Zamboni repairs? There's a place for that

SOMERSET, Wis. — It's not the mileage, it's the terrain.

Driving around in tight circles, scraping ice and spritzing water take a lot out of a machine, even one that travels only 5 mph. And when a Zamboni stops cold in its tracks pretty much anywhere in the Midwest, the phone rings at a small repair shop in western Wisconsin.

Call R&R Specialties, the Zamboni whisperers.

With apologies to the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, the iconic Zamboni is arguably the coolest motor vehicle on the planet. Invented to smooth ice scratched and scraped into submission by skates, the Zamboni is built tough. But what happens when the scraper stops scraping, the water stops spritzing and the Zamboni freezes up?

R&R handles routine maintenance, blade sharpening and emissions testing on Zamboni machines plus ice painting at rinks, but the company's technicians also make emergency calls. Like when a Zamboni quits in the middle of a weekend youth hockey tournament.

Any number of things can go wrong: crashing into the side of the rink, popping a tire, pucks getting stuck in the augur, engines seizing, brakes going out. And then there's stuff on the ice getting sucked into the Zamboni, like parts of hockey sticks, tape, lint, tire studs, hair, confetti, teeth.

"They call, we go," said R&R mechanic Bert Bertelsen, adding that often the problem can be fixed over the phone by trouble-shooting with rink maintenance folks.

New fuel-powered Zamboni machines sell for $100,000, and electric models retail for $125,000 to $130,000. While officials at many rinks schedule regular maintenance of their Zambonis — in fact, summer is the busiest time of the year for R&R — the repair shop stays busy all winter during hockey season with space to handle five machines at a time.

"The biggest issue with the machines — would you buy a $100,000 car and let 12 different people drive it in a week?" said R&R general manager Dale Hansen. "Often they're all young kids. That's the nature of the arena business. A lot of them are part-timers that work at night and weekends. It comes down to operator error that causes a lot of damage."

Explaining how a Zamboni works is akin to describing a cow's digestive system — it's a bit complicated with several unseen moving parts that ultimately get the job done. The guts of most Zamboni machines include water tanks, a long sharp blade, augurs, containers for snow, rubber squeegee, sprinkler pipes and a cloth towel bar to evenly distribute hot water on the rink surface. Many rinks use water that's been filtered and treated to remove impurities.

A California ice rink owner named Frank Zamboni invented the first ice resurfacing machine in the 1940s, greatly speeding up the pace of hockey games and putting smiles on hockey players and skaters around the world. While there are other resurfacing machine companies, Zamboni has become a registered trademark and the ubiquitous name for the huge box on wheels that parades around rinks and leaves behind a shiny sheen of smooth ice.

Hansen began repairing Zamboni machines in 1987 in Minnesota while working for a Zamboni distributor and moved to Somerset when the repair shop's current owner bought it in 1996. Somerset was chosen because of its location near the Twin Cities and other hockey hotbeds in the upper Midwest. R&R, which has eight employees, handles Zamboni repair and maintenance in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and North and South Dakota.

Located behind R&R Specialties is a Zamboni cemetery with 20 machines of varying ages and models; some are used to cannibalize parts and others may someday get refurbished and return to the ice. Among the vehicles in the boneyard is a one-of-a-kind 1966 Model L Zamboni.

When R&R mechanic Stue Bertelsen mentions what he does for a living, he frequently hears — really? Are there enough Zambonis in the Midwest that need fixing? Yes, there are. Roughly 75 in the Twin Cities alone.

"In this area people are fairly fascinated," said Hansen. Often people say "Oh, I'd love to drive a Zamboni. The other thing people don't realize is just how much work they are, just how much they break down."

This story was originally published March 2, 2015 at 12:00 AM.