Tractor pulling at the Monroe County Fair

One of the main events that provides evening entertainment at the various rural county fairs around the region is the truck & tractor pulling competition. Monroe County, Illinois is just across the river from us & so we thought that we would go & watch a competition held by the Illinois Tractor Pulling Association (which is one of the oldest sanctioning bodies for truck & tractor pulling in the US) at the County Fair in Waterloo.

Truck & tractor pulling is, as the name implies, a competition using tractors & large trucks to pull a heavy 'sled' along a prepared dirt track. The sled can be loaded with different weights (up to 65,000 lbs depending upon the pulling category). At the start of the pull the weights are positioned over the sled's rear axles & as the tractor travels the course the weights are moved forward along the sled increasing the effective weight until the tractor is no longer able to overcome the force of friction generated by the sled. At the end of the run, the pull vehicle is unhitched from the sled, the weights are moved back & the sled front axle is hydraulically lowered (so that the sled nose is lifted clear from the ground) to enable the sled to be driven back down the course ready for the next run.

There were a number of different classes pulling at this event including 8,200 lbs. Super Stock, 8,200 lbs. Limited Pro Stock, 10,000 lbs. Pro Stock, 7,500 lbs. Modified Tractor, 6,200 lbs. 2-Wheel Drive Truck, & 9,300 lbs. Super Farm Stock. One of the most popular makes of tractor is John Deere (always painted green & yellow) & this brand seemed to be the most popular at the event, although there were also a number of International & Ford tractors. The types of pull vehicles varied from stock looking diesel tractors (which accompanied their pulls with a massive plume of sooty smoke), multiple turbocharged, alcohol fueled tractors, & 2-wheel drive 'trucks' (which included a number of pickup trucks, a 1930s van, & '34 ford hot rod) powered by the same type of supercharged v-8 engine typically found in top fuel dragsters.

We arrived for the start of the competition at 6:00pm & left at 10:30pm before the racing had finished. Typically, these events can go on well past midnight. The 2-wheel drive trucks seemed to be somewhat more fragile than the tractors (probably due to their highly-strung, very high horsepower engines) but it was actually the last tractor that we saw pull that provided the most excitement of the night. Just as it came to the end of it's pull (just past where we were seated) the alcohol powered engine blew up & sent a huge ball of fire skyward. The driver jumped (literally) off the tractor through the flames, but the emergency services soon had the fire extinguished.