Sixteen-year-old Rosalee Ramer is the nation’s youngest professional monster truck driver. She has been riding in monster truck rallies for the past two years. The California teen has already entered 24 shows. She drives a 10-ton truck, “Just being in a truck loud, feeling it under you, stepping on the throttle, it almost doesn’t feel real. You feel like you’re in a different world,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. She built her own monster truck, Detour, out of a 2010 Ford Ranger, with the help of her dad.
Rosalee’s dad, Kelvin Ramer, runs his own tow truck company and says his daughter has always shown an interest in cars. “If it had a steering wheel and she could get in it, she would,” Kelvin told Yahoo Shine. He said that at three-years-old, Rosalee was already learning how to build engines. She would help her dad, also a monster truck driver, by holding a flashlight while he worked on cars.
She is currently a sophomore at Pacific Collegiate School. After receiving an almost perfect math score on her SAT exam, she is now planning to attend MIT someday in order to study mechanical engineering and electronics. She would be the first Ramer to go to college. Her dad told the San Francisco Gate that he’ll make sure she goes to the college of her choice, and he’s even accompanied her on campus tours. He said, “I just wanted to make sure she’d get to her classes safe at night. Like any dad, I walked around wondering how I would feel when I’m not there with her.”
Ramer, who also plays the piano and is a straight-A student, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that monster truck driving is something she’s very passionate about, “It’s definitely going to be a part of my life for a long time, it’s what I love.” She is currently working on designing the first electronic fuel injection system for a monster truck.
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