Venture innovated

What’s wit these companies that start with “V?” After posting about the first ever symmetrical board that was made by Vision, I came across this post on Vert is Dead about the evolution of the new truck hole pattern. Ocean Howell may have been the first guy to drill his own baseplates, and Venture was apparently the first truck company to offer it as a stock option. I guess everyone else just copied them. Does anyone know who the first board company was to offer the new, smaller mounting pattern? One thing I’d like to know is how did the industry standardize on the first pattern? If you’ve never seen some old trucks from the early 70’s, they all had their own mounting patterns. Boards came undrilled, and you could buy special guide to help drill them straight. Was there some sort of round table meeting with the big truck companies, or did the board manufacturers drive that decision. Were there arguments and hold outs? Some of the plastic boards had multiple mounting holes molded into them, as if they wanted to be be able to mount trucks from different manufacturers in case a supplier had problems.

In the late 80’s I made a half assed attempt at starting a skate shop. Quarter-assed is more like it, but one of the things I ended up with was a healthy supply of brand new trucks. You can imagine my confusion at one point in the 90’s when I bought a new deck and tried to mount it up with some NOS Thunders. For a while there I was drilling decks to accommodate the old trucks, but I got sick of having slightly crooked setups. Then I went to buy new Thunders, and they were like a completely different company, everything was low and narrow… no more lizards and skulls on the baseplates, so I went back to Indy. The whole thing was very traumatic. Scarred me for life, actually.

This is a close up of a Venture advert from the November 1992 issue of Thrasher. It features Venture rider Jeff Chamley. You can see the whole Venture advert with the backstory on Vert is Dead.