Brad’s Bio

I grew up on a small family farm outside Dixon, IL. Around 5 years old, from watching my father compete at our local 4-H fair with this farm stock tractor puller, I became fascinated with motorsports, especially monster trucks and tractor pulling. During high school I was very competitive in athletic sports and developed a hard work ethic and competitive spirit.

After the passing of my father in 2007, I took over our 1200 acre family grain farming operation. Along the way I kept up with the hobby of motorsports, building demolition derby cars, competing in antique tractor pulling, and building mud and trail trucks.

After the passing of my late wife in 2014, I decided I wanted to pursue my lifelong dream of competitive motorsports, however, I felt that God was calling me to give glory to Him in all that I do.

So Against the Grain as a mega truck was born. Along the way I met some professionals in the monster truck industry who thought I had what I took to be in the industry. So after a few phone calls and much consideration, we purchased the monster truck formerly known as “Big Dawg” from Doug and Brenda Noelke in 2017.

We continue to operate our family farm and are always striving to expand our farming and monster truck operations into realms we never thought were possible.

Brad’s Cancer Journey

In July 2020, I became diagnosed with CML Luekemia with blast crisis. This came unexpected after little to no signs or symptoms. Obviously, we had to cancel what was remaining of our 2020 season and suspend operations indefinitely.

After 8 months of chemotherapy treatments, I became healthy enough to proceed to the next step of my treatment, allogenic stem cell transplantation at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. On April 9th 2021, after 5 days of intensive chemotherapy and total body irradiation, I received stem cells from a donor from Poland. My family and I are forever thankful for the selfless sacrifice from this person. For three months I remained in Rochester staying near to the hospital fighting low blood counts, infections, fatigue, and weakness. I was discharged from care at Mayo clinic in late June and have been at home recovering from treatment.

Currently, I am working on regaining lost strength and stamina from the transplant process. Each week that goes by shows improvement. It’s been a very long hard road, but having faith in Jesus Christ as our savior has given me the strength and perseverance to keep pushing on. We are gearing up for a 2023 rebirth into monster trucks with newfound strength, desire, and passion to entertain crowds nationwide.