When Trucks Fly

A monster trucker is the kind of person who has a favorite type of dirt. I’ve heard drivers describe a track as fluffy, sticky, loose, tacky, grippy, greasy, slick, crumbly, powdery, bone-dry, baked out, dead, loamy, earthen, sandy, slidey, soupy, snotty, and marshmallowy. Everyone understands the distinctions. They obsess over them like vintners obsess over terroir. The first time I met an employee of Monster Jam, which sells millions of tickets to its monster-truck shows every year, the first thing she told me was that the company owns more dirt, she thinks, than anyone else in the world.