Antique tractor collection saved last month in a barn fire
A barn fire last month placed Rich Stuchal’s collection of antique tractors at risk, but “everything fell in place” to save all but one of them.
The fire was reported just before 10:50 a.m. March 17 at Stuchal’s barn on Browntown Road in Mercer Township as he was preparing to fix a flat tire on an old Minneapolis-Moline tractor he bought about a week earlier.
A retired farmer, Stuchal said he was working on the tractor in a shop that was converted from a milking parlor. It is attached to the large barn that houses the family’s collection of 26 antique tractors, field tractors, a skid loader and other equipment.
He said he left the shop to take a break. When he looked outside a short time later, he saw what he initially thought was steam coming from the eves.
“The closer I got, I realized it was fire,” Stuchal said.
He said opened a main door, but couldn’t see anything through the smoke. He called 911.
His son, Cory Stuchal, who runs the farm, came with a couple of employees to help.
Together with others they managed to remove the rest of tractors from the barn before the smoke became too heavy to continue.
He credited the 911 dispatcher he talked to for asking enough questions to realize more than one fire department might be needed to extinguish the fire.
Numerous volunteer fire companies responded and helped remove the rest of the tractors as they put out the fire. However, the Minneapolis-Moline he was working on was destroyed, he said.
He said he jokes with people who ask him about the tractor by telling them, “I hadn’t bonded with it yet. It hadn’t been here long enough to bond with.”
He said Minneapolis-Moline stopped manufacturing tractors around 1972.
“These were antique collector tractors. No production tractors were involved. It was just a hobby building,” Stuchal said.
A couple of tractors in the barn had minor, superficial damage. The roof and almost half the roof trusses in the barn will have to be replaced, he said.
“When you step back and look at what could have been, everything fell in place,” Stuchal said. “The 911 operator asked enough questions and sent extra fire companies. The response was quick. Everything worked right.”
Even the wind helped by blowing in a direction that prevented the fire from spreading toward the tractors, he said.
Stuchal said he began collecting tractors after he sold his cattle in 2012. He said his father-in-law started the farm, which his son and daughter, Nikole, now operate.
