Mini monster truck driver 9 years old
The little boy with a tooth missing and the fire-resistant underpants says his favorite venue is Indianapolis because there he can stab the gas pedal to the floor and pop a wheelie and ride that thing for something like 500 feet before he has to let his 3,000-pound monster truck smash back into the ground and bounce around a bit.
He loooooves popping wheelies.
"Actually?" he says. "At school? They don't even believe me."
Who would?
He's 9 years old. He's in the fourth grade at Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He travels around the country with his mom and dad, driving a modified miniature monster truck in various shows.
Yes. He drives. A monster truck.
He's 9.
"Well," he said when he was asked what it's like to drive that thing, as if he had anything else to compare it to, "it has a lot of torque to it."
His name is Kaid Jaret Olson-Weston, but that's far too long to fit on the side of a mini monster truck.
"Kid KJ" is not.
And so it is.
KJ and his family are in town this week promoting, well, him, at the Specialty Equipment Market Association Show, better known as SEMA, a massive event mostly featuring aftermarket parts for cars and trucks.
KJ has a booth. He has one of his trucks there - he's got several others.
It looks like it's the size of a big Jeep, a half-scale model of the monstrous monster trucks the grown-ups drive.
How in the world did he get here?
By taking small, logical steps, of course.
His mom and dad, Nancy and Tod, swear they didn't push him into it.
Tod has always been a garage tinkerer. He's a real estate attorney now, but before that he was a certified mechanic. He's the kind of guy who grew up riding motorcycles and driving go-karts, then fixing them when they broke.
Nancy, a title agent, is sort-of a gearhead, too. She always had been a fan of monster trucks.
Into that world came KJ.
He adored the outdoors as a toddler. Rode dirt bikes and four-wheelers and go-karts, just like his dad.
When he was 3, the family went to a monster truck show.
"I want to drive one," he said.
Turns out, the family has some money. Mom bought her own monster truck, when KJ was 5.
"He lived and breathed it" after that, she said.
On the circuit, they met a guy who builds half-scale models of the trucks. They're fit for grown-ups, but Nancy and Tod bought one. Moved the pedals around. Modified the seats and the safety equipment.
Voila. A monster truck for kids.
KJ was 6 when he drove in his first show, 7 when he crushed his first car.
Now he's doing 80 shows a year, bringing his schoolwork with him. (He said he has "all A's. My worst grade is a B-plus.") He sometimes signs hundreds of autographs. His mom said they're going to tour South America soon.
She and Tod swear they're not exploiting KJ. They're not pageant parents, and KJ is no Honey Boo Boo.
"We never even have to ask him twice," his mom said. "He is so into this. He wants this."
They said driving that truck is probably safer than riding a dirt bike or playing football. It's got a full cage and a five-point harness and seats molded to a little kid's body and straps that hold his arms in, plus he wears a helmet and that fire suit and gloves and, his dad said, those fire-resistant underpants.
KJ has never once been hurt, no matter how many cars he crushes or how many times he flips his truck over.
"He's coming in from a monster truck show where he just went over six cars and he doesn't have a scratch on him," Nancy said.
All of which leads to Jake, his shy little brother.
Jake, who is two years younger, used to watch his big brother. He never said much about the monster trucks, but he was into dirt bikes and go-karts.
Then one day, at an event on a New Jersey beach, his dad asked him to pull KJ's truck out of the trailer. It's too small in there for a grown-up.
The boy climbed in. He fired it up. He backed it out of the trailer and roared across the beach and has not looked back since.
And so it was that Jake "the Snake" was born.
But that's another story.
Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.
