The world of monster trucking is one few are familiar with – well, other than those commercials on TV with an announcer constantly yelling about kids’ tickets being “just five bucks”.
The fact of the matter is those things are some honking machines that aren’t just meant for play in the dirt. They can get some major air – and that’s exactly what Joe Sylvester set out to prove earlier this month. The former carpenter, turned off-road junkie, once held the world record for the longest monster truck jump at 208 feet, however it was recently beaten – leaving Sylvester a little disappointed.
Not to be outdone, Sylvester jumped his 10,000 lb. Bad Habits monster truck 238 feet – about three-stories high – destroying the previous record by 23 feet. With fireworks blasting in the background, it looked like something out of a potato chip commercial. Here’s the footage – eat your heart out Grave Digger:
Afterwards, filled with testosterone and adrenaline, Sylvester made clear how difficult it was to pull off. “It’s not a matter of the difficulty,” Sylvester told Yahoo!. “It’s if they’ve got the balls to hit a jump at 85 mph, and as far as I know, there’s not anybody ready to step up and take that kind of a chance.”
The jump took three weeks of planning and despite over-rotating, which led to a rough landing, it only took Sylvester one try. This stunt was not the longest in a motor vehicle – no, that honor still belongs to Travis Pastrana. The NASCAR and X Games athlete holds the overall ramp-to-ramp record thanks to a 269-foot jump off the Long Beach Pier in a rally car back in 2010. But Sylvester’s feat is still impressive.
Now if only he could do a backflip with his monster truck, then he’d one-up Pastrana.
Ed Miller is a contributor for CraveOnline Sports. You can follow him on Twitter @PhillyEdMiller or “like” CraveOnline Sports on Facebook.
