Snowcat  A snowcat is an enclosed-cab, truck-sized, fully tracked vehicle designed to move on snow. Major manufacturers are Kässbohrer (Germany), Prinoth (Italy) and Tucker (United States). A snowcat dedicated to snow maintenance rather than transport is a snow groomer. Other terms are 'piste machines', 'trail groomers' (in North American English) or 'piste bashers' (in British English) because of their use in preparing ski trails ("pistes") or snowmobile trails. In addition to grooming snow they are used for polar expeditions, logging in marsh areas, leveling sugar beet piles, and seismic studies in the wild. Most snowcats, such as the ones produced by Bombardier or Aktiv in the past, have two sets of tracks, fitted with a Christie suspension or a Horstmann suspension. Others, like the Tucker Sno-Cat and Hägglunds "Bandvagn 206" vehicles, have a complex arrangement of four or more tracks. The tracks are usually made of rubber, aluminum or steel and driven by a single sprocket on each side, and ride over rubber wheels with a solid foam interior. Their design is optimized for a snow surface, or soft grounds such as that of a peat bog. The cabs are optimized for use in sub-zero weather or cold conditions worsened by wind chill, with strong forced heating and a windshield designed to be kept clear of internal and external ice or condensation through a variety of means such as advanced coatings, external scrapers (windshield wipers of a modified type), and internal ducts blowing hot air on the surface. The forerunners of the snowcat were the tracked "motors" designed by Captain Scott and his engineer Reginald Skelton for the Antarctic Terra Nova Expedition of 1910–1913. These tracked motors were built by the Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company in Birmingham. In the 1955–1958 Fuchs and Hillary Transantarctic Expedition, four modern snowcats were used, produced by the Tucker Sno-Cat Corporation of Medford, Oregon. These vehicles were highly modified for the purposes of the expedition. The name "snowcat" originates from the 1946 trademark by Tucker Sno-Cat Corporation. This specialized over-snow vehicle dominated the snow transportation market until the 1960s when other manufacturers entered the business. By then "snowcat" was such a common description that it was used to describe all over-snow vehicles (see generic trademark).