This was my first truck pull. I’ve heard of them and if anyone ever invited me to one, I would have gladly gone along. I’m a curious person, but it seems I’ve never had family nor friend interested in pulls.
The town I grew up in had a huge county fair and we had stock car races. We could hear them at night from home, miles away. When I was I kid, I begged to go. Again, I didn’t know people who cared about them.
So I had ideas about how this worked, even though I never looked anything up. In my imagination, two suped up pick ups would face each other and by connected by 20 feet of chain between them. And they would have a tug of war. Where this idea came from? I don’t know. But the trucks would basically pull each other back and forth and engines would get loud and eventually one truck would win. That’s not how it went….at all.
I was going alone, and unsure what type of people this event drew in, so I was a bit wary. It was at the local fairgrounds and proved to be a family friendly, calm event. I parked and brought my chair and set it between a family and a couple. They smiled, said hello and moved over a bit for me. It was crowded and I sat where there was an open spot left (more on this later).
At one end, stood a long and expensive looking piece of equipment called a sled. Sleds can weigh up to 60,000 pounds. This one was a class 8, near 40,000 pounds. A new sled runs about $600,000 and $300,000 for a decent used one. They can be rented for an event; four hours (with operator) costs $2600-3000. The engine is a 180 hp. I watched a few videos about pulling sleds and one guy said the chain doesn’t break, just the hitches on the trucks and tractors.
Once a vehicle is chained to the sled, the basics are a weighted box (with the capacity of up to 23,000 pounds), moves along the sled and is dropped to the ground. The truck or tractor doing the pulling wins by pulling the weight for it’s class, the farthest. The standard track length is 300 feet.
After each run, a larger tractor and a tamping machine repair the track for the next pull. As this happened, I recognized a friend’s husband and son operating the tractor. I got up to look for her and almost tripped over a neighbor’s son and his friends. An older couple came a bit later and sat next to me. Their son did pulls in another state and they explained a bit to me. Fortunately, this community’s too friendly to let someone feel alone at a town event.
At the start of the pull, an announcer asked the crowd to stand for the national anthem. Apparently it was coming from someone’s phone over the loud speaker as halfway through, the song stopped and we heard a phone ringing. There was a quick apology and we returned to being patriotic.
Drivers invest a fair amount of money into enhancing their trucks and tractors, adding weight to the front, proper hitches, engines, exhaust systems, etc. The winnings can be significant. The woman next to me said she didn’t know exactly how much her son has won, but recently after winning a competition, he took his family to Europe.
Part way through the event, there was a pause for fireworks click here for fireworks. The announcer called for the lights to go out and they cut all power including his speakers.
A child near me seemed to have just learned the word finale as she asked, with emphasis, at each subsequent firework if it was the grand finale.
I sat toward the middle of the track when I arrived. It was quite loud during the pulls, but not for long. I did see some younger children with ear protection. When I walked around and witnessed a pull from the top end, the sound was much softer. That was also where the people I knew sat. In retrospect, either end would be quieter. Lesson learned. Click here to watch and HEAR the pull from my seat.
As with most sports, there is a whole culture to pulling. T-shirts are sold, people travel to events, some camp out. There are better known drivers and trucks and some trucks have names. There is a rule book over thirty pages long and parents are permitted to give consent to their children to drive at surprisingly young ages. That’s freedom.