Sep 7, 2026 · 1 hr 15 min · 12 segments
Before the NTPA, tractor pulling was largely a collection of local events with different rules, different organizations, and no national standard. In this episode of Breaking Barriers, Gary Bontrager…
Ed HartGuestreally I want to address in this episode the NTPA as I understand it from my viewpoint and I just you know in the mid 70s was old enough to start to watch these there were no associations a lot of like city city you know if they had a day like 4th of July or any day that they had an event and Or county fairs were a big one.
And then I think sometimes you would get into, I believe like in my hometown, the Optimist Club would put on a poll in conjunction to, well, I grew up in Kelowna, Iowa.
But also then like Lions Clubs and other clubs also got into these just as fundraisers.
The interesting thing was tractor pulling, as I recall, even over on my uncle, he had like a field drive.
And I know there was a tractor pull there that my dad participated in before I was born.
And it would just be literally maybe, you know, Ernie at the local dealership or some neighbors would kind of get the word out.
And then, of course, you came along with a tremendous amount of ability or natural talent in just organizing and promoting.
And so I guess I want to stop talking, but I kind of just want to set a little of a stage of my perspective of what we've seen and how that even began in the sport in general.
So... you obviously started pulling and were very competitive and people can hear about that in another episode uh we talked about that um what what was in your mind or thought process of saying we need to organize something here what what was the first thing that drove that
really I want to address in this episode the NTPA as I understand it from my viewpoint and I just you know in the mid 70s was old enough to start to watch these there were no associations a lot of like city city you know if they had a day like 4th of July or any day that they had an event and Or county fairs were a big one.
And then I think sometimes you would get into, I believe like in my hometown, the Optimist Club would put on a poll in conjunction to, well, I grew up in Kelowna, Iowa.
But also then like Lions Clubs and other clubs also got into these just as fundraisers.
The interesting thing was tractor pulling, as I recall, even over on my uncle, he had like a field drive.
And I know there was a tractor pull there that my dad participated in before I was born.
And it would just be literally maybe, you know, Ernie at the local dealership or some neighbors would kind of get the word out.
And then, of course, you came along with a tremendous amount of ability or natural talent in just organizing and promoting.
And so I guess I want to stop talking, but I kind of just want to set a little of a stage of my perspective of what we've seen and how that even began in the sport in general.
So... you obviously started pulling and were very competitive and people can hear about that in another episode uh we talked about that um what what was in your mind or thought process of saying we need to organize something here what what was the first thing that drove that
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