Pontoon Boat Guide

www.pontoonboatguide.com is the new pontoon boat authority and we thought it important to provide an overview of how today鈥檚 sleek, modern pontoon boats came about and who the major players in the new pontoon boat industry are. Pontoon Boat Guide鈥檚 staff will also write about the high-quality pontoon boat brandsthat you can expect to find in the marketplace and provide some comparison between the pontoon boats for sale of the past. Pontoon Boats of days gone were basically barges with cheap pontoon boat seats and flimsy pontoon boat decks. New pontoon boats of today cruise the lakes, rivers and water waysin luxury and style, just like a quality runabout.

There are several companies that lay claim to being the originator of the 鈥渕odern鈥?pontoon boat. Without stepping on anyone鈥檚 pride, it seems that several companies who had manufacturing capabilities started building pontoon boats in a very small way around the same time. Of these, Harris Flotebote, Princecraft, Lowe Pontoons and Cypress Cay Pontoons were some of the earliest.

People familiar with Princecraftpontoon boats tell the story of the owner of a store wanting a pontoon fish boat for his family.After they built the pontoon boats by hand, people on the lake saw them and wanted one. The family founded the company in northern Canada and called it Princecraft because of the region they were from. We suspect this may have been the case with many of the early pioneering custom pontoon boat builders. Lowe Pontoons 鈥?Lowe Boats of Lebanon, MO was making galvanized steel pontoon boats in the early 1970鈥檚 and sold to the Brunswick companies in the mid 2000鈥檚. Brunswick has since kept the new Lowe pontoon boat name and has expanded to become one of the leading manufacturers of custom pontoon boats in the industry. Harris Pontoon Boat Manufacturing of Fort Wayne, IN was a pioneering pontoon builder with the Harris FloteBote. In the late 1960鈥檚 Harris rocked the pontoon boat community by installing deluxe upholstered pontoon furniture on their pontoon boats. Cypress Cay Pontoons of Indiana was also a pioneering pontoon fishing boat builder. The founder of the pontoon company was widely accepted as one of the pioneering pontoon designers. Cypress Cay was an offshoot of a successful aluminum fishing boat companywho was later sold and split into aluminum boat and fiberglass boat divisions.

Today you can pay up to $50,000 for a top of the line performance tri tube pontoon boat with built in changing rooms, toilets, sinks, ABS helm stands and high horsepower engines capable of propelling your pontoon boat up to 50 miles an hour.

There are of course dozens of best pontoon boat companies building pontoon boats today and there are bound to be others that started early. Among them, Lowe Pontoons, Cypress Cat, Princecraft Pontoon Boats and Harris Floteboteis here today. We will continue to try and build up the history of this great boating past time and welcome any information you may have concerning pontoon boating. For more information on the latest pontoon boats, visit www.pontoonboatguide.com