Charles "Chuck" Werner (Born July 22nd, 1973) is a retired monster truck driver out of Champaign, Illinois. He drove for Tom Meents and was best known for driving Bulldozer and El Toro Loco. Werner was also best known for being both a hard driver and even harder crewing, working on both his truck and Neil's truck.
Career[]
Before monster trucks, Chuck was in the Army for four years. Then, he worked at a car dealership for eight years. During this time, Chuck would meet Tom Meents and regularly attended his shop to work on monster trucks, doing this for around three years. This eventually led to Tom hiring Chuck to drive for the Meents camp in 2005.
In 2006, Chuck landed a few driving roles, first in Bob & Tom for a few arena events. Chuck was then bumped up to drive Hot Wheels, driving it for the last half of the stadium shows of the season. Going into the off-season, Chuck became the new full-time driver of Hot Wheels after Rob Knell retired. In the Summer Heat series, Chuck drove Bulldozer for its only two shows of the year in Fayetteville and Sunrise.
In 2007, Chuck was now the only other teammate to Tom Meents alongside Neil Elliott, and he drove Hot Wheels through the season in the truck's final year. Chuck also used the Hot Wheels chassis to briefly run two other identities, these being Bulldozer in Anaheim, as Frank Krmel was running the Hot Wheels name on his chassis, and Bob & Tom in Indianapolis, performing moderately well at the show.
In 2008, Chuck took over Bulldozer, which returned to run full-time following the Hot Wheels truck's retirement, still utilizing the same chassis. Chuck retained his driving role of Bulldozer in 2009, which was the truck's last full season. On the European Tour that year, Chuck drove Maximum Destruction for the first time in Chorzów.
In 2010, Chuck began driving El Toro Loco, still using the same chassis.
In 2012, at Jacksonville, Werner had arguably one of the most incredible and craziest saves in Monster Jam history that won him the Save of the Year that season. The save can be found here. He drove Monster Energy in Mexico later that year.
In 2014, Chuck was struck by Avenger in Atlanta during qualifying. He was one of the 6 Doom's Day drivers in the World Finals 15 encore. He also drove Thor for the racing encore the night before.
In 2015, Chuck competed in the Fox Sports 1 Championship Series and won freestyle in St. Louis. At World Finals 16, he drove the new blue N.E.A for the racing encore and drove the biker Zombie in the freestyle encore. He drove the black El Toro Loco for the North of the border vs South of the border contest in Salinas.
In 2016, Chuck's chassis was used for Army in the military encore at World Finals 17, which was driven by Neil Elliott.
In 2017, Chuck competed in the FS1 stadium tour and attempted 3 corkscrews. The first was in Indianapolis, then he did 2 in Detroit for the final show of the tour. That same year, he won the Wow Factor award.
In late 2018, Chuck drove Max-D in Santiago, Chile.
In 2019, Chuck was supposed to drive Max-D on the international tour, but never did. He would retire afterwards.
World Finals appearances[]
- 2013 - Max-D (encore)
- 2014 - Thor (racing encore)/Doom's Day (freestyle encore)
- 2015 - N.E.A (racing encore)/Biker Zombie (freestyle encore)
Trivia[]
- Chuck allegedly turned down World Finals invites.
- Chuck has a wife, Heather, & two girls: Gwen & Alexis.
Gallery[]
