KEWAUNEE – Every farm may have at least one truck on the premises, but few can hold a candle to what Brandan Tulachka drives. 

The 22-year-old Kewaunee native and resident is owner and driver of Just Get-Er-Done II, a monster truck he races professionally at arenas, race tracks and fairs across North America.

And, during the coming week's Kewaunee County Fair, fans of motorized mayhem can catch the homegrown rising star in action, as Tulachka will spin doughnuts, pop and dive into wheelies, race against other trucks, fly off ramps and over crushed cars, catch big air and more in his 10-foot-tall, 1,600-horsepower truck for the All Star Monster Truck Tour show July 9, the Friday night of the fair.

Tulachka is just in his third year of racing with what the truck's Facebook page (facebook.com/justgeterdoneii) claims is the only monster truck race team in the state, but he already is beginning to make a name for himself.

In 2020, he and Just Get-Er-Done II competed in the national arena tour series of Monster Jam, the most recognized name for monster truck races in the world. Tulachka won the overall title at events in Worcester, Massachusetts and Topeka, Kansas, before the COVID-19 pandemic brought Monster Jam to a halt last March.

The cancellation of Monster Jam and other shows last spring and summer paused Tulachka's ability to earn a living from the truck, so he worked for M&E Landscaping in Kewaunee until monster truck events began to resume with a few regional shows late last summer.

This year, Tulachka is back to racing professionally, appearing at 40 to 45 race weekends on the national All Star and Renegade tours as well as a few independent shows. The team also picked up a couple of local sponsors in Packer Fastener of Green Bay and PFS Powder Coatings of Luxemburg. And he plans to be back with Monster Jam in 2022.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Tulachka turned to monster trucks at a young age, since his father raced them as well. In fact, monster trucks run in the family, literally.

Mitch Tulachka ran a truck called Get-Er-Done out of the family beef cattle farm in Kewaunee but quit as the family grew, Brandan said. 

"Dad had two trucks before this," Brandan Tulachka said in an interview from the team shop as they prepared for the fair show. "He got out of it because he couldn't bring us with him. We were all too young to travel."

Tulachka said he was originally more interested in the motorcycle trick shows that often were performed at monster truck events, but an accident caused him to rethink that idea.

"When I was a little kid, I was big into dirt bikes. They always had these freestyle bikes at the (truck) shows," he said. "Then, just before I was going to do that, I broke my wrist."

That led to a talk with Mitch about getting into monster trucks instead. Turns out Mitch was more than ready, Brandan said.

"He said (quitting monster truck racing) was a terrible idea," Tulachka said. "When I talked to him about it, he was awesome. He said, let's get this going."

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The farm is where you'll find the shop for the team, MK Motorsports. It's truly a family team, as a new Get-Er-Done monster truck was built last year for Mitch to get back behind the wheel and share driving time with Brandan's sister, Mikayla Tulachka, who made her debut in a Monster Truck Racing League show in Iowa in May. Get-Er-Done and Just Get-Er-Done II have run together at shows across the country.

The shop occasionally hosts other monster truck teams that are appearing in or passing through the area — Green Bay and Milwaukee are popular stops on the Monster Jam tour — and Tulachka, who said he exhibited cows at the fair as a kid and was out trying to chase down calves the day before talking with the Star-News, said it's often a bit of culture shock for the visitors.

"Whenever I have guys from other teams come out to the farm, they're always out by the cows, looking at them. Some are from the bigger cities, they've never seen cows before," Tulachka said with a chuckle.

More than mashing the gas pedal

One might think driving a monster truck isn't that hard, that it's just a matter of mashing the gas pedal to the floorboard.

Not so, Tulachka said.  

"Oh, man, it took a good two years before I got super-comfortable with it," Tulachka said. "Once I got one thing mastered, there always was another thing to master."

For one thing, there's more to racing a monster truck than crushing cars under its 66-inch-diameter tires. The usual components of the events include trick, freestyle and racing competitions, so drivers have to know how to make their machines perform stunts as well as handle well while cornering at speed.

For example, Tulachka noted his truck can be steered by the rear wheels as well as the front ones, but the fronts and rears steer separately with his left hand controlling the fronts and right hand (which also is where the shifter is located) steering the rears. He said a fair amount of coordination and finesse is needed to successfully wheel one of those vehicles.

"I actually use the rear steer more than front steer," he said. "It's like steering a forklift.

"The truck is a crazy machine. You've got to learn a lot about it."

That goes for keeping the truck running at the shows, too. The Tulachkas' two Ford-bodied monster trucks don't have a thing in common with any truck on a Ford showroom floor. The chassis are tube-framed, the supercharged engines are built specifically for the purpose (the team gets theirs from Midgette Motor Sports in North Carolina), and the bodies are fiberglass replicas.

Which makes sense, given the beatings the trucks take performing back flips, wheelies and nose stands — Tulachka said that's his favorite trick to do, balancing the truck on the front tires alone with the rear pointing straight up in the air — and crashing to the ground after a jump of more than 100 feet. Plus, fans don't want to go to a show to watch trucks break down and not be able to perform as advertised.

So, these trucks are more technically sophisticated than any racing vehicle that'll be seen at the fairgrounds. Which requires meticulous maintenance by the team to keep them running.

"When we bring the trucks home, we've got to make sure every nut and bolt is tight," Tulachka said. "If one nut or one bolt fails, essentially the whole truck fails."

And when Just Get-Er-Done II does run for the crowd in the fairgrounds grandstands, Tulachka said it'll be a spectacular show. 

"A lot of big air," Tulachka said. "We're definitely gonna blow the doors off this place."

FYI

Brandan Tulachka of Kewaunee is part of the All Star Monster Truck tour that competes in racing, freestyle and best trick competitions at 7 p.m. Friday, July 9, as part of the Kewaunee County Fair. Truck rides will be offered around the track from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. and after the show, and a meet-and-greet with the drivers will be held before the show. A Rough Truck and ATV/UTV Challenge also is part of the show.

There is no additional charge beyond regular fair admission ($15 July 9, $25 for all four days) to watch the show; cost of the monster truck rides is $10 and there are no age or height requirements. For more information, visit kewauneecountyfair.com or facebook.com/kewauneecountyfair.

Contact Christopher Clough at 920-741-7952, 920-562-8900 or [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: The monster truck next door: Kewaunee's Tulachka, known for Monster Jam, to compete at county fair