Monster Trucks Facts

Dennis Anderson bagged grain for $3.65 an hour. He welded a monster truck from a wrecked 1950s Ford. Rivals mocked the junk heap, so he snapped back he'd dig them a grave with it. The name stuck. A booked truck no-showed a car-crush show, and his junker stunned the crowd instead. That truck became Grave Digger, the world's most famous monster truck. The weathered early Digger still sits in his family's truck museum.

Bigfoot is widely called the first monster truck, and it began as Bob Chandler's 1974 Ford F-250. He kept breaking it off road, and local shops did not stock the parts, so he opened a 4x4 shop. In 1981 he drove it over junk cars in a field and filmed the run, and in 1983 more than 68,000 fans packed the Pontiac Silverdome to watch Bigfoot. Bigfoot trucks still tour arenas today.