We chatted with a monster truck veteran who made it his life goal to be a driver. The City of Wildwood, and Preston Perez, have become unexpected winners in the cutthroat world of monster trucking.
WILDWOOD – Most kids outgrow their obsessions. Preston Perez didn’t. One look at a monster truck on the TV, and five-year-old Preston was hooked. Now 28 years old, he’s gone on to compete in over 700 shows across the country, and performed in 23 different trucks. But there’s one race that sticks out as his favorite: the “Monsters on the Beach” Monster Truck Race, held right here in Wildwood.
Yet claiming his 2023 title, “Beast of the Beach,” was no easy task. Growing up in Washington with a single mother barber and no connections to the industry, Preston had to figure out how to claw his way in. “I started out as a fan,” he said—an understatement if there ever was one. Each week a monster truck race appeared on the TV, Preston hit the record button, only to later pore over the grainy VHS tapes and memorize every stat. “I was an obsessed kid,” he admitted.
But it was ultimately that obsession that fueled his success. Six years after his fixation began, Preston was able to attend his first monster truck show that hosted a pit party, where fans could meet the drivers and take pictures with the trucks. There, he asked the announcer for an autograph from a crew chief who had only ever driven a truck twice before. Such obscure knowledge was almost embarrassingly revealing. Preston explained, “he looked at me, and he was pretty much in awe. He was like, ‘How the heck does this kid even know who he is?’”.
But the announcer was impressed—so impressed, he let the 12-year-old kid be a judge of the show. They then struck a deal: free haircuts from his mother in exchange for tickets to any show he wanted. “That changed everything for me,” Preston said. “I knew I loved monster trucks, but that was when I was like, ‘Okay, I have to do this. Somehow, someway, I need to make it happen.’”
And he did. By consistently showing up to shows and pit parties, at just 14 he was invited to start crewing. By 19, he climbed inside a monster truck to drive for the first time, thirty minutes before his first show.
But that’s just how the industry works: “Practice is a privilege,” Preston said. The equipment is expensive and the space is hard to find, so most practice, if not all, comes from performing live. Monster Truck University provides a program for drivers who want to improve, but it’s only available to those who’ve already made a name for themselves. In the end, then, it all comes down to improvisation. “The first time I ever hit a jump or performed was in front of people at a live event,” Preston explained. “And my first back flip, my only one to date, was in MetLife Stadium.”
But live practice didn’t scare him. The trucks are built to stumble, to flip, to make mistakes, and event organizers take painstaking measures to ensure the safety of the drivers.
“I would trust driving a monster truck a million times more than riding a bike down the interstate,” Preston said. “You’ll never catch me riding a motorcycle.”
Now, Preston’s career is driven by freelancing gigs, which means traveling the country to wherever work takes him. The monster truck world, Preston explained, works less like traditional sports and more like the music business. Venues book promoters to hold a show, and those promoters then book truck drivers. Big corporate names like Monster Jam are like the Super Bowl, or perhaps Taylor Swift. The trucks themselves are trademarked, complete with merchandising deals at Walmart. The trucks are what pull in roaring crowds, after all.
Smaller independent teams function more like garage bands, often run by families who own trucks and pass the tradition onward, building their reputation with time. And freelance drivers like Preston are the touring musicians, hired to step into different trucks as needed, building reputations one performance (and one crash) at a time.
Still, in Preston’s world, it’s reliability more than talent that leads to success: “You want them to perform, you want them to do some crazy tricks and crazy stuff. But you also want reliability. You know, if a truck goes out there and does something crazy, but breaks on the first hit, then the quality of the show goes down.”
But even with all of Preston’s experience, the race on Wildwood’s beach stands out. “This is one of those shows where you’re gonna get some wild and crazy stuff from start to finish,” he said. “And this is definitely my favorite.”
The event began in 1995, when the Wildwoods Hotel & Motel Association needed a way to bring tourists back after the summer fireworks faded. Joe Salerno, now executive vice president of the organization, told Do the Shore: “I was a big supporter of creating events to bolster the economy in the Wildwoods in the shoulder seasons. As most people realize, we don’t have industry here, we have tourism.”
At the time, Joe didn’t know much about monster trucks. But given its rising cult following, he was convinced there was value in hosting a race.
“I found it to be interesting how there’s such a following and how families and kids, how they love them. They know all the drivers, they know all the trucks.” So, Joe made a gamble: he and a couple of other volunteers chipped in a total of $35,000 to make a race happen. “I thought my wife was gonna hang me on that one, but we believed in it.”
And it paid off. “We had over thousands upon thousands of people just on the beach. The boardwalk looked like it was gonna tip because there were so many people.”
That first year, the organization received an award from the state for best event in New Jersey. So, with help from the mayor, the association set up Wildwood’s Monster Truck Rides on the Beach to raise funds for future events, cementing it as an annual tradition. Now, the show is only one of two monster truck races in the country held on beaches, with enough of a reputation to warrant a Wikipedia page. But for Joe, “it’s not just bringing trucks here or cars or an event, it’s more than that. It’s all part of the makeup of letting the economy continue to flourish.”
And for the drivers, it’s more than that too—it’s their chance to leave a tread mark, something Preston stressed.
“They all want their name etched in history to be the next Beast of the Beach,” he explained. “I came from nothing. I didn’t have a bunch of money, I didn’t have any family in the sport. I did it all myself through the help of people being gracious enough to give me opportunities. It’s very possible to accomplish a dream and do what you wanna do up there, ‘cause I did.”
“Monsters on the Beach” Monster Truck Races will be held on September 26th and 27th.
Contact the author, Mariana Meriles, at mmeriles@cmcherald.com
