Proving they deserve to be at the head of the pack for the second year in a row, NC State University’s Pack Pullers recently claimed the top spot at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) International Quarter Scale Tractor Student Design Competition, besting teams from 22 other universities across the U.S. and Canada.
Prior to its 2024 win as overall champion of ASABE’s annual competition in Peoria, Illinois, the Pack Pullers had never surpassed third place in 20 years of competing. This year’s win has solidified the student team’s sense of success.
“It’s very surreal,” says Silver Hyatt, Pack Pullers team captain and a senior majoring in biological engineering with an agricultural concentration. “Since last year was the first time NC State had ever won the competition, to win back-to-back is crazy! There’s a very elite group of schools that win repeatedly. Only nine unique teams have ever won over the 27 years this competition has been going on. It’s evident that NC State is here to stay within that elite group and that our win last year wasn’t just a fluke.”
Indeed, the Pack Pullers dominated the 2025 competition. In addition to earning the overall champion title, the team’s winning tractor, named Moonshiner in homage to the North Carolina tradition of moonshine-running vehicles, took first place in manufacturability, static design, durability, defense of design and overall performance. The team also placed second in maneuverability, sixth in team presentation and fifth in pulls.
Grant Ellington, associate Extension professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and Pack Pullers team co-advisor, says the team was bolstered this year with a number of returning students who were involved in last year’s tractor design.
“They had the experience and knew what it would take to win the competition based on the previous year’s effort,” he says. “Additionally, all the work they did during both semesters to design, build and especially test the 2025 tractor prior to the competition was tremendous.”
Ellington also credits support from the BAE department and CALS for ensuring the students had the tools to succeed, which included sending a second teamof students to compete as an X-team for underclassmen to gain experience. This was the first time the Pack Pullers competed with an X-team, expanding the team’s reach and impact.
“The overall objective of this competition is to better prepare students for the workforce by providing a hands-on engineering design challenge,” Ellington says. “They get to apply engineering and technology concepts from their formal coursework to solve a real-world design challenge in a team environment. As students work together designing and building a prototype tractor, they gain experience that develops their essential skills and confidence to succeed in their future careers.”
Hyatt says this year’s competition presented a significant design challenge with a brand new motor with a crankshaft oriented 90 degrees from the motor the team had previously used.
“This brought on a ton of new driveline changes,” she says. “We knew our designs were tried and true, so we focused on adapting to the motor change and continuing our quality of work from the past several years. Doing well last year allowed us to replicate that success and focus on other areas of improvement.”
But winning the competition is just the beginning of how participating in the Pack Pullers shapes students’ technical skills and sets them up for future success.
“I can’t put into words the tremendous things that being a part of the Pack Pullers has done for me. From developing presentation skills, to writing 25 pages of technical design details, to actively defending our design choices to industry professionals, the soft skills developed are unmatched,” Hyatt says.
“This is, of course, on top of the metal fabrication, CAD [computer-aided design] work, understanding manufacturing processes and designing systems to accommodate them. This competition was created to give engineers the skills they need to hit the ground running when they enter their jobs, and it does just that.”
This post was originally published in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences News.
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