FORT KENT, Maine — Bigger is better in Fort Kent this weekend.
While anglers cast for the largest fish during the annual muskie fishing derby and local farmers once again cook up the world’s largest buckwheat Acadian pancake during the annual Ploye Festival, a collection of monster trucks will rev through town, at times crushing everything in their path.
“This is what we are all about up here,” Steve Daigle, advertising manager at Valley Motors, said Friday morning. “We live in truck country.”
Parked outside the dealership Friday arguably was the king of truck country: the Dodge Raminator, a 12-foot-tall, 5-ton truck with tires bigger than many small cars.
Part of the Hall Brothers Racing Team out of Champaign, Illinois, the Raminator made the trip to Fort Kent to take part in what Daigle hopes will be the largest truck parade in the country 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, starting from Valley Motors and ending about a mile and a half up Main Street at Pelletier Motors across from Northern Maine Medical Center.
At 2:30 p.m., the Raminator will take center stage at a car-crushing show behind the dealership.
“We brought in some junk cars for it to crush,” Daigle said. “But there may be some surprises, too.”
The Raminator will be joined by local drivers in their own monster trucks and anyone with any sort of truck is invited to take part in Saturday’s parade, according to Daigle, who is hoping for more than 100 trucks altogether.
“You could not ask for a better weekend for this,” he said. “With the muskie derby and ploye festival, there are a lot of people in town.”
The Raminator already was gathering fans Friday morning, as truck enthusiasts stopped in to check it out and children clambered over the giant tires.
“He is crazy for monster trucks,” McKenzie Roy said of her 3-year-old son, Jameson, as his grandfather lifted him onto the truck. “This is a pretty big deal for him.”
For his part, Jameson was impressed by the Raminator but allowed that the red monster truck owned by the local Theriault Brothers driving team was his favorite.
Kurtis Kraehmer, Raminator’s mechanic, was happy to talk trucks with people stopping by but said starting up the beast was not going to happen until show time.
“This truck runs on racing methylene,” he said. “Sitting at idle it uses 1 gallon per minute, and when it’s wide open it burns a gallon a second.”
Driver Mike Miller said running the truck is “quite an experience” and admits to getting butterflies each time he takes the wheel.
“But then you get moving, and it’s great to drive,” he said.
