Founded in 1965 and based in Carson City, Nevada, the company built at least 200 fixed-grip chairlifts,[citation needed] as well as 31 high-speed quads.

[1] The company's lifts have been involved in the deaths of five people and the injury of at least 70, the worst record of any ski-lift maker operating in North America.

After a series of equipment failures, Yan Lifts were outlawed in certain states including California and Colorado.

[2] Eventually, Yan Lifts manufactured new track and cables for the Angels Flight funicular, but the company, now called YanTrak, went out of business in 2001 after a major accident.

[3][4] The last detachable chairlift made fully designed and built by Yan, La Roca, located at Espot Esquí, closed in 2019 after failure leading to one of the chairs falling off the line occurred.

Lift Engineering was founded by Janek Kunczynski, a Polish immigrant and former ski racer who initially worked at Poma.

Kunczynski was known for dining with prospective clients (après-ski) instead of just simple negotiating, and would sketch plans out on paper napkins.

The lift also developed the same grip problems that occurred on the Yan high-speed quads, and ceased operation in 1996.

Despite questions about safety, Yan managed to sell a total of 31 high-speed quads in the United States and Canada.

[citation needed] On April 4, 1993, a 9-year old boy was killed and another child injured when loose bolts and a subsequent deraillment caused two chairs to stack up on Sierra Ski Ranch’s Slingshot lift.

Sierra Ski Ranch’s marketing director would later state, “we found they just didn’t withstand the test of time” when the company committed $6 million to replace its three Yan detachables in 1996.

[citation needed] These were designed so that in order to stay connected to the cable, the chair had to be subject to gravity.

[citation needed] Following the accident at Whistler, and reports of grip-slipping at a plethora of other mountains, 15 resorts spent millions of dollars either upgrading, or completely replacing their combined 31 detachable quads in the United States and Canada.

The redesign was ordered by a group of British Columbia and Alberta ski resorts that included Silver Star and Lake Louise.

Many resorts suffered greatly from the economic burden of having to replace their workhorse lifts, such as contributing one million dollars in retrofit costs to Schweitzer's 1996 bankruptcy,[16] and Sun Valley who had 7 Yan High Speed Quads.

In 2019, the second last Yan high speed quad La Roca, located at Espot Esqui in Spain, suffered a catastrophic failure leading to one of the chairs falling off the line.

There are still many fixed grip lifts around the U.S. and Canada that are made by Yan, with one more in Val D'Isere, France(The Mont Blanc triple).