Come on back and show your new trucks!

I would love to see this forum thrive again. It takes people taking the initiative to make it happen. It’s not because the thread isn’t here, it’s because people aren’t visiting or posting. Maybe that’s the state of monster trucks? Maybe people have bailed on the sport? All I know is I don’t get why people have abandoned this forum.

 

Unfortunately no. I personally think it’s a sign of the crisis that the sport is currently in. The fans just aren’t there. That’s because no one in the industry is offering anything that would potentially create fans or compel people to actively follow the sport, and the industry has been this way for the past 20-25 years. Not even monster jam has done anything to foster growth in fanbase for quite some time. They’ve just kept doubling down on making their shows like Disney on Ice with monster trucks, and selling toys to kids. It’s sad really.

BUT!!! let me tell you what I’ve got in the works.....

I’m a prospective team owner and driver. I have plans to begin building a truck and a team later this year to be debuted in 2020. So I’m getting into the industry with plans to try to influence some change and growth.

I’m also looking into potentially creating a brand new monster truck racing series. I’ve got plenty of capital to work with, and am seriously looking into putting my ideas into practice and pursuing them. I see so much that needs to be changed in the monster truck industry if its going to survive, let alone improve. The state of the industry now is sad and pathetic to be honest. It needs reinvigorating for the next decade. It needs to be made into a real sport with real racing, real competition, and real drivers who are stars and have real name recognition like back when it was Dennis and Tom Meents. The current monster jam model of making it like a Disney on Ice show with a bunch of fabricated, generic characters playing the roles of drivers does the opposite of this. The sport needs to be turned on it’s head, the over-the-top, freestyle-focused, circus-like show needs to be scrapped, and a real racing points series with serious teams needs to be established. The racing needs to be intense and the courses need to allow for high speeds and big air.

I’m looking into creating an actual racing series and sanctioning body for monster trucks that would be built into a top notch racing league on the level of NHRA, NASCAR, Lucas Oil Off-Road series, and AMA Supercross. There are many things that can be done to make the series very successful and bring lots of fans and excitement into it. I’ve been noticing that the industry needed change for a long time, but instead of sitting around waiting for someone to do it, I believe I’ll have to do it myself.

Nothing I’m sharing is official yet, but I am definitely in the early stages of planning. I will be creating a YouTube channel as soon as the work on my first truck begins later this summer. I will come back here and share everything that is going on.

But to conclude, if the sport can see the changes I’m talking about, there will be more fans getting engaged, and you will see traffic to this site increased significantly.

 

You continue to mention "unlimited" capital. Do you have advocates behind you to assist your push into the industry? It's all about the connections

 

Well, I guess I would say (hopefully without conceit) that when it comes to building my first truck and establishing my racing team, money is certainly not an issue. The whole racing series idea is little more than an idea at this moment, but continuing to look brighter if this next year goes as planned. That’s all I can say at the moment.

 

While Monster Jam has made some bad decisions and gone a different direction we'd like, I don't think the sport as a whole is suffering as bad as this forum indicates. It's till super popular and I see long lines and full seats at the shows I attend. I'm on other forums that have died, even a once major fantasy baseball forum and we know that's booming. It's just the forum model that's dying...which is sad because I think it's far superior than social media platforms that I refuse to use because of their politics (the companies more than the users).

Speaking of Monster Jam...STUPID STUPID STUPID move catering to antigun moms when let's be honest, your customer base are mainly rural gun owners. I boycott most companies completely that do this, but my kids (and I) love monster trucks too much. We do go to almost exclusively indy shows though, haven't been to a MJ-run show for years.

Zane Rettew, Stinger driver organizes a local fair show near his hometown that gets bigger and better every year. Last year he did a backflip there and goes bigger each year. 7 trucks last year including Ice Cream Man, Jester, Extermigator, Backdraft, Instigator,Master of Disaster...he gets some big name trucks to come.

We usually hit The Buck twice a year for Stinger and other trucks like Bigfoot, Raminator, Team Scream trucks, Bounty Hunter's team, War Wizard, Stone Crusher, Predator, Samson, Vaters team trucks...always a good show despite being a drag-racing track venue. We have a a forum member that runs tuff trucks there and does very well.

Harrisburg, PA doesn't always get the biggest names...they used to draw Bigfoot and Buonter Hunter but last few years it's been smaller Indy teams...we'll go there some years. Missed this year.

Zane's the hardest-running driver I've ever seen , at least in front of his hometown fans. He's on par with Jim Koehler in intensity and insanity. He'll run it until it's dead, and he has to pay for it too. He's currently second behind Randy Brown and Grave Digger on the MJ Arena tour. We'll be seeing him in the World Finals soon enough.

 

Coming from a guy that was a kid in the 80s when monster trucks were all the rage and were good for one thing, destroying cars, I can say that I am not AT ALL interested in the sport as it now stands. The only way for me to get my monster truck fix is to roam ebay for old monster truck memorabilia, visit the monster truck museum, and hoping to one day get a one-on-one chance to photograph and video Bigfoot #1 doing what it did all those years ago.

I think that the sport's greatest asset is also its greatest liability. Yes the new space frames and light weight bodies allow for awesome shows that are pointless to some degree. Whatever happened to the bob chandlers of the world? There are plenty of vintage bodies out there to bring back the original monster trucks.

There are many people still around with deep pockets and a lot of nostalgia to bring the sport back to its roots. Ive said time and again the the first thing I would do with a windfall is to go out and buy a late 70s early 80s F150 and turn it into a monster truck.

Think of an event where are all the original monster trucks are in running condition and are set to meet at a stadium for some good ole car crushing. No racing in today's sense, just putting some 1990s cars straight in their path 'road house style'. would you pay $20, $40, $100 for a 2 hour show? This is perhaps what some of the fans want to see??? Idk just my .02

 

The tech in these trucks are enabling this sport to go bigger and bigger. In my opinion this is best for the masses. The majority of fans are not gearheads and are present for the entertainment value. I would love to see a show again and willing to travel but it appears the collective source TMB no longer has an updated schedule. I remember being able to browse The Monster Blog calendar and plan shows months in advance; is it a lack of updating or is the frequency decreasing?

 

I would like to see more postings of pics of new builds, and or updates on trucks. I like this forum it has a lot of good info.

 

I do like the newer trucks. I like both the old and new for different reasons. But the new ones allow for more intense racing. They’re purpose-built to handle good. I would make it mandatory to run factory, non-3d bodies if I created a racing series. I would make them be TRUCKS, not giant lobsters, dragons, or puppy dogs.

 

I'm new but I'll throw my thoughts based on comments and my past months lurking out there anyway...

After having been away for so many years not sure whether I feel more like a human who spent 20 years on an alien planet or an old man yelling at clouds based on what I see....

On the bad side, I see a "sport" that's mostly stuck in the Stage 3 era of the 90s with minor improvements and heavily divided. On one side you have this big corporate circus on par with what I see in anything else entertainment these days in the mainstream. Hearing/reading on Monster Jam feels like hearing/reading about a manufactured pop diva, while reading about the other "series-es" I liken to reading about some 80s bands playing a Casino or county fair. I love the bands still, and they're as good as or better than they were in the past, but they just can't get the attention they deserve regardless. And I see potential for all kinds of ideas out there and ideas themselves as such in this thread, but nobody's making it happen, or the powers that be aren't letting it happen....much like music TBH.

But there's a lot of potential just from lurking I see.

On the modern side, I really like that electric truck Bigfoot came up with and see some real potential there. That I think really opens the door to a wider audience of fan in many ways and could do some real good to take certain polarizing stigmas away. Even if not a stage 4 or 5 thing, maybe a sub class, at least at first, like monster "tanks" in the 80s. And as car makers get more into hybrids and EVs it could bolster sponsorship for a true product by taking it to an extreme again rather than just making it all standard tube chassis with Merlin motors in them.

And it seems the voices for old school trucks are pretty loud too. You have a get together here and there of the old school, you've got people who own the old trucks, and people replicating them. Relative newcomers on an old-school platform. I just finished watching all the Earthquake YouTube videos.....that whole underground punk-rockish DIY thing applied to monster trucks is really cool being one who grew up watching Stage 1 and 2 trucks and carries a DIY ethos in my own hobbies.