BIGFOOT 50x50 Day 26, 1999: “Ground Control to Major Dan”

With the one-two punch of the fallout with USHRA and then the SFX purchase of USA Motorsports, BIGFOOT was left without a points series to race in 1999. But that didn’t mean that business dried up. Far from it. BIGFOOT remained as busy as ever, with their usual Ford and Firestone displays and crushes, and running full monster truck shows for the likes of Motorsports Entertainment Group, Beckley/Checkered Flag Productions, Pro Shows Inc., Milestone Motorsports, their own BIGFOOT International Events Group, and of course Special Events, and the Jamboree Circuit.

At the Bloomsburg Jamboree on July 9, Dan Runte took BIGFOOT 14 to a new long jump world record. Hitting the ramp at roughly 55 miles per hour, he flew the truck 144 feet, 10 inches. Breaking the 141 foot, 10 inch record he set in May of 1998 in Mesa, Arizona. The jump was arranged and filmed by Family Channel for a show called Record Breakers.

On September 11, at the Tennessee Aviation Days air show in Smyrna, Tennessee Dan and 14 broke their record again. This time by 57 feet, landing the truck at 202 feet. Not only that, Dan became the first person to jump an airliner by jumping a retired Boeing 727. Bob Chandler would estimate that at the apex of the leap, Runte was roughly 24 feet in the air. The next day Eric Tack would take Wilderness 15 over the aircraft with a leap also good enough to break Dan’s Bloomsburg record, landing at 148 feet.

Dan would go for broke one more time in 1999. This time in Las Vegas on December 14. Dan would throw BIGFOOT 14 175 feet over seven cars and the length of his seventy-three foot hauler. He wouldn’t break his 202 foot record, but he would break 14. Emerging from the pyro fireball that went off as he left the ramp, 14 would nose forward in the air and land very hard at a very high angle on its front tires, the impact sheering off the right front wheel. Dan would be fine, but 14 would need to take a break from flying for a little bit.