Where to get a Snow Trac

[Lyndon]

Part1: This just applies to Snow Trac, Trac Master and Snow Master, westeraskmaskiner/AKTIV, Part 2 will be all makes of Snow Cats.

As 550 St4's were shipped to Alaska, roughly a quarter of the total production, it's a likely place to find one.They show up in the Anchorage Daily News, and the Fairbanks Daily New Miner. These 2 papers are the only ones that I've ever seen that have a columb for "Mushers" & a columb for "Hunting Vehicles". Alyeska, the trans alaska pipeline operator, had a fleet of these which they traded in for Tucker Snow cats in 1983 or there abouts. The dealer in Delta Junction bought most of the machines back up when they were auctioned off, fixed them up and resold them.

There is also an Alaska Equipment trader that has had one in it once or twice.

Perhaps the largest single user in the world of Snow Trac's was the Canadian phone company. This was a subsidy of the Canadian National Railways. Later it was devided into regional companies. Northwest Tell, in the Youkon and NW Territories, had a headquarters in Whitehorse. Their head engineer, said that at one point they had 200 machines, all parked together at their headquarters. This would be without a doubt the largest collection of machines ever assembled in one place. Alas I have not been able to obtain that photo, although the source was a very creditable one (Every resident of Whitehourse!) These machines were taken better care of than any others I had seen. I had pretty good luck just asking gas station attendents in Whitehorse, who had one?
The telephone co. headquarters for BC Tell, in St. George and Camloops would come in 2nd and 3rd place. The engineer at St. George was VERY knowlegable about ST4's, but the mechanics and head engineer at Whitehorse held the #1 spot in working knowlege of ST4's. The head engineer from Whitehorse, Rory Corniel has since retired, and they sold off the maintence division to private contractors. All the machines were auctioned off in 93 & 99. Locals who attended the Auction's would say stuff like;"Yeah, the Buffalo farmer in the west side of town bought 3 Snow Masters to tend his Buffalo farm" and other similar tales.

Between alaska and canada this accounts for more than half the entire production, so they are both good places to shop.
A bunch went to US Ski areas, but most didn't survive. Even though I saw loads of them at ski area's in New England, back in their 'Hayday', they didn't stay with a ski area long. They just were not heavy duty enough for that type of service. I've only successfully tracked down about 3 in New England, 20 years later.

The dealers in the US were: Twin Pines Equipment, in Boston, the US importer. A place in the Midwest that I can't remember the name of, an individual in West Yellowstone, and Skifac industries in Seattle. Canada had a dealer or two also. A place in Calgary made the replacement Brass sprockets and the tires for the Canadian Phone company. Good place to ask around or follow the news paper.

There is a Canadian Version of the Heavy Equipment trader, and I've seen St4's for sale there regularly.

 

[XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq]

Thanks for the good background Lyndon:

The telephone co. headquarters for BC Tell, in St. George and Camloops would come in 2nd and 3rd place.

One small correction:

I think it's Prince George (the third largest city in B.C.) that you are referring too and I know it is Kamloops. This should help anybody searching.

 

[Lyndon]

I'll be heading back up to Alaska this week and I'll be "On the Hunt" for ST4's. Besides the 2 old style Snow Trac's, the pristine "FBI rig", and my Tucker Kitten, which are all for sale, I'll be keeping an eye out for "parts" machines and Whole useable ones. There's this mine in NW Alaska that had several that may end up never being found, and getting them out would be a monumental project. If you can find Kotzebue on an Alaska map, then go inland by plane, there's a mine there that the owner has a bunch of them. He liked them because they fit in the cargo door of a DC 6. They will probably never leave, but who knows. I'll forward adds from the Alaska news papers to this site, via sattellite, directly from Prudhoe Bay(350 miles North of the Arctic Circle) where it's 30 below all the time! If you don't think 'Hell freezes over', then you've never been to Prudhoe Bay, and "were so far north we look south to see the 'Northern Lights" are the norm here. I know of one owned by a native in Nuiqsut, pernounced NEW ICK SUT, that was still operational (ST4) but there's no road to Nuiqsut. It's a native village of about 350 people,right on the edge of the National Petroleum Reserve. I've stayed in the town and eaten dinner with the Chief there. In the winter the Oil Companies build an Ice road there, but only the natives and Oil Company personell can drive on it. Most of the year it is only accessable by plane. There are probably as many sled dogs as residents there. If someone wants to drive up the ALCAN with me I'll be going up about every 6 weeks. I generally managed to spot at least one or two machines on every trip.

 

[Snowcat Operations]

How long will you be gone for? I would like to go at least once up into Alaska.

 

[Lyndon]

OK I see I never finished up this thread: When I first started collecting Snow Cat's I called every dealer in the US and Canada, and half the Ski area's in North America. Next I started calling Electric Motor repair shops....? That's right! There was always some old guy, "Old as Dirt" in almost every major city, that knew where every business was and it was always the Electric Motor Rewind Shop. >
The "Real Finds" were the machines that belonged to Power Companies and Phone Companies. These hardley ever got used and generally were not all beat up. The next best machines came from the Park & Forest Service. Ex- Ski area machines were near the bottom of the list, and EX-Hunter machines were BELOW the bottom of the list and usually not worth consideration for restoration.
Along the US/Canada border tended to be the best prices and as the seasons were shorter the farther south you go, the machines had less hours on them. Also the demand is proportional to the price, and in area's that the season is short there is less demand and consequently lower prices. AS you get into Northern Canada and Alaska the Price goes up.
For the serious Snow Cat Shopper a subscription to the Canadian Heavy Equipment Trader is worthwile investment. Good machines show up for low prices, again mostly in southern Canada. I used to subscribe and saw good deals there on a regular basis. Bombardier, Snow Trac, Raid Trac, Nodwell, and to a lesser extent Tucker and Thiokol.

 

[fogtender]

If I remember my Alaska history correctly, the first Alaska dealer was in Anchorage, "Alaska Marine and Equipment" in the early sixties. A famous Bush Pilot Don Sheldon (Book about him called "Wager with the Wind") almost froze to death when one he bought broke down out in the Wilderness out of Talkeetna Alaska if I remember well enough, and that was a major reason that they quit selling them.

The new dealership was then ESI (Equipment Services Inc.), located accross from Merrell Field, just east of the Anchorage Chrysler Dealership. ESI was doing really well selling/servicing them and then the owner of the Company had a bit much to drink one night and a telephone pole jumped out in front of him. His wife ran the company for a few more years but basically ran it into the ground with the bottle.

ESI was sold out to a Bert Shaw (he sponsered me when I was a kid in the Soap Box Derby in the 60's) who owned "Shaw Tool Rental" in Anchorage. He "Sorta" ran ESI for a bit as a Hobby since he has sold his rental company earlier, then sold it off ESI in parts. I remember going into the parts department with him in the early 80's, about 1982-3 or so, just before it was sold off, there was enough parts there to build a fleet of snowtracs still. The entire SnowTrac inventory was sold off at one time, I almost bought the entire batch then, but decided it didn't fit with my company at the time which was heavy equipment, so I bought the other equipment that was more related instead.

The Inventory has been sold to different people over the years and the parts went away one at a time. I understand that the balance of the inventory ended up in North Pole, Alaska, and was sold a couple of times there.... Don't know how much is left, but it is a fraction of what it use to be, but still a lot.

Anyway, just thought I would throw that out there... I have an Imp, so I don't need all those SnowTrac parts anyway....

As a side note, when I was 16, I started working Summers on a barge line in the late 60's that ran the KUSKOKUIM RIVER from Bethel to McGrath Alaska. We freighted a number of SnowTracs up to points along the river for mining companies and the like. They still may be there, but really costly to get out into the real world. To freight anything that you can find there, it needs to go down river in the summer to Bethel and then gets Freighted to Seattle then from points there. The other option is to have it flown into Anchorage at about $4,000.00 a pop or more. Makes it pretty hard to get a good deal and then keep it that way.