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Caterpillar Inc.
Caterpillar Inc. is an American construction, mining and other engineering equipment manufacturer. The company is the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment. In 2018, Caterpillar was ranked number 73 on the Fortune 500 list and number 265 on the Global Fortune 500 list. Caterpillar stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Caterpillar Inc. traces its origins to the 1925 merger of the Holt Manufacturing Company and the C. L. Best Tractor Company, creating a new entity, California-based Caterpillar Tractor Company. In 1986, the company reorganized itself as a Delaware corporation under the current name, Caterpillar Inc. It announced in January 2017 that over the course of that year, it would relocate its headquarters from Peoria, Illinois, to Deerfield, Illinois, scrapping plans from 2015 of building an $800 million new headquarters complex in downtown Peoria. Its headquarters are located in Irving, Texas, since 2022.
The company also licenses and markets a line of clothing and workwear boots under its Cat / Caterpillar name. Additionally, the company licensed the Cat phone brand of toughened mobile phones and rugged smartphones from 2012 to 2024. Caterpillar machinery and other company-branded products are recognizable by their trademark "Caterpillar Yellow" livery and the "CAT" logo.
The company traces its roots to the steam tractor machines manufactured by the Holt Manufacturing Company in 1890. The steam tractors of the 1890s and early 1900s were extremely heavy, sometimes weighing 1,000 pounds (450 kg) per horsepower, and often sank into the earth of the San Joaquin Valley Delta farmland surrounding Stockton, California. Benjamin Holt attempted to fix the problem by increasing the size and width of the wheels up to 7.5 feet (2.3 m) tall and 6 feet (1.8 m) wide, producing a tractor 46 feet (14 m) wide, but this also made the tractors increasingly complex, expensive, and difficult to maintain.
Another solution considered was to lay a temporary plank road ahead of the steam tractor, but this was time-consuming, expensive, and interfered with earthmoving. Holt thought of wrapping the planks around the wheels. He replaced the wheels on a 40 horsepower (30 kW) Holt steamer, No. 77, with a set of wooden tracks bolted to chains. On Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1904, he successfully tested the updated machine plowing the soggy delta land of Roberts Island.
Contemporaneously, Richard Hornsby & Sons in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, developed a steel plate-tracked vehicle, which it patented in 1904. This tractor was the first to be steered using differential braking of the tracks, eliminating the forward tiller and steering wheel. Several tractors were made and sold to operate in the Yukon, one example of which was in operation until 1927, and remnants of it still exist. Hornsby found a limited market for their tractor, so they sold their patent to Holt five years after its development.
Company photographer Charles Clements, looking at the machine's upside-down image through his camera lens, commented that the track rising and falling over the carrier rollers looked like a caterpillar, and Holt seized on the metaphor. "Caterpillar it is. That's the name for it!" Some sources, though, attribute this name to British soldiers who had witnessed trials of the Hornsby tractor in July 1907. Two years later, Holt sold his first steam-powered tractor crawlers for US$5,500, about US$185,000 in 2024. Each side featured a track frame measured 30 inches (760 mm) high by 42 inches (1,100 mm) wide and were 9 feet (2.7 m) long. The tracks were 3 inches (76 mm) by 4 inches (100 mm) redwood slats.
Holt received the first patent for a practical continuous track for use with a tractor on December 7, 1907, for his improved "Traction Engine" ("improvement in vehicles, and especially of the traction engine class; and included endless traveling platform supports upon which the engine is carried").
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Caterpillar Inc.
Caterpillar Inc. is an American construction, mining and other engineering equipment manufacturer. The company is the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment. In 2018, Caterpillar was ranked number 73 on the Fortune 500 list and number 265 on the Global Fortune 500 list. Caterpillar stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Caterpillar Inc. traces its origins to the 1925 merger of the Holt Manufacturing Company and the C. L. Best Tractor Company, creating a new entity, California-based Caterpillar Tractor Company. In 1986, the company reorganized itself as a Delaware corporation under the current name, Caterpillar Inc. It announced in January 2017 that over the course of that year, it would relocate its headquarters from Peoria, Illinois, to Deerfield, Illinois, scrapping plans from 2015 of building an $800 million new headquarters complex in downtown Peoria. Its headquarters are located in Irving, Texas, since 2022.
The company also licenses and markets a line of clothing and workwear boots under its Cat / Caterpillar name. Additionally, the company licensed the Cat phone brand of toughened mobile phones and rugged smartphones from 2012 to 2024. Caterpillar machinery and other company-branded products are recognizable by their trademark "Caterpillar Yellow" livery and the "CAT" logo.
The company traces its roots to the steam tractor machines manufactured by the Holt Manufacturing Company in 1890. The steam tractors of the 1890s and early 1900s were extremely heavy, sometimes weighing 1,000 pounds (450 kg) per horsepower, and often sank into the earth of the San Joaquin Valley Delta farmland surrounding Stockton, California. Benjamin Holt attempted to fix the problem by increasing the size and width of the wheels up to 7.5 feet (2.3 m) tall and 6 feet (1.8 m) wide, producing a tractor 46 feet (14 m) wide, but this also made the tractors increasingly complex, expensive, and difficult to maintain.
Another solution considered was to lay a temporary plank road ahead of the steam tractor, but this was time-consuming, expensive, and interfered with earthmoving. Holt thought of wrapping the planks around the wheels. He replaced the wheels on a 40 horsepower (30 kW) Holt steamer, No. 77, with a set of wooden tracks bolted to chains. On Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1904, he successfully tested the updated machine plowing the soggy delta land of Roberts Island.
Contemporaneously, Richard Hornsby & Sons in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, developed a steel plate-tracked vehicle, which it patented in 1904. This tractor was the first to be steered using differential braking of the tracks, eliminating the forward tiller and steering wheel. Several tractors were made and sold to operate in the Yukon, one example of which was in operation until 1927, and remnants of it still exist. Hornsby found a limited market for their tractor, so they sold their patent to Holt five years after its development.
Company photographer Charles Clements, looking at the machine's upside-down image through his camera lens, commented that the track rising and falling over the carrier rollers looked like a caterpillar, and Holt seized on the metaphor. "Caterpillar it is. That's the name for it!" Some sources, though, attribute this name to British soldiers who had witnessed trials of the Hornsby tractor in July 1907. Two years later, Holt sold his first steam-powered tractor crawlers for US$5,500, about US$185,000 in 2024. Each side featured a track frame measured 30 inches (760 mm) high by 42 inches (1,100 mm) wide and were 9 feet (2.7 m) long. The tracks were 3 inches (76 mm) by 4 inches (100 mm) redwood slats.
Holt received the first patent for a practical continuous track for use with a tractor on December 7, 1907, for his improved "Traction Engine" ("improvement in vehicles, and especially of the traction engine class; and included endless traveling platform supports upon which the engine is carried").