I recently purchased a 1979 Lite-Foot snowcat from a cabin owner in Salt Lake City, Utah.
It's seems that information is very scarce on these cats and I've been doing some research to gather as much as I can.
The original builder, Bill Salt, has past away, but I have had some great conversations with Kevin Smith who partnered with Bill and knows alot about the origins of these great machines.
Here is a little history that Kevin sent me:
"
OK, here's a history lesson for you
.
Bill Salt owned and operated an ornamental iron business and built these cats more or less as a hobby. He used the old weasel steering differential and modified the drive axles to gain some width. The engines and transmissions came from wrecked vehicles and although he seems to have favored the 250 cid Ford, I've come across some 300 cid sixes and also a Chev or two. He would hand fabricate the cabs and later he made a fiberglass cab.
Bill didn't assign serial numbers or keep records of what components went into which cats but if I had to venture a guess I would say he built somewhere in the neighborhood of around twenty five cats over about a 20 year period. Most of Bill's customers were cabin owners using the machine for winter access.
The early logo was hand painted on the front of the cats and looked like this:Lite-Foot
In 1991 I came into the picture. Bill was trying to sell his "snow cat business" and it looked and sounded like a fun way to make a living. I bought Bill's equipment and inventory and rented his shop from him. He tutored me and we built one machine together. It was hydrostatic drive but used Bill's cab, chassis and tracks. Bill built a decent machine and he had a pretty good "following" but I could see some changes were needed if I was going to sell this machine to utility companies. I continued to use the Lite-Foot name but changed the logo.
Over the next three years I re-designed the Lite-Foot to better target the telcom and utility market and it continued to evolve for another three or four years. In the process I developed a hydrostatic machine that performed extremely well in the dry powder we have here in the western U.S. and as our reputation grew so did the business.
LMC (previously DMC and prior to that Thiokol) was struggling to stay in business at the time and eventually closed their doors which put additional pressure on us to grow the business. Our overhead was low, we had no debt and I was hesitant to change that. As luck would have it PistenBully was looking for a utility machine to fill a void in their product line. They approached me in 2005 and after considering several options we sold the Lite-Foot design to PistenBully in 2006.
The name was changed to PistenBully Scout and I spent the next year working with the incredible team of people at PistenBully USA in Reno, NV., the PistenBully dealers throughout the U.S. and some great people at the parent company in Germany.
After my non-compete agreement expired I started my present business building tracks. While my focus is on complete track sets for popular machines no longer in production I also specialize in fabricating or duplicating obsolete parts such as the track rollers for the older Tucker Snocats.
I hope you find this enlightening and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about your Lite-Foot. I'll do my best to answer them.
Regards,
Kevin Smith
R V Specialties, Inc.
928 W. South Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84104
(801) 355-4171
litefootsnowcats@aol.com
www.snowcattracks.com "
So far, I am really happy with the quality of this machine and curious about others that folks might have.
If you know anything about them or have one, please document it here for people to reference.
It's seems that information is very scarce on these cats and I've been doing some research to gather as much as I can.
The original builder, Bill Salt, has past away, but I have had some great conversations with Kevin Smith who partnered with Bill and knows alot about the origins of these great machines.
Here is a little history that Kevin sent me:
"
OK, here's a history lesson for you
Bill Salt owned and operated an ornamental iron business and built these cats more or less as a hobby. He used the old weasel steering differential and modified the drive axles to gain some width. The engines and transmissions came from wrecked vehicles and although he seems to have favored the 250 cid Ford, I've come across some 300 cid sixes and also a Chev or two. He would hand fabricate the cabs and later he made a fiberglass cab.
Bill didn't assign serial numbers or keep records of what components went into which cats but if I had to venture a guess I would say he built somewhere in the neighborhood of around twenty five cats over about a 20 year period. Most of Bill's customers were cabin owners using the machine for winter access.
The early logo was hand painted on the front of the cats and looked like this:Lite-Foot
In 1991 I came into the picture. Bill was trying to sell his "snow cat business" and it looked and sounded like a fun way to make a living. I bought Bill's equipment and inventory and rented his shop from him. He tutored me and we built one machine together. It was hydrostatic drive but used Bill's cab, chassis and tracks. Bill built a decent machine and he had a pretty good "following" but I could see some changes were needed if I was going to sell this machine to utility companies. I continued to use the Lite-Foot name but changed the logo.
Over the next three years I re-designed the Lite-Foot to better target the telcom and utility market and it continued to evolve for another three or four years. In the process I developed a hydrostatic machine that performed extremely well in the dry powder we have here in the western U.S. and as our reputation grew so did the business.
LMC (previously DMC and prior to that Thiokol) was struggling to stay in business at the time and eventually closed their doors which put additional pressure on us to grow the business. Our overhead was low, we had no debt and I was hesitant to change that. As luck would have it PistenBully was looking for a utility machine to fill a void in their product line. They approached me in 2005 and after considering several options we sold the Lite-Foot design to PistenBully in 2006.
The name was changed to PistenBully Scout and I spent the next year working with the incredible team of people at PistenBully USA in Reno, NV., the PistenBully dealers throughout the U.S. and some great people at the parent company in Germany.
After my non-compete agreement expired I started my present business building tracks. While my focus is on complete track sets for popular machines no longer in production I also specialize in fabricating or duplicating obsolete parts such as the track rollers for the older Tucker Snocats.
I hope you find this enlightening and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about your Lite-Foot. I'll do my best to answer them.
Regards,
Kevin Smith
R V Specialties, Inc.
928 W. South Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84104
litefootsnowcats@aol.com
www.snowcattracks.com "
So far, I am really happy with the quality of this machine and curious about others that folks might have.
If you know anything about them or have one, please document it here for people to reference.