BETHEL — Bigfoot 3 first rumbled into Bethel in 2014 for the Molly Ockett Day parade. Now it’s coming back.

Monster trucks have fans everywhere, but in Bethel, no one tops Eli Mann.

In 1987, at age 10, Mann begged his mother, Mitzie, to buy him a book about trucks at the annual Crescent Park School book fair. She hesitated — “Don’t you have enough trucks?” — but relented after enough pestering. “She helped foster this whole thing,” Mann said. She bought him a $1.95 sticker book. “I remember cherishing this book to the point where I only used one or two of the stickers.”

From there, it snowballed for Mann: Matchbox cars to posters to radio-controlled Bigfoots. After he got his driver’s license in 1987 he got a Ford  Bigfoot Cruiser. In 1996, for Telstar Career Week, Mann landed a dream gig — shadowing monster truck legend Bob Chandler at his shop in Hazelwood, Missouri.

In the meantime, Bigfoot 3, the third Bigfoot truck ever built, in 1983, had been converted from a show and race truck into one of two Bigfoot Safarifoot ride trucks, featuring passenger seats and a large roll cage mounted in the bed. From 1993 to 2001, it gave rides at the same venues where it had once raced.

In 2014, Mann bought Bigfoot 3.  “It wasn’t up to standards when we purchased it,” he said. He decided it wasn’t safe to be around, so began a ten year restoration. “Bigfoot 4×4 had always been at the forefront of safety in the industry,” said Mann.

The push to finish it came ahead of the 50th anniversary of monster trucks in Pacific, Missouri. Bigfoot 3 — nearly done — was towed there and put on display in June of this year.

Origins of a Giant

Bob Chandler, a carpenter, started four-wheeling on weekends in the 1970s. He kept breaking parts. One friend quipped he had “a big foot.”

Chandler and his wife Marilyn, opened a parts store. Meanwhile, his trucks kept getting bigger. “It was just fun at first, then people wanted to pay to see Bigfoot fly over other cars,” said Mann. On October 8, 1982, in front of 82,000 fans at the Pontiac Silverdome, the craze became a phenomenon.

“Everyone just lost it,” Mann said. “Overnight monster trucks became successful.” The Chandlers built one truck a year until the late ’90s. There are now 24 Bigfoots. With number three here in Bethel.

Ironically, Mann didn’t see his first monster truck show until 1999, in Essex Junction, VT. He was in his twenties by then. A show his uncle planned to take him to 10 years earlier in Portland was canceled due to snow.

Inside the shop

Mann’s welding shop on Intervale Road is packed with projects. “People just keep breaking stuff,” he quips. On a lift inside is BigFoot 3. With its 66-inch tires, it weighs 14,000 pounds and runs on methanol or racing fuel — 50 gallons to the mile. “With a racing engine it was putting out 1200 horses,” said Mann.

The restoration has been meticulous. He and his family traveled to Auburn, NY, where BigFoot 2 was in private ownership and also under a restoration. They took photos, measured Bigfoot 2’s bumper and later recreated original parts. Mann even built a paint booth inside the garage.

Back at the Bethel shop, they tracked down a rare World War II Navy transfer case. Fellow welder Randy Moran, from Denmark, fabricated a custom stainless steel fuel tank extension. Good friends and relatives also pitched in to help bring the truck closer to completion. Brett Wilson, Dan Cox, and Ronald Bouchard all contributed bodywork, while Mann’s nephew Randy and his brother, Taneli Koskela, helped handle the finish work.

Mann, a Christian, expresses deep gratitude to God, his wife, and their blended family of eight children. He credits his mother with teaching him how to connect with the world long before the Internet, and his father—a longtime jeweler in Bethel Village—has also been a source of support.

A vintage Ford Part’s Department poster of BigFoot 3 hangs above the tool bench in the shop. “We wanted to go back to that style body and that style look,” Mann says, pointing to the poster. “We wanted to have it done for the 50th anniversary of Bigfoot”

Should you take care where you park during the parade? Possibly. Bigfoot 3 can crush five cars with ease. But Mann adds: “I have no interest in doing any weird stuff with this truck. I have too much labor invested.”

Oh — that $1.95 sticker book his mom hesitated to buy? Bigfoot 3 was on the cover.