KC's Fireworks Displays owner Clive Featherby and his three sons, two of which are main features of his touring monster truck and thrill show. Billy, 14, on the left and Jay, 11, on the right.
KC's Fireworks Displays owner Clive Featherby and his three sons, two of which are
main features of his touring monster truck and thrill show. Billy, 14, on the left and
Jay, 11, on the right.
The new family of destruction has been catching lots of mainstream press in Australia and you can read a few of the articles by clicking the following links. The scans of the articles are very large so be patient. Yes, they include photos including that of Billy Featherby's first rollover inside Captain Crusher.
Clive Featherby has written the following in regards to several issues including that pertaining to the safety of his machines, the newspaper articles, his son driving a monster truck and the obstacles his efforts have overcome in making monster trucks mainstream in the land down under:
We told the press quite
clearly the people attending were from our U.K based fireworks insurers who also insure
many motorsporting venues in the USA. These officials attended our Brisbane show in the
pretence that I was trying to convince them to include the monster trucks under my
fireworks insurance, which once they inspected the event, the equipment and our very
stringent safety measures they have verbally agreed
to insure all aspects of my show that also include the jet cars etc.
Regarding Billy driving, I certainly don’t wish to sound insulting
but he has received extensive training prior to being allowed to drive in public and now
that he
has proven capable and safe I am comfortable with him doing what he does. I do not expect anyone in America to agree with
this or condone this but it
will continue in this country.
I am a one-man band trying desperately hard to establish the trucks in
this country. I have now spent over three million dollars trying to do so. I tried putting
a female driver in a truck, I also have Barry Gaunt who is 63 years old driving a truck
who I advertise most probably incorrectly as the worlds
oldest monster truck driver. I tried rolling trucks on purpose just for the media days,
flying Americans like Rich Inman and Calvin Carrington
out to drive trucks, I put Australia’s top pro footballer in a truck, a black guy in
a truck…yet none of these gained any worthwhile exposure. Then I
put a 14 year old in the truck and he genuinely beat everyone in freestyle and over the
past month we’ve been full color in ALL major newspapers around
Australia, on every nation news, on every T.V talk show, on all the current affairs shows!
Its finally working!
Until 12 months ago
monster trucks were regarded as complete and utter crap in this country and Richard can
confirm this even to this day not ONE journalist knows who Gravedigger or any clear
channel trucks but I am finally getting across to people.
Our DVD is selling good, fans are turning up in larger numbers to our shows
and our shows are now very good so if Billy helps move this along then so be it.
I truly believe our safety standards are now as good if not better than
anywhere else in the world. All trucks have
to have the obvious remote cut
out switches, full fire prevention equipment, etc. every show must have a ambulance in
attendance, a fire truck with fully trained fire crew, our
drivers must have in helmet contact with our chief steward and fire chief, all drivers
must wear full double layer F.I.A approved fire suits,
fireproof sock,s underwear, balaclavas, gloves etc.
All officials must have full first aid and fire emergency training updated
every twelve months, etc, the
list goes on and importantly in Billy’s truck its governed to only 50% throttle.
Yourself, Paul Shafer, Richard Inman and Jeff Hawkins are the ONLY
people who have ever offered me any advice or help and for that I am truly grateful.
As for the MTRA, I believe our association AMTRA is more active to driver and public needs
than they are. It took me 2 months to even
get
an initial response when I first ever contacted them.
Then I offered to pay someone to come down and view our operations and give
advice so
that we could rectify any wrongs that we may be doing.
To this day they have never replied, same as USHRA, we couldn’t even
get them
to respond to a email and believe me we tried many times.
A lot of what we are doing may be frowned upon by people in your
country, but rest assured we are safe in our activities, our shows are well
presented and our standards are rapidly reaching those of the good American shows. Billy will continue to drive, but I realize many
people will criticize what we are doing but hopefully they can bear in mind I am one
person running virtually everyone of the 41 monster truck events that happen in this
country so far away from yours.
Thank you once again take care best wishes, Clive Featherby
