April 20, 2023 • 52 mins
Even if you're not a fan of cars or racing, you've heard of monster trucks -- they're the huge, modded vehicles famous for committing acts of wanton destruction in arenas and stadiums across the United States. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into their strange origin story... along with the rivalries that ensued offstage.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Let's hear it from our super producer,
mister Max Sunday Sunday Sunday.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Williams Sunday Sunday, say so, I've been your goal.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's it's It may be Sunday while someone's listening to this,
but there's never a bad time to check out a
monster truck show. Have you ever seen one?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
You guys? Not in person? They do what is it
called monster Jam here in Atlanta. It's a big thing,
very popular event. I was invited to go once and
I couldn't make it, but I want to go. I
want to see what is it? Truck Osaurus? Is that
a thing?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Truck Osaurus is? We mentioned this in our previous episode, Right,
truck Asaurus is in the Simpsons. It's a truck dinosaur
created by Professor Frink.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Right, and it like it shoots fire and stuff. Right,
isn't it based on something real? I swear it is.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
There's like Robosaurus is the real life versions Okay, dinosaur
robot created by Doug Mulliwiki. I want to say, and
got it?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, but monsters, I mean it's just you know, I'm
obviously I'm not a I've made no secret that I'm
not the biggest sportsman on the planet. And it's weird
because like monster truck it's not really a sport. It's
more of a spectacle kind of. It's more like going
to see an air show or something. Wouldn't you say,
is there a competition element involved? I don't think so.
I think it's all kind of. It's also not like
(01:57):
a demolition derby and that that has like a you know,
or someone wins, but I don't think anybody wins. It's
a rally, so it's not necessarily like a competition unless
I'm mistaken.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Well, it's a heck of a good time as long
as you're not in a truck that recks.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
We always, i.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Think, associate monster truck rallies with a sort of halcyon
era in the nineteen eighties, you know, WrestleMania was a
thing people tuned into and if you are unfamiliar with
monster trucks, if you've never been to a show before,
you might be surprised to learn just how popular this
(02:37):
stuff was. Just a few years before, Hogan and Andre
the Giant conducted WrestleMania three at the Pontiac Silver Dome
in Pontiac, Michigan. About four years before that happened, sixty
eight thousand people poured into the same Silver Dome to
watch a converted Ford F two fifty with oversized wheels
(03:00):
crush other vehicles, just smashing them the way you walk
on water bottles.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And that scene setting comes courtesy of Jake Ross and
at Mental Floss, who really kind of likened the whole
wrestling phenomenon with monster trucks. It really is kind of
the same bread and circuses spectacle of professional wrestling, but
instead of wrestlers, you've got these insane converted trucks. And
(03:25):
when we say converted, we're basically referring to you know
how it all kind of started with an Afford F
two fifty truck. YEP, that's just one whole hundred bigger
than the F one fifty, which is already pretty massive.
You know, it's converted by by being given massive wheels
and obviously all of the gack that goes along with that,
you know, the what do you call it? The you know,
(03:47):
I'm sure it's got a modified suspension and all of
that you know, with hydraulics, and maybe the hydraulics like lyft,
but something that allows the shock of literally running over
cars to be absorbed to the point where the driver
is not gonna get jostled out of their seat right exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And this this is a huge moment for a huge truck.
The crowd is looking at this thing called Bigfoot, owned
by a guy named Bob Chandler, and they love it
so much that they swarm the field. They want to
get closer to Bigfoot. And the guy who owns it, Bob,
he rolls up the windows and stops the show and
(04:27):
drives off because he's afraid his monstrous truck will take
some monstrous damage. This is the story of the monster trucks. Now,
we want to be clear with you folks. Like any
amazing origin story, there are some differing narratives, so you're
gonna hear different sources saying different things about who invented
(04:49):
the quote unquote first monster truck. We'll stick with Bob
Chandler for a moment here. He's got a really interesting story.
He was a carpenter by trade, and he used to
be in the Navy, where he works as a mind
sweeper when he was about thirty five years old. He
wasn't dreaming of making monster trucks. He just liked pickups.
(05:11):
You know, if you're a carpenter, a pickup is a
great vehicle. You can haul lumber, you can haul tools,
you can go camping if you want, like a friend
of the show Alex Williams, who is eternally camping, it seems.
And let's let's go back here. Let's get some help
from our friends at haggarty dot com Cameron neviuw who
(05:32):
has a great article on the brash disputed birth of
the American monster truck. Nolan, can you paint the scene here?
What was going on with the origin of the trucks?
Do we have to go back to the nineteen sixties
to understand?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
We do. We don't have to, but we choose to
because that's that is where it started. The big three
auto companies you've heard of these. I believe Chrysler was
one of them, Ford was the other. What's the third
big American auto company? GM? GM? Of course General Motors,
you know, back back in the in the golden era
(06:08):
of of of of American manufacturing of cars, because obviously
the car was an American invention. But then, as we know,
a lot of these communities really got rocked when overseas
manufacturing became more cost effective and a lot of foreign
auto makers began to you know, flood the market with
affordable vehicles. So, you know, places like Flint, Michigan, for example,
(06:32):
really you know, got hit super hard when this happened
and they lost a lot of their infrastructure. But in
the sixties things were booming and the Big Three started
to kind of build and put out vehicles that emphasized
the idea of the open road, or rather the off road,
being able to just take your car wherever your little
(06:54):
adventuring heart may lead you. For it had the Bronco,
which was kind of stuff smiling on a previous vehicle model,
the Jeep, which we know, but it kind of combined
the off roadiness of the Jeep with something more akin
to like a family car, you know, so you have
kind of the best of both worlds. And this did
(07:15):
very well. You know, consumers were all about this idea
of freedom, even if they never took the thing off row,
they liked to think that they could if they wanted to.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, this is kind of the birth of the sport
utility vehicle or SUV, and you have doubtlessly seen many
of these, especially if you live in a city. You
might have been a little aggravated seeing one slow down
at a speed bump or a pothole, and you're wondering,
why'd you pay so much for the four wheel drive.
(07:44):
Off Roading was booming at this time or mudding, whatever
you want to call it, especially on the West Coast.
People would go onto the dunes and they would build
these tube frame contraptions with balloon tires, which are exactly
what they sound like. They were originally designed for Arctic
exploration in this miliu. In nineteen seventy four, Bob and
(08:07):
Marilyn Chandler of Missouri purchased their brand new Ford F
two fifty. Now my car stuff's coming out here, guys.
I don't think anybody should buy a vehicle brand new
unless you get a really really good deal.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, because there's that whole like, you know, depreciation the
moment you drive it off the lot scenario.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Right, even worse than a boat.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
It's the number. It's a shocking number.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It's it changes over time. It's been a while since
I looked at it. But it could be significant. You know,
I've seen numbers like fifteen percent, et cetera. And it
also to be proud of me, I bought a certified
pre own.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I know we.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Talked about it. I remember, I remember making these schemes.
And that's been a really good car to you man.
That one's held up right, dude.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I haven't had to have any major work done on
it at all, and it's still kicking along beautifully. It's
a great car. Highly recommend not not an F four
two fifty. I wouldn't be going off roading in this guy,
Although maybe I could do some modifications to put some
bigger wheels on it. But I don't think I don't
help good.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, it's a it's a rabbit hole, and it's a
wallet vortex and a time vampire. But if you have
a mod so okay, this is the thing. They want
to mod their vehicle too. They want to be part
of this off roading boom. But Bob and Maryland have
a problem. They say, we can't find four by four
(09:30):
parts in our home state of Missouri.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
So if you would put your car stuff on again
for a second to explain to me and the listeners
what is four by four referring to So four.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
X four is short term or for four wheel drive,
and that means that you have a two axle vehicle
drive train that can provide torque to all of the
wheels simultaneously, as opposed to something like front wheel drive
where or rear wheel drive where it's just that one pair.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
I know what four wheel drive is. Never until this
moment did I know that four x four was referring
to that. But that makes sense. So this is obviously
a feature that would be very helpful in getting enough
torque to say, launch your modified F two fifty over
a sand in right.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah. And there's also all wheel drive, which is very similar.
It's a little bit different. All wheel drive is always
going to be active, and four wheel drive you have
to turn it on. It has to be engaged.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
By the driver, and part of it is also about
helping getting you unstuck yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, and helping you navigate you know, uneven terrain. So
they want to get in on this, and they call
a friend in nineteen seventy five, shortly after they buy
this Ford, and it's a buddy of theirs who loves
going off road. His name's Jim Kramer, and they say, look,
let's start our own business. We found an opportunity. Let's
(10:59):
sell for by four parts. And they say, okay, we're
gonna call the business Midwest four wheel Drive, and we're
going to supply people. We're gonna be based in Saint Louis.
So this guy, then, while he started to do business,
he's still doing his off roading right without without all
these modifications just yet, and he is wrecking his poor
(11:23):
forward often like tearing up engines, axles, you name.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
It, and you know. So he was putting these big
oversized wheels on his f two fifty forty eight inches
to be precise, and that would also involve modifying the
axles so that they could support that. And I was
just doing a little digging, and it seems that because
of that lack of four by four parts and maybe
no one not even really considered doing this yet, these
(11:49):
wheels were really only available from like farm equipment and
more industrial equipment, you know, like backos and things like
that that would backos are more tread based, but like
you know what I'm talking about, like certain tractors would
be it would be sure, that's exactly right, because they
need to, you know, go over rough terrain by their very.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Nature, or wheels on a harvester. Yeah, yeah, it makes
total sense. And this is this is funny because the
guy starts this shop because he wants to have a
shop like this selling things to him. It's kind of
like someone who starts a restaurant because they're hungry, you
know what I mean. He's dipping into his own supply
(12:28):
pretty quickly. He gets easy access to all sorts of parts.
The Mental Floss article you mentioned earlier has some quotes
from him as his cabin begins to loom over the road.
This is a gradual process building up to those forty
eight inch oversized wheels because it's advertising for the shop.
(12:49):
But he says, I never really had the thought to
build a monster truck. I had a stock for two
fifty and I kept putting bigger and bigger tires on
it that I broke the so I put bigger axles
under the truck. Then I didn't have enough power, so
I put a bigger engine in there. It was quote
just kind of a vicious circle for about three or
(13:10):
four years. The truck gradually got to be its own star,
I guess, And so he would zip around town. I mean,
this is great. He's a rolling billboard for his company now,
and this is a fast vehicle, like once he gets
the engine in there. This is cartoonish on the road totally.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
And Ben correct me if I'm wrong here again, if
you could put on your car stuff, Helmut. The idea
of stock cars. This that refers to using stock like
consumer available cars, and modifying them, right.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yeah, yeah, A stock car is an ordinary car that's
been modified in some way, usually for racing. The other
version would be a stock car in the world of trains,
that would be like a railroad car.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
So this is a stock truck. It's being modified not
necessarily for racing, but for trucking, for monster trucking.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Right yeah. And we know how he got the nickname too.
His buddy Jim Kramer, who helped start the business. He
joked about how Chandler at kind of a lead foot.
He said, Bob Taylor's big foot is always on the
gas and people started calling him Bigfoot. And Bob Jaylor
strikes me as a pretty cool guy to hang out
(14:24):
with because he leans into the nickname. He says, Oh,
people are calling me Bigfoot on the streets. I'll just
paint it on the truck. And he was.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Also bigfoot in the sheets.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Hey right, Uh, locals loved this and he got people
coming out of the woodwork trying to buy his unique truck.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Now, I'm not trying to be a pill here, but
I have a I suspect that not all locals love
this because I don't know if you've ever seen anyone
driving one of these things around like Atlanta, trying to
squeeze into parking spaces or cutting you off of traffic.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Don't love it?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
No, it's not great. These things really are designed. I
would not make this my daily driver, you know. So
maybe you know it led to like okay, well, it's
trying to take this thing off the road literally and
into something more contained, you know, or we can really
see what it's made of.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, and you know, the car does become a celebrity.
I for the record, one hundred percent agree with you
about not having big vehicles in densely packed urban areas
that's not off road, you know what I mean. And
I'm speaking from personal experience when I when I say
seeing somebody in a huge offer vehicle slow down at
(15:47):
a speed bump, I try not to judge people. But
if it was a video game, they lose like ten
points of respect easily, very least negative xcipede. Yeah, and
these vehicles are very expensive. Look, let's play inflation calculator
a little bit. So the Ford in its factory version,
the four to two f two fifty that he bought
(16:09):
it sold for about forty four hundred dollars straight in
the mid seventies. And that would be if we could get.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
A boop and a boop and a boop and a
boop and a boop and a boom and a.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Boop, sixteen thousand dollars in today's money. But once he
got it modded up and it became the Bigfoot truck,
people would try to buy it for fifty grand, which is,
if we inflation calculate and.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
A boo, boop, a boopeee beep, one hundred.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And eighty five grand today.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Dude, Okay, I mean, and that makes sense because not
only I mean, I'm sure that the parts and labor
and all of the you know, modifying that went into it,
you know, added some of the price tag. But I
don't think that is sherely what this figure is referring to.
This is also just the the wow factor of it all,
the fact that this thing did not exists outside of
(17:02):
what this guy created, right.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, and the story goes national. The Los Angeles Times
interviews the couple, and Marilyn Chandler says, when we go
out at night, it looks like lightning because so many
people are taking flash pictures. Pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, yeah, it is. And speaking of you know, Hollywood
come in a calling, you know, in the form of
the La Times. It really did come a calling in
a much more you know, palpable way that you know,
created what we now know as the Monster Truck Rally.
In the summer of nineteen seventy nine, when Chandler was
thirty eight years old, he met a guy by the
(17:39):
name of Everett Jasmer, which is a really great name,
Everett Jasmer, who is a drag racer and also a
fan of trucks. And that, you know, there would have
been rallies and things, or you know, not rallies like
what we know is the Monster Truck Rally, but you
know meetups, let's call them, like little car meetups. Yeah,
(18:00):
stuff like that. So there was a circuit, you know,
and this was a relatively somewhat to some degree burgeoning
kind of thing. I mean, I'm sure you know off roading, well,
I mean no, we talked about that. That was really
kind of more a phenomenon of the sixties, so this
is but still that's relatively that's only you know, about
ten years at this point that we've been having this,
(18:20):
so it's still a relatively nascent kind of a hobby,
I guess. So the circuit would have been pretty small,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, it would have been something that you were aware
of if you were involved with this, if you were
a quote unquote car guy. But it wasn't. It wasn't
getting what's the best way to say it, It wasn't
getting the same level of recognition that say, like a
NASCAR would be getting. It was prominent enough in the
American zeitgeist that it did make national news. And this guy,
(18:51):
Everett Jasper, I'm so glad he introduced him. He was
a Chevy guy. He had a nineteen seventy Chevy K
ten and he had bought it used in nineteen seventy four.
Good job, Everett. And he has a lot in common
with Bob Chandler. He's named his truck and he this
is the funny story. This comes to us from history
(19:12):
dot com. Everett was mowing his lawn one day and
he had a vision vision.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yes, yes, yes, he was. He was visited by the
ghost of Monster Truck Future. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
The ghost of Monster Truck Future said Everetts, you need
to make red, white and blue license plates, and you
need to put USA dash one on them. And Jasmer
made it. So Everett had one of these hanging on
his wall. He put the plate on his Chevy and
then that became the name of his truck USA.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
These things I say to thee and they will come
from far and wide fortune to spectate the spectacle which
you would be at the center of if you read it,
they will come.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
There was no such thing as a monster truck yet
there's still like in the first part of Field of Dreams.
Here and their friendship between Bob and Everett. These guys
create a national phenomenon that leads to a billion dollar industry.
And it all starts with a phone call to Bob
Chandler's after market four by four shop in nineteen seventy nine.
(20:27):
Hollywood comes calling.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Oh yeah, we tease the call, but really quickly, I've
got a backtrack for two seconds Field of Dreams. I
think a superior name for that movie would have been
Baseball Ghosts. What do you guys think?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
I agreed one hundred percent it is yeah cool.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
So Chandler gets a call from the pic Jazz, from
a movie producer who's working on a comedy. This is
also you got to remember this was like in the seventies,
there were a lot of like big rig type movies,
you know, like every which Way but Loose, if I'm
not mistaken, which is the one where involves no, there's wait,
there's bj and the Bear I think is one where
(21:03):
there's like a rangutan or a chimpanzee, and like what's
his name? Burt Reynolds driving a four by four and
if I'm not wrong, every which way but Loose might
have to do with a four by four. Definitely there's
a monkey in that one too, sorry, and Ape But yeah,
truck movies, you know, even like the film from the
seventies Sorcerer, which is you know, a fabulous you know,
(21:25):
kind of like adventure rollicking, kind of like very complex
character study by William Friedkin involves driving a big rig
across a like rope bridge and the rig is loaded
with like nitro glycerin, and it's really one of the
most tense sequences in film. So it makes sense that
Hollywood would have caught wind of this, like, how can
we bake this in to like, you know, our truck pictures,
(21:50):
you know. So he's working on a comedy with a
fabulous title called Take This Job and Shove It from
nineteen eighty one, very irreverent. And he had seen Chandler's
truck in one of these kind of magazines that would
have been, you know, featuring this kind of stuff, these
kind of you know, DIY sort of motorist mags.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, and this this is a golden opportunity. They say,
we want to have your truck, just make some appearances.
So Bigfoot shows up in the movie Take This Job
and Shove It, starring Art Carney, Robert Hayes, Barbara Hershey,
David Keith. People, I'm not really familiar with. It's named
after that country song Take This Job, barsh of It.
(22:30):
Barbara Hershey had a really sultry voice.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Cool, all right, I'm into I love a sultry voice.
So this monster truck, Bigfoot shows up as a big
time participant in a pickup truck race in the film.
Initially the studio wanted to use stunt drivers, but no
one really knew how to drive the truck as well
as Bob Chandler because he literally built it, and so
(22:57):
he was behind the wheel for filming. And when he's
going to go film, he calls up his buddy Everett Jasmer,
the Chevy guy USA one, and he says, hey, come
hang out with me on this movie shoot. And Jasmer says,
this is a great opportunity. So he shows up and
after that they get invitations to these events around the country.
(23:19):
They keep making their trucks bigger and bigger. We have
a quote from Everett where he says it was like evolution.
I liked the joke. We both crawled out of the
mud and became monster truckers in the early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Oh yeah, that's so fun. And then of course they
eventually evolved into things like truck Zilla, truck Asaurus, whatever
you want to call it. It did become kind of
like a Transformer Z the kind of vibe. Right, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
They like evolved into the mud. If you think about it,
it's weird.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, And there's also the lesser known monster truck, the
mud Skipper.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Right, and so okay, So back to Chandler. He's watching
TV one Saturday morning. He's already filmed Take This Job
and Shove It, and he sees a show called Wide
World of Sports, and he says, I saw these trucks
driving around a muddy area, and there was a body
of a car in the mud, sticking up six inches
out of the ground. And this Toyota starts pushing it
(24:14):
and puts its front tires on it. And he says,
my pal Jim Kramer was with me, and I said
to him, I bet Bigfoot would drive clean over a car.
So Jim Cramer goes to one of his friends who
has a farm, and they take the truck there they
set out some cars. I guess they knew someone who
(24:34):
just had some broke down cars. Max is shaking his
head like, yeah, you get in situations.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Oh well, I mean think about all any of those
any number of these junk yards you see in sort
of rural areas. I mean, the things are just they're
lousy with them. They're stacked, like the point where they're
like towering over the fences. So certainly there would have
been plenty of opportunities to get some like beat he
kind of parts cars to just line up and make
a real big showing up.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
And it's it's so weird because they videotaped this. It's
literally in some guy's yard on a farm, and his
wife has a little bit of a problem because she says,
this is kind of destructive.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Bob.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
We're trying to make a good clean name for our truck,
a family oriented thing. But a promoter sees the video
and says, I want you to do that in front
of a crowd.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
So they say.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
They'll try it one time in a place called Jefferson City, Missouri.
The crowd went crazy. Bob Chandler says, from that point on,
anytime he went anywhere with Bigfoot, people wanted to see
him drive over other cars. She's got to be awkward
at the grocery store.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah. We have kind of an exchange here between Jasmer
and Chandler. Should we just do it real quick?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, let's just go that's right.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Let's just let's just make it. Make a scene of
who do you want to be? Ben?
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'll be Bob if you want to be Everett.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Jasmer got it? Okay, I'll be Jasmer because he's my
favorite name. Okay. By nineteen eighty three, Bob had another
opportunity to do that That's Incredible show. He already had
sixty six inch tires. I was getting ready to put
them on my truck. He called me one day and
told me about the TV show, and I wasn't ready.
I had just a few weeks to get the truck
rebuilt and get the sixty six inch tires on so
we could compete on the show.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
We just stepped up to the sixty six inch tires,
and our trucks weren't really set up for that size tire.
They're massive things, thousand pound tires. For the show, there
was going to be fifty something cars in a row
for each of us to drive over. They wanted a
race that would be somewhat.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Competitive, which answers my previous question. There is you know,
even if it's the illusion of competition, there is like
a little bit of built in competition carrying on as
Jasmer I was out of time. We literally didn't have
time to put the sixty six inch tires on the
truck and try it out. We were down to the
last second, so we loaded the truck on a trailer
and loaded the tires and went to Saint Louis. We
(26:47):
unloaded and put the tires on for the first time
at the racetrack. I discovered in the process that the
steering wasn't working very well with those big tires, so
I was having a difficult time steering the truck during
the competition. I've never said this to anyone before. I
think Bob knew I was having and steering problems, and
I think he slowed down to make me look less bad.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Well, as I remember it, I had a speakerphone in
the truck and the producers were yelling at me to
let Everett catch up to me, to keep it interesting.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It was a fantastic time. Of course, we got a
lot of exposure out of him. There were a few
other guys building trucks at the time, but we were
three or four years into what people were calling monster trucks.
But That's incredible was a trigger and people started building
trucks all over the place. The promoters made hay out
of him. That was a major step in promoting the
whole monster truck sport.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So I love how you could tell these guys are
have become really good friends, and they were packing arenas
across the country. By the mid eighties, the monster truck
phenomenon took over tailers, telling people, I can't believe how
the crowd loves to see destruction. And he earned about
ten thousand dollars a pop every time he did his show,
(27:55):
which was pretty great money considering how many shows they did.
And then he started building more Bigfoot trucks. They were
all Fords, and sometimes he would send them to events
if he couldn't be at two places at once. This
is where we saw other trucks coming in, like the
ones Everett mentions, right, we see King Kong out of Wisconsin.
This is where the narrative differs. The owner of King Kong,
(28:17):
a guy named Jeff Dane, would later say, hey, King
Kong was the first to crush cars, but it again,
it depends on who you ask. We know that there
was the Barefoot from Illinois, not to be confused with
Bigfoot and Taylor's Bigfoot one. Going back to our history
dot Com article is monster truckings quote Muhammad Ali the
(28:38):
biggest name in the business, the one everybody wants to beat,
and they got tired from having to do this constantury.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Sorry, but I have to add I can't remember if
it was Chandler or Jasmer that said it, but the
idea that they were surprised that people were into watching
this kind of destruction. You'll remember, Ben, we did an
episode in the past on Ridiculous History about staged train crashes.
Do you remember this, how dangerous they were? The crash
(29:09):
and Crush was I believe the episode that took place
near Waco, Texas where people were actually injured, and these
these train crashes were maybe basically they staged these collisions
and people would watch them, you know, from Afar, and
the crash of Crush ended up being such a disastrous
kind of explosive collision that people were injured by flying debris.
(29:34):
So this to me is just kind of an extension
of that. And we're talking this crash a Crush was
in eighteen ninety six, So people's thirst for motor vehicular
mayhem I think was pretty well established already. Maybe they
just didn't realize that there was that connection and that
it was something that kind of had already proven out
historically that people would really pay attention to.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
They kind of just stumbled upon it. Yeah, people loved
crazy spectacles. I mean that love of vehicular destruction is
a big part of why Mad Max Fury Road is
just so unflinchingly awesome.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It's an incredible, incredible movie. It's also a great story
and really re acting and just wonderful world.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Bill eate for Furios to come out, so we see
some prescients here. When Bob Chandler tells his wife, we
got to get what we can because it's not going
to last. And as the eighties progress, more and more
monster trucks enter the fray. You got Monster Vet, Frankenstein,
(30:33):
Blue Thunder, Crimson Crusher with two k's, King Crunch with
two K's, and a lot of these start getting custom made.
They get a roll cage, they get ex military gear
on them, ex Military components or custom made stuff. Also,
(30:54):
although it sounds like it's a bunch of people having
fun playing the adult version of Hot Wheels cars, we
have to remember that as this becomes a business, as
this becomes a sport, people aren't always super friendly. They
argue over who did what first. Everybody wants to be
the king of the hill, to be the largest, the fastest,
(31:14):
to get the most events under their belt.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Well, and it's a classic example of like, you know,
you can trademark a name, you can trademark technology if
it has if it just you know, displays a certain
amount of originality, right, or like, you know, kind of innovativeness.
But I think popping big wheels on a truck does
not fall under that perview, right, So you could very
(31:39):
easily kind of mimic you know, this stuff and make
your own monster truck. And unless you were you know,
ripping off a name or like a branding or a logo,
you would not be in danger of infringing on anybody's
intellectual property. But again I'm teasing here because the name
was everything that's the brand Bigfoot, right.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, that's the you know, it's like the invention of
the baseball cap kind of you can't tell other people
what they can or can't put on their own hat.
And so this this leads us to one of the
great rivalries of monster trucking, Bob Chandler and a guy
named Fred Schaeffer. Fred lives out in Granite City, Illinois,
(32:20):
about twenty five miles from Chandler's shop as the monster
truck drives, and in the seventies, Schaeffer was also a
car guy, but he was drag racing. He said, I
wasn't fast enough. I didn't have the financing to become
a professional drag racer, but locally I was the man
to beat.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
So we talked about We talked about King Kong. We
talked about Bearfoot. Right, this is not Barefoot like no Shoes,
is like Bearfoot, which also, you know, obviously Bigfoot conjures
images of the Sasquatch. You know, so Barefoot being a
very similar sounding name and conjuring a very simil image
(33:01):
potentially a little problematic.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Right, Yeah, yeah, this so we know there's gonna be
a rivalry.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
We talked about Fred Schaeffer and Bob Chandler. Yeah, one
day Fred Shaffer, the locally famous drag racer, visits Midwest
four wheel Drive and he says, I want to see
this Bigfoot one in person. And Shaeffer would later say,
I don't want to knock his truck, but it looked
pretty rough, And he said, after I saw Bigfoot, I
(33:33):
thought I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna build me a
Chevy truck because I don't like Fords. I never did. Yeah, Fred,
really feel if you have Fred seems like the kind
of guy who thinks Ford stands for found on road
dead right, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Oh, I forgot about that one. So by nineteen seventy
nine he got some help from his buddy Jack Willman,
and he did just that. He you know, took his
automotive know how and essentially mutated a nineteen seventy nine
Silverado into a monstrous creation with a blown four fifty
(34:08):
four engine and barefoot with no spaces just like Bigfoot
painted across the side. He wasn't necessarily throwing shade at
our hero of the story today. He was in referring
this guy seems to go large. He was referring to
his pets, of which he had two American black bears
(34:31):
named Sugar and Spice. I find it very difficult to
believe that Barefoot was not in some way a ploy
to create some brand dilution.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
He would have known.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
He had to.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
He's a smart guy. It works because he gets offers
to exhibit his truck and his pet bears, Sugar and
Spice at local t shows for five hundred bucks a pop.
And he says, back then there were only a few
(35:05):
trucks in the US, we would be booked for months
and months and months, and things come to a head.
At a nineteen eighty two truck show in Wisconsin, a
local paper says there are only three monster trucks in existence, Barefoot, Bigfoot,
and King Kong, And uh, that's probably that's not true,
(35:26):
probably at this point, but it is true that they've
become a big three all their own. They're known for
putting on the best shows.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Well, and those kinds of statements are sort of like
world's best cup of coffee.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Looks good on a flyer, but pretty hard to quantify,
you know. I mean, there certainly were other tinkerers that
were doing something that could be akin to a monster truck,
but whatever. So Chandler and Schaeffer at this point we're
trying to desperately to meet the demands because they're you know,
relatively at least in terms of the world of monster
(35:57):
truck racing. There weren't that many of these things that
had reached the level of prominence as Bigfoot, Barefoot, and
King Kong. So you started to see kind of additional
trucks being put out by these makers.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, they have to meet spectator demand. So Schaefer, Fred
Schaeffer builds Little Barefoot. Huh cut, it's a nineteen eighty
two Chevy S ten, And we can get into some
of the specifics, the nuts and bolts of the modifications
they made, but I think maybe we we'll keep.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
It like this.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
So one of the cool things about Little Barefoot is
that he uses planetary axles. They're coming from a military
front end loader, and so he can do stuff like
haul off a pillar of an inner state. He can
light the tires on fire because of the strength of
(36:52):
the engine, and people love again, they love the spectacle
of it. Chandler, Bob Chandler eventually says, Hey, Fred, why
don't you come out meet me at my bigfoot appearance.
It's a tractor meet in Ridgefield, Ohio. And Chandler drives
his truck out. First, he grabs the mic and he
introduces He introduces Fred Schaffer in the Chevrolet Barefoot, and
(37:16):
then Fred says, when I came out and that's Chevy,
there were a whole lot more cheers, which sounds a
little petty.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Uh, it does sound petty, and he seems like a
petty guy. But for by all accounts, his truck was better.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Well, that's the thing. You know, he comes later in
the game so he can benefit from That's true, the
lessons that Bobbler. Anyway, they keep beefing up. In nineteen
eighty four, zz Top said, hey, can you guys, can
we use your trucks in a music video. Chandler names
his price, and then Schaefer undercuts him and gives them
(37:53):
a much lower price so he can get in the
music video. And then Fred Schaeffer's truck bear Foot also
appears on an episode of night Rider. Then it's in
a TV another TV show, it's an Evolvo commercial, It's
in a tour's beer ad, just like Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Yeah, and so at this point, Barefoot is literally eating
bigfoots kibble, you know, or whatever bigfoots eat. And it's
starting to really get to Chandler to the point where
he has decided, you know, maybe he wasn't gonna do
this at first, because obviously he was trying sort of
maybe not make nice but to sort of, you know,
encourage a little healthy rivalry. But at this point he
(38:35):
feels like, you know, Barefoot is starting to overshadow Bigfoot,
so he decides he's gonna do something about it.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah, yeah, because Barefoot is all over TV. Bob Chandler
sues Fred Schaeffer and he says, the name of our
trucks is too similar. This is a civil action, but
it ruins their relationship ship, and Fred Schaefer himself says,
it's been ugly ever since then.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Ugly exactly, gotta double down the ugly. But you know,
this actually did kind of that beef that we were
describing that at first was kind of a controlled beef
and now it's an absolutely out of control, wildfire beef.
It really does kind of create that same vibe as
you see in professional wrestling, oh, you know, with like
(39:28):
the heel wrestler, you know, the bad guy and and
you know obviously all that stuff's hey, sorry, kids, wrestling
is not real manufactured exactly, wait, elaborate. I always forget
what that means. K Fabe is the.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Idea that one will never give away the illusion or
show like, you'll never let the audience know that the
staged performance is indeed staged.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
God is it an acronym or is it a word?
What is that? I don't know, I don't know what it's.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Supposed to Apparently originate from pig Latin the forma like
in pig Latin for fake, you would say a fay yeah,
but no one's quite sure.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
I think that's interesting. Okay, so it's sort of yeah,
got it, poor Bento.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
But it's it's Carney slang.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Mm hm, no, that makes sense. So now you really
do have this kind of you know, pro wrestling level
rivalry that at least between these two guys was very real.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Oh yeah, one hundred percent. And it comes to a head.
In nineteen eighty eight, T and T Motor Sports announces
the Monster Truck Challenge. This is called the Most Powerful
Sport on Earth. It's going to be on ESPN, and
it's going to show you the original monster trucks, Bob
(40:48):
Chandler versus Everett Jasper, Bigfoot versus USA one, Ford versus Chevy.
And I got a note here, Noel Max in this arena,
particularly having one car named USA one, feels like you're
kind of stacking the deck, right, mm hmmm, Like we
(41:09):
know the audience votes for it.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Wasn't that part of his vision from the Monster Truck
gods USA one putting that like on the on the
the license plate of the very least. So I guess
he's he's still carrying that that that the divine instruction forward.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Huh oh yeah, and we could uh you know what, Actually,
we have another pair of interviews with these guys. So
we returned to Everett and Bob.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Already in progress. This was a dream come true for
me because I came out of drag racing in motorsports,
but I committed the new truck to auto shows for
the first three months. Of course, I probably got sick
to my stomach. I had to sit back and watch
the TNT Monster Truck Challenge For the first three months.
Everyone was running in it, including Bigfoot. I told my
crew that we have to get in there for April
(41:55):
and do the best we could.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
And here's Bob. I think we had big Foot four's
part of that series. There were quite a few trucks competing.
I had a driver named Rich Hosier in that series,
which ended up being probably the best business decision I
ever made since I started in the monster truck business.
I put the driving into the hands of one of
my younger crew named Rod Litzau. We proceeded to go
(42:17):
from nowhere in April to second place behind Bigfoot by
the end of the season, and we were right on
his tail. It came down to the last weekend and
this is a true story. He's not blowing smoke. The
Monster Truck Challenge Final had these trucks which all weighed
more than ten thousand pounds, running over cars. They were
crashing into each other. They were cartwheeling end over end
(42:40):
in the dirt. The two rivals go head to head
at the very end in the TNT National Championship. They
run at high speeds over rows and rows of cars.
As they get near the finish line, USA one loses control.
The truck knowses forward. It crosses the line first just
as it flips on its side and technically wins. The
(43:05):
driver that Everett mentioned jumps out, and a huge crowd
again rolls around their cheering form raw Rah Muster trucks.
Someone in the back probably is doing USA USA. That's
the vibe, and we know that there are again more
trucks of notes that enter the freight. But now we've
(43:25):
got people thinking beyond movies. Now we've got people thinking
of sponsorships and merchandising.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Oh it does just add TNT Motorsports, which was kind
of the premiere. I guess the league at this Point.
TNT stands for Trucks and Tractors and it was founded
in Owensboro, Kentucky by Billy Joe Miles. These events were
broadcast on ESPN and another network at the time called
Power Tracks. And this would have aired on what was
(43:53):
then called TNN, which I think stood for the Nashville Network,
which ran from nineteen eighty three to two thousand and
then it became what you guys might remember as Spike TV,
the men's Network.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It's getting a hard thumbs down from Max. There not
a fan of the Mint's Network, but Corporate America is watching.
The streets of Wall Street are watching. So Chandler gets
a lot of money from Ford and Mattel. Everett Jasmer
gets money from Chevy and a plastic model company called AMT.
(44:27):
In nineteen ninety two, Fred signs another high dollar deal
with Dodge. This is incredibly important because it's not cheap
to build these vehicles. They build more versions of their
existing trucks, They send out more trucks to shows. Eventually,
Bigfoot Alone has a huge fleet of Bigfoot offsprings, and spinoffs,
(44:49):
all paid for by Ford. A lot are basically carbon
copies of the original Bigfoot, while others have different gimmicks,
you could call them different modification, their unique projects, like
the Bigfoot Shuttle, which was a mini.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Van, Yeah, a mini van with forty eight inch rubber
tires and a lift an aerostar minivan specifically, thank god,
not a Honda Odyssey. That would be a nightmare fuel
for all of us, not just you, Ben.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
And be inappropriate and unfair to the audience.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I think that's right. And all of these you know,
all of these modifications were expensive, so you know, I
mean a lot of the money they were taking in
was going into just kind of upping the ante right
every time, Yeah and.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Over time again. Other people are entering the freight. There's
a North Carolina mud bogger named Dennis Anderson who has
built trucks on his own since he was twenty two.
He upgrades his rig to a legit monster truck and
he calls it the Grave Digger, which is super you know,
edgy and cool like the Undertaker and restless about.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
To say, very wrestling Gee, yeah, for sure. So we've
got the Grave Digger now that one started. But you know,
I love that you mentioned been the toy deals because
that's a big I remember these as toys more than
I do as televised events. Those were cool. Everybody wanted
one of those because then you could take your hot
(46:19):
wheels right and run over them with your big monster
truck toy.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, learning the rules of the road very quickly, mad
Max style.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Not to mention when they became remote controlled, and then
you really could do you know, those control monster trucks
to let you ride on back two wheels, you know,
do all kinds of stuff. I mean, there were really
miniaturized versions of the kind of you know, engineering that
was actually in the real things.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah, and we know that grave digger was very much
on the spectacle end of stuff. Even Fred Schaeffer said
he might only last one round, but that round was
a dandy and he had his you know entrance music
Bad to the Bone by George Thorahgood.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
So people were digging this and there was a lot
like digging it. They were grave digging it, and some
people would accuse them of grave robbing or at least
stealing ideas. There was so much money involved that by
nineteen ninety one, the United States hot Rod Association, which
is the big Dog truck and tractor pools purchases T
(47:29):
and T, and they had the exclusive booking rights to
all the top trucks, including Grave Digger, and they, the
management of the hot Rod Association, said, look at all
this profit that's going to these individual drivers. We owned
the rights here. So they wanted their cut, They wanted
their vigorous Fred Schaefer says, we used to make three
(47:50):
thousand dollars for a show. We'd make about twelve grand
and T shirts and they, the hot Rod Association, would
take about forty percent. We would walk out with ten grand.
That's attack of attacks. That's a big old tax.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
And the driver of Barefoot actually had this to say
about the kind of you know, the greed that started
to really flourish. We're going to give you a dollar
per sure, take it or leave it, That's what he said.
The us HRS perspective was and if say the drivers
didn't like it, or the folks who had, you know,
(48:25):
founded the whole thing didn't like it, well they were
out of luck, weren't they.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, they were out of luck. And it seemed to
like corporate mounthfeasans played a huge role in this. There
was an exclusive contract with every American football stadium on
the calendar. You just had those choices, you know, if
you can keep existing and give us almost fifty percent
of everything you do, or you can say, hey, I
(48:52):
had a good time. For a few years, Bob Channel
was out and he was on the outside of the
industry that he very much built.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
One would hope that he feathered his nest a little
bit enough to be comfortable. We don't know that, but
I really do hope that that's the case, because you
know what, when the whole Monster Truck thing really kicked
into gear pun utterly intended, was really in the nineties,
you know, when when the three of us grew up
where I guess maybe at least me be I always
(49:23):
forget Max is a young lad. But in the nineties
we joked about Sunday Sunday Sunday. These commercials were everywhere.
Grave Digger at this point really was the star of
the show, or at least one of them. And they
rebranded the whole thing to Monster Jam, which is what
we was just still around today, is that event that
always comes through Atlanta, And it really was kind of
(49:44):
like one of those World Wrestling Federation kind of package deals,
you know what I mean. Where you'd get to see
it'd be a whole show. The trucks were like the wrestlers,
and every one of them had their own personality, and
there'd be these perceived rivalries that were probably inspired by
those real life rivalries, and then just sort of jushed
up a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, and as there's a cold business decision here, because
obviously the suits wanted to push trucks that they owned
completely right now, they're not giving up sixty percent. Now
they own, they own the whole operation. Which is why
Chandler doesn't get to do as much when he refuses
to sell the Bigfoot brand. And so Bigfoot still did
(50:29):
a lot of stuff, like in nineteen ninety nine, a
Bigfoot model jumped over a seven to twenty seven airplane.
And you'll still see a lot of applause from monster
truck fans when Bigfoot shows up when it is in
any kind of event, and Chandler felt his age catching up.
(50:50):
He did say later he said someone wanted Bigfoot one,
the original monster truck, at a show. Instead, I want
you to drive over cars. This from a twenty seventeen interview.
He says, I said I didn't want to I'm seventy
five years old. I don't want to tear things up now.
I want to enjoy the rest of my life. And
it sounds like he chose the right time to roll out.
(51:13):
And you know, Jasmer says the same thing about his
original truck, and they really bonded with these because they
changed their lives. And you know with that, Noel, Max
and No we went a little bit long. But I'm
starting to think we should go to Monster Jam just
for the experience, right.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Oh, let's just do it. All three of us should go. Yeah. No,
It's something I've been wanting to do for some time,
and I think this is what better time than the present?
When when does it happen? It's got to be a
summer kind of thing. I bet you it's the summer.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
Yeah, I was looking this up. And Munster Jam is
coming to Atlanta this year. Wait for it this month?
Speaker 2 (51:48):
No way? Yes? Wait ed April twenty second and twenty third. Okay,
what do you guys say we go to the Sunday
Sunday Sunday one.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah, I feel like we go to the Sunday one. Okay,
Max to you in, Yeah, Max is in. It's a
little bit of a it'll be a little bit of
a drive, so maybe we meet up in the city
and then we.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Have we gotta do it. Let's just do it. This,
it's this coming Sunday, Sunday Sday.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
It's this Sunday.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Oh oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
Okay, well we've got to go because we got to
make some plans. Thank you so much, fellow Ridiculous Historians
for tuning in. Big thanks to our super producer mister Max.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Williams Alex Williams who composed this theme. Thanks to Chris
frasciotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Co, Jonathan stricklet Ben, thank.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
You Sunday, Sunday Sunday.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Indeed, and we'll see you then and next time. Folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Let's hear it from our super producer,
mister Max Sunday Sunday Sunday.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Williams Sunday Sunday, say so, I've been your goal.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's it's It may be Sunday while someone's listening to this,
but there's never a bad time to check out a
monster truck show. Have you ever seen one?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
You guys? Not in person? They do what is it
called monster Jam here in Atlanta. It's a big thing,
very popular event. I was invited to go once and
I couldn't make it, but I want to go. I
want to see what is it? Truck Osaurus? Is that
a thing?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Truck Osaurus is? We mentioned this in our previous episode, Right,
truck Asaurus is in the Simpsons. It's a truck dinosaur
created by Professor Frink.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Right, and it like it shoots fire and stuff. Right,
isn't it based on something real? I swear it is.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
There's like Robosaurus is the real life versions Okay, dinosaur
robot created by Doug Mulliwiki. I want to say, and
got it?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, but monsters, I mean it's just you know, I'm
obviously I'm not a I've made no secret that I'm
not the biggest sportsman on the planet. And it's weird
because like monster truck it's not really a sport. It's
more of a spectacle kind of. It's more like going
to see an air show or something. Wouldn't you say,
is there a competition element involved? I don't think so.
I think it's all kind of. It's also not like
(01:57):
a demolition derby and that that has like a you know,
or someone wins, but I don't think anybody wins. It's
a rally, so it's not necessarily like a competition unless
I'm mistaken.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Well, it's a heck of a good time as long
as you're not in a truck that recks.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
We always, i.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Think, associate monster truck rallies with a sort of halcyon
era in the nineteen eighties, you know, WrestleMania was a
thing people tuned into and if you are unfamiliar with
monster trucks, if you've never been to a show before,
you might be surprised to learn just how popular this
(02:37):
stuff was. Just a few years before, Hogan and Andre
the Giant conducted WrestleMania three at the Pontiac Silver Dome
in Pontiac, Michigan. About four years before that happened, sixty
eight thousand people poured into the same Silver Dome to
watch a converted Ford F two fifty with oversized wheels
(03:00):
crush other vehicles, just smashing them the way you walk
on water bottles.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And that scene setting comes courtesy of Jake Ross and
at Mental Floss, who really kind of likened the whole
wrestling phenomenon with monster trucks. It really is kind of
the same bread and circuses spectacle of professional wrestling, but
instead of wrestlers, you've got these insane converted trucks. And
(03:25):
when we say converted, we're basically referring to you know
how it all kind of started with an Afford F
two fifty truck. YEP, that's just one whole hundred bigger
than the F one fifty, which is already pretty massive.
You know, it's converted by by being given massive wheels
and obviously all of the gack that goes along with that,
you know, the what do you call it? The you know,
(03:47):
I'm sure it's got a modified suspension and all of
that you know, with hydraulics, and maybe the hydraulics like lyft,
but something that allows the shock of literally running over
cars to be absorbed to the point where the driver
is not gonna get jostled out of their seat right exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And this this is a huge moment for a huge truck.
The crowd is looking at this thing called Bigfoot, owned
by a guy named Bob Chandler, and they love it
so much that they swarm the field. They want to
get closer to Bigfoot. And the guy who owns it, Bob,
he rolls up the windows and stops the show and
(04:27):
drives off because he's afraid his monstrous truck will take
some monstrous damage. This is the story of the monster trucks. Now,
we want to be clear with you folks. Like any
amazing origin story, there are some differing narratives, so you're
gonna hear different sources saying different things about who invented
(04:49):
the quote unquote first monster truck. We'll stick with Bob
Chandler for a moment here. He's got a really interesting story.
He was a carpenter by trade, and he used to
be in the Navy, where he works as a mind
sweeper when he was about thirty five years old. He
wasn't dreaming of making monster trucks. He just liked pickups.
(05:11):
You know, if you're a carpenter, a pickup is a
great vehicle. You can haul lumber, you can haul tools,
you can go camping if you want, like a friend
of the show Alex Williams, who is eternally camping, it seems.
And let's let's go back here. Let's get some help
from our friends at haggarty dot com Cameron neviuw who
(05:32):
has a great article on the brash disputed birth of
the American monster truck. Nolan, can you paint the scene here?
What was going on with the origin of the trucks?
Do we have to go back to the nineteen sixties
to understand?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
We do. We don't have to, but we choose to
because that's that is where it started. The big three
auto companies you've heard of these. I believe Chrysler was
one of them, Ford was the other. What's the third
big American auto company? GM? GM? Of course General Motors,
you know, back back in the in the golden era
(06:08):
of of of of American manufacturing of cars, because obviously
the car was an American invention. But then, as we know,
a lot of these communities really got rocked when overseas
manufacturing became more cost effective and a lot of foreign
auto makers began to you know, flood the market with
affordable vehicles. So, you know, places like Flint, Michigan, for example,
(06:32):
really you know, got hit super hard when this happened
and they lost a lot of their infrastructure. But in
the sixties things were booming and the Big Three started
to kind of build and put out vehicles that emphasized
the idea of the open road, or rather the off road,
being able to just take your car wherever your little
(06:54):
adventuring heart may lead you. For it had the Bronco,
which was kind of stuff smiling on a previous vehicle model,
the Jeep, which we know, but it kind of combined
the off roadiness of the Jeep with something more akin
to like a family car, you know, so you have
kind of the best of both worlds. And this did
(07:15):
very well. You know, consumers were all about this idea
of freedom, even if they never took the thing off row,
they liked to think that they could if they wanted to.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, this is kind of the birth of the sport
utility vehicle or SUV, and you have doubtlessly seen many
of these, especially if you live in a city. You
might have been a little aggravated seeing one slow down
at a speed bump or a pothole, and you're wondering,
why'd you pay so much for the four wheel drive.
(07:44):
Off Roading was booming at this time or mudding, whatever
you want to call it, especially on the West Coast.
People would go onto the dunes and they would build
these tube frame contraptions with balloon tires, which are exactly
what they sound like. They were originally designed for Arctic
exploration in this miliu. In nineteen seventy four, Bob and
(08:07):
Marilyn Chandler of Missouri purchased their brand new Ford F
two fifty. Now my car stuff's coming out here, guys.
I don't think anybody should buy a vehicle brand new
unless you get a really really good deal.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, because there's that whole like, you know, depreciation the
moment you drive it off the lot scenario.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Right, even worse than a boat.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
It's the number. It's a shocking number.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It's it changes over time. It's been a while since
I looked at it. But it could be significant. You know,
I've seen numbers like fifteen percent, et cetera. And it
also to be proud of me, I bought a certified
pre own.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I know we.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Talked about it. I remember, I remember making these schemes.
And that's been a really good car to you man.
That one's held up right, dude.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I haven't had to have any major work done on
it at all, and it's still kicking along beautifully. It's
a great car. Highly recommend not not an F four
two fifty. I wouldn't be going off roading in this guy,
Although maybe I could do some modifications to put some
bigger wheels on it. But I don't think I don't
help good.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, it's a it's a rabbit hole, and it's a
wallet vortex and a time vampire. But if you have
a mod so okay, this is the thing. They want
to mod their vehicle too. They want to be part
of this off roading boom. But Bob and Maryland have
a problem. They say, we can't find four by four
(09:30):
parts in our home state of Missouri.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
So if you would put your car stuff on again
for a second to explain to me and the listeners
what is four by four referring to So four.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
X four is short term or for four wheel drive,
and that means that you have a two axle vehicle
drive train that can provide torque to all of the
wheels simultaneously, as opposed to something like front wheel drive
where or rear wheel drive where it's just that one pair.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
I know what four wheel drive is. Never until this
moment did I know that four x four was referring
to that. But that makes sense. So this is obviously
a feature that would be very helpful in getting enough
torque to say, launch your modified F two fifty over
a sand in right.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah. And there's also all wheel drive, which is very similar.
It's a little bit different. All wheel drive is always
going to be active, and four wheel drive you have
to turn it on. It has to be engaged.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
By the driver, and part of it is also about
helping getting you unstuck yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, and helping you navigate you know, uneven terrain. So
they want to get in on this, and they call
a friend in nineteen seventy five, shortly after they buy
this Ford, and it's a buddy of theirs who loves
going off road. His name's Jim Kramer, and they say, look,
let's start our own business. We found an opportunity. Let's
(10:59):
sell for by four parts. And they say, okay, we're
gonna call the business Midwest four wheel Drive, and we're
going to supply people. We're gonna be based in Saint Louis.
So this guy, then, while he started to do business,
he's still doing his off roading right without without all
these modifications just yet, and he is wrecking his poor
(11:23):
forward often like tearing up engines, axles, you name.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
It, and you know. So he was putting these big
oversized wheels on his f two fifty forty eight inches
to be precise, and that would also involve modifying the
axles so that they could support that. And I was
just doing a little digging, and it seems that because
of that lack of four by four parts and maybe
no one not even really considered doing this yet, these
(11:49):
wheels were really only available from like farm equipment and
more industrial equipment, you know, like backos and things like
that that would backos are more tread based, but like
you know what I'm talking about, like certain tractors would
be it would be sure, that's exactly right, because they
need to, you know, go over rough terrain by their very.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Nature, or wheels on a harvester. Yeah, yeah, it makes
total sense. And this is this is funny because the
guy starts this shop because he wants to have a
shop like this selling things to him. It's kind of
like someone who starts a restaurant because they're hungry, you
know what I mean. He's dipping into his own supply
(12:28):
pretty quickly. He gets easy access to all sorts of parts.
The Mental Floss article you mentioned earlier has some quotes
from him as his cabin begins to loom over the road.
This is a gradual process building up to those forty
eight inch oversized wheels because it's advertising for the shop.
(12:49):
But he says, I never really had the thought to
build a monster truck. I had a stock for two
fifty and I kept putting bigger and bigger tires on
it that I broke the so I put bigger axles
under the truck. Then I didn't have enough power, so
I put a bigger engine in there. It was quote
just kind of a vicious circle for about three or
(13:10):
four years. The truck gradually got to be its own star,
I guess, And so he would zip around town. I mean,
this is great. He's a rolling billboard for his company now,
and this is a fast vehicle, like once he gets
the engine in there. This is cartoonish on the road totally.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
And Ben correct me if I'm wrong here again, if
you could put on your car stuff, Helmut. The idea
of stock cars. This that refers to using stock like
consumer available cars, and modifying them, right.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yeah, yeah, A stock car is an ordinary car that's
been modified in some way, usually for racing. The other
version would be a stock car in the world of trains,
that would be like a railroad car.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
So this is a stock truck. It's being modified not
necessarily for racing, but for trucking, for monster trucking.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Right yeah. And we know how he got the nickname too.
His buddy Jim Kramer, who helped start the business. He
joked about how Chandler at kind of a lead foot.
He said, Bob Taylor's big foot is always on the
gas and people started calling him Bigfoot. And Bob Jaylor
strikes me as a pretty cool guy to hang out
(14:24):
with because he leans into the nickname. He says, Oh,
people are calling me Bigfoot on the streets. I'll just
paint it on the truck. And he was.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Also bigfoot in the sheets.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Hey right, Uh, locals loved this and he got people
coming out of the woodwork trying to buy his unique truck.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Now, I'm not trying to be a pill here, but
I have a I suspect that not all locals love
this because I don't know if you've ever seen anyone
driving one of these things around like Atlanta, trying to
squeeze into parking spaces or cutting you off of traffic.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Don't love it?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
No, it's not great. These things really are designed. I
would not make this my daily driver, you know. So
maybe you know it led to like okay, well, it's
trying to take this thing off the road literally and
into something more contained, you know, or we can really
see what it's made of.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, and you know, the car does become a celebrity.
I for the record, one hundred percent agree with you
about not having big vehicles in densely packed urban areas
that's not off road, you know what I mean. And
I'm speaking from personal experience when I when I say
seeing somebody in a huge offer vehicle slow down at
(15:47):
a speed bump, I try not to judge people. But
if it was a video game, they lose like ten
points of respect easily, very least negative xcipede. Yeah, and
these vehicles are very expensive. Look, let's play inflation calculator
a little bit. So the Ford in its factory version,
the four to two f two fifty that he bought
(16:09):
it sold for about forty four hundred dollars straight in
the mid seventies. And that would be if we could get.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
A boop and a boop and a boop and a
boop and a boop and a boom and a.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Boop, sixteen thousand dollars in today's money. But once he
got it modded up and it became the Bigfoot truck,
people would try to buy it for fifty grand, which is,
if we inflation calculate and.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
A boo, boop, a boopeee beep, one hundred.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And eighty five grand today.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Dude, Okay, I mean, and that makes sense because not
only I mean, I'm sure that the parts and labor
and all of the you know, modifying that went into it,
you know, added some of the price tag. But I
don't think that is sherely what this figure is referring to.
This is also just the the wow factor of it all,
the fact that this thing did not exists outside of
(17:02):
what this guy created, right.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, and the story goes national. The Los Angeles Times
interviews the couple, and Marilyn Chandler says, when we go
out at night, it looks like lightning because so many
people are taking flash pictures. Pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, yeah, it is. And speaking of you know, Hollywood
come in a calling, you know, in the form of
the La Times. It really did come a calling in
a much more you know, palpable way that you know,
created what we now know as the Monster Truck Rally.
In the summer of nineteen seventy nine, when Chandler was
thirty eight years old, he met a guy by the
(17:39):
name of Everett Jasmer, which is a really great name,
Everett Jasmer, who is a drag racer and also a
fan of trucks. And that, you know, there would have
been rallies and things, or you know, not rallies like
what we know is the Monster Truck Rally, but you
know meetups, let's call them, like little car meetups. Yeah,
(18:00):
stuff like that. So there was a circuit, you know,
and this was a relatively somewhat to some degree burgeoning
kind of thing. I mean, I'm sure you know off roading, well,
I mean no, we talked about that. That was really
kind of more a phenomenon of the sixties, so this
is but still that's relatively that's only you know, about
ten years at this point that we've been having this,
(18:20):
so it's still a relatively nascent kind of a hobby,
I guess. So the circuit would have been pretty small,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, it would have been something that you were aware
of if you were involved with this, if you were
a quote unquote car guy. But it wasn't. It wasn't
getting what's the best way to say it, It wasn't
getting the same level of recognition that say, like a
NASCAR would be getting. It was prominent enough in the
American zeitgeist that it did make national news. And this guy,
(18:51):
Everett Jasper, I'm so glad he introduced him. He was
a Chevy guy. He had a nineteen seventy Chevy K
ten and he had bought it used in nineteen seventy four.
Good job, Everett. And he has a lot in common
with Bob Chandler. He's named his truck and he this
is the funny story. This comes to us from history
(19:12):
dot com. Everett was mowing his lawn one day and
he had a vision vision.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yes, yes, yes, he was. He was visited by the
ghost of Monster Truck Future. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
The ghost of Monster Truck Future said Everetts, you need
to make red, white and blue license plates, and you
need to put USA dash one on them. And Jasmer
made it. So Everett had one of these hanging on
his wall. He put the plate on his Chevy and
then that became the name of his truck USA.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
These things I say to thee and they will come
from far and wide fortune to spectate the spectacle which
you would be at the center of if you read it,
they will come.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
There was no such thing as a monster truck yet
there's still like in the first part of Field of Dreams.
Here and their friendship between Bob and Everett. These guys
create a national phenomenon that leads to a billion dollar industry.
And it all starts with a phone call to Bob
Chandler's after market four by four shop in nineteen seventy nine.
(20:27):
Hollywood comes calling.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Oh yeah, we tease the call, but really quickly, I've
got a backtrack for two seconds Field of Dreams. I
think a superior name for that movie would have been
Baseball Ghosts. What do you guys think?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
I agreed one hundred percent it is yeah cool.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
So Chandler gets a call from the pic Jazz, from
a movie producer who's working on a comedy. This is
also you got to remember this was like in the seventies,
there were a lot of like big rig type movies,
you know, like every which Way but Loose, if I'm
not mistaken, which is the one where involves no, there's wait,
there's bj and the Bear I think is one where
(21:03):
there's like a rangutan or a chimpanzee, and like what's
his name? Burt Reynolds driving a four by four and
if I'm not wrong, every which way but Loose might
have to do with a four by four. Definitely there's
a monkey in that one too, sorry, and Ape But yeah,
truck movies, you know, even like the film from the
seventies Sorcerer, which is you know, a fabulous you know,
(21:25):
kind of like adventure rollicking, kind of like very complex
character study by William Friedkin involves driving a big rig
across a like rope bridge and the rig is loaded
with like nitro glycerin, and it's really one of the
most tense sequences in film. So it makes sense that
Hollywood would have caught wind of this, like, how can
we bake this in to like, you know, our truck pictures,
(21:50):
you know. So he's working on a comedy with a
fabulous title called Take This Job and Shove It from
nineteen eighty one, very irreverent. And he had seen Chandler's
truck in one of these kind of magazines that would
have been, you know, featuring this kind of stuff, these
kind of you know, DIY sort of motorist mags.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, and this this is a golden opportunity. They say,
we want to have your truck, just make some appearances.
So Bigfoot shows up in the movie Take This Job
and Shove It, starring Art Carney, Robert Hayes, Barbara Hershey,
David Keith. People, I'm not really familiar with. It's named
after that country song Take This Job, barsh of It.
(22:30):
Barbara Hershey had a really sultry voice.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Cool, all right, I'm into I love a sultry voice.
So this monster truck, Bigfoot shows up as a big
time participant in a pickup truck race in the film.
Initially the studio wanted to use stunt drivers, but no
one really knew how to drive the truck as well
as Bob Chandler because he literally built it, and so
(22:57):
he was behind the wheel for filming. And when he's
going to go film, he calls up his buddy Everett Jasmer,
the Chevy guy USA one, and he says, hey, come
hang out with me on this movie shoot. And Jasmer says,
this is a great opportunity. So he shows up and
after that they get invitations to these events around the country.
(23:19):
They keep making their trucks bigger and bigger. We have
a quote from Everett where he says it was like evolution.
I liked the joke. We both crawled out of the
mud and became monster truckers in the early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Oh yeah, that's so fun. And then of course they
eventually evolved into things like truck Zilla, truck Asaurus, whatever
you want to call it. It did become kind of
like a Transformer Z the kind of vibe. Right, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
They like evolved into the mud. If you think about it,
it's weird.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, And there's also the lesser known monster truck, the
mud Skipper.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Right, and so okay, So back to Chandler. He's watching
TV one Saturday morning. He's already filmed Take This Job
and Shove It, and he sees a show called Wide
World of Sports, and he says, I saw these trucks
driving around a muddy area, and there was a body
of a car in the mud, sticking up six inches
out of the ground. And this Toyota starts pushing it
(24:14):
and puts its front tires on it. And he says,
my pal Jim Kramer was with me, and I said
to him, I bet Bigfoot would drive clean over a car.
So Jim Cramer goes to one of his friends who
has a farm, and they take the truck there they
set out some cars. I guess they knew someone who
(24:34):
just had some broke down cars. Max is shaking his
head like, yeah, you get in situations.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Oh well, I mean think about all any of those
any number of these junk yards you see in sort
of rural areas. I mean, the things are just they're
lousy with them. They're stacked, like the point where they're
like towering over the fences. So certainly there would have
been plenty of opportunities to get some like beat he
kind of parts cars to just line up and make
a real big showing up.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
And it's it's so weird because they videotaped this. It's
literally in some guy's yard on a farm, and his
wife has a little bit of a problem because she says,
this is kind of destructive.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Bob.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
We're trying to make a good clean name for our truck,
a family oriented thing. But a promoter sees the video
and says, I want you to do that in front
of a crowd.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
So they say.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
They'll try it one time in a place called Jefferson City, Missouri.
The crowd went crazy. Bob Chandler says, from that point on,
anytime he went anywhere with Bigfoot, people wanted to see
him drive over other cars. She's got to be awkward
at the grocery store.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah. We have kind of an exchange here between Jasmer
and Chandler. Should we just do it real quick?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, let's just go that's right.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Let's just let's just make it. Make a scene of
who do you want to be? Ben?
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'll be Bob if you want to be Everett.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Jasmer got it? Okay, I'll be Jasmer because he's my
favorite name. Okay. By nineteen eighty three, Bob had another
opportunity to do that That's Incredible show. He already had
sixty six inch tires. I was getting ready to put
them on my truck. He called me one day and
told me about the TV show, and I wasn't ready.
I had just a few weeks to get the truck
rebuilt and get the sixty six inch tires on so
we could compete on the show.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
We just stepped up to the sixty six inch tires,
and our trucks weren't really set up for that size tire.
They're massive things, thousand pound tires. For the show, there
was going to be fifty something cars in a row
for each of us to drive over. They wanted a
race that would be somewhat.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Competitive, which answers my previous question. There is you know,
even if it's the illusion of competition, there is like
a little bit of built in competition carrying on as
Jasmer I was out of time. We literally didn't have
time to put the sixty six inch tires on the
truck and try it out. We were down to the
last second, so we loaded the truck on a trailer
and loaded the tires and went to Saint Louis. We
(26:47):
unloaded and put the tires on for the first time
at the racetrack. I discovered in the process that the
steering wasn't working very well with those big tires, so
I was having a difficult time steering the truck during
the competition. I've never said this to anyone before. I
think Bob knew I was having and steering problems, and
I think he slowed down to make me look less bad.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Well, as I remember it, I had a speakerphone in
the truck and the producers were yelling at me to
let Everett catch up to me, to keep it interesting.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It was a fantastic time. Of course, we got a
lot of exposure out of him. There were a few
other guys building trucks at the time, but we were
three or four years into what people were calling monster trucks.
But That's incredible was a trigger and people started building
trucks all over the place. The promoters made hay out
of him. That was a major step in promoting the
whole monster truck sport.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So I love how you could tell these guys are
have become really good friends, and they were packing arenas
across the country. By the mid eighties, the monster truck
phenomenon took over tailers, telling people, I can't believe how
the crowd loves to see destruction. And he earned about
ten thousand dollars a pop every time he did his show,
(27:55):
which was pretty great money considering how many shows they did.
And then he started building more Bigfoot trucks. They were
all Fords, and sometimes he would send them to events
if he couldn't be at two places at once. This
is where we saw other trucks coming in, like the
ones Everett mentions, right, we see King Kong out of Wisconsin.
This is where the narrative differs. The owner of King Kong,
(28:17):
a guy named Jeff Dane, would later say, hey, King
Kong was the first to crush cars, but it again,
it depends on who you ask. We know that there
was the Barefoot from Illinois, not to be confused with
Bigfoot and Taylor's Bigfoot one. Going back to our history
dot Com article is monster truckings quote Muhammad Ali the
(28:38):
biggest name in the business, the one everybody wants to beat,
and they got tired from having to do this constantury.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Sorry, but I have to add I can't remember if
it was Chandler or Jasmer that said it, but the
idea that they were surprised that people were into watching
this kind of destruction. You'll remember, Ben, we did an
episode in the past on Ridiculous History about staged train crashes.
Do you remember this, how dangerous they were? The crash
(29:09):
and Crush was I believe the episode that took place
near Waco, Texas where people were actually injured, and these
these train crashes were maybe basically they staged these collisions
and people would watch them, you know, from Afar, and
the crash of Crush ended up being such a disastrous
kind of explosive collision that people were injured by flying debris.
(29:34):
So this to me is just kind of an extension
of that. And we're talking this crash a Crush was
in eighteen ninety six, So people's thirst for motor vehicular
mayhem I think was pretty well established already. Maybe they
just didn't realize that there was that connection and that
it was something that kind of had already proven out
historically that people would really pay attention to.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
They kind of just stumbled upon it. Yeah, people loved
crazy spectacles. I mean that love of vehicular destruction is
a big part of why Mad Max Fury Road is
just so unflinchingly awesome.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It's an incredible, incredible movie. It's also a great story
and really re acting and just wonderful world.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Bill eate for Furios to come out, so we see
some prescients here. When Bob Chandler tells his wife, we
got to get what we can because it's not going
to last. And as the eighties progress, more and more
monster trucks enter the fray. You got Monster Vet, Frankenstein,
(30:33):
Blue Thunder, Crimson Crusher with two k's, King Crunch with
two K's, and a lot of these start getting custom made.
They get a roll cage, they get ex military gear
on them, ex Military components or custom made stuff. Also,
(30:54):
although it sounds like it's a bunch of people having
fun playing the adult version of Hot Wheels cars, we
have to remember that as this becomes a business, as
this becomes a sport, people aren't always super friendly. They
argue over who did what first. Everybody wants to be
the king of the hill, to be the largest, the fastest,
(31:14):
to get the most events under their belt.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Well, and it's a classic example of like, you know,
you can trademark a name, you can trademark technology if
it has if it just you know, displays a certain
amount of originality, right, or like, you know, kind of innovativeness.
But I think popping big wheels on a truck does
not fall under that perview, right, So you could very
(31:39):
easily kind of mimic you know, this stuff and make
your own monster truck. And unless you were you know,
ripping off a name or like a branding or a logo,
you would not be in danger of infringing on anybody's
intellectual property. But again I'm teasing here because the name
was everything that's the brand Bigfoot, right.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, that's the you know, it's like the invention of
the baseball cap kind of you can't tell other people
what they can or can't put on their own hat.
And so this this leads us to one of the
great rivalries of monster trucking, Bob Chandler and a guy
named Fred Schaeffer. Fred lives out in Granite City, Illinois,
(32:20):
about twenty five miles from Chandler's shop as the monster
truck drives, and in the seventies, Schaeffer was also a
car guy, but he was drag racing. He said, I
wasn't fast enough. I didn't have the financing to become
a professional drag racer, but locally I was the man
to beat.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
So we talked about We talked about King Kong. We
talked about Bearfoot. Right, this is not Barefoot like no Shoes,
is like Bearfoot, which also, you know, obviously Bigfoot conjures
images of the Sasquatch. You know, so Barefoot being a
very similar sounding name and conjuring a very simil image
(33:01):
potentially a little problematic.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Right, Yeah, yeah, this so we know there's gonna be
a rivalry.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
We talked about Fred Schaeffer and Bob Chandler. Yeah, one
day Fred Shaffer, the locally famous drag racer, visits Midwest
four wheel Drive and he says, I want to see
this Bigfoot one in person. And Shaeffer would later say,
I don't want to knock his truck, but it looked
pretty rough, And he said, after I saw Bigfoot, I
(33:33):
thought I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna build me a
Chevy truck because I don't like Fords. I never did. Yeah, Fred,
really feel if you have Fred seems like the kind
of guy who thinks Ford stands for found on road
dead right, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Oh, I forgot about that one. So by nineteen seventy
nine he got some help from his buddy Jack Willman,
and he did just that. He you know, took his
automotive know how and essentially mutated a nineteen seventy nine
Silverado into a monstrous creation with a blown four fifty
(34:08):
four engine and barefoot with no spaces just like Bigfoot
painted across the side. He wasn't necessarily throwing shade at
our hero of the story today. He was in referring
this guy seems to go large. He was referring to
his pets, of which he had two American black bears
(34:31):
named Sugar and Spice. I find it very difficult to
believe that Barefoot was not in some way a ploy
to create some brand dilution.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
He would have known.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
He had to.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
He's a smart guy. It works because he gets offers
to exhibit his truck and his pet bears, Sugar and
Spice at local t shows for five hundred bucks a pop.
And he says, back then there were only a few
(35:05):
trucks in the US, we would be booked for months
and months and months, and things come to a head.
At a nineteen eighty two truck show in Wisconsin, a
local paper says there are only three monster trucks in existence, Barefoot, Bigfoot,
and King Kong, And uh, that's probably that's not true,
(35:26):
probably at this point, but it is true that they've
become a big three all their own. They're known for
putting on the best shows.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Well, and those kinds of statements are sort of like
world's best cup of coffee.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Looks good on a flyer, but pretty hard to quantify,
you know. I mean, there certainly were other tinkerers that
were doing something that could be akin to a monster truck,
but whatever. So Chandler and Schaeffer at this point we're
trying to desperately to meet the demands because they're you know,
relatively at least in terms of the world of monster
(35:57):
truck racing. There weren't that many of these things that
had reached the level of prominence as Bigfoot, Barefoot, and
King Kong. So you started to see kind of additional
trucks being put out by these makers.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, they have to meet spectator demand. So Schaefer, Fred
Schaeffer builds Little Barefoot. Huh cut, it's a nineteen eighty
two Chevy S ten, And we can get into some
of the specifics, the nuts and bolts of the modifications
they made, but I think maybe we we'll keep.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
It like this.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
So one of the cool things about Little Barefoot is
that he uses planetary axles. They're coming from a military
front end loader, and so he can do stuff like
haul off a pillar of an inner state. He can
light the tires on fire because of the strength of
(36:52):
the engine, and people love again, they love the spectacle
of it. Chandler, Bob Chandler eventually says, Hey, Fred, why
don't you come out meet me at my bigfoot appearance.
It's a tractor meet in Ridgefield, Ohio. And Chandler drives
his truck out. First, he grabs the mic and he
introduces He introduces Fred Schaffer in the Chevrolet Barefoot, and
(37:16):
then Fred says, when I came out and that's Chevy,
there were a whole lot more cheers, which sounds a
little petty.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Uh, it does sound petty, and he seems like a
petty guy. But for by all accounts, his truck was better.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Well, that's the thing. You know, he comes later in
the game so he can benefit from That's true, the
lessons that Bobbler. Anyway, they keep beefing up. In nineteen
eighty four, zz Top said, hey, can you guys, can
we use your trucks in a music video. Chandler names
his price, and then Schaefer undercuts him and gives them
(37:53):
a much lower price so he can get in the
music video. And then Fred Schaeffer's truck bear Foot also
appears on an episode of night Rider. Then it's in
a TV another TV show, it's an Evolvo commercial, It's
in a tour's beer ad, just like Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Yeah, and so at this point, Barefoot is literally eating
bigfoots kibble, you know, or whatever bigfoots eat. And it's
starting to really get to Chandler to the point where
he has decided, you know, maybe he wasn't gonna do
this at first, because obviously he was trying sort of
maybe not make nice but to sort of, you know,
encourage a little healthy rivalry. But at this point he
(38:35):
feels like, you know, Barefoot is starting to overshadow Bigfoot,
so he decides he's gonna do something about it.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah, yeah, because Barefoot is all over TV. Bob Chandler
sues Fred Schaeffer and he says, the name of our
trucks is too similar. This is a civil action, but
it ruins their relationship ship, and Fred Schaefer himself says,
it's been ugly ever since then.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Ugly exactly, gotta double down the ugly. But you know,
this actually did kind of that beef that we were
describing that at first was kind of a controlled beef
and now it's an absolutely out of control, wildfire beef.
It really does kind of create that same vibe as
you see in professional wrestling, oh, you know, with like
(39:28):
the heel wrestler, you know, the bad guy and and
you know obviously all that stuff's hey, sorry, kids, wrestling
is not real manufactured exactly, wait, elaborate. I always forget
what that means. K Fabe is the.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Idea that one will never give away the illusion or
show like, you'll never let the audience know that the
staged performance is indeed staged.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
God is it an acronym or is it a word?
What is that? I don't know, I don't know what it's.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Supposed to Apparently originate from pig Latin the forma like
in pig Latin for fake, you would say a fay yeah,
but no one's quite sure.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
I think that's interesting. Okay, so it's sort of yeah,
got it, poor Bento.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
But it's it's Carney slang.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Mm hm, no, that makes sense. So now you really
do have this kind of you know, pro wrestling level
rivalry that at least between these two guys was very real.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Oh yeah, one hundred percent. And it comes to a head.
In nineteen eighty eight, T and T Motor Sports announces
the Monster Truck Challenge. This is called the Most Powerful
Sport on Earth. It's going to be on ESPN, and
it's going to show you the original monster trucks, Bob
(40:48):
Chandler versus Everett Jasper, Bigfoot versus USA one, Ford versus Chevy.
And I got a note here, Noel Max in this arena,
particularly having one car named USA one, feels like you're
kind of stacking the deck, right, mm hmmm, Like we
(41:09):
know the audience votes for it.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Wasn't that part of his vision from the Monster Truck
gods USA one putting that like on the on the
the license plate of the very least. So I guess
he's he's still carrying that that that the divine instruction forward.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Huh oh yeah, and we could uh you know what, Actually,
we have another pair of interviews with these guys. So
we returned to Everett and Bob.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Already in progress. This was a dream come true for
me because I came out of drag racing in motorsports,
but I committed the new truck to auto shows for
the first three months. Of course, I probably got sick
to my stomach. I had to sit back and watch
the TNT Monster Truck Challenge For the first three months.
Everyone was running in it, including Bigfoot. I told my
crew that we have to get in there for April
(41:55):
and do the best we could.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
And here's Bob. I think we had big Foot four's
part of that series. There were quite a few trucks competing.
I had a driver named Rich Hosier in that series,
which ended up being probably the best business decision I
ever made since I started in the monster truck business.
I put the driving into the hands of one of
my younger crew named Rod Litzau. We proceeded to go
(42:17):
from nowhere in April to second place behind Bigfoot by
the end of the season, and we were right on
his tail. It came down to the last weekend and
this is a true story. He's not blowing smoke. The
Monster Truck Challenge Final had these trucks which all weighed
more than ten thousand pounds, running over cars. They were
crashing into each other. They were cartwheeling end over end
(42:40):
in the dirt. The two rivals go head to head
at the very end in the TNT National Championship. They
run at high speeds over rows and rows of cars.
As they get near the finish line, USA one loses control.
The truck knowses forward. It crosses the line first just
as it flips on its side and technically wins. The
(43:05):
driver that Everett mentioned jumps out, and a huge crowd
again rolls around their cheering form raw Rah Muster trucks.
Someone in the back probably is doing USA USA. That's
the vibe, and we know that there are again more
trucks of notes that enter the freight. But now we've
(43:25):
got people thinking beyond movies. Now we've got people thinking
of sponsorships and merchandising.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Oh it does just add TNT Motorsports, which was kind
of the premiere. I guess the league at this Point.
TNT stands for Trucks and Tractors and it was founded
in Owensboro, Kentucky by Billy Joe Miles. These events were
broadcast on ESPN and another network at the time called
Power Tracks. And this would have aired on what was
(43:53):
then called TNN, which I think stood for the Nashville Network,
which ran from nineteen eighty three to two thousand and
then it became what you guys might remember as Spike TV,
the men's Network.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It's getting a hard thumbs down from Max. There not
a fan of the Mint's Network, but Corporate America is watching.
The streets of Wall Street are watching. So Chandler gets
a lot of money from Ford and Mattel. Everett Jasmer
gets money from Chevy and a plastic model company called AMT.
(44:27):
In nineteen ninety two, Fred signs another high dollar deal
with Dodge. This is incredibly important because it's not cheap
to build these vehicles. They build more versions of their
existing trucks, They send out more trucks to shows. Eventually,
Bigfoot Alone has a huge fleet of Bigfoot offsprings, and spinoffs,
(44:49):
all paid for by Ford. A lot are basically carbon
copies of the original Bigfoot, while others have different gimmicks,
you could call them different modification, their unique projects, like
the Bigfoot Shuttle, which was a mini.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Van, Yeah, a mini van with forty eight inch rubber
tires and a lift an aerostar minivan specifically, thank god,
not a Honda Odyssey. That would be a nightmare fuel
for all of us, not just you, Ben.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
And be inappropriate and unfair to the audience.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I think that's right. And all of these you know,
all of these modifications were expensive, so you know, I
mean a lot of the money they were taking in
was going into just kind of upping the ante right
every time, Yeah and.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Over time again. Other people are entering the freight. There's
a North Carolina mud bogger named Dennis Anderson who has
built trucks on his own since he was twenty two.
He upgrades his rig to a legit monster truck and
he calls it the Grave Digger, which is super you know,
edgy and cool like the Undertaker and restless about.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
To say, very wrestling Gee, yeah, for sure. So we've
got the Grave Digger now that one started. But you know,
I love that you mentioned been the toy deals because
that's a big I remember these as toys more than
I do as televised events. Those were cool. Everybody wanted
one of those because then you could take your hot
(46:19):
wheels right and run over them with your big monster
truck toy.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, learning the rules of the road very quickly, mad
Max style.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Not to mention when they became remote controlled, and then
you really could do you know, those control monster trucks
to let you ride on back two wheels, you know,
do all kinds of stuff. I mean, there were really
miniaturized versions of the kind of you know, engineering that
was actually in the real things.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah, and we know that grave digger was very much
on the spectacle end of stuff. Even Fred Schaeffer said
he might only last one round, but that round was
a dandy and he had his you know entrance music
Bad to the Bone by George Thorahgood.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
So people were digging this and there was a lot
like digging it. They were grave digging it, and some
people would accuse them of grave robbing or at least
stealing ideas. There was so much money involved that by
nineteen ninety one, the United States hot Rod Association, which
is the big Dog truck and tractor pools purchases T
(47:29):
and T, and they had the exclusive booking rights to
all the top trucks, including Grave Digger, and they, the
management of the hot Rod Association, said, look at all
this profit that's going to these individual drivers. We owned
the rights here. So they wanted their cut, They wanted
their vigorous Fred Schaefer says, we used to make three
(47:50):
thousand dollars for a show. We'd make about twelve grand
and T shirts and they, the hot Rod Association, would
take about forty percent. We would walk out with ten grand.
That's attack of attacks. That's a big old tax.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
And the driver of Barefoot actually had this to say
about the kind of you know, the greed that started
to really flourish. We're going to give you a dollar
per sure, take it or leave it, That's what he said.
The us HRS perspective was and if say the drivers
didn't like it, or the folks who had, you know,
(48:25):
founded the whole thing didn't like it, well they were
out of luck, weren't they.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, they were out of luck. And it seemed to
like corporate mounthfeasans played a huge role in this. There
was an exclusive contract with every American football stadium on
the calendar. You just had those choices, you know, if
you can keep existing and give us almost fifty percent
of everything you do, or you can say, hey, I
(48:52):
had a good time. For a few years, Bob Channel
was out and he was on the outside of the
industry that he very much built.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
One would hope that he feathered his nest a little
bit enough to be comfortable. We don't know that, but
I really do hope that that's the case, because you
know what, when the whole Monster Truck thing really kicked
into gear pun utterly intended, was really in the nineties,
you know, when when the three of us grew up
where I guess maybe at least me be I always
(49:23):
forget Max is a young lad. But in the nineties
we joked about Sunday Sunday Sunday. These commercials were everywhere.
Grave Digger at this point really was the star of
the show, or at least one of them. And they
rebranded the whole thing to Monster Jam, which is what
we was just still around today, is that event that
always comes through Atlanta, And it really was kind of
(49:44):
like one of those World Wrestling Federation kind of package deals,
you know what I mean. Where you'd get to see
it'd be a whole show. The trucks were like the wrestlers,
and every one of them had their own personality, and
there'd be these perceived rivalries that were probably inspired by
those real life rivalries, and then just sort of jushed
up a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, and as there's a cold business decision here, because
obviously the suits wanted to push trucks that they owned
completely right now, they're not giving up sixty percent. Now
they own, they own the whole operation. Which is why
Chandler doesn't get to do as much when he refuses
to sell the Bigfoot brand. And so Bigfoot still did
(50:29):
a lot of stuff, like in nineteen ninety nine, a
Bigfoot model jumped over a seven to twenty seven airplane.
And you'll still see a lot of applause from monster
truck fans when Bigfoot shows up when it is in
any kind of event, and Chandler felt his age catching up.
(50:50):
He did say later he said someone wanted Bigfoot one,
the original monster truck, at a show. Instead, I want
you to drive over cars. This from a twenty seventeen interview.
He says, I said I didn't want to I'm seventy
five years old. I don't want to tear things up now.
I want to enjoy the rest of my life. And
it sounds like he chose the right time to roll out.
(51:13):
And you know, Jasmer says the same thing about his
original truck, and they really bonded with these because they
changed their lives. And you know with that, Noel, Max
and No we went a little bit long. But I'm
starting to think we should go to Monster Jam just
for the experience, right.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Oh, let's just do it. All three of us should go. Yeah. No,
It's something I've been wanting to do for some time,
and I think this is what better time than the present?
When when does it happen? It's got to be a
summer kind of thing. I bet you it's the summer.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
Yeah, I was looking this up. And Munster Jam is
coming to Atlanta this year. Wait for it this month?
Speaker 2 (51:48):
No way? Yes? Wait ed April twenty second and twenty third. Okay,
what do you guys say we go to the Sunday
Sunday Sunday one.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah, I feel like we go to the Sunday one. Okay,
Max to you in, Yeah, Max is in. It's a
little bit of a it'll be a little bit of
a drive, so maybe we meet up in the city
and then we.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Have we gotta do it. Let's just do it. This,
it's this coming Sunday, Sunday Sday.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
It's this Sunday.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Oh oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
Okay, well we've got to go because we got to
make some plans. Thank you so much, fellow Ridiculous Historians
for tuning in. Big thanks to our super producer mister Max.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Williams Alex Williams who composed this theme. Thanks to Chris
frasciotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Co, Jonathan stricklet Ben, thank.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
You Sunday, Sunday Sunday.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Indeed, and we'll see you then and next time. Folks.
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