Winter season has arrived. Everybody who has ever been skiing that slopes need to be prepared for a smooth piste. This is done by ‘’Pistenbully’s’’, a bulldozer like snowpusher with carterpillar tracks. In German this type of machine is named ‘’Pistenraupen’’. Hardly anyone knows that Lely was one of the first who put a Pistenbully on the market in 1968. A nice restored and fully operared Lely ‘’Pistenbully’’ can be seen in the Lely museum. Till a few years ago this machine was still active in snow rich winters in Gruibingen, near Stuttgart. Did you know that all ski pistes of the Winter Olympics 1972 in Sapporo (JP) were preparated by a dozen Lely Pistenbully’s?  In total some 300 were built.

The history of the Lely Pistenbully started in 1967 when a German inventor needed a manufacturer for his new invention, necessary for riding with carterpillar tracks on a slope. The invention Lely added to the Pistenbully was a small secundary plate on the tracks to avoid sliding of the slope when not straight aligned, see left picture. If you will go skiing this winter, look at the tracks in the snow a Pistenbully has left and you may see a trace of this Lely invention.

What happened to the Lely Pistenbully? In 1970, the Lely Dechentreiter factory was taken over by Fendt and Fendt kept on producing these machines with the Lely design till mid 70. Then their machines were outperformed by a competitor Kassbohrer (they actually came up with the name ‘’Pistenbully’’) and Fendt stopped the production of the Lely designed range. For more info, see the link.