Jason Svonavec on What Competing in the Fendt High Stakes Series Means to a Small-Town Puller
Jason Svonavec
Tractor pulling is one of those sports that people either get or they do not. There is no middle ground. You are either the kind of person who hears a modified diesel engine scream at full throttle and feels something in your chest, or you are the kind of person who wonders why anyone would spend a Friday night watching tractors drag a weighted sled down a dirt track.
Jason Svonavec gets it. He has been around engines and heavy machinery his entire working life — from his years in heavy hauling between 1999 and 2010 to his current role running Fearless Leasing. But tractor pulling is different from work. It is pure, unfiltered competition, and for a guy who has spent decades in the equipment world, there is nothing quite like pushing a machine to its absolute limit just to see what it can do.
His tractor, Bootlegger, competes in the Pro Stock class in the Fendt High Stakes Series, one of the premier pulling circuits in the country. The Pro Stock class is not the one with jet engines bolted onto modified frames. It is the class where the tractor has to look and function like something you might actually see on a farm — with a whole lot more going on under the hood. Engine modifications, turbo tuning, chassis setup, weight distribution. Every detail matters because at this level, pulls are won and lost by inches.
For a small-town competitor, showing up to a national-level series is a commitment that goes way beyond the entry fee. There is the offseason build work. Teardowns after every event. The logistics of transporting a competition-ready machine to venues across the country. The fuel, the tires, the parts that need replacing whether you won or lost. This is not a cheap hobby, and nobody at the Pro Stock level is doing it for prize money alone.
So why do it? Because it is the purest test of preparation and execution that Svonavec has found outside of running a business. And honestly, the parallels are closer than most people would think.
In tractor pulling, the guy who wins is not always the one with the most horsepower. It is the one who prepped the best. Who checked every bolt, tested every system, and made the right adjustments for track conditions that day. It is the one who did not skip the teardown after the last event because he was tired. It is the one who noticed that the turbo was running a little warm and dealt with it before it became a problem on the track.
That sounds a lot like the equipment business. The contractor who maintains his machines does not have the sexiest fleet, but his stuff runs when it needs to run. The dealer who inspects every unit before delivery does not move the most volume, but his customers come back.
Bootlegger represents everything Svonavec believes about how you approach something you care about. You build it right. You maintain it obsessively. You show up prepared. And when it is time to hook up and pull, you trust the work you have done and let the machine do what you built it to do.
The Fendt High Stakes Series brings the best in the country to the same track. For a competitor from a small town running a family operation, that stage means something. It means the work you put in stands up against anyone, regardless of budget or backing. It means the kid who grew up around diesel engines and dirt roads can compete at the highest level of the sport and hold his own.
There is a certain pride in that. Not the loud, chest-thumping kind. The quiet kind. The kind where you load Bootlegger back on the trailer after a solid pull, drive home, and start prepping for the next one.
The 2026 season is coming up, and the Svonavec team is already deep into prep work. New adjustments, lessons learned from last season, and the same relentless attention to detail that defines everything Jason does — whether it is on the pulling track, at Banshee Farms with the Longhorn herd, or in the yard at Fearless Leasing.
It all comes from the same place. Do the work. Trust the process. And never show up unprepared.