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We've got a huge crush on Monster Trucks, coming to Philly this weekend

Nothing says "America" like big, loud, crowd-pleasing car crushers.

Monster Jam! / Monster Mutt Dalmation
Monster Jam stars the biggest performers on four wheels: Monster Jam trucks! The twelve-feet-tall, ten-thousand-pound machines will bring you to your feet, racing and ripping up a custom-designed track full of obstacles to soar over - OR smash through. The 2014 touring season brings more Monster Jam tailored perfectly for your family's budget, and these colorful, larger-than-life beasts are sure to capture the hearts of both young and old.
Monster Jam! / Monster Mutt Dalmation Monster Jam stars the biggest performers on four wheels: Monster Jam trucks! The twelve-feet-tall, ten-thousand-pound machines will bring you to your feet, racing and ripping up a custom-designed track full of obstacles to soar over - OR smash through. The 2014 touring season brings more Monster Jam tailored perfectly for your family's budget, and these colorful, larger-than-life beasts are sure to capture the hearts of both young and old.Read more

APPLE PIE is fine and baseball can pass the time, but sometimes America needs a night full of gasoline fumes, ear-shattering decibels and supersized machines built to destroy.

What other country could have designed monster trucks?

"America is, of course, the country of overindulgence," said Candice Jolly, driver of the "Monster Mutt Dalmatian" truck. "These trucks are 10,000 pounds with 66-inch tires. If that doesn't yell, 'America,' I don't know what does."

Jolly will be behind the wheel Friday and Saturday, competing against fellow drivers, as the Monster Jam returns to the Wells Fargo Center in South Philly, one of hundreds of shows the tour puts on every year across the globe.

The shows include side-by-side racing with a traditional finish line and freestyle competition where the drivers have an open floor to get as crazy as their shock absorbers will allow in an effort to get the loudest response from the crown.

Jolly, one of five women who compete in monster-truck racing, has been racing in some form for most of her life, including high-speed go-karts, swamp buggies in the mud and demolition derbies. She found her way up to a monster truck in 2007.

"I had never driven anything that you had to fly through the air, so that was different," the 29-year-old Florida native said. "That was the biggest challenge for sure."

Most of Jolly's family members are behind the wheel, too. Her husband also drives monster trucks and her mother, father, stepfather, son and sister all race on various different types of tracks. There's no question that she's the coolest mom on any career day.

"My son is my biggest fan," she said.

Monster trucks, before worldwide tours, were mostly attractions at county fairs and tractor pulls. The truck that started it all, Bigfoot, was built off a 1974 Ford F-250 in 1979 and taken to events for the public to gawk at. A few years later, Bigfoot was crushing cars in major American stadiums.

Today, the tour crushes approximately 3,000 cars per year, everything from vans and buses to ambulances. They're usually obtained at local junkyards and returned after each event.

On Sunday, at a show in the Netherlands, a monster truck veered into a crowd at an outdoor venue, killing three people and injuring about 20 more. An organizer for the event told media outlets that the truck's gas pedal may have gotten stuck and it crashed through a small metal fence.

Stephen Payne, vice president of corporate communications for Feld Entertainment, said that the Netherlands tragedy was not a Monster Jam show or affiliated with the tour in any way. He also said that there are safety procedures taken for Monster Jam shows that would prevent a similar accident here.

"I can say first and foremost that we would never allow our spectators that close to a moving truck," Payne said.

Spectators at Monster Jam are often sitting above the track and there is a buffer, as much as the first 10 rows, that's closed to spectators. Payne also said that each truck is equipped with a remote switch that allows the crew to shut off the engine if anything goes wrong.

One of the most famous monster trucks, Grave Digger, still competes in the Monster Jam, and the four-time champion was an inspiration for many current drivers when they were kids.

"Grave Digger is probably the most popular truck in the world," said Bari Musawwir, 33, who drives the Spider-Man truck.

As a kid in Detroit, Musawwir first saw Grave Digger when his mother took him to a monster-truck show at the Pontiac Silverdome. It inspired him to get into racing. He started with remote-controlled cars.

"I got pretty good at that - I got noticed at races and I got noticed by a monster-truck racer," Musawwir said. "They put me in a test session. It was pretty nerve-racking, to say the least."

Ironically, Musawwir's first show was not in the United States, as Monster Jam has also become wildly popular overseas. All told, the tour travels more than 45,000 miles a year.

"My first show was in Panama in 2010," Musawwir said. "They actually put them in shipping containers and they go by boat. Everybody can relate to seeing something spectacular. It's got that universal language."