I honestly love wheelstanders. They are my absolute favorite type of exhibition vehicle and put on a great show when everything goes right. Of course, everything does not always go right.

One of the questions I pose to spectators jokingly involves asking where someone “learns” to drive a wheelstander. It’s obviously at the dragstrip, but not normally during a national event. There’s good reason for that.

While announcing an IHRA National event a few years ago, we got word that a budding wheelstander driver was going to be allowed to make test runs and license passes in his vehicle during the course of the event. The announcers were being told this as we were handed a copy of the paper schedule of the event.

A paper schedule being handed to you in the tower of a dragstrip is a sure sign of a couple things. The most important thing being that the paper schedule will have no resemblance to what is actually happening at any point in the day because it’ll all be blown to hell by noon. This day followed my previous experience.

We were hours behind schedule when the newbie wheelstander pilot pulled out of the staging lanes. He was sitting in the front of a Dodge Ram truck that was dressed up to look like a fire truck, complete with a big hose reel and everything. The look was admittedly cheesy, but the big blown Hemi in the back was pretty cool.

Anyway, the driver did his burnout and a couple of dry hops to test out the traction and then let it fly. At about 1,000 feet the truck began to dance back and forth on the rear tires. Wheelstanders are steered, when in the air, by individual rear brakes. The front tires are feet off the ground so the rears need to be worked to keep the vehicles going in the straight line. As this truck began to rock back and forth at pretty much terminal velocity, there was very little hope that the driver was going to save it.

The look on the race director’s face, seconds before the crapola hit the fan was that of someone who knew he was about to pay the price for a bad decision.

The truck’s death wobble ended as it flopped down onto its side at well north of 100 mph. When it struck the wall, what was thought to be a mock hose reel came rocketing off the truck and flew over the wall, luckily onto the non spectator side of the track. That “fake” hose reel was actually a massive weight to help the truck get up into the air and stay there. It would have mowed people down like a giant bowling ball on the wrong side of the track. It should have never broken away like that.

The driver was ok, but the ensuing hour plus clean-up took the remaining shards of truth involved with the paper schedule and incinerated them.

Here’s the wild thing. The actual truck (repaired) is for sale on racingjunk.com right now. The lead photo is actually a picture of the truck on the lap that it wrecked! You’ll notice the other photos in the ad show a newer front end and some more differences.

Here’s a link to the truck.