KARLSTAD, Minn. — When Matt Brazier started doodling in class one day as an 11-year-old who was “bored in school,” it would have been hard to imagine that his sketch of a pickup truck with tracks would blaze the trail for one of the most successful companies in northwest Minnesota.
That would be Mattracks, the Karlstad-based company that specializes in manufacturing rubber track conversion systems for vehicles.
Name a vehicle, whether for work, play or somewhere in between, and Mattracks has probably made tracks for it. The company also makes non-driven tracks for trailers and similar implements. Founded by Matt’s dad, owner and CEO Glen Brazier, based on his son’s long-ago doodling, Mattracks this year marks its 30th anniversary.
As business stories go, they don’t get much more colorful than that.
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“I used to play with a lot of Legos, and build things, and my dad was always building things,” Matt Brazier, now 43, said. “I drew a pickup with tracks, he saw it and away we went.
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Glen Brazier, who owned and operated National Transmission stores in Thief River Falls and Bemidji at the time, spent the next few years engineering and developing prototypes before gaining a patent. The first Mattracks — named, of course, after Matt — went on sale to the public in 1994. The company started in Thief River Falls, Matt Brazier said, before moving to a small shop in Greenbush, Minnesota, and relocating to Karlstad in 1995.
“My dad was a mechanic and fixed transmissions,” Brazier said. “He’s built gyrocopters, airplanes ... you name it.”
Brad Dokken / Grand Forks Herald
Expanding lineup
The first Mattracks products targeted the recreation market, but the company today has expanded its product line to more commercial and even military applications, said Michelle Gjerde, Mattracks marketing manager. Mattracks is “constantly innovating new products” to stay ahead of the competition, Gjerde said.
“Some of our newest tracks are for tractors, skid steers, sprayers, we’ve got some new row crop tracks — so whatever innovations have been on the ag side,” she said. “But we do have some new tracks for ATVs and UTVs that are in prototype mode right now.”
Mattracks products can be installed on most vehicles in an hour, Gjerde said, compared with up to 15 man-hours to install some of the competitors’ products on large farm implements.
“Ours is designed to be as easy as changing a tire,” she said.
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The sheer number of products also sets Mattracks apart, Brazier says.
“Most of the competitors have two models,” he said. “We have 178 different models. We build tracks for absolutely anything. Custom, you name it.”
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