BIGFOOT Places Pacific At the Center of Pop Culture – as American as Apple Pie

Open House September 25

In 1974 when Bob Chandler bought a new F-250 pickup truck it never entered his mind that his truck might one day be up there in the realm of American pop culture icons along with with baseball, cowboys, Route 66 and apple pie. He just liked to drive. It was a hobby.But like all hobbies, to keep pursuing it the first rule was to keep the thing running and that led to a business that would make Willy Wonka proud – tours that brought hordes of fans to his magical factory.

We may take Bigfoot for granted now – as a popular spectator sport and as a hometown treasure – but it took a while to get here. And it was the ingenuity of one man who found ways to improve the performance of his racing truck that gave us the Bigfoot we know today. One of its descendants, Bigfoot 10, is set up in front of Pacific City Hall to remind motorists on I-44 that Pacific is the home of Bigfoot.

And on September 24, they will pour into Pacific by the thousands. They will hoist kids up on top of the 66 inch wheels and take selfies with celebrity drivers, who are now famous. They will pose for group shots in front of the five Bigfoot models that routinely rev their engines for demonstrations around the world each year. They will buy toy Bigfoot trucks and Bigfoot tee shirts.

But most of all, they will stand ten deep to watch the car crushing demonstration in the field adjacent to the Bigfoot garage on Rose Lane.

So who is this Bigfoot creator? And what brought him to Pacific?

The first Bigfoot was a new Ford F-250 pickup bought by Bob Chandler in 1974. The company still has the vehicle, which is identified as Bigfoot One. When he struggled to find the 4×4 parts he wanted for the pickup, in 1975 he and his wife Marilyn, along with long-time friend Jim Kramer, formed Midwest Four Wheel Drive in Hazelwood, Missouri.

Chandler used the F-250 as a service vehicle and advertisement for the shop. As a hobby he raced it on weekends. A natural tinkerer, he upgraded it several times to be competitive. It was his competitive driving that garnered the nickname that would be embedded in American culture. “We always had to tow him home,” Kramer said. “We told him, ‘If you’d keep that big foot of yours off the gas, we wouldn’t have to do this all the time.”

Chandler painted the nickname on his truck. In 1979, he completely rebuilt the pickup to have four-wheel steering and 48-inch tires using axels from a military truck, with updated body panels from a 1979 Ford.

In 1981, in what is believed to be the first monster truck to crush cars, Chandler drove Bigfoot over a pair of cars in a field as a test of the truck’s ability and filmed it. He planned to use the short video as a promotional tool in his four-wheel drive performance shop. An event promoter saw it and asked Chandler to do the car crush in front of a crowd. 

He wasn’t sure whether he should do it because of the “destructive” image that could be associated with Bigfoot, but he eventually agreed, and history was made. After performing in a 1981 car crush at the Pontiac, Michigan Silverdome, Bigfoot became part of American pop culture. 

Although Bob George, one of the owners of a motorsport promotion company, is credited with coining the word “monster truck,” when he first used the phrase he was referring to Chandler’s Bigfoot.

In 1982 Bigfoot Two was created and incorporated with 66 inch wheels, which became the Bigfoot standard.

In August 1983, Bigfoot and USA-1 competed in the first side-by-side monster truck race, which was filmed for the television show That’s Incredible. 

In 1988, to standardize rules for truck construction and safety, Bob Chandler and two other monster truck pioneers formed the Monster Truck Racing Association (MTRA). The organization still plays a major role in the sport’s development in the US and EU.

To this day, the world’s biggest monster truck is Bigfoot 5, built in 1986, with tires that measure 10 feet.

In 2015, after outgrowing its crowded corner in Hazelwood, the Chandlers moved Bigfoot headquarters to Pacific.

The following year, Bigfoot treated Pacific to the annual open house that fans had come to know in Hazelwood. The crowd that arrived in Pacific showed local fans just how embedded the iconic monster truck had become in American culture. Visitors from across the region and across the U.S. filled Rose Lane and Lamar Parkway from Old Gray Summit Road to Osage Street.

When the Automotive Special Equipment Manufacturers Association (SEMA) named Bob Chandler to the SEMA Hall of Fame in May 2019, the town of Pacific celebrated with him.

Being named to its hall of fame is like being in the MLB Hall of Fame. When the honor was bestowed on Chandler and Bigfoot, local fans knew that Bigfoot had paved the way for an international monster truck industry. 

Today monster trucks drive a multibillion-dollar industry, featuring an estimated 300 monster trucks. Weighing about 10,000 pounds with 1,500 horsepower engines, modern monster trucks are faster, stronger and safer than their pioneering predecessors.

Monster trucks and their celebrity drivers perform to jam packed stadiums around the world, are featured in movies, blanket the Internet with YouTube videos and are as recognizable as – well – as cowboys, baseball or apple pie..

But Bob and Marilyn Chandler’s Bigfoot was the first. Their daughter and son-in-law Ann and Bob Trent manage the business at 2286 Rose Lane.

The firm now operates a fleet of five full time racing monster trucks and two display trucks. They also keep Bigfoot One, “although it is showing its age,” Ann Trent said, and Bigfoot Five, which was outfitted with ten foot tires. 

Bigfoot 4X4 monster trucks now appear in 700 shows a year around the U.S. and the world.

“Most of our appearances are in the U.S. and Canada,” Ann Trent said. “But we’ve had appearances in 26 countries around the world.”

The annual Open House was postponed in 2020 due to COVID. But on September 25, Rose Lane in Pacific will again be the center of the monster truck world and Bigfoot will be the star.