What is that cute little dog car with the big wheels? It’s Scooby Doo Monster Truck! It tackles the Monster Jam Course with reckless abandon! Where did the truck come from? Who climbed into the cockpit and drove it into this insane and crazy competition?
Scooby Doo Begins
First, let’s do a little history. The Scooby Doo Monster Truck began when Feld Motorsports formed a North American Monster Jam team. Feld is famous for the Wringlng Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus and they do a number of roadshows including Disney on Ice, Disney Live and Nuclear Cowboyz. Their sports division includes the Scooby Doo Monster Trucks with a look based on the great Dane from the famous Saturday morning cartoon show with a brown body, tongue hanging out of the fender mouth and a tail sticking out of the back box that never stops wagging.
Meet Driver: Nicole Johnson
Feld Sports hired Nicole Johnson, a professional rock crawler, off-road enthusiast and experienced Monster Jam driver to pilot the new Scooby Doo Truck in 2013. Johnson’s early experience off-road with her husband and her talent for rock crawling made her a raucous devil-may-care driver on the Monster jam tracks. She might not even care about a straight line if she saw it from way up in her cockpit. She already had driven the circuit in the Tasmanian devil and enjoyed the rookie-of-the-year award in 2010. As the mother of two boys, she was the perfect choice for the family-friendly Monster Jam. The Scooby Doo truck had a worthy, experienced pilot with Johnson!
Nicole Johnson became the first woman to do a full back-flip on the circuit in a career filled with victories and first-woman-ever accomplishments. With the glass-ceiling-smashing driver, the Scooby Doo team became a huge hit at Monster Jams. The Scooby Doo truck proved a popular attraction.
Scooby Doo Tournament History
In 2013, Johnson took the Scooby Doo Truck all the way to the Monster Jam World Finals. In 2014, Johnson returned to the World Finals with the Scooby Doo Truck and did the famous back-flip in the freestyle competition. Answering the call for a More Monster Jam Tour, the Scooby Doo team entered a second truck driven by Bailey Shea Williams, an all-terrain-vehicle driver. Shea would drive in the More Monsters tour and join the Young Guns Shootout competition at the World Finals. Meanwhile, Johnson returned in the Scooby Doo Truck to the World Finals in 2015. The Scooby team introduced a third truck driven by Brianna Mahon to tour the regular events in 2015.
In 2016, Lindsey Read joined the team, Bailey Shea Williams returned to the Young Guns Shootout tournament and Johnson was again invited to the World Finals in a Scooby Doo truck. In 2017, Miranda Cozad joined the team and drove in the More Monster Tour in the West, and Bailey Shea Williams drove in the east coast version. Brianna Mahon drove the third Scooby Doo Truck in the east tour of the Fox Sports 1 Series.
In 2018, a fourth truck was added, and Linsey Read returned to drive in an area tour, Myranda Cozad competed in the Triple Threat Central Series and Haley Gauley drove Axe, a ’41 Willys Jeep, as a Scooby Truck in the Stadium Tour. Steven Sims took over for Gauley in the tour and won the Overall Event Championship in Anaheim, and went on for an appearance at the World Finals 19.
In 2019, Scooby Doo team will field two cars. Linsey Read competes in the Monster Jam Arena Championship Series and Myranda Cozad competes in the Triple Threat Central Tour.
Under the Hood
Scooby’s motto in the beginning was “taking on the big dogs in the show,” and the truck is made up to look like the famous dog, but under the body, it’s all monsters! Like most monster trucks, the Scooby Doo sports 66-inch wheels and high clearances achieved with a computer designed steel tubing frame that protects the driver and gives designers a platform to attach specially designed axle shafts and crazy combinations of shock absorbers. The result is a twelve-foot-long vehicle that stands twelve-feet high.
The design genius reflects the creators’ years of experience driving monster trucks.
Though no Monster Truck has ever driven over 100 mph, the engines, pulled from drag racing cars, run on methanol alcohol and ethanol fuel with an output of near 2000 horsepower. The engine is center-mounted behind the driver. The Hemi is famous for crushing ordinary cars wheeled on the track. At nine-hundred pounds on average, the trucks are fairly nimble and do acrobatic stunts like backflips and leaps while pulverizing most vehicles in their path. The rigs are built by highly motivated enthusiasts who get racing sponsors to lend their name and financial backing to the endeavor.
The Scooby Doo Monster Truck was intended to take on two other trucks based on cartoon characters: Superman and Batman. The Scooby Doo Monster truck debuted in 2013 and has expanded to four Scooby-Doo Trucks and four different drivers and ATVs too. The Scooby Doo truck has become so popular, there’s a Hot Wheels die-cast model that kids and collectors can buy for their collection.
Current Drivers
Linsey Read is a sports enthusiast who with her family will try any sport that looks interesting. At Monster Truck events, she’s got a routine where she studies the tracks and plans everything she’s going to do. She’s from Texas, and she was able to perform before her family in Oklahoma, and she won trophies at the event. It was a big deal for her.
Myranda Cozad started driving for Scooby Doo after the extraordinary Madusa Miceli got her into the business. She always wanted to be in motorsports. She had her biggest career thrill when she was introduced for the first time in the Scooby Doo truck. She’s a regular girl from Iowa who found Austen, Texas to be the best place in the world and loves blue skies and pizza.
