BOWLING GREEN — Under the shade of a portable canopy set up inside the fence at the Wood County Fairgrounds, Bertus Boer was grinding away on the massive tires that will propel one of his “Screamin Bobcat Team” rigs in the National Tractor Pulling Championships, taking place here through Saturday.
He worked to restore the grip the unit will need when its tires spin at 120 mph as his tractor, churning with close to 3,000 horsepower, plows down the track.
Mr. Boer, who owns several companies in the Apeldoorn Area of the Netherlands, spends a good portion of his summers in the United States, competing on the national circuit.
Periodically, he will also take part in tractor pulls in his native country, as well as in Sweden, Hungary, Finland, and the United Kingdom, but he first competed here in 2010. This event has been a regular part of his schedule ever since.
VIDEO: 2017 National Tractor Pulling Championships
“This is the biggest pull in our sport,” said the 52-year-old, who has a mechanical engineering background. “We get huge crowds here and the fans are great. We travel the season — North Carolina, Wisconsin, Tennessee — but this is the biggest event of all.”
How big? David Schultz, the director of the event from Northwestern Ohio Tractor Pullers Inc., said between 65,000 and 80,000 fans will come through the gates during this year’s three-day event. He expected all 2,100 campsites to be full by Friday evening, with more than 300 entries in various modified farm tractor, modified tractor, pickup truck, and semi-truck classes, and the region enjoying an economic impact of some $37 million before the smoke clears and the fairgrounds go quiet.
The Bowling Green event marked its 50th year in 2016.
“We’ve got competitors here from all across the country, including five from California this year, plus the group from the Netherlands, and fans from as far away as New Zealand who arranged their summer vacation just so they could fly here and be in Bowling Green for this pull,” he said. “It’s very gratifying to see all of these teams and the fans come here, and we’re constantly working to provide them with a great show.”
Mr. Boer, who during the off-season stores the tractors he uses on the U.S. circuit in New Hampshire where his motor-builder lives, sometimes drives the rigs, as does his 26-year-old son Berrie, who will pilot “Bobcat Jr.” in this weekend’s event.
“Tractor pulls are big in Netherlands, but not as big as they are here,” said the younger Mr. Boer, who looked on Friday morning as his father meticulously cut grooves in the tires and roughed their surface to provide more traction.
A tractor pull is structured to determine the strongest machine and the best driver, so power — not speed — is a priority. The machines usually run on a surface of sand, clay, or packed soil along a long track and drag a metal sled filled with weight. The load is winched forward as the tractor and sled move down the track, increasing the drag until the unit bogs down and stops.
The distance of the pull, measured to the thousandths of an inch, determines the winner. In rare cases, a driver might make a “full pull” covering the length of the track.
The rigs range from what look something like souped up, standard-issue farm tractors, to monstrous marvels of engineering and machining that are powered by jet engines. The “Bobcat Jr.” rig Berrie Boer drives, classified as a “mini” in the sport, is powered by methanol, runs on tires that cost $1,500 a set, and is about a $130,000 investment as assembled.
“This isn’t a cheap hobby,” said the elder Boer, who won his class in this event last year, and whose team is in first place in the standings as the circuit comes to Northwest Ohio.
“During the week I’m a businessman, but this is what we do on the weekends. It clears your mind, you know. It’s a very social group in tractor pulls and we all respect each other and help each other out. It’s completely different than the speed sports.”
With all of that torque and power — up to 10,000 horsepower in the largest unlimited rigs — and thousands of fans sitting just a short distance from the pulling track, safety is an obvious concern. The sport requires a long list of safety features, including fire suits for the drivers, kill switches, and side shields in the event an engine comes apart.
“We’ve got a technical inspection sheet with over 70 points on it, and most of those involve safety,” said Larry Murdock, a retired pipe-fitter from Bowling Green who works the event each year. “There’s so much power in these things. You need a lot of safety features to protect the driver and the crowd.”
Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.
First Published August 19, 2017, 4:11 a.m.