So many things differentiate the Caterpillar brand from its competitors that it can be difficult to know where to begin. From its trademark Caterpillar Yellow to its tradition of making the most rock-solid products on earth, everything about the Caterpillar name is synonymous with the world’s toughest machines. In fact, the company’s success has led to it being used by economists as a bellwether for the state of the economy as a whole.

 

In Caterpillar: Modern Earth-Moving Marvels, author Frank Raczon details the largest and most modern earth-moving machines today, with down-to-earth explanations of how and why they work the way they do as well as interviews and quotes from Caterpillar’s engineers and operators themselves. Bolstering the profiles is the appropriate historical background to understand just how far these machines and the company have come, featuring rare historical photography and insight from noted industrial historian Keith Haddock. The book also offers a glimpse of how the Caterpillar’s meteoric rise from an under-the-radar producer of agrarian and industrial equipment led to its modern status as an international corporate superstar.