Farmer steers monster truck through tough times

DIXON, Ill. — For Brad Shippert, of rural Dixon, driving his monster truck Against the Grain is not as smooth a ride as many might think.

For a start, the truck has no doors. Shippert gets into the truck by literally climbing under the truck and then climbing up into the driver’s seat.

There, he fastens a safety harness that is so tight it can make taking a deep breath a challenge.

“It’s so tight that you really have to remember to breathe in and out. And I’m wearing a fire suit, so it’s hot,” he said.

The ride, on tires that were formerly on a farm fertilizer sprayer, is bumpy to say the least. When the truck bounces into the air, there are no guarantees it’s going to land on the tires.

Even so, Shippert can’t help but grin when he talks about his truck.

“Monster trucks are just awesome,” he said.

As for the ride, Shippert has faced tougher journeys.

The journey to get the monster truck, like so much else that Shippert has been through, was an enormous leap of faith.

“We bought it in November of 2017. I rented a car and drove from Dixon, Illinois, to Union, Missouri. I bought the truck and the hauling rig and drove it back,” he said.

Shippert was always interested in motorsports, but the step up to monster trucks was gradual.

“Back in college, I had a 1988 Ford Bronco 2 that we built up. I had three or four vehicles like that, and we got into mud racing a little bit, then we got into mega truck racing,” he said.

Through the mega truck racing circuit, Shippert became more familiar with monster trucks.

“Monster trucks were always my thing growing up, but career paths and life just never brought me into motorsports; it was just farming,” he said.

Monster truck owners urged Shippert to join them. When he expressed an interest, they connected him with Doug Noelke, from east-central Missouri, the owner and driver of the famous Big Dawg monster truck.

The timing was perfect as Shippert was ready to be done with mega trucks. Unsure what came next, he turned to his faith.

“Nothing was working right, nothing was going right, and not turning out the way I wanted it to. I said, ‘OK, born-again Christian here, let’s pray about it. God, if you want me to do this, make it this, this, this and this,’” he said.

Shippert’s prayers were answered.

“The right people, the right truck, the right price — all of these things you would consider when going into any business. It fell in my lap, and we decided these prayers are being answered, so I guess we’re going to go monster trucking,” he said.

Before he entered the monster truck business, Shippert’s life had already taken him on some heartbreaking twists and turns.

He and his first wife, Erin, had been married five years when she was diagnosed with cancer. She died in December 2014. Their daughter Reagan was 2.

“It was scary. My mom was around, and Erin’s parents were living with me at the time to help me get back on my feet. It was a scary time,” he said.

He met his wife, Angela, a few months after Erin died.

“We started dating around February of the next year. It was really quick. I also saw how the Lord was guiding me through everything. It was a little controversial, a little touchy, for a long time, with family and everything. But everybody is very accepting,” he said.

They married in June 2016. Their son Rocky was born in 2017, followed by son Remington in 2019.

Erin’s family remains close and involved.

“Dennis, Erin’s dad, is grandpa to all of our kids,” he said.

When Shippert joined the monster truck industry, he had been farming for several years. He came back to the family farm in 2007 after the death of his father, Wes.

Wes farmed with his sister, Marilyn. After he died, Brad stepped into the farming operation with his aunt.

The farming was in his blood. Owning and operating a monster truck took some learning.

The first show Shippert did with the truck was in June 2018.

“It was a learning experience. I built a jump behind my shop, and I hit it about three or four times, and I did a donut in the waterway, and I said I’m ready; let’s load it up and do a show,” he said.

A routine dentist appointment in July 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 epidemic, threw another bump in front of Shippert.

“I was getting some dental work done, some fillings, and afterward the dentist said, ‘You bled like an 80-year-old on Coumadin; you might want to get looked at.’ So, previous history of a wife with cancer, anytime someone says ‘get looked at,’ you get looked at,” he said.

After getting bloodwork done in Dixon, Shippert was sent the same day to OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

“I got down there and did labs, and those were worse,” he said.

Diagnosed with leukemia, he had a blood transfusion and started chemotherapy almost immediately.

After eight months of chemotherapy in Peoria, Shippert received a stem cell transplant in April 2021 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He spent 100 days at Mayo recovering from the transplant.

While the monster trucking was paused, the farm operation didn’t have that option.

“Our longtime employee, Robert Fenwick, stepped up, and he did everything. He ran the combine, and Deb Wolfram did a lot of the trucking, and the local elevator helped us out, and we got through it. We had a lot of help from a lot of people, and that got us through,” he said.

Shippert’s uncle, Don Nelson, helped out with spring planting.

When he began treatment, Shippert put his monster trucking on hold. But selling the truck and quitting was never an option.

“No. It kept me going. When I got sick, we winterized the truck and got it into a state of ‘it’s sitting, put away, if something bad happens, it’s going to be easy for someone to figure out how to sort this out.’ But then if I do recover, I can just do yearly maintenance and get back at it. We just put it to bed for a little while,” Shippert said.

He relied on the strong faith he cultivated before and after Erin’s cancer diagnosis and her death. He, Angela and their children attend Faith Christian Church in Grand Detour.

“I had faith that the Lord would provide. Either way, it was going to be OK,” he said.

His leukemia was declared in remission in November 2021.

He took some time to regain his strength and took the dust cover off the monster truck. January 2022 was the first time he drove it.

“I wasn’t sure if I could do it; it was a three-show weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. I wasn’t sure how the truck would feel and how I would feel. We did great that weekend. We made it to finals every night,” he said.

The name for the truck, Against the Grain, was born from Shippert’s mega truck days.

“The mega truck world is kind of a party scene. The mud bogs are a little bit of a party crowd. Everybody had these kind of sinister names, not really PG-rated names. Me being a born-again Christian, I said I’m not about that; I want to do something different. I want to be against the grain, so there we go, Against the Grain. The name stuck,” he said.

Shippert said that telling his story is as important now as every other part of the performance and appearances with Against the Grain.

“People need to know you can survive cancer and get back to life; you can race monster trucks, do something extraordinary,” he said.