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In 1974, Monster Truck Legend Bob Chandler, ordered a brand-new Ford F-25o pickup truck. Not long after receiving his new pickup truck, Bob made some heavy modifications to increase it's hauling and off-road capabilities. After becoming frustrated from the inability to conveniently purchase replacements for his damaged parts, Bob and his wife Marilyn partnered with Jim Kramer to form Midwest Four Wheel Drive in his home state of Missouri.
After Bob continued to break parts and replace them with heavier duty parts, the truck grew bigger and bigger. Due to Bob's heavy-right-foot driving style, his truck was nicknamed "Bigfoot" by one of Bob's shop employees. Not long after that, Bob installed 48-inch tires and decided to make appearances with his huge F-250 truck.
In 1978 Bob made a trip up to Ohio, accompanied by his friend, Mike Blank, from Missouri who drove a race car named "Woodstock". At that time, Bob was the mechanic for Mike Blank's race car. When they came to the small town of Cleves, OH, Bob brought with him his huge, custom built F-25o to the Gravelrama® 8 event. This deemed our Gravelrama® event as the first ever off-road event that Bigfoot and a monster truck attended. Bob had a hankering for showing off his truck's off-road capabilities, so Gravelrama® was the perfect off-road event to do this. Gravelrama's® biggest challenge at the time for racers and off-road vehicles was our legendary Big Eliminator Hill. Bigfoot unsuccessfully attempted to climb the Big Eliminator Hill quite a few times, but he was determined to get his beast of a truck up and over our hill.
In 1986, Bigfoot, driven by Jim Kramer, finally made it's first successful up and over climb of our Big Eliminator Hill and the crowd loved it. Bigfoot continued to make appearances at Gravelrama® and even brought some of his other builds, including, Miss Bigfoot, which was a lifted Ford Ranger driven by his wife Marilyn, Bigfoot #2, Bigfoot Fastrax (a tank style Bigfoot) & Bigfoot Shuttle which was a v6 nitrous Ford Aerostar Van.
In 1987, the I.O.K. 4 Wheelers Club hosted an event on the Gravelrama® grounds that was called the "Spring Tune and Monster Truck Challenge". This event brought out several monster trucks including Bigfoot. Just a few of the other Monster Trucks that showed up as well were, USA-1, Holman's Beast, Nitemare, King Kong, Awesome Kong II, Spiker's Eagle, Duece's Wild & No Problem. At one of our Gravelrama® events that had monster trucks in attendance, we had the race lights on the flat drag strip go down. The race chairmen at that race were John Ryan and charter member Wayne "Hendo" Henderson. The chairmen knew that it was going to be a little while before they could get it back up and running. They had an idea. Hendo walked over to the drivers of Bigfoot and USA-1 and asked them if they would be willing to do some flag drop drag racing in the trucks to keep the crowd entertained in the down time. Of course, as off-road enthusiasts themselves, they jumped at the opportunity to take their Monster Trucks down the drag strip. It was a hit! At that time we still had crowds on both sides of the drag strip. Both sides were going wild as the Monster trucks raced down the track, they loved it!
In this Hill Climb Compilation video Gravelrama's® Big Eliminator Hill was featured 9 times out of the 16 clips in this video. The first clip in the video that shows BIGFOOT on Gravelrama® grounds is at 4:27 in to the video. We haven't heard it straight from the horses mouth but we're pretty sure he enjoyed the challenge and climb of our Eliminator Hill the most!
Email: gravelrama@iokfourwheelers.com
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