Antique tractor club more than just tractors 

“Financially, you never recover from tractor pulling. You start putting all this money in, but you get hooked on it, and away you go.” 

That’s how Dale Conard describes his involvement with antique tractors and participating in the Great Plains Antique Tractor Club based out of Hutchinson, Kansas. 

Conard grew up on a farm and after college he started teaching at Hutchinson Community College and was an instructor in the ag diesel program. 

“I’ve been associated with tractors all my life that way, working on them and using them and everything,” he said.  

While at HCC he was introduced to the club and tractor pulling at one point and when he did retire, he decided it looked like a “pretty fun thing to do.” 

“There was one meeting that somebody said they had to sell a tractor, and so I bought my first tractor the next day from a family,” he said. 

After that, he was hooked. He pulls with a small International Harvester tractor and also has a restored Oliver. 

“But the silliness of it—you start doing these and putting parts together,” Conard said. “I got parts from Ohio. I took my tires up to Iowa, and I’m saying you just never financially recover from the hobby.” 

Club members Chuck Smith and Jim Decker have similar backgrounds with farming and ranching, and in their retirement years, they too have turned their sights to pulling. Smith is the GPATC event coordinator. Decker is vice president. 

Decker farmed most of his life and worked at Hesston Manufacturing. 

“I actually retired from there, but I still kept involved with farming, especially with my dad-in-law,” Decker said. “And then when that all got sold out, I sold the rest of what I had as far as the farm, and I moved to town.” 

He started working on tractors and decided to try his hand at tractor pulling.  

“We had never pulled before, and we started pulling tractors, and really got excited about it, and that’s how we’re going about it now, still staying pretty closely involved,” Decker said. 

He has two tractors and that requires maintenance, including one planned for this winter. 

Smith worked on a farm all his life and had cattle for “45 to 50 years,” he said and used various types of tractors to put up hay and do work around the ranch.  

“The first tractor I ever owned was an old Massey 44 and it did a little bit of everything in the beginning,” he said. “When it finally was retired, it kind of sat in the tree row.” 

“I decided that maybe that tractor could be pulled out, and it had done me a heck of a job over the years,” Smith said. “(We) started tearing into it, and we stripped it down to where it was bare bones, and rebuilt the engine, transmission and redid all of the metal work on it.” 

Once it was finished, Smith decided he wanted to do something with it. He attended the Kansas State Fair tractor pulls and decided he wanted to give it a try. 

“We got started and started learning. We found out how little we knew, and continued to work on it, and having a good time doing it,” Smith said. “It’s been something for the two of us in our retirement, gives us something to work on.” 

Details

Conard said the GPATC started about 30 years ago, and has slowly evolved into hosting tractor pulls, shows and other events.  

“The main thing we started out with was shows and parades, those type of things. And then we got into the pulling side of it,” Conard said. “The pulling has grown quite a bit in the last five years. We’re getting more participation in that all the time.” 

The club has about 65 members in 2025, with about half of them being what Conard calls older guys like him, Smith and Decker.  

“We try to encourage the young ones,” Conard said. “We try to help the young ones out the best we can and get them interested in it.” 

Smith said pulling events the organizers host are in Larned, Schoenchen, Hoisington, and towns closer to Hutchinson including Nickerson, Sterling, Pleasant View, and Inman.  

Participation at the pulling events is pretty good, according to Smith. The tractor shows are well attended too.  

“We get sometimes up to 100 hooks, and there’ll be a number of people, depending on the town, and the weather,” he said. “With nice weather, we get a fairly nice crowd out to watch.” 

The pulling events require a track that has to be at least 300 feet long and 24 feet wide, and the surface needs to be fairly level and packed hard. 

“Then we have equipment that we work the track to keep it in good condition, so that we don’t end up with a bunch of holes pulled in it,” Smith said.  

As members of the GPATC, Conard, Decker and Smith all participate in the events and have found a couple of different things they enjoy. For Conard, it’s the people.  

“We all have a common goal, and the common goal is not necessary to beat or win,” he said. “The common goal is to help each other out to where we can help them to do a better job.” 

The club doesn’t award prize money or trophies to the winners, but Conard believes that doesn’t deter members from competing and having fun. They do have different divisions for tractor ages and weights being pulled.  

“We have a limit of 4 miles an hour, but we can use different things, different tractors and different tires,” he said. “We start out at 2,500 pounds and we go clear to 10,000 (pounds).” 

Decker said the divisions go up by 500-pound weight increments and add weight as the class goes on.  

“It’s a little bit of a challenge to handle all the weight, but we make it happen,” Decker said. “We help each other and one of the big things is just the camaraderie. But we still strive to beat and win for bragging rights.” 

Smith said they work hard to make events special for those participating and attending. 

“I enjoy the people that come to the pulls,” he said. “We pray before a pull, we do the national anthem, we believe in these things and we’re not afraid to show it.” 

What brings Smith the most joy is how the group works together.  

“If you’re broke down, you’re liable to have an awful lot of hands and wrenches and everything there to help you,” he said. “We try not to let anybody be behind.” 

Giving back

The club also provides scholarships to students at HCC. Since 2022, GPATC has been able to award $8,500 in scholarships to 12 students.  

At the Yoder pull club members gather sponsorships from local merchants to help with the scholarship funding. Many of the members operate a concession stand at the National Junior College Athletic Associationbasketball tournament in Hutchinson and they sell programs at state high school athletic events to raise funds for the scholarships. 

Best of times

Through the years, Conard, Smith and Decker have all helped in various aspects of the club, and all three have personal fulfillment that keeps them participating.  

For Conard, when they’re working together, it’s much more than the tractors.  

“You’re not just pulling all the time, but you’re working on a sled, doing things and fellowshipping together. I think it’s a good thing,” he said. 

For Decker, the thing he likes most is being together with the guys and working. 

“And then I just love tractor pulling. I love the competition and the camaraderie of being together with other guys and talking about things and working on the sled and just making everything happen and going to all these different places with the pulls and meeting other people,” he said. “It’s just a good time. I look forward every time we have a pull or have a meeting.” 

Plus, Decker gets an outlet for his need for competition. Conard said he’s a former drag racer. 

“I can tell the difference when Jim takes off at the sled, and when Chuck takes off the sled, they take off two different ways,” Conard said. “You can tell the drag racing type thing that Jim does.” 

Smith enjoys the people most. 

“There’s absolutely no doubt about that,” he said. “I’m a real people person and meeting different people.” 

For Smith, even though they are using antique tractors, he believes preserving history is important.  

“We’re getting tractors pulled out of the junkyards, out of tree rows, out of barns, and get them restored for shows, parades and antique pulling,” he said. “All of the people, it seems like, when you visit with them, when they start pulling out a tractor, and whether they’re showing it, or whether they’re pulling it, they’ve got a story. This was a great tractor, or great grandpa’s tractor and I used to sit on the tractor for so many hours. They’re just great stories to hear.” 

For more information about GPATC visit www.greatplainsantiquetractorclub.com/. 

Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or by email at [email protected].