Bigfoot Learns to Turn: Rear Steer Arrives

Four-Foot Tires Do Not Improve a Turning Circle

Raise a pickup into the air, install four-foot-tall tires and replace the normal running gear with heavy military hardware, and ordinary steering begins running out of answers.

The front wheels could only turn so far. Meanwhile BIGFOOT had become taller, wider and considerably less interested in squeezing through spaces Ford once considered adequate.

That was inconvenient on trails. It became worse at shows, pulls and four-wheel-drive events where fences, buildings, spectators and promoters had already occupied most of the useful acreage.

Chandler needed a tighter turning circle.

The normal answer would have been to improve the front steering.

Bob had another axle.

The Rear Axle Got Voting Rights

BIGFOOT’s military hardware gave Chandler another option. The rear wheels did not have to spend their entire lives following obediently behind the fronts.

In 1979, BIGFOOT got rear steering.

Turn the front wheels one direction and the rear wheels the other, and the enormous truck could pivot through a much tighter circle. Instead of dragging the whole machine around a broad arc, both ends helped change direction.

The practical problem was solved.

Bob had also added a feature to a monster truck before there was much agreement about what a monster truck was supposed to contain.

This Was Before Monster-Truck Racing

The timing is the good part. BIGFOOT received rear steering before Chandler’s famous car-crushing demonstrations turned giant pickups into a national attraction and years before side-by-side racing established what serious monster trucks would need.

There was no settled chassis formula and no stadium-racing handbook explaining that several tons of truck would eventually need steering at both ends.

Bob was still modifying his personal Ford because each improvement created another inconvenience.

The truck became harder to turn.

So he made the back wheels turn too.

Years later the solution looked obvious. Solutions usually do after somebody else has already cut, welded and broken enough parts to prove them.

A Repair Became Part of the Show

BIGFOOT made its first paid public appearance in 1979 at a Denver car show, and other bookings followed. Audiences were already staring at the height, tires and military hardware.

Then Bob turned the rear tires.

A lifted pickup was understandable. A lifted pickup whose back wheels suddenly pointed somewhere else looked as though the truck had started making decisions on its own.

Rear steering had been added because Chandler needed maneuverability. The fact that spectators enjoyed watching it was a useful bonus.

Then the Trucks Started Racing

As monster trucks grew toward 66-inch flotation tires, the maneuverability problem did not improve through natural causes. The machines remained enormous, heavy and increasingly expected to perform inside arenas and stadiums that had not become larger simply because the trucks had.

Car-crushing exhibitions allowed slow, deliberate steering. Racing did not.

Now drivers had to line up for obstacles, make tighter turns and recover after landings while another giant truck was trying to reach the finish first.

Several tons of machinery occasionally arrived pointed a few degrees away from where the driver wanted it.

Rear steering could do something about that.

What began as Chandler’s solution to an awkward truck became a competitive tool.

The Driver Received Another Job

Monster-truck rear steering was not intended to make subtle decisions by itself while the truck bounced through the air.

The driver controlled it.

The steering wheel handled the front axle. A separate control operated the rear, allowing the driver to tighten a turn, move the back of the truck sideways or straighten the chassis after a landing.

So while controlling throttle, transmission, brakes, front steering and several tons of machinery that occasionally forgot it belonged on the ground, the driver received another steering assignment.

There had clearly been too much spare time in the cockpit.

Eventually Nobody Thought It Was Strange

That may be the best evidence that Chandler’s idea worked.

Rear steering stopped being a novelty.

Modern monster trucks are expected to have it. Huge tires, extreme suspension travel and tight courses make four-wheel steering part of the basic machinery, and drivers use the rear axle without the grandstands giving it much thought.

That is what happens to a successful oddball idea. First everybody stares at it. Then everybody copies it. Eventually people forget somebody had to invent the thing.

BIGFOOT was doing it in 1979.

Bob Wasn’t Designing the Future

He was fixing his truck.

That is what makes BIGFOOT’s early development so good. There was no grand plan for creating a new sport. Each modification exposed the next problem.

Bigger tires broke the original running gear, so stronger axles went underneath. The stronger hardware let the truck grow larger. The larger truck became difficult to turn.

So Bob made the rear axle steer.

One modification kept wandering into the next chapter of monster-truck history.

Rear Steer Arrived Before the Rulebook

Rear steering came before the famous car crushes, before serious monster-truck racing and before anybody had compiled a standard equipment list for these machines.

Bob Chandler had simply made BIGFOOT so large that turning only the front wheels no longer seemed like enough steering.

So he started turning the back ones too.

The rest of the monster-truck world eventually decided Bob had saved them some engineering.