Bigfoot is a monster truck. The original Bigfoot began as a 1974 Ford F-250 pickup that was modified by its owner Bob Chandler beginning in 1975. By 1979, the modifications were so extensive, the truck came to be regarded as the first monster truck. Other trucks with the name "Bigfoot" have been introduced in the years since, and it remains a well-known monster truck moniker in the United States.
Early history
A former construction worker and off-roading enthusiast from the St. Louis area, Chandler began racing in 1975, using the Chandler family's 1974 Ford F-250 four-wheel drive pickup truck and found that automotive shops in the Midwest generally did not carry the parts needed to repair the frequent damage. To remedy this problem, Chandler and his wife Marilyn, along with friend Jim Kramer, opened a shop called Midwest Four Wheel Drive and Performance Center in Ferguson, Missouri. The shop moved to Hazelwood, Missouri, in 1984, which remained as Bigfoot's headquarters until 2015 when the headquarters was relocated to Pacific, Missouri.
In 1979, Chandler replaced the under assembly of the truck with one from a military-surplus top loader featuring four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering that used tires. This modification drew attention and Chandler started making appearances at tractor pulls and car shows with his newly christened "Bigfoot" (so named for Chandler's heavy-footed racing style which caused frequent breakage of parts) to show off the truck's capabilities as well as to promote his shop. The truck's growing popularity led to its appearance in the 1981 Gus Trikonis film Take This Job and Shove It (which also features the early monster truck USA-1 credited under a different name).
Chandler's next experiment would prove revolutionary. In 1981, Chandler placed two dilapidated cars in a field, so that Chandler could videotape himself crushing the cars with Bigfoot as a joke. When Chandler began playing the video in his shop, a man promoting a motorsports event in Columbia, Missouri, asked him to duplicate the stunt in front of a crowd. After initial hesitation because of the destructive image it would convey, Chandler eventually agreed to perform at the event in April of the following year in what is believed to be the first public car crush. Later that year, a second Bigfoot, built to help meet the steadily rising demand to see the vehicle and sporting tires, received more major media attention by crushing cars at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. In 1983, Bigfoot began receiving sponsorship from Ford Motor Company, a relationship which continued until 2005.
By 1984, many truck owners around the country had taken to imitating Chandler's template of outfitting their vehicles with tires standing tall, with some trucks sporting even larger tires. Promoters of truck and tractor pulls, such as SRO Motorsports (later the United States Hot Rod Association) and Golden State Promotions, noticed the exploding popularity of the giant trucks and began booking several to crush cars at their events, with the eventual result being the advent of side-by-side, drag-racing style car crushing events. A popular example of the early days of monster truck racing is portrayed in the 1986 home video release Return of the Monster Trucks, which involves a truck pull, car crushing, and mud bogging all in the same course. That event, held in the Louisiana Superdome, was won by Bigfoot, as well as most of the events it was entered into in the mid-1980s. By this point, Chandler had already built an entire fleet of "Bigfoot" trucks to accommodate the vast demand for his vehicle, which remained as the most popular and marketable monster truck despite the large number of imitators. In 1987, Chandler added to his innovations by founding the Monster Truck Racing Association, which remains today as the chief voice in monster truck safety.
Another form of competition Chandler faced was the physical size of the competition. Many truck owners had taken to calling their vehicles the "world's largest monster truck", so Chandler outfitted his "Bigfoot 4" vehicle with tires he had purchased from a junkyard owner in Seattle for $1,000. The tires had been previously used by the US Army in Alaska on their overland train in the 1950s. In 1986, Chandler built a new truck, "Bigfoot 5", specifically for the tires. Upon its public debut in Indianapolis, Indiana, the truck immediately took the title of the "world's tallest, widest, and heaviest monster truck" and was eventually given official recognition of the title by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002. With a second set of tires attached, the truck stands tall, measures wide, and weighs over .
