Chris Schroeder was at the wheel when he felt something go wrong.
It was the Cashton-based Krazy KW crew’s second hook of the weekend in Hutchinson, Minnesota. The team of Schroeder and Chris Mlsna took first on Friday night, but a torn-up differential during night two would send them to fourth place in the standings overall.
After the incident in Hutchinson on June 13, Schroeder and Mlsna spent last weekend replacing the mangled piece to prepare for the Budweiser Dairyland Super National Truck and Tractor Pull in Tomah.
The Tomah Tractor Pull serves as their “home” pulling event.
Compared to the other five events they attend around the Midwest in Ohio, Minnesota, and Iowa, the 30-ish-mile trip to Tomah is like walking around the block.
“It’s the most local pull we do,” said Mlsna.
Schroeder says one of the best parts of pulling in Tomah is making a decent pass in front of their fan section.
“The windows are open, I take the helmet off, and you can hear them screaming,” said Schroeder.
But last weekend, it was the differential that was screaming.
MECHANICAL DREAM TEAM
Thankfully, Chris and Chris know some guys who have worked on diesel trucks for quite some time. Themselves.
“We buy old parts. We do all the work. We do everything,” said Schroeder.
Mlsna, also known as “Diesel” according to the embroidery on his team shirt, made a career of working on semi trucks after graduating from Cashton High School. After attending Western Technical College, he started working in the garage for Martin Milk Service and Warehousing in Wilton. He’s been there for 20 years.
“Scrappy” Schroeder’s path after CHS led him into construction, but he eventually found his way into driving semi. He hauls cattle full-time with his own truck and company ‘Stampede Express’.
The two knew each other in high school, but eventually became roommates, along with a couple of other guys, which is when their friendship solidified.
In 2008, the two were introduced to semi truck pulling in Norwalk. They bought their rig later that year and started officially competing in 2009.
In their search for the right truck, Chris and Chris looked all over, and even traveled to the east side of Wisconsin twice but never liked what they saw.
Until Mlsna’s boss at Martin said he had an old Kenworth in the shed.
It was exactly what they were looking for.
They removed the sleeper cab, shortened the frame, and covered the 80’s-esque brown paint job with a sleek and shiny black coating, amongst many other mechanical upgrades to make it withstand each pull.
The whole transformation process took about six months or “a lot of weekends and late nights,” said Mlsna.
When they first started the project, they said if it didn’t go well they could always revert it back to a work truck. They were even able to drive it on the road to get to first handful of hooks. That’s not the case these days.
“There’s so much horsepower now, it would hate itself,” said Schroeder.
“It was probably 500 to 600 horsepower back then,” said Mlsna.
“Now we’re probably over 3,500,” said Schroeder.
Every year, they added something new, or used, to the truck to increase the performance but felt they were always a step behind the competition.
“We’re pretty much to the point, other than the turbocharger, we got pretty much everything everybody else does,” said Schroeder.
Now, the 1985 Kenworth W900 B Model, powered by 3406 C-Model Caterpillar, is their workhorse which took them just shy of first place in the overall National Tractor Puller Association standings last year.
In 2025, Krazy KW finished just 2.5 points behind champion Pat Eilen’s Just Passin’ Thru in Class, in the NTPA Super Semi class.
In total, Krazy KW ended up finishing first on four different hooks last year. It was their most successful season at the super national level – so far.
“To be honest, I never thought that’d ever happen,” said Schroeder.
“We thought we’d sneak one or two out,” said Mlsna.
“We just kind of accepted that they’re probably going to beat us,” said Schroeder. “And then we started winning.”
Chris and Chris say there is room for improvement, mechanical-wise. With a new differential, the two are hopeful that no grinding noises will take place this weekend, but neither will be behind the wheel if anything goes wrong.
FAMILIAR FOE TAKES THE WHEEL
Long-time puller Al McDowell is slated to take the Kenworth down the track this weekend. Schroeder and Mlsna say it was a bucket list item for McDowell to drive at Tomah, so they made it happen.
In their early days, Chris and Chris competed against McDowell, who was driving a ‘78 International Transtar Cabover.
“He was whooping on us for two years,” said Schroeder.
Eventually, they started “whooping” on McDowell for a couple years. It would be in 2013 or ‘14 that Krazy KW took off, almost quite literally, and had to move up in classes.
They say McDowell helped them get started and they’ve remained friends ever since.
“He got us pointed in the right direction,” said Schroeder. “‘What to do’, ‘what not to do’ kind of thing.”
In Tomah, guest driver McDowell and Krazy KW will pull on Friday night in the third session, which starts at 7 p.m.
If things go well, which means if things don’t break, they’ll be competing on Saturday night as well, in the second-to-last class.
Last year in Tomah, they took fourth place on their first hook and then second the next night.
While they would like to repeat or improve on their success this year, their true goal is to...
“Quit breaking stuff,” said Schroeder.
