Taylor Swift is Employing the World’s Truckers

As the concert industry bounces back from the pandemic, at least one tour has pulled out all the stops in giving people their money’s worth. 

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is a massive undertaking in staging, sound, video, and lighting gear designed very cleverly to easily fit into every stadium and arena the tour has booked. The gargantuan stage setup can be set up quickly, but they save even more time and can book more shows because they take a leap-frog approach to the production. 

There are actually two of these complete, mammoth stage setups. While one is used to present a series of shows in, say, San Francisco, the other one will be assembled in Los Angeles and await Swift’s arrival. Then, while Taylor performs the LA shows, the set in San Francisco is packed up and moved to the next location after Los Angeles. This leap-frogging of complete stage sets allows them to pack more shows into the schedule. 

Major Moving Job

The sheer scale of the two sets accounts for the large number of trucks used to transport everything on tour. The stage set takes up most of a football field, and the clever design of the set doesn’t rely on hanging anything from the venue ceiling, as audio, video and lighting equipment are hung on many music tours. The entire set is entirely self-contained and just needs a large amount of clear room to set up. 

It reportedly takes between 80 and 90 large trucks (including the “merch” truck) to move the sets to different venues. Once a stage set has reached the next venue, it takes two to three weeks to set everything up and test the equipment before Swift flies in to perform the shows.  

Taylor Swift brings the Eras tour to Asia in 2024, with three shows in Tokyo and six in Singapore, so you may get to see this remarkable stage set for yourself.