During his career, Bud Stotler trained for major owners such as for Sagamore Farm and beginning in 1932, simultaneously for the Shoshone Stable of William R. Coe.
Hired in 1925, the operation was owned by Margaret Emerson, heiress to the Bromo-Seltzer fortune and widow of the also wealthy Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt who lost his life when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915.
[4] In 1939, Bud Stotler conditioned that year's American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly, Now What, even though a serious automobile accident in April 1939 forced him to temporarily hand over his Sagamore training duties to assistant, Lee McCoy.
[5] In December 1939, Stotler announced his retirement and resigned from Sagamore [6] but returned later in 1940 to train a small stable of horses for himself and other clients until 1944 when he signed with the major California operation of Charles Howard.
Joseph and Ada Stotler's daughter, Katherine, married jockey John Bejshak.