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St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
January 17, 1987, Saturday, City Edition
Tampa Stadium crew gets down and dirty for monster trucks
BYLINE: DARRELL FRY
SECTION: SPORTS; motorsports; Pg. 3C
LENGTH: 440 words
DATELINE: TAMPA
TAMPA - Remember what time you woke up this morning? That's about the same time Don Trotter was tuck-ing himself in. He doesn't exactly call it the graveyard shift, but his job from Friday afternoon through the wee hours of this morning had a lot to do with shovels and dirt.
Trotter, 57, is largely in charge of transforming the natural grass field of Tampa Stadium into a muddy play-ground for monster trucks and sled-pulling funny cars in tonight's Super Bowl of Motorsports.
The car-crushing, ground-pounding event, featuring the monster truck Bigfoot, begins at 8 p.m. To make the battlefield for these mechanical warriors, it took about 100 truck-loads of dirt and clay, 100 cubic yards of "slime" and 3,000 sheets of 3/4-inch plywood with the aid of bulldozers and other heavy equipment to build the 5-foot deep "mud bog" and the 200-foot path for the truck pull.
Trotter and a team of 25-30 workers put down a layer of wood, a layer of plastic and then another layer of wood before pouring on the dirt and clay. The crew began construction at 4 o'clock Friday afternoon and worked in shifts through the night.
"It's a job. And when you start it you can't stop," Trotter said, taking a surveying gaze over the football field Friday morning. "We don't let the guys stay out there too long. That's when you start making mistakes."
Trotter's biggest worry is not seriously damaging the turf.
"If the event is over at 11 p.m., we'll start taking it up at 11:01," he said. "Our whole way of thinking is not to damage the grass. Relatively, there will be very small damage."
Most of the 50,000 or more fans expected to show up for what is often called "the rodeo of the 1980s" will come to see the monster trucks. And the "monster" part of their name is an accurate description. Each truck is typically 10 feet high, weighs more than 13,000 pounds, stands on tires four feet in diameter and carries a price tag of around $ 100,000. Check out some of their names - Mega Force, owned by Tampa's Kevin Dabney, Tennessee Thunder, Virginia Giant, Thunder Beast and Bob Chandler's well-known Bigfoot.
Tickets for the event are on sale at all Select-a-Seat outlets and at the stadium for $ 15, $ 14 and $ 12. Special discount tickets are available at all area Ace Auto Parts stores. Children 12-and-under are admitted for $ 8.
LOAD-DATE: November 18, 1992
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Times Publishing Company
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