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The road Thomas J. Scheckel followed
to Quarter Horse racing prosperity was neither yellow nor brick. In fact, much of it was rocks and dirt. Yet it provided the Bellevue, Iowa horseman with the means to successfully compete in the racehorse industry.
Tom still calls himself a farmer by heart. Yet it was construction — specifically of highways and interstates — in which he earned his living.
“I did construction for more than 50 years,” he says. “I owned a heavy-equipment company from 1974 until 2022. I tried to retire once but customers kept me busy doing work.”
Over the years, Tom also owned well over a dozen farms and a livestock sale barn, and did livestock, farm, and household
auctioneering as well. But he always found time for horses. Since getting his first at age five — a little white Welsh pony — he’s been active in many equine flavors, from draft horses to halter, from cutting to reining to racing. Although he has owned Thoroughbreds in the past, he now raises and races strictly Quarter Horses.
He has earned or tied for multiple Leading Owner titles at Canterbury Park in Shakopee, Minnesota, and Prairie Meadows in Altoona, Iowa, and as this issue goes to press, he holds lifetime AQHA stats of 134 firsts, 131 seconds, 140 thirds from an even 1,051 starts — 38.5% in the money — with over $3 million in earnings.
Scheckel Family Home/ Farm of 92 Years.
HIS EQUINE ROOTS
Tom’s parents, Odello and Ila, planted the horse-business seed in Tom as well as in his brothers, who are also involved in the industry.
After graduating from high school in Bellevue, where he still lives on the family farm, he worked for someone else for four years — long enough to save for and buy his first piece of heavy equipment. “I used to do a lot of farm work but that slowed down in the mid- 80s when interest rates got high,” he says.
He started bidding contract work, which led to highways. “We did site work — any major earth-moving projects — everything from roads to landfills to the construction of ethanol plants,” he adds. Rather than being
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