That was fine as our tour was intended to be purely experiential, not a nuts-and-bolts breakdown of Skat’s processes. Michelle had volunteered to clear her schedule and walk us through the Skat-Trak headquarters with one key caveat, much of the proprietary processes couldn’t be photographed or documented. Until that time, I had never seen my father “geek out.” I still use your paddles on my Rhino,” he continued, producing a couple of photos hastily printed from his home computer that morning. “I had a shop that rented out jet skis, dirt bikes and ATCs in the ’80s. “I was one of your biggest customers,” my 71-year-old father boasted as he shook Business Office Manager Michelle Stuart-Thompson’s hand. Beginning with developing custom paddle tires for dune buggies, sand rails and ATVs, Skat-Trak stepped into offering impellers by the early 1980s. Over its 60-plus-years of manufacturing, the Stuart family has earned incomparable notoriety in both the worlds of personal watercraft and sand sports. These vats need to be kept circulating or will immediately harden. Spanning over half a century, the equipment inside is a hodgepodge of modern CAD-design computers, high-tech CNC machines, ancient Naval shipyard-grade Bridgeport presses and drills, to custom-designed tooling shielded from peering camera lenses.Įach component – be it an impeller, a stator or intake grate – starts as a wax mold before being dipped and baked several times to create the final ceramic mold. Yet, that is the history laden in Skat-Trak. The front office is clean and new with a bright marquee hanging above the front door that directly contrasts a faded and weathered hand-painted sign stretching across the facade of the original large aluminum warehouse out back, a few feet off of the side street entrance. The multi-acre facility perched off of the northern side of the Inland Empire’s 10 Freeway is an industrial version of the Winchester Mansion, a maze of cross-crossing expansions, additions and alterations that date the company’s near-60 years of business like rings on a tree. “I’m going,” my father insisted when I announced that I was scheduled to tour the Calimesa, California, headquarters of legendary Skat-Trak Performance Products. We spotted these still new-in-box 20-year-old props in the inventory. The history of Skat-Trak is still found throughout the company’s massive facility.
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