During my time at Arctic Cat, I was fortunate enough to be part of many historic adventures that I now treasure as fond memories. Most of those revolved around two people: John Sandberg, originator of ArcticInsider, and Tom Rowland, owner of Thomas Sno Sports.
During the summer of 2018, I was invited on a trip to Aaron Johnson’s farm near Roseau, where Tom was going to purchase Arctic Cat’s very first forklift, which was built by Roger Skime. You can Read the Full Story Here.
It’s probably taken longer than Tom had wanted, but fast forward 6-ish years, and Thomas Sno Sports has mechanically restored Arctic Cat’s first forklift, and has put it to use once again to load/unload Arctic Cat snowmobiles at the dealership. (See videos below)
During a visit to Thomas Sno Sports this Fall, I was happy to see/hear, the forklift had been moved inside, and a major effort to get the unit running was underway.
At the time, the crew had stripped the bodywork down so they could get to the engine/transmission and had just installed a “new” rehabbed engine block. I wasn’t sure if I was more impressed with the forklift, the Prowler sitting next to it, or Sandberg’s old ArcticInsider ZR4000 XC race sled lurking in background?
What looks like any Prowler, this one is particularly special. Believe it or not, this was the very first snowmobile Blair Morgan purchased with his own money. Blair retired it to a woodline at his farm and reportedly told Tom, “I jumped the sh#t outta that thing!” Tom volunteered to restore it for Blair and enlisted the help of Aaron Scheele and Tucker Hibbert to complete it. (Damn. Cool.)
Above – Thomas Sno Sports has some of the best mechanics, and one of them, Zach Omara, Id trust to take with me to the moon to fix the space shuttle. Zach is young, but has a renaissance-man soul. He can fix anything, and was responsible for a fair amount of rehabbing the forklift back to life. It was only fitting to see him operate this rig in the video.
If you’re looking for a snowmobile, ORV, or just want to look at one of the coolest Arctic Cat collections in the midwest, come visit this guy, Tom Rowland, at Thomas Sno Sports in Ogilvie, MN.
Awesome article with awesome people and machines!
Good article, just neat stuff.
Grew up in the lumber business, and spent many thousands of hours operating forklifts. This article really made me smile!
Nice! glad to see this part of history back going again pretty darn cool! yeah Zack is great! they all are! they treat ya right!
A ’92 Prowler! Funny, as this was also my first “self purchased” sled. I think I started that sled 76 times that summer! I had every piece of purple from the CATalog hanging off that sled. Great memories!
Well done! Congrats to Tom and his crew for getting this machine back in action!
How ’bout that interview with Jhant??