In 1953, Peterson shipped its first D7 SnoCAT to Thule Air Force Base in Greenland. Initially the Army Corps of Engineers had contacted Caterpillar about building a tractor that could walk on permafrost. Knowing the order would not be mass-produced, they referred the Corps to Peterson. By then, Caterpillar had come to recognize Buster Peterson (brother to founder Howard Peterson) and his Special Services crew, as a sort of West Coast design shop, using them frequently to put experimental ideas into iron quickly.
The first SnoCAT was a D7 with 4-ft wide low ground pressure tracks and an enclosed heated cab for subzero weather. After its initial field-testing in April 1953, the Corps ordered several more which were delivered in May 1954. The machines helped build airstrips along the DEW Line - the nation's Distant Early Warning System - built as protection against possible Soviet missile attacks during the Cold War. Subsequent machines were used as mule teams to supply exploration work in the Arctic and Antarctic polar caps. Later versions were used in snowbound areas in the United States as the design's value became more evident. The SnoCAT design was actually an adaptation of another machine which pioneered the low ground pressure (LGP) concept at Peterson. A 1960 issue of Goodyear's BIG Magazine explains:
" ... the low ground pressure tractor was born in Peterson's engineering dept. not as a snow-traveling vehicle, but in answer to a customer's need for a tractor that could crawl over stockpiles of wood pulp without sinking from sight."
The
wide-gauge tracks worked so well in the pulp mill that Buster decided to try them on the Army's Arctic request.
