Back in the early 2000's I was running the vehicle fleet for the local city. We were looking at options for snow removal from our downtown area, where they were using loaders to fill dump trucks, then hauling it to a dump site a couple miles away. I found that some of the companies making snow MELTERS for big cities and airports were making smaller portable units that might fit our needs, then found out that there was a manufacturer in the local area called Michigan Melters. They were working out of a hanger at the Gratiot County Airport between Alma and Ithaca, so I loaded up a DPW supervisor and we went down to meet them and take a look.

The crew brought out a machine and fired it up while the owner showed us 2 40' shipping containers full of machines that were being sent to Moscow on a contract with the Russian government. We walked into the office to warm up for a minute, and I saw some pictures of the V8 bike on the wall. Turns out that owner, "EJ", was EJ Potter. The guy with me had no clue what we were talking about, but my dad was familiar with him from the early days, and we'd gone to see him in the Allison-engined pulling-tractor days in the '70's (ever heard an Allison V12 pulling tractor in a hockey arena? You won't forget it...).

The machine was VERY basic, but worked well, and looked to be easy to operate and maintain (my biggest concern). They actually brought one up for us to demo, and we couldn't overload it. I figured we'd go from an 8-10 man crew for 8-12 hours for a 4" snowfall to a 3-man crew for 4 hours. As soon as the union saw those numbers they started throwing up roadblocks and we never bought a machine, but that's how I got to spend a couple afternoons standing around shooting the bull with the Michigan Madman.