Fond memories here. I was a Zamboni driver from the age of 16 to 19. I was the youngest driver at my local, municipal rink in metro Detroit which had one indoor and one outdoor rink. A pretty good gig that earned me admiration from lots of pint sized aspiring hockey players.
Driving it was fun. It was even more fun when you focused on how fast you could go vs how well the ice was resurfaced. (Did I mention I was 16?!) The mechanics of the machine were also very cool.
I'm a full-time SWE now, but I was still working part time at the rink pre-COVID because I still enjoyed the physical aspect of non-office work, but of course that's on hold for now. It's definitely the coolest job I've had, and I still list it on my resume because practically half the recruiters/interviewers I talk to are super interested and ask about it, especially if they're hockey fans.
> As the great sage Charlie Brown once said: “There are 3 things in life that people like to stare at: a flowing stream, a crackling fire, and a Zamboni clearing the ice.”
I literally didn't know that Zamboni was a brand name and thought all ice resurfacers were Zambonis until a week or so ago they're that dominate in that market.
For me, reading about a zamboni causes always a short thinking pause to identify its meaning, as in Czech, we call a zamboni a "rolba", because of... a name of a Swedish company. (This process is called genericization or apellativization.)
What strikes me about this story is how organically they grew their business, using the proceeds from fulfilling relatively prosaic market needs (first ice, then ice-skating rink, etc.) to fund the development of adjacent competencies. The lengthy time to market acted as a positive change agent, working hand in glove with the minute attention to detail refining the product to market fit, building a moat of competency before debuting. Instead of cutting 90 minutes to 60 with a machine that only scraped down the surface, the prototype solved the customers' problem in a very comprehensive manner.
I love seeing these kinds of organic growth business stories as they illustrate grit/perseverance, though that kind of business development is terribly out of fashion in the business press these days.
A continuity of small improvement iterations driven by founder and successor. A drastic contrast to the insatiable programme of "so I've won at ice rink maintenance, hand it off to some clerk, let's see where else I can find even bigger profits" that could have been the alternative.
By an Italian immigrant too! Not exactly from a country known for their connection to skating.
(to be fair, I'm Dutch so I can only speak for speed skating, not for ice hockey or figure skating, but I don't expect Italians to be much into that either)
We have a local rink in our town and I volunteered for years as a "hoser," part of a crew of volunteers that would shovel off the rink late at night and then spray a new layer of ice so that the kids would have a fresh surface in the morning. Every year, without fail, a local engineering student would show up while I was getting setup and ask if they could test their new "backyard Zamboni" on the rink (e.g. some variation on an upside down propane grill on wheels) and I would watch as they learned the painful lesson that there were not 20 MPH winds in the lab.
in related news: first night frost in the Netherlands this year has resulted in the first skating rink opening. In only one night, thanks to a new system based on nebulisers and isolating occluded air cement.
Didn't realize it was a family name until now. Part of me thought Charles Schultz invented a silly name for Snoopy's infatuation with driving the ice resurfacing machine.
It's crazy how much the original machines still resemble the latest models. Other than a little styling here and there, they pretty much still look like the original models.
Driving it was fun. It was even more fun when you focused on how fast you could go vs how well the ice was resurfaced. (Did I mention I was 16?!) The mechanics of the machine were also very cool.