Without dozens of workers behind the scenes, the 57th Annual National Tractor Pulling Championships on Aug. 15-17 at the Wood County Fairgrounds would be dead in its tracks.

With an estimated crowd of 65,000 for the weekend event, and over $250,000 in purse money and contingency prizes, the Northwestern Ohio Tractor Pullers Association boasts a membership limited to 225 led by nine directors. But without one four-man quartet, the show could not go on.

They are the sled team quartet, Tom Schaller, Don Schaller, Brian Schaller, and Dan Sheldrick, who make sure the “dance” between the pulling vehicle and the sled that carries the weight is coordinated smoothly.

Today, the quartet’s reputation as a sled team extends across the country and into Canada.

Sheldrick, a 1977 Rossford High School graduate, has watched sleds evolve since he was a kid and his father, Ron, was a member of the early sled teams.

Sheldrick has been a member of the NWOTPA for 48 years, but he and his late father combined have been “sledding” for over a half century.

His father began a tiling business in 1965, but if there was a pull to go to, they put everything down and went. His father even pulled Dan out of school if necessary, and sometimes Dan went and Ron stayed home and worked.

“He was very supportive of me traveling with the sled while he stayed home and put in tile because he loved tractor pulling,” Sheldrick said. “I have to give him a lot of credit for that.”

Wood County led the way

To demonstrate the importance of switching out the sled, and do so expediently, a press release from the National Farm Machinery Show website, FarmMachineryShow.org, honors the process.

“Truck and tractor pulling in simplest terms is a dance between two partners,” the release says “There’s an animated and loud partner leading the dance, the pulling vehicle. The other partner, the sled, is in full and silent control of the path of the lead, even as it follows.”

Hooking and unhooking from the sled are among the quartet’s primary duties. Should there be any issue with the primary sled, the team brings an additional sled that can quickly be put into action.

Decades before and leading up to 1995, the sleds were owned, even designed, by the NOTPA, which puts on the BG show. The early designs were a revolution in tractor pulling.

In the fall of 1967, the NWOTPA hired a local man, Merle Grimm to build a weight exchanger or sled.

Thus, Heartbreaker I was born — a motorized mechanical weight exchanger designed specifically for tractor pulling. It was soon to be copied by other tractor pulling groups across the nation.

As tractor pulling technology and power evolved in the early 1970s, it was determined that Heartbreaker I was too small and too light to provide the resistance for the newer and more powerful machines.

So in 1974, another local man, Chuck Ziss was hired by the NWOTPA to build Heartbreaker II which would be recognizable to many because it was used by the organization until 1995. The Sheldricks were there and heavily invested the entire time.

“I’ve been around the sled since I was a kid,” Sheldrick said. “My dad used to take me when they were building the Heartbreaker II (sled).”

“My dad used to travel with the sleds some with different guys. In later years, myself and some guys my age traveled with the sled. We went to Canada, Michigan, Indiana, and Louisville (National Farm Machinery Show at Freedom Hall).

“There was a Heartbreaker I sled that Merle Grimm built that was used a short number of years, then the idea of the Heartbreaker II was that you could pull a light tractor clear up to the heaviest tractor, and the sled would do the whole thing,” Sheldrick said.

“They called it a weight exchanger — they didn’t even call it a sled back then because it exchanged the weight from the wheels to the pan, so they called it a weight exchanger for a long time, but they are largely known as sleds anymore.

“The heartbreaker II was used widely throughout the United States because there just weren’t that many sleds around,” Sheldrick said. “That is how we got into Louisville with it and pulls in Canada. We just did lots of pulls with it.”

Sheldrick often was personally involved, assisting with maintaining those early sleds.

“I spent hours working on the sleds with my friends,” Sheldrick said.

Continuing the tradition

Since 1995, Vaughn Bauer and his team have provided the sleds. Bauer’s Ironman sleds are a prominent part of national pulling events across the United States, with four sleds in action at 200 events annually.

Dan and the Schallers still help the Bauers operate the sleds, and they still travel to help not only the Bauers, but other sledders around the country. They are recognized and welcomed to any show.

Their reputation as a sledding quartet extends well beyond BG and they have friends and associates as far away as Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri — anywhere you can find the roar of a modified tractor or truck pulling a dead weight.

“That’s probably the best thing about the whole thing is all the people that we’ve met throughout the nation,” Sheldrick said. “By traveling with the sleds, we got to meet so many people who are friends of ours.”

The quartet continues today, even though it is not on them to build and maintain the sled, and they may not have the primary role of switching the,sleds out.

“The Bauers, they are in the sled business, they build sleds and they operate sleds,” Sheldrick said. “We go to some of the pulls, like at Louisville, we helped hook and unhook the sled at Louisville.

“Ever since our sled left there, we’ve done that for the Bauers now, or with the Bauers. So we still enjoy being down on the track and being able to help out. At Bowling Green, I still unhook a lot of the sleds. There are two tracks up there and I hook on the south track.”

Today at 65-years-old, Sheldrick says he “considers it the best seat in the house right between the tracks.”