Competition, camaraderie drive tractor and truck pullers at Lebanon Area Fair

It’s not a sport that you can practice.

And amateur participation is generally limited to fair season in Pennsylvania. 

What, then, motivates individuals to become involved in tractor and truck tractor pulls? During a pull, tractors and trucks – divided into classes based on weight and model – cross a 100-meter track, pulling increasingly heavy weights as far as they can.

Read More: What exactly is a tractor pull?

For Bill Early of Annville, it’s a family sport for the patriarch, his daughter Heather Thompson, son-in-law Denis Thompson, and grandchildren Luke and Paisley Thompson, ages 12 and 8.

“It’s a nice family thing to do,” said Early, who owns about 10 acres and farms a total of 50 acres in the Annville area.

And then there are Early’s extended family of farm friends who also participate in the sport.

“A group of us will go to various fairs. We were at the Bucks fair, the Berks fair, then we went to Schaefferstown last Friday night, and then we went to Newville. It’s a bunch of farmers who all get together to go to tractor pulls and have fun,” Early said

Heather Thompson said her interest in tractor pulls began when her husband, who was a Marine, was deployed.

“It started out as a thing for me and him (Bill) to do together when my husband was deployed. My husband was in the Marine Corps and it kind of became a thing that I would tag along with him to go to shows together. And then when my husband returned from deployment, my husband got into it then too,” Thompson said. “And now our son is involved as well. But I don’t pull too much anymore.”

For Billy Smeltzer of Myerstown, his passion for truck pulls shifted into gear at a young age. He’s been pulling for more than 30 years in his 1974 F-250 Ford, four-wheel drive pickup truck.

“I’d say when I was a young guy, my parents took me to the Lebanon Fair and we watched the truck and tractor pulls and I said, ‘I am going to do that one day,’” recalled Smeltzer. “And then I turned 16 and I pulled the truck for the first time.”

Early and Thompson both mentioned a passion for the horsepower that moves the machinery, with Thompson equating a love for tractor pulls to those who attend car shows.

You don’t really understand car shows unless you’re a car show person, and you don’t really understand tractor pulls unless you’re a tractor person.

Heather Thompson

“You don’t really understand car shows unless you’re a car show person, and you don’t really understand tractor pulls unless you’re a tractor person. Like he said, part of it is to admire the horsepower of it. It’s like showing it off just like when you take your car to the car show to show it off. My dad likes to take the ones that he and my husband and I restored with him and just show it off,” she said.

Being that it is fair season, and the Lebanon Area Fair has multiple tractor and truck pulls for amateur drivers, local competitors have been getting ready for this year’s events.

“I was going to say my husband, Dennis, can tell you all about what goes into it because him and my dad have been out in the garage for the past three weeks doing nothing but getting the tractors ready,” Thompson said.

Early’s passion for tractor pulls is well-seasoned. He’s a tractor-pulling veteran who’s celebrating a major milestone in 2025.

“It’s 40 years now. I started in ’85 down at the fairgrounds with my pulling,” Early said. “We use our tractors from the farm. The one I’m pulling right now I just took out of the field this year because I bought another one to replace it out in the field.”

Unlike other sports that you can hone your skills through practice, pulling events, given that few amateur participants have a sled with weights and a track on which to practice, means improvement is somewhat limited to participating in as many shows as you can.

“We don’t have a sled to try it on or nothing. You know, we might hook two tractors together and try to get the same thing, but that never works,” Early said. “The biggest thing is getting your weight right for each weight class, because they go by weight, and then there’s turbos, and everything else.”

“I’d say we go to a lot of different fairs and pulls over the summer, so if my truck is doing one thing, say hopping a little bit, then I’ll go to the next pull and I’ll try to adjust the air pressure in the tires to take away that hopping or change the shocks on the front,” said Smeltzer. “You go to pulls and figure out how your truck is acting and then come home and make changes. That’s where the engineering and science come in. There is no practice.”

Thompson noted that being on a tractor on a regular basis breeds familiarity with the equipment. She equated it to a motorist who gets to know the sound of a vehicle by driving it regularly. 

All three agree that being a gearhead can be helpful for tractor and truck pullers.

“I’d say that if you are interested in mechanics and engineering and that kind of thing, you could be interested in pulling,” Smeltzer said. “I’d say you have to be a little bit of a mechanic because most guys work on their own trucks and a lot of guys work on their tractors. I think you have to have an interest in mechanics to be able to do it.”

“My nephew’s a diesel mechanic, and he helps once in a while with them. He rebuilt my one pulling tractor for me, tore it all apart and rebuilt the motor for me,” Early said.

“You don’t have to be one to do it, but it helps to be a motor head, yes, it really does,” Thompson said. “Eventually the tractor’s gonna break. Something’s gonna blow, something’s gonna happen, even if you’re not pulling. Today my dad was working on the driveway with a stone rake and blew a hose on it and he had a fix within five minutes. So, it definitely helps.”

She added that Denis learned to work on small engines in FFA.

“There’s not too much that they (her dad and husband) can’t figure out on their own. So it definitely helps. There’s nights where my husband and my dad both pull, like, three classes, and something small could happen, and I know they can just drive right back to the pit, fix it, and have it ready for the next class versus, you know, someone who might not know what they’re doing and have to scratch for the rest of the night and then call somebody to come help them fix it. Most of the time, I’m going to say, my dad and my husband can usually figure out what’s going on (with a tractor).”

LebTown asked all three what goes through their minds in the moments before the green flag is dropped to start a pull and they are in the spotlight.

“It all happens very fast, you back into the sled straight and you tighten the chain to pull,” said Smeltzer, who is a co-owner of Lebanon-based Woodland Contractors. 

While he admitted to having butterflies every time he pulls, there are a million questions going through his mind, too, in the seconds before a start.

“How do I want to start out? What RPMs do I want to start at? Where do I want to be? Where do I want to go on the track?  Where’s the soft spots, where’s the harder spots? Where’s the best traction? Where’s the best line in the track?” Smeltzer said. “All of those things go through your mind in the seconds before you start. And I would say this: If you don’t have butterflies in your stomach right before you go, you should probably not do it anymore because you’ve lost your drive to do it.”

Heather and Denis Thompson both claim having nerves before a pull, with Denis saying he’s worried he might break the equipment during the drive. Heather, who raced horses for 15 years before getting into pulling, said nerves are present in both types of competition.

“I get nervous but I just kind of focus at the same time. I kind of honed the focus but definitely get very nervous,” she said, “especially when I hear my dad yelling at me too from the sidelines that I’m doing something wrong.”

LebTown asked if she can hear him over the roar of the tractor. 

“I can hear him. He’s very loud,” she said.

Ultimately, a reason to be involved in pulls is the friendships you develop along the way. This is true no matter what kind of vehicle you prefer to pull.

“Whenever we go to pulls, there is generally an area crowd of guys, 5 to 6, maybe up to 10. Before we pull, we’re all camaraderie. We’re grilling burgers, we’re carrying on, we’re hanging out, and talking or whatever,” Smeltzer said. “And right before the pull, we’re always, ‘Good luck, do a good job,’ and there’s always some kind of encouragement for each other.”

The moment the participants hit the track, however, the competitive juices begin to flow and friendships are temporarily suspended.

“You want to go as far as you can, and it’s about being competitive,” Smeltzer added. “Once you hit the track, you always want to beat the other guy.”

After the event, it’s as if all of that rivalry never happened.

“After it’s over, we’re all back to being friends again,” said Smeltzer. “We travel together. If someone has trouble on the way to or coming back from a pull and they have trailer trouble, we’re there for each other.”

“You can sit down and eat with the pullers before the next tractor show and talk, but once it’s on the track…” said Early, who added that the friendships are temporarily halted. “We do our show and then afterwards we’re back to talking again and being friends.”

What exactly is a tractor pull?