Monster trucks bring monster excitement to fair
Adrena and Christian McComb of Strasburg pose in front of Adrena’s favorite truck, Muddy Girl, at the pit party. Christian’s favorite truck was Backdraft.
The Monster Truck Show sold out on Saturday night at the grandstand at the Tuscarawas County Fair. The show was a production of the Monster Truck Racing League and featured the Wolf’s Head, Torque, Muddy Girl and Backdraft Monster Trucks.
Dave Shifflet and his son Cam, age 3, from Canton attended the preshow pit party, where Cam Shifflet posed for photos inside a monster truck tire.
“It’s his first time to see monster trucks, and he is wearing his monster truck T-shirt,” Dave Shifflet said.
The show sold out shortly after 6 p.m. “We got the last two tickets together. After that only single-seat tickets were left,” Dave Shifflet said.
Announcer Justin Storie, from the state of Missouri, has a theory on the popularity of monster trucks. “They’re big, loud, and they’re trucks and they crash a lot. It’s the destruction that appeals to people.”
Storie enjoys working with the show and also has worked as a crew member and on building the tracks.
Paul Breaud, a monster truck driver from Airville, Pennsylvania, said it’s important you want to drive the oversized vehicles. “It’s a lot of work and a full-time job and a lot of money,” he said.
Breaud said the vehicles drive well if they are set up right, and that includes the seat and the shocks. But it takes much know-how to drive them. “You have to be able to steer the front and the back at the same time. You have to learn how to hit the jumps,” he said.
Safety is the top concern of the drivers. The interior of the vehicle’s cab is surrounded by a roll cage. “I had it rolled over a few times,” Breaud said, but the experience didn’t stop him from continuing to drive. “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t feel safe.”
The drivers wear fire suits, helmets and gloves and use neck restraints and full-containment seats. A monster truck’s engine also can be turned off via remote control by a crew member if a problem occurs.
Breaud said it is not if, but when for a crash. “Every hit [from a jump] is like a crash,” he said.
“Stupidity” was the first answer Breaud gave when asked why he began driving monster trucks but then added he was looking for a job he enjoyed. Most of the time Breaud is driving the Backdraft monster truck, which honors the firefighters and EMTs killed on 9/11.
The MTRL trucks do 70-80 shows per year all over the United States and Central America. They have even traveled to Barbados and Newfoundland.
The show also featured racing extreme quad racers, and a rider’s quad bobbled on a ramp, throwing him to the ground. The incident prompted a brief delay in the show and sent the rider to the hospital to get checked out.
The schedule changing from the usual Saturday night truck and tractor pulls to monster trucks was the result of the Ohio Fair Managers Convention.
“We took some clinics and seminars at the convention. They said we need to change because everyone gets tired of the same old thing,” first-time fair board member Dave Miller said.
The sold-out grandstand proved change is good.
“It was cool. We liked it, and the drivers all did a good job,” said Kim Walton of New Philadelphia, who attended the show with her son, Luca Massarelli.
They had watched live monster truck shows twice before: once in Cleveland and at another county fair. They took the opportunity at the pit party to ride in Maximum Overdrive, a monster truck fitted with 10 seats in the back for passengers.
“It was scary but fun. They did a burnout,” Walton said.
“I loved the freestyle,” Massarelli said of the last event of the evening where drivers went over jumps and performed other stunts of their choosing. Massarelli is a big fan of monster trucks and even collects the miniature versions of the vehicles.
Massarelli’s favorite truck of the evening was Wolf’s Head, and he stopped by the merchandise tent afterward to pick up a T-shirt featuring the truck.
One thing is certain: Monster trucks are welcome back at the Tuscarawas County Fair.