A 14-CLASS TRUCK AND TRACTOR PULL IN THE LAND OF LINCOLN
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BY MIKE MCGLOTHLIN
A 14-CLASS TRUCK AND TRACTOR PULL IN THE LAND OF LINCOLN
Perhaps no other form of motorsport has been hit as hard as truck and tractor pulling has in 2020. County and state fairs, brush pulls, and countless professionally sanctioned and organized events have all been canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, effectively spoiling hundreds upon hundreds of pullers’ summer plans. As the world struggled to find a way to return to normal, one mid-summer sled pull got our attention. Coined the Lewistown FFA Truck and Tractor Pull, it’s held in rural westcentral Illinois and put together by avid truck pullers Nick Christy, his brother Sean, Jeremy Haggerty, and a small army of volunteers. With the all-clear from the Fulton County fairgrounds, the third annual affair went as planned—and with a great turnout. Given the limited amount of truck and tractor pulls that’ve been held in 2020 due to Covid-19, the competitors that showed up in Lewistown were champing at the bit to get some hooks in. And hook they did, with many drivers signing up to pull in more than one class. Things got started with an 11,000-pound Farm Stock tractor class, progressed through to an 8,500-pound daily driver diesel category, followed shortly thereafter by an 8,500-pound stock turbo diesel field. Later on, big horsepower came in the form of the Work Stock diesel truck class (roughly 900 hp), 9,500-pound Pro Farm tractors (1,200 hp), and culminated with an anything-goes 8,500-pound Open class. You can find all the highlights from the days’ intense ground-pounding action in the pages that follow.
Each year, the Lewistown FFA Truck and Tractor Pull gets started at noon, and on a Sunday. Just before kick-off, the 11,000-pound Farm Stocks lined up to roll across the portable scales positioned at the far side of the pits. By the time the day was through, more than 150 hooks would take place at the Fulton County Fairgrounds.
Daytime pulls are always a challenge as far as dust is concerned. After a couple weeks of hot, dry weather, the track in Lewistown simply absorbed whatever water the crew threw at it and turned to dust once again. That said, the track was biting hard enough to eat a few driveshafts on the day.
The term Work Stock has been thrown around quite a bit in truck pulling over the past 15 years. Today, Work Stock in much of the Midwest (especially Illinois and Missouri) means a lot more than the name would imply to the layman. Most of these trucks turn out more than 800 hp, and some even sit closer to the 900hp mark. The Work Stock truck class that’s sanctioned by the United Pullers of America is one of the more competitive groups of trucks in the Midwest, and a dozen of them showed up to battle for points in Lewistown.
In Work Stock, trucks are allowed to run ballast or hang suitcase weights out front, and can weigh up to 8,500 pounds. Turbo selection boils down to either a stock-appearing unit or a T4 flanged S300 with a compressor wheel inducer no larger than 66mm (2.6 inches) and a map groove no bigger than 0.250-inches. Eric Loy has been a major player in Work Stock for a long time, and his ’05 Dodge dually wasted little time getting to the end of the track. His 307.07-foot distance was good enough for Third Place.
Rarely does a truck pull commence without a casualty or two. Sometimes, there is even a double-whammy in the cards, but that’s the way pulling goes sometimes. When Austin Neulinger’s ’95 GMC lost four-wheel drive mid-hook, the rear driveshaft followed suit. It was placed in the bed and a tow-off tractor was summoned.