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Power play
Dairyman Josh Watson revs up his weekends as one of the area’s top diesel truck pullers
| By Chris Villines |
9/28/2012 |
All the work. All the late hours. All the travel. All for something that takes 12 to 15 seconds, tops. And Josh Watson wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
Because when the Loudon dairyman’s 1,400-horsepower, 1-ton diesel truck pulls a 32,000- to 48,000-pound sled between 280 to 400 feet, it’s what he calls his ultimate “adrenaline rush.” Since 2005, Josh has spent many a weekend traveling from his family’s Watson Dairy Farm to diesel truck pulling events in East Tennessee and other locations across the Southeast. Behind the wheel of his powerful machine, the competitive juices get flowing for this normally laid-back farmer.
“I grew up watching smoker tractors,” says Josh, 34. “Dad took me to a pull in Louisville when I was about 12, and I had a blast. I thought I might have me a smoker tractor one day. Never did I dream that someone would start pulling with a diesel truck that we use on the farm.”
Josh says he’s “always been a diesel truck man,” so when he heard the sport that started in the northern states had made its way down south, he just had to give it a try.
“The first pull I went to was in middle Tennessee,” he says. “I tried it and got hooked right away. All I ever drove was diesel trucks since the early ’90s. I had one when it wasn’t cool to have one. Now everybody thinks they’ve got to have one.”
Between 15 and 20 times a year, Josh loads his 2006 Dodge Ram 3500 on a gooseneck trailer and heads to a pull along with his wife, Whitney, their two children, Jabe, 8, and Kate, 5, and a supportive throng of friends and family. While some of the pulls are tied to county fairs, others are stand-alone events. Either way, Josh knows there’s precious little time to prove himself.
“At most pulls, you get to run once and you go home,” he explains. “You do all this work for a 15-second pull, and then it’s over. It’s kind of funny. But at some pulls, you get the option to buy back in and pull twice. You just have to make sure you factor in some cool-down time for the truck because it’s not good for the engine.”
Josh competes in the modified — or outlaw — class, where pulls range in length, depending on the track’s setup.
“The old saying used to be that 300 feet was a full pull,” he says. “Every track is different, and the sled is always set different. I’ve pulled 280 feet, and my all-time high was 412 feet in Sweetwater. That was something else — I pulled the sled clear off the track, and my nearest competitor was only about 380 feet. I set the record that night.”
In the seven years that he’s been competing, Josh says he’s won his “fair share” of events, each of which pays anywhere from a few hundred dollars up to a couple thousand. But he says the satisfaction of winning outweighs any financial gain.
“Not to brag, but around here my truck will win most every time if it doesn’t break,” he says. “Now, if we go up to Indiana where there will be a lot more trucks, I’m just another stalk in the field. I just enjoy getting out there, seeing what my truck can do, and trying to win. It gives me something to do to keep me from getting burned out on the farm.”
As hard as Josh works to be the best on the track, he works just as hard on the farm, which he operates with father Robert, brother Caleb, and help from seven employees — six full-time and one part-time. The Valley Farmers Cooperative members currently milk 340 Holsteins, with their milk contracted to Mayfield, and grow soybeans, wheat, and silage corn on 1,100 owned and leased acres.
“I do all of the crop harvesting and planting, Caleb works with the cows, and Dad oversees the whole operation,” says Josh, whose oldest brother, Travis, is an assistant baseball coach at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala. “We work well together. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve managed to keep our heads above water. It’s all our family’s ever known, from my father to my grandfather to great-grandfather.”
No matter the generation, says Derald Wright, manager of Valley Farmers’ Loudon branch the Watsons have been highly regarded in the community. Robert currently serves on the board of the Co-op.
“They are hard-working, good, Christian people,” says Derald. “They want to be the best in everything they do, whether it’s on the farm or when it comes to their hobbies of truck pulling or hunting. And they support Valley Farmers Co-op very well. They purchase almost everything for their farm here if we sell it.”
When Josh isn’t tending to the farm’s crops, he’s working on his “side” business, Diesel Den Performance, which offers repairs and custom upgrades for diesel trucks. He and his full-time employee, Mark Longworth, service their customer base from a hilltop shop overlooking the farm.
“We started the business here at the farm, but we got so busy that I built this new shop last year,” says Josh, whose pulling truck sports the Diesel Den logo. “We don’t ever get slow. We stay covered up, and we got so busy that I had to hire Mark because I couldn’t do it all by myself. I feel like we always treat people right, and they always bring their business back to us.”
Whitney, formerly a physical therapy assistant, now keeps the books for Diesel Den while caring for the kids in her role as a stay-at-home mom. But with Josh’s coaxing, she has also tried her hand at diesel truck pulling.
“Josh built a truck to run in the Work Stock Class, and he wanted me to be the driver,” she says. “I’ve pulled three times this year, and I won first place at both the Greene County and Wilson County fairs. The first two times I pulled, Josh rode with me to coach me along because I don’t like to be thrown into something without knowing how to do it.
“When you get to the end of the track and all the nerves have passed, it’s a fun experience. I don’t know if I want to pull every time that Josh does because I like to just be a spectator sometimes, but I enjoy it. We’ll see what the future holds.”
While breaking in Whitney as a newfound pulling enthusiast, Josh says he knows that he’s in the sport for the long haul.
“I like the competition,” he says with a smile. “I like to get as much power as I can out of this ol’ diesel truck. People are amazed at what we can do with these things.”
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