Oregon company’s (Omnitrac) tracked vehicles show up in war zones, farmers’ fields

When serial entrepreneur Dennis Wilkinson founded Omnitrac http://www.omnitrac.com/ a decade ago, he wasn’t sure what to expect from his little northeastern Oregon creation.

He had no idea that in relatively short order Omnitrac would become the world’s best-known manufacturer of something called "rubber-tracked systems," producing everything from secret unmanned military reconnaissance vehicles to deep-sea machines.

The Associated Press

http://www.magicvalley.com/news/business/index.asp?StoryID=4244

Or that Omnitrac’s modest offices would one day become the only spot in this mountainous and remote corner of Oregon where a visitor might rub elbows with weapons designers from the U.S. Department of Naval Surface Warfare and Alabama’s Redstone Arsenal.

Wilkinson, 63, owner and president of Omnitrac, started the company in 1994 simply because he liked vehicles that ran on rubber tracks, and he hoped to find a niche producing them for farmers to use in their fields. Despite those modest expectations, the company has over the years become the best-kept manufacturing secret in this corner of Oregon.

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Omnitrac LLC

P.O. Box 520

2210 East "L" Avenue

La Grande, Oregon 97850 USA

(541) 963-0139 office

(541) 963-0768 fax

http://www.omnitrac.com/

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"We had no idea there was an application there," he said of using unmanned, rubber-tracked vehicles in deep-sea and military operations.

Omnitrac recently designed and built a rubber-tracked system for a desk-sized military reconnaissance vehicle known as "Gladiator" that weighs 1,600 pounds and can smash through a 6-inch wall at 12 mph — which may not sound terribly fast until you consider it coming through the wall at you.

A smaller 3 mph version is designed to maneuver along interior hallways and climb stairs. Wilkinson said he was told the military machines could be outfitted with machine guns and flame throwers, as well as cameras.
photo
AP photo
Omnitrac designed and built the rubber-tracked system that propels this prototype bus, shown Dec. 31, 2003, in La Grande, Ore. The Omnitrac“rubber-track systems” are used in everything from secret unmanned military reconnaissance vehicles to deep-sea machines.

"If you have bad guys, you just send this little guy in there; his lights are blinking and he says, ‘How do you do, fellas,’" he said.

Omnitrac also has built tracks for 35 underwater machines that lay fiber-optic lines on the ocean floor at depths of 7,000 feet. The track systems for those submersible machines were commissioned by Perry Tri-Tech of Jupiter, Fla., and the machines tip the scales at 6 to 7 tons each, he said.

A similar tracked machine built with Omnitrac’s assistance was designed to retrieve underwater pipelines for repairs, said Wilkinson. His company also builds tracks for machines engaged in scientific research in Antarctica and to explore for oil on Alaska’s North Slope, he said.

"We don’t have much competition in the areas where our specialties are," Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson gets inquiries from time to time from treasure hunters who think they need submersible tracked vehicles to find wrecks on the ocean bottom, he said. Disabled people sometimes want tracks on their wheelchairs, and Omnitrac clients sometimes use tracked vehicles for environmental studies of proposed industrial sites and office complexes.

"Everything now has to be environmentally tested to see if the ground is stable and what is down there," said Wilkinson. "We can take a track system and drive across a yard and not leave a mark."

Most recently, Omnitrac completed initial testing of a 17-passenger "snowbus" built to transport winter sightseers around Yellowstone National Park. On a recent, snowy morning, Wilkinson brought the yellow snowbus to a halt in a knee-deep drift outside his company’s headquarters after a test run.

"It handles pretty well," he said of the hybrid machine, part school bus and part snowmobile. "I drove it over to the bowling alley for lunch. Caused quite a stir."

Omnitrac won a contract early in 2003 to design and mount four sets of rubber tracks on the bus for seasonal use at the national park. The prototype track drive system cost $100,000, but production models probably will run $35,000 to $45,000 a bus, he said.

Representatives of Goodyear, which manufactures the rubber tracks, said they would only support the project if Omnitrac were brought in to mount them on the buses, said Jim Bartel, president of Heart International, of Grand Blanc, Mich., which designs and makes the buses themselves.

"Dennis never flinched," said Richard Rief, vice president in charge of marketing for Heart International. "He went right ahead and did what he said he was going to do, and he did a heck of a job."

The tracked buses are designed to travel at up to 40 mph through unplowed snow carrying sightseers. Heart International developed a handicapped-accessible, wheeled version of the bus earlier this year for the National Park Service to carry summer visitors through Yellowstone.

Omnitrac has a contract with Heart International to mount tracks on at least two other Yellowstone snowbuses for winter use, said Wilkinson.

Heart International is heading up the development and eventual manufacture of the buses. Bartel hopes next winter 25 or more will be operating in Yellowstone.

The creation of the snowbus is timely. A recent ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., had the effect of reducing snowmobile numbers in the park to 493 a day from 950, and could eliminate the one- and two-person snow machines altogether by next winter, said Bartel. The effect could be to increase demand for bused trips.

But Omnitrac’s business fortunes aren’t tied to Yellowstone, either way.

Less exotic tracked machines by Omnitrac seed, fertilize and harvest such diverse agricultural crops as Australian sugar cane, grapes, blueberries, tomatoes and romaine lettuce, said Wilkinson.

Tracked vehicles are popular with farmers because they cause 50 percent to 75 percent less soil compaction than wheeled vehicles, he said.