Monster Truck Madness – Starting a Monster Truck Club

Have you ever seen pics or videos of solid axle monster trucks racing and thought to yourself, “I wish there were folks that did that around me?” Well, I’m here to tell you that, yes, you can get something rolling like that around you.

I am speaking from personal experience here. A few years ago in St. Louis, there was no one racing r/c monster trucks. We started our club with just three racers. Five years later and we now have 70+ entries at standard club races. Now, it’s taken a lot of work by a lot of people to make that happen, but let’s just focus on the start up.

Solid axle monster truck racing is a freaking BLAST, and all you really need to make it work is just a few people. Ideally, at least four so you can have an elimination bracket. You’ll then want a few ramps and a racing surface (dirt is the best!). If you have all the aforementioned things, then bam, you are ready to start a club.

Oh, I guess you’ll also need some rules. Ah yes, rule discussion, the absolute worst part of racing.

If I was you, I would keep the rules simple and limit yourself to just one class when starting up. Solid axle monster trucks, despite becoming much more popular in recent years, are still a niche thing. You are going to have much better odds of success if you funnel everyone into a single class.

I have routinely seen promising start up racing groups immediately shoot themselves in the foot by adding multiple classes, there-by splitting the limited participant pool up, right from the get-go.

The last piece of advice I can give you is to make sure you keep the focus on fun. This should be a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how this falls by the wayside, especially when people start harping about rules, classes, etc. I guess that could be said about any new r/c racing club.

That’s really it. It’s how we started, and you definitely can do it as well. If you like full size monster truck racing and know a few folks with r/c solid axle monsters, you can go racing just like the big boys.

If you have any questions, I’d be happy to help answer them. Since starting in 2014, I’ve learned a thing or two. Shoot me an e-mail at doug at bigsquidrc.com. If you manage to get a club going (or currently have one), I’d love to feature you here in this column as well. I’m all about promoting this segment of the hobby!

That’s all for this week. Have a good one!