MONSTER MASH : Unique in San Diego, Schott Keeps On Truckin’ With Smash Hit

We are in a Monster Truck. It is Thursday, and we are riding across the San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium parking lot to visit Robosaurus.

It has been quite an afternoon.

Gary Schott is at the wheel, which is vibrating wildly along with the rest of the truck. This is normal. As we rumble across the pavement, in a thick cloud of methanol fumes and amid a deafening roar, Schott’s mind is at peace. His 6-year old daughter, Kristen, is doing OK after being taken to the hospital earlier because of dehydration. Schott’s Monster Truck, ExTerminator, has been delivered to the stadium from his San Marcos home. Lunch is digesting.

Tonight’s U.S. Hot Rod Assn. Grand Slam of Motor Sports, featuring a Monster Truck pull and Monster Truck and Mud Bog racing, was two days away.

You probably know about tonight. Radio spots have been airing all week, spoken by the Man Who Does Motor Sports Advertisements. You know him--he has the most manly voice of any man who ever lived. He speaks deeply and talks VERY LOUDLY as if this is one of the MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS in history, or at least since Pat Sajak got his own talk show. You get the feeling that if you don’t rush right out and immediately purchase a ticket, you will be hunted down, captured and fed to a large reptile, possibly Robosaurus. Then, everything echoes. (“COMING down Interstate 8, it’s NOT Godzilla but ROBOSAURUS-- saurus -- saurus .”)

Anyway, even if that commercial would have come over the stereo in Schott’s truck, we wouldn’t have heard it above all the noise. Truth be told, if the U.S. Navy had accidentally dropped another bomb, this time, say, on the stadium behind us, we probably wouldn’t have heard that .

Not that Schott minds the noise.

“I just liked four-wheel drives,” he says when asked why he became involved in Monster Trucks. “I like Monster Trucks--I like the power and the noise, that kind of thing.”

Pause.

“I’m going to put some special mufflers on this. It would be nice to hear the engine.”

You mean, this sound isn’t the engine?

Noise is one of the U.S. Hot Rod Assn.’s important themes. A few minutes after we parachute out of Schott’s 10-feet tall Monster Truck, we are standing by as Robosaurus comes to life.

“Don’t you just love the noise it makes?” the tall blonde in red leather pants asks.

Oh. Her.

Her name is Gayleen Hays, and a few minutes earlier, she was draped over one of Robosaurus’ claws, as photographers happily snapped away. Her husband, Mark, is one of the inventors of Robosaurus, which will eat cars Saturday.

Robosaurus looks exactly like a Tyrannosaurus Rex would look if a Tyrannosaurus Rex were constructed out of 56,000 pounds of steel and aluminum built by real, tax-paying American workers.

It is 40-feet tall and lifts 4,000-pound cars higher than a five-story building. It spits fire as far as 20 feet, and it emits red smoke from behind what looks to be its head. It is loaded with woofers hiding in secret compartments for sound effects. It looks like something from a space movie. It sounds like a giant video game.

What it does is rip apart cars as if they were paper. Of course, you can have the same thing done by leaving your car out overnight in parts of downtown Los Angeles and other major cities, but the professionals who rip cars apart by night usually aren’t willing to help solve the drug problem in the United States.

One of the many neat aspects of Robosaurus is that the big lug is also an anti-drug symbol. We are not making this up.

“Drug abuse is a real problem in this country, and Robosaurus can be an inspiration for young people to ‘just say no,’ ” Mark Hays says in a press release. “His symbolic performance of crunching cars is Robo’s message to help stamp out drugs.”

Meanwhile, it is 3:30 and there are people in the early stages of rush hour on Interstate 15 south. Robosaurus is clearly visible from the freeway ramp leading to Interstate 8, but nobody makes any U-turns.

Schott has pulled his Monster Truck in front of Robosaurus for the camera people. He grins and shakes his head. Schott has that look on his face that he is secretly thinking his truck may be smaller than Robosaurus but that it can still make more noise.

The engine in ExTerminator is a super-charged 454. It has fuel injection, open headers and the frame of a 1972 Chevrolet pickup. His first Monster Truck, Terminator, is a 1985 Chevy. The one he is working on is a 1989 Ford. He also owns a Peterbuilt semi and a 1970 Volkswagen. The Volkswagen--his everyday car--is yellow and primer gray.

Between ExTerminator and the Monster Truck he is building, Schott said he spent $38,000 on parts alone last year. You can understand why Schott’s is the only Monster Truck in San Diego.

“Others have tried but failed,” he said. “There were a few feeble attempts, and that helped me out more. It gave me more determination.”

The tires on this thing are five feet by four feet. They are for fertilizer-spreader tractors, and each costs $1,800. To climb into the cab, you open a door, attach a hand to the inside handle and use the front tire as a ladder. Just don’t look down as you’re going up.

Schott, 29, is a former roofer. His father was a roofer, and his grandfather was a roofer. But times got tough in 1980, and Schott moved to Scottsdale. It was there that he met his second wife, Valerie, at--where else?--a Mud Bog. They decided to move back to San Marcos and open an off-road shop. Actually, it was his idea, and he had to do some talking. When the off-road shop opened, he said, he had $150 in his pocket and walked to work.

People told Schott, who dropped out of San Marcos High School in ninth grade, that he couldn’t do it. These people included Valerie.

“Pretty soon, she was whiffing steaks and lobster three times a week,” he said.

This was in 1983 and 1984. Schott’s first Monster Truck show was in Bakersfield in 1985.

For the uninitiated, the Monster Truck race Saturday will go like this: Two trucks start at what would be home plate for baseball, back end to back end. One truck will head toward first base, crunching five or six cars lined up in its path. The other truck will head toward third base, also crunching cars. Then the two trucks will head toward center field, crunching some more cars along the way. The truck that reaches a designated destination in center field first wins. But the races are based on time, so some fast losers advance to subsequent rounds. On most nights, winners race four or five times.

Most people who aren’t involved in motor sports don’t understand Schott’s racing.

“My parents weren’t wild about it at first, but now they come to some of my shows,” Schott said.

And then there’s his grandfather in San Antonio, Tex.

“He wants me to do a show there so he can have one ride before he dies,” Schott said. “A lot of people think it’s stupid. Hell, whatever trips your trigger. That’s the way I look at it.”