HILLSBURGH, Ont. – There’s no shortage of trucks out in Wellington County, but there’s likely few like the one a Hillsburgh resident has displayed on his front lawn.
Tom Grundy’s monster truck is a bit of a landmark in Hillsburgh (northeast of Guelph), right at his fence line on Wellington Road 22 just off Trafalgar Road, and it attracts a lot of attention.
Grundy sees people stopping by for photos all the time but he doesn’t mind, bringing joy to others is why he put it there in the first place.
“Making little kids have smiles on their faces makes my day,” Grundy said in an interview at his property.
The truck is made up of a 1986 Chevy S-10 with a 460 Ford block engine and 68-inch John Deere Combine tires which Grundy uses for mud bogging, a type of off-road motorsport where the goal is to drive through a pit of mud.
The lifelong Wellington County resident said he’s been mud bogging his whole life and has always had an appreciation for monster trucks.
He has a lot of smaller mud bogging trucks on his property but always wanted something “real big” as his other trucks would get stuck.
Grundy got his chance when a friend moved to Saskatchewan and bought the monster truck off him about five years ago.
With this big truck Grundy is able to go through some deep swamps, up to the headlights sometimes, occasionally climbs cars with it and he’ll also decorate it at Christmas time.
He’s taken it all over the country but Grundy said he plans to take it down to Florida in the near future.