Racing family stacking up wins

Story by Harold Raker

Photos by Robert Inglis

Doing an interview about his family’s stock car racing one afternoon last month, Andrew Yoder could see his 3-year-old son, River, enjoying himself on the front lawn of his uncle Jim’s home in the rolling hills of rural Snyder County.

Andrew may also have been looking at the next generation of Yoder Racing.

At 28, Andrew is the youngest of the successful Yoder family of race drivers. The others are his uncle Jim, 55, and Jim’s son, Dylan, 31. Jim and Dylan race as a team while Andrew, helped by his uncle Gene (Jim’s brother) run their own operation. Their shops are located about two miles apart between Selinsgrove and Middleburg.

Between the two race shops, the wins are piling up with no apparent end in sight.

Jim and Gene were neighbors growing up with engine builder Phil Miller. Miller and his dad talked Jim into racing and Gene joined him in the pits.

“I always said he’s the one I blame for getting me involved in this,” said Jim said with a laugh about Miller, who is one of his race care sponsors. “He got me involved in this and now I can’t quit.”

JIM YODER HAS RACED STOCK CARS FOR MORE THAN 35 YEARS AND HAS WON FEATURES IN STREET STOCKS, LIMITED LATE MODELS AND SUPER LATE MODELS AT TRACKS IN PENNSYLVANIA AND NEARBY STATES.

Nevertheless, they are having too much fun racing to think about quitting.

Jim, who started racing stock cars (street stocks and semilates) in the mid-1980s, moving into the super late models in 1991, doesn’t know how many wins he has, but the first one came 26 years ago, and he has won a race or two nearly every year since, but usually many more.

“I was keeping track for a while but I haven’t looked at it,” he said, “but it would probably be close to 100.”

All along, both Jim and Gene had an idea they would one day be joined on the track by their own sons.

Gene saw the potential in Andrew at a young age when the future late model standout started claiming checkered flags and track championships in a variety of go-kart classes.

“Andrew was good at it right off the bat, so we stuck with it, and it just went from there,” Gene said. “He had the knack for it.”

Gene knew Andrew was headed for the big tracks. In fact, “I wanted us to do it earlier.”

The first time they put Andrew in a super late model, a huge jump up from karts, Yoder entered the Chili 100 race at Clinton County Speedway and ran all 100 laps, finishing ninth. He followed that up by winning his first three races in the Econo class at Port Royal Speedway.

Dylan had his own kart when he was 7 or 8 and started racing at age 9 at Selinsgrove Raceway Park, located on the