THE PLATO FAMILY
Kid: shane, 13 years old
Parent: lee
HEALDSBURG, CA
Shane started driving monster trucks at five years old and he’s been driving professionally ever since! At only 13 years old Shane is the current title holder of the “World’s Youngest Professional Monster Truck Driver!” He’s infamous in the sport and has big plans of traveling the world competing in is his FULL size monster truck! He currently drives “Skull Krusher” a full-size behemoth of a truck that was previously used in Monster Jam. Although Shane has reached a high-level of success it hasn’t come without extreme effort and sacrifice. Father, Lee, has had made the difficult decision to leverage his home and business as collateral in order to afford the astronomically expensive hobby. The truck itself costs upwards of 250k dollars. Not to mention the cost of maintenance after every show, the cost of travel, gas, hotels, marketing, etc. The Plato family has put everything they have into Shane.
Shane’s passion has transitioned from a hobby into a business with all of the pressure and risk that comes with entrepreneurship. Now, add a father and son team (where the son is only 13) and there’s plenty of challenges and literal growing pains. Not only does Shane want to succeed but he needs to succeed in order for the families’ sacrifices to be worth the risk. Lee feels an incredible amount of pressure for his son to succeed and has difficult conversations to ensure that Shane understands the seriousness of their shared endeavor. Shane can no longer act like a normal teenager, there’s too much on the line. Now that dad has started driving as well it’s a father son team that is side by side. (Its smart marketing on dad’s part) Shane has enjoyed the title of “Youngest Pro Monster Truck Driver” but there is a newcomer on the horizon who is hell-bent on stealing the title away. Young Mason Menter (age 11) out of Remona, California is hot on his tails. Mason and father Mike are planning on getting into a full size truck within the next year and are well on their way of taking the title away from Shane. Shane and dad will be spending the next year scouting for sponsorships to alleviate the financial burden as well as learn how to do a “backflip” in the truck. If Shane can add the dangerous and spectator pleasing feat to his arsenal of tricks it’ll help to catapult his celebrity status and ensure his future as a prodigal monster truck driver.