Guestbook

Jack Nodwell On 26/05/2011

I must say that I am very impressed with the work put into this site.

My father, Bruce Nodwell, was the inventor of the Nodwell line of soft tracked vehicles and I founded and managed Foremost Industries for roughly 35 years. I retired and left Foremost in 2003.

I recently did a bit of editing to the Wikipedia site for Bruce Nodwell and linked in your "Nodwell" section, so as to illustrate the wide range of equipment.

In looking back, it is intersting how many varieties of off-road vehicles were designed over the years and how many companies failed to prosper. At Foremost, we did well for three decades due to major export efforts, with a major success in Russia.

In the early 1980s, our management group realized that the special vehicle line was not a sustainable business, let alone a growth business. The subsequent demise of the large all-terrain vehicle sales is due to three factors.
1. These machines are expensive and are of high maintenance, and companies don't like to invest in short usage, specialized machinery.
2. Whenever a new market was located, such as the Western Siberian oilfields, the oil companies build roads, so each new market goes away.
3. Even though the vehicles have low ground pressure, they do a lot of environmental damage.
Due to this realization, we started converting Foremost to a drilling rig manufacturer in 1988. The need for various drilling rigs always grows.
These days, remote rig assess is done using matting that can be laid down on the soft ground and then conventional equipment can drive right up to the rig, even during breakup. Environmental damage is small. I am a director of Strad Energy Services in Calgary. Strad now sells or rents a greater volume of matting than Foremost did in vehicles at its peak.
The world changes.
Thanks for capturing this interesting history of Unusual Off-Road Locomotion.
Cheers, Jack Nodwell

Bruno Nikodemski On 29/04/2011

One of the electronic designers on the GM/DRL & Boeing actual Lunar Rover, Roving vehicle.

Can any of you find some more links & info on wire-mesh tires, and elastic wheels. For historical reference.

Tyler Van Megen On 24/11/2010

I read you're article about the history of Foremost and Nodwell and wanted to thank you for the history and photos of the original designs. I found it very informative. Here at All-Track we have been building our own tracked vehicles since 1968 and was impressed to see our name listed in the article. We would appreciate if you would link that page to our website at www.all-track.ca

You can reach us at 1-800-583-8850 if you wish to talk to us about tracked vehicles.