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Jan Leonard, now sales director of Skytrac, has been in the lift business for 43 years. He ran several companies, including Doppelmayr, and has been involved in the installation of 800 new lifts, and hundred of modifications, rebuilds, and relocations. That covers a significant portion of the chair lifts operating today.

SAM interviewed Jan to explore his career in the industry.

SAM: How did you get started in the lift business?
Jan: As a Civil Engineer just out of college in 1969, I worked at American Bridge in Pittsburgh, building big bridges. In 1971, I went skiing at Killington, and happened to have Dave Wilcox (longtime Killington manager) as my ski instructor. I thought lifts were a neat thing, since they involved engineering in a remote, hostile environment. I joined Hall Ski Lift that year. When Hall ran into financial issues, I moved to the Thiokol Logan Division in Logan, Utah, which built snowcats and was getting into the lift business. That was late 1973. Thiokol, which was a huge chemical and aerospace company, decided to leave the resort business in 1975. Mark Ballantyne and I bought the lift designs from Thiokol and started CTEC (Cable Transportation Engineering Co.; too much of a mouthful, so we abbreviated it) in 1976, and John DeLorean bought the snowcat business.

SAM: What was it like back in the day?
Jan: When I started with Hall, the equipment was all pretty simple, and there was little variation from one installation to another. We could do a complete engineering package and be ready for production in one day. Same at Thiokol.

SAM: What are the biggest changes you have seen?
Jan: The widespread adoption of detachables in the late ’80s. The first U.S. installation was in 1981, but it took time for the design to catch on. Also, the development of the ANSI code. In the 1960s the code was a little booklet, 1/8-inch thick. Now it’s 5/8-inch thick. But a lift is still a lift—it’s no whiz-bang anti-gravity transportation system.

And third, ski area owners then were self-made individuals who did everything at the ski area. Owning a ski area was a real heart-felt challenge to these guys. I don’t remember any MBAs running ski areas back then.

SAM: What is your favorite part of the job?
Jan: Interaction with ski area personnel and selling equipment—the challenge of taking their lift dreams and making them a reality. But I am also very competitive—I don’t like losing! The thrill of getting a sale is phenomenal.

SAM: What are your favorite accomplishments?
Jan: Tops was taking a small company, CTEC, and building it up (along with Mark) into a major manufacturer with more than 450 employees, and having it last more than 30 years, competing with the Europeans. It takes drive, sacrifice and love of what you are doing to succeed.

As far as a project, rebuilding the Mad River Glen Single Chair in 2007. No other area, or lift company, could have done it. Anyone else would have just torn it down. But Mad River wanted to preserve its iconic nature, and lift, and asked us to do it. We stayed true to the original design as much as possible. One example: the old lattice towers with riveted connections. Everyone else wanted to remove them, believing the rivets were loose and dangerous. Well, rivets are one of the best fabrication connections ever developed—thousands of railroad bridges are out there with riveted connections. This was one of many instances when my background with American Bridge came into play. We inspected all of the rivets on the single chair and found them sound. Then, we designed a brand new single chair using our standard grip. We used an old spoke line sheave design from the late ’70s to replace the existing sheaves. It all looks like the original design. I am really proud of this accomplishment.

We also built the first “chondola.” The Europeans want to make everyone believe they invented the chondola—a version was done at Big Mountain, Mont.—but that’s not the case. We built the very first real chondola at Telluride, Colo., in 1992.

SAM: What makes lift profiles so satisfying?
Jan: Laying out a lift line, determining the placement of the towers, is a “black art.” Every lift is different, and even small lifts have their challenges and quirks. There are so many variables that enter into the layout of every lift. Lift capacity, lift speed, lift configuration—type of chair, gondola, etc.—tension (minimum and maximum) in the lift system, span lengths between towers, sag of the haul rope between towers, variable loading conditions from an unloaded lift to a loaded lift, tower heights, clearance of chairs over the terrain, drive friction ratios of unloaded to loaded lift, friction of the rope line loads, it just goes on and on! All of these items and more are constant considerations in laying out a lift profile. I think I am good at it.

SAM: What’s your greatest memory?
Jan: I have a few. When I worked for Vic Hall, I tried a slogan on him: “Hall Ski Lifts, let us ‘Hall’ your ass up the mountain.” He was not impressed. Also, Yan Kunczynski, Boris Vilhar, and myself in a car trunk, being driven by Hank Lunde at the 1981 NSAA Convention in San Diego. And more generally, the pressure the big guys placed on us to finish a lift on time.

SAM: Who’s your favorite character/mentor?
Jan: Yan, Vic Hall, Leroy Schultz. Not a lot to be said about Yan that has not been said already. He certainly created a huge presence in our industry. Vic Hall, just a great, very conservative individual and engineer. Leroy Schultz was the major influence during my time at Thiokol. Leroy also loved the lift industry and the people involved in it.

SAM: What do you expect the future of the lift business will look like?
Jan: It will always be an up and down industry—pun intended. We had years in the 1980s and ’90’s where we, CTEC alone, built 20 to 25 lifts. Now we are lucky to see 20 new lifts in all of North America. But that could change.