Photos: Courtesy of Feld Entertainment
Grave diggers aren’t what they used to be. We should know because we chatted with one…..Randy Brown to be exact. So how does one become a ‘Grave Digger?’ “I grew up on a farm down here in North Carolina,” said Brown, “and was always racing as a past time, a hobby and everything with my dad and all. I grew up down the road from the Grave Digger team with Dennis Anderson.” Anderson created the legend of Grave Digger® back in 1982, and to this day Grave Digger is the world’s best-known monster truck. So these grave diggers are about trucks.
Randy Brown
“It was just always an interest of mine to get involved and since the opportunity presented itself, I jumped in and it’s been a great experience for me. It’s really worked out well. And I hope to keep doing it for a long time.”
As fate would have it, he will be doing it for a long time. Brown will be in Washington, DC next week when Monster Jam thunders into the Verizon Center on January 24th and 25th for the first time since 2011. “Monster trucks,” according to the PR agency, “are custom-designed machines that sit atop 66-inch tall tires and weigh a minimum of 10,000 pounds. Built for short, high-powered bursts of speed, monster trucks generate almost 2,000 horsepower and are capable of speeds of up to 100 miles an hour. They whirl and fly 130 feet into the air, amazing audiences of all ages.”
The Illuminata
As you can see from the photo, that’s a lot of complex hardware to piece together so we asked Randy if he built them himself. “We do,” he explained. ” We have my shop, my company Randy Brown Motor Sports and we do maintain and work on repair and everything and on some of our Grave Digger trucks. I’m not as hands on as I used to be because there are other obligations with driving it. But yeah, we still do participate in working on the trucks. We don’t build them from scratch anymore, they’re all done down in our main shop down in Kill Devil Hills, but I do have some input in what happens to the trucks and how they are built.
It’s just like any other racing operation or racing sport. We’re doing it because we love to race but also at the same time I have to make a living to support my family. It does become a commercial enterprise and a business.”
The Iron Outlaw
We’re thinking Monster Trucks could do some serious road rage on the tracks, but Brown claims it is probably the safest sport out there. “When it comes to safety and everything, we have all the safety issues. Our safety guidelines that we have to go by for the U.S. Hot Rod Association and Monster Jam are comparable to Nascar and I consider it to be a very safe sport. We’re as safe as any of those cars.”
Think Evil Knievil on four wheels: “We do a lot of jumping with the trucks. We have side-by-side racing that we jump over 2 sets of cars. We have freestyle and they always tend to put a bigger jump in the middle of it so we can get higher and farther. We have a ramp that they build actually in front of the cars. Our trucks that we make get about 1500 horsepower. So when you tilt ’em, it’s got quite the acceleration. When you step on the car and hit the ramp, it sends you in the air pretty good.” Sounds like every wife’s nightmare. So we asked: “Do your family members freak out when you perform?” “No. not really,” he replied. “We feel it’s more dangerous for me to drive or travel to and from the event than it is for me at the event when I’m doing my shows and things. That’s more of a fear for them, all the traveling that I do versus the racing.
The Crush Station
Also, we all know each other. Although we race with different people every weekend, I might run in to the same group of guys, 2 or 3 times a year. There are 12 events going on all over the country with an average of 8 vehicles per event. You can imagine it takes a lot of Monster trucks to do this tour. We’re all friends. Everybody gets along. We work well together but we are competitive with each other. We want to win. The more you win, the more popular your truck becomes. Everybody works hard to win, but we also get along and work together to keep the trucks going.”
Brown expects to win the competition. “Every time I show up, I expect to win. We have the equipment to win. We have the ability to win, it’s just a matter of making sure everything goes our way. Like I said, with the competition as tight as it is, it’s hard to do, but we do expect to win every time we go to a show.
It’s one-on-one. And then when we do what we call our freestyle event that’s judged by judges in the crowd and the fans grade you on how well you perform. You’re basically out there just showing off for the fans. You take these big trucks and you’re jumping over stuff, you’re riding wheelies and you’re doing donuts. They judge you on how you perform. That’s where they get the winner – in freestyle.”
The Bounty Hunter
Monster Jam toura take us all over the country or all over the world actually. We do a tour all over the US., we go up into Canada, we’re in South America. We do a tour over in Europe and this past year we actually went to Australia also. We’ll be going back there for 2014. We’re all over the world touring and doing shows, – Monster Truck, Monster Jam shows.
Right now we’re racing for points to go to Las Vegas to the world finals in March. Our racing team Grave Digger has been a world champion for the past 4 times. I have nothing but good things to say about my experiences with Monster Jam and all my tours and everything that I’ve done. This is my 15th year doing it. It’s good family entertainment. We welcome everybody to come down, take a look and have fun. We hope to see everybody at the Verizon Center.”
A plan.
