First Monster Truck?

[bluestringer]

[Hi-Po]

That is way too cool!!  Someone has got to build a model of it for sure.  I like it!

[Goose1957]

Cool "truck", but I bet it was a beast to drive. Can't imagine turning those front tires without power steering. And it must have been geared really low. Not a lot of horsepower in those model A's. Still would be a neat project.

Jeff

[Fat Brian]

This is really cool. There are a lot of specialty vehicles from this period that approach the design most consider a monster truck.

This has been at times a heated debate within the monster truck community. The current thoughts on finding the first monster truck is that it must have the 66" agricultural tires that became the standard tire for the genre and it must have done "monster truck things" like car crushing, sled pulls, or hill climbs. This definition excludes a lot of the early vehicles like this that were designed mainly for working. 

By the current accepted definition the original Bigfoot truck is the first monster truck. There was a mud racing truck called Kaw-liga that was on 66" tires first but they only ever used it for mud racing so it doesn't meet the second requirement of doing "monster truck things".

This is an argument of when a thing becomes different enough or it's use changes to the point that it is now a new thing.

[Zippi]

That looks pretty kewl James.  I'll be it would bouce a little with those airplane tires.  

[stavanzer]

There are several magazine articles about that A Model. It was a one-of-a-kind vehicle, designed for delivering mail in deep snow. I've seen photos of it taken in the last few years, so it survived a very long time. The tires are unique and possibly never to be restored.

[ABC Auto Industry]

I came across this topic while looking up monster truck stuff, and there is no doubt in my mind that Bigfoot was first. However, it wasn't the first to crush cars. That honor goes to either Jeff Dane's King Kong, Fred & Gary Dykman's Cyclops or High Roller (which later became Jeff Strand's Thunder Beast).

[Fat Brian]

7 hours ago, ABC Auto Industry said:

I came across this topic while looking up monster truck stuff, and there is no doubt in my mind that Bigfoot was first. However, it wasn't the first to crush cars. That honor goes to either Jeff Dane's King Kong, Fred & Gary Dykman's Cyclops or High Roller (which later became Jeff Strand's Thunder Beast).

Yep, and even Bigfoot's first crush was on 48s not 66s. Unfortunately there just isn't a lot documented about those early days and most events included more than a few barley pops to cloud memories.