This husband-and-wife duo rule their family by day and tag-team monster trucks by night.
Since 1998, Jim and Dawn Creten have impressed fans with wheelies, flips and other high-flying stunts in the big-wheeled trucks they’ve named Bounty Hunter and Scarlet Bandit — and they’ll do it again at Saturday’s 2019 Monster Jam at MetLife Stadium.
Monster trucking has long been a full-time career for Dawn, 45, and her 53-year-old husband — and a way of life for their four kids, ages 8 to 19.
“He and I do about 60 shows a year,” Dawn tells The Post, “so it’s pretty much every weekend. And in the summertime, we do mid-week, like fairs and racetracks. We’re not just a couple people that decided to throw trucks in a trailer — we actually thought it out.”
Dawn wasn’t always a monster trucker. She was a medic in the Army for eight years and began competing a year after meeting Jim, who has degrees in robotics and mechanical engineering, in 1997. When they’re not on the road, they live in Tonganoxie, Kan., with their son and three daughters.
After founding their business, 2Xtreme Racing, the couple found out they were expecting their first child. Not long after that, they had a second. At that point, Dawn says, “we decided to take the girls, and we bought a semi that had living quarters in it. We traveled with the two little ones until they were 5 or 6 years old.”
Their business took off in 1999, when they landed an auto-parts franchise sponsorship. While Jim transports their trucks to different shows, Dawn swaps the Scarlet Bandit for her coolest ride yet: a Chrysler SUV.
“It’s an Aspen,” she says of her home wheels. “It’s my little grocery getter.”
Their oldest daughter seems interested in following in their tire marks, but the couple prefers she get a formal education: at Monster Jam University, in Paxton, Ill. (Yes, it’s a real thing.)
Jim won the Monster Jam World Finals for the first time in May, something that impressed the older children. But the younger ones? Not so much.
“I don’t think they quite understand that I just won the world championships,” Jim says. “The little guy, he’s really into his little iPad.
The 2019 Monster Jam will be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, on Saturday. Tickets, $25 and up.