.
45:36
Speaker 1: Over time again. Other people are entering the freight. There's
45:39
Speaker 1: a North Carolina mud bogger named Dennis Anderson who has
45:43
Speaker 1: built trucks on his own since he was twenty two.
45:47
Speaker 1: He upgrades his rig to a legit monster truck and
45:51
Speaker 1: he calls it the Grave Digger, which is super you know,
45:56
Speaker 1: edgy and cool like the Undertaker and restless about.
45:59
Speaker 2: To say, very wrestling Gee, yeah, for sure. So we've
46:03
Speaker 2: got the Grave Digger now that one started. But you know,
46:05
Speaker 2: I love that you mentioned been the toy deals because
46:09
Speaker 2: that's a big I remember these as toys more than
46:12
Speaker 2: I do as televised events. Those were cool. Everybody wanted
46:17
Speaker 2: one of those because then you could take your hot
46:19
Speaker 2: wheels right and run over them with your big monster
46:22
Speaker 2: truck toy.
46:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, learning the rules of the road very quickly, mad
46:27
Speaker 1: Max style.
46:28
Speaker 2: Not to mention when they became remote controlled, and then
46:31
Speaker 2: you really could do you know, those control monster trucks
46:34
Speaker 2: to let you ride on back two wheels, you know,
46:37
Speaker 2: do all kinds of stuff. I mean, there were really
46:39
Speaker 2: miniaturized versions of the kind of you know, engineering that
46:43
Speaker 2: was actually in the real things.
46:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we know that grave digger was very much
46:48
Speaker 1: on the spectacle end of stuff. Even Fred Schaeffer said
46:52
Speaker 1: he might only last one round, but that round was
46:56
Speaker 1: a dandy and he had his you know entrance music
47:00
Speaker 1: Bad to the Bone by George Thorahgood.
47:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.
47:06
Speaker 1: So people were digging this and there was a lot
47:10
Speaker 1: like digging it. They were grave digging it, and some
47:13
Speaker 1: people would accuse them of grave robbing or at least
47:16
Speaker 1: stealing ideas. There was so much money involved that by
47:20
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, the United States hot Rod Association, which
47:24
Speaker 1: is the big Dog truck and tractor pools purchases T
47:29
Speaker 1: and T, and they had the exclusive booking rights to
47:32
Speaker 1: all the top trucks, including Grave Digger, and they, the
47:37
Speaker 1: management of the hot Rod Association, said, look at all
47:40
Speaker 1: this profit that's going to these individual drivers. We owned
47:44
Speaker 1: the rights here. So they wanted their cut, They wanted
47:46
Speaker 1: their vigorous Fred Schaefer says, we used to make three
47:50
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for a show. We'd make about twelve grand
47:53
Speaker 1: and T shirts and they, the hot Rod Association, would
47:56
Speaker 1: take about forty percent. We would walk out with ten grand.
48:01
Speaker 1: That's attack of attacks. That's a big old tax.
48:04
Speaker 2: And the driver of Barefoot actually had this to say
48:09
Speaker 2: about the kind of you know, the greed that started
48:12
Speaker 2: to really flourish. We're going to give you a dollar
48:16
Speaker 2: per sure, take it or leave it, That's what he said.
48:18
Speaker 2: The us HRS perspective was and if say the drivers
48:22
Speaker 2: didn't like it, or the folks who had, you know,
48:25
Speaker 2: founded the whole thing didn't like it, well they were
48:27
Speaker 2: out of luck, weren't they.
48:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were out of luck. And it seemed to
48:32
Speaker 1: like corporate mounthfeasans played a huge role in this. There
48:37
Speaker 1: was an exclusive contract with every American football stadium on
48:40
Speaker 1: the calendar. You just had those choices, you know, if
48:45
Speaker 1: you can keep existing and give us almost fifty percent
48:48
Speaker 1: of everything you do, or you can say, hey, I
48:52
Speaker 1: had a good time. For a few years, Bob Channel
48:55
Speaker 1: was out and he was on the outside of the
49:00
Speaker 1: industry that he very much built.
49:02
Speaker 2: One would hope that he feathered his nest a little
49:05
Speaker 2: bit enough to be comfortable. We don't know that, but
49:09
Speaker 2: I really do hope that that's the case, because you
49:12
Speaker 2: know what, when the whole Monster Truck thing really kicked
49:15
Speaker 2: into gear pun utterly intended, was really in the nineties,
49:19
Speaker 2: you know, when when the three of us grew up
49:21
Speaker 2: where I guess maybe at least me be I always
49:23
Speaker 2: forget Max is a young lad. But in the nineties
49:27
Speaker 2: we joked about Sunday Sunday Sunday. These commercials were everywhere.
49:32
Speaker 2: Grave Digger at this point really was the star of
49:35
Speaker 2: the show, or at least one of them. And they
49:37
Speaker 2: rebranded the whole thing to Monster Jam, which is what
49:40
Speaker 2: we was just still around today, is that event that
49:42
Speaker 2: always comes through Atlanta, And it really was kind of
49:44
Speaker 2: like one of those World Wrestling Federation kind of package deals,
49:48
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. Where you'd get to see
49:50
Speaker 2: it'd be a whole show. The trucks were like the wrestlers,
49:53
Speaker 2: and every one of them had their own personality, and
49:55
Speaker 2: there'd be these perceived rivalries that were probably inspired by
49:59
Speaker 2: those real life rivalries, and then just sort of jushed
50:02
Speaker 2: up a little bit, you know.
50:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as there's a cold business decision here, because
50:07
Speaker 1: obviously the suits wanted to push trucks that they owned
50:10
Speaker 1: completely right now, they're not giving up sixty percent. Now
50:15
Speaker 1: they own, they own the whole operation. Which is why
50:19
Speaker 1: Chandler doesn't get to do as much when he refuses
50:23
Speaker 1: to sell the Bigfoot brand. And so Bigfoot still did
50:29
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, like in nineteen ninety nine, a
50:31
Speaker 1: Bigfoot model jumped over a seven to twenty seven airplane.
50:35
Speaker 1: And you'll still see a lot of applause from monster
50:39
Speaker 1: truck fans when Bigfoot shows up when it is in
50:44
Speaker 1: any kind of event, and Chandler felt his age catching up.
50:50
Speaker 1: He did say later he said someone wanted Bigfoot one,
50:54
Speaker 1: the original monster truck, at a show. Instead, I want
50:57
Speaker 1: you to drive over cars. This from a twenty seventeen interview.
51:00
Speaker 1: He says, I said I didn't want to I'm seventy
51:03
Speaker 1: five years old. I don't want to tear things up now.
51:05
Speaker 1: I want to enjoy the rest of my life. And
51:09
Speaker 1: it sounds like he chose the right time to roll out.
51:13
Speaker 1: And you know, Jasmer says the same thing about his
51:17
Speaker 1: original truck, and they really bonded with these because they
51:20
Speaker 1: changed their lives. And you know with that, Noel, Max
51:23
Speaker 1: and No we went a little bit long. But I'm
51:26
Speaker 1: starting to think we should go to Monster Jam just
51:29
Speaker 1: for the experience, right.
51:30
Speaker 2: Oh, let's just do it. All three of us should go. Yeah. No,
51:32
Speaker 2: It's something I've been wanting to do for some time,
51:34
Speaker 2: and I think this is what better time than the present?
51:38
Speaker 2: When when does it happen? It's got to be a
51:39
Speaker 2: summer kind of thing. I bet you it's the summer.
51:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was looking this up. And Munster Jam is
51:44
Speaker 1: coming to Atlanta this year. Wait for it this month?
51:48
Speaker 2: No way? Yes? Wait ed April twenty second and twenty third. Okay,
51:52
Speaker 2: what do you guys say we go to the Sunday
51:54
Speaker 2: Sunday Sunday one.
51:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we go to the Sunday one. Okay,
51:58
Speaker 1: Max to you in, Yeah, Max is in. It's a
52:01
Speaker 1: little bit of a it'll be a little bit of
52:03
Speaker 1: a drive, so maybe we meet up in the city
52:06
Speaker 1: and then we.
52:07
Speaker 2: Have we gotta do it. Let's just do it. This,
52:09
Speaker 2: it's this coming Sunday, Sunday Sday.
52:11
Speaker 1: It's this Sunday.
52:12
Speaker 2: Oh oh my gosh.
52:15
Speaker 1: Okay, well we've got to go because we got to
52:17
Speaker 1: make some plans. Thank you so much, fellow Ridiculous Historians
52:20
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Big thanks to our super producer mister Max.
52:24
Speaker 2: Williams Alex Williams who composed this theme. Thanks to Chris
52:28
Speaker 2: frasciotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Co, Jonathan stricklet Ben, thank.
52:32
Speaker 1: You Sunday, Sunday Sunday.
52:35
Speaker 2: Indeed, and we'll see you then and next time. Folks.
52:46
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
52:50
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.