Last modified: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 2:05 AM EDT Rolling into Gillette BY LAUREN CARTER / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF FOXBORO -- It's Tuesday afternoon at Gillette Stadium. The parking lot is full of trailers, tents, vans, tractortrailer rigs, and yellow tape. The hallways are lined with carts, trunks and gallons of bottled water as workers mill about with rolls of cable slung over their shoulder. The football field is a sea of folding chairs, with thick wires snaking across the Terraplas plastic surface covering the grass. The Revolution are playing this Saturday, and the Patriots are playing Sunday night against the Denver Broncos. But the commotion on Tues day isn't about any of the home teams. It's all part of the setup for the Rolling Stones, who kick off the second U.S. leg of their `` A Bigger Bang'' world tour at Gillette Stadium tonight, with opening act Kanye West. And when it comes to the Stones' tour, one thing is clear: Size matters. `` It's the Rolls Royce of tour ing,'' said Dale Skjerseth, pro duction manager for the Rolling Stones. `` It's the finest one you will ever get on. It's no holds barred. You can't get any big ger.'' It's so big that the entire setup and breakdown takes a full week to complete, with the stage's steel structure -- which weighs in at 170 tons -- requir ing 38 hours of setup time. The production unit, a `` dressing'' for the steel structure, is only slightly less massive, weighing in at 130 tons and requiring one day of setup. The Stones' caravan is a fleet of 152 vehicles, 105 of them trucks carrying the steel structure, with two full tractor-trailer rigs just to transport equipment for the dressing room. For shows overseas, production gear is carried in five wide-body Boeing 747 cargo planes, and steel is sent over on a ship. `` It's the biggest production tour that's out there in the world,'' said Tim McWilliams of Concert Productions International. `` Anything you want to talk about, we probably have the most of it -- from the number of people on the road, to the number of trucks, to the infrastructure.'' That kind of monstrous production scale has translated into record-setting sales. The Stones hold the record for the top two most-attended North American tours of all time, and registered the top-grossing tour of 2005 with `` A Bigger Bang.'' The mammoth production could also have something to do with the high ticket prices, which have recently dropped by $40 and now range from $22.50 to $352.50. But the goal is to put on a show that has no comparison, and McWilliams said in that department, the Stones tour lives up to its name. `` The fans don't go away upset because they know when they go to a Rolling Stones show, it's an event,'' McWilliams said. `` A whole spectacular event.'' Both Skjerseth and McWilliams are industry veterans who have worked on dozens of other tours, including `` huge'' productions for the likes of AC/DC and Ozzy Osbourne. As for the second biggest production they've ever worked on? `` The last Stones tour,'' Skjerseth said. LAUREN CARTER can be reached at 508-236-0339 or at lcarter@thesunchronicle.com.