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Very few people have ever
heard of the two inventors who started the company in 1925, when
they merged their two separate companies.
Benjamin Holt operated the Holt Manufacturing Company in the
early 1900s in Stockton, Calif. Holt was a very private person, so
little is known about him personally.
Meanwhile, Daniel Best operated the Best Tractor Company with his
son in San Leandro, Calif., during the same period. There were
periods when Holt worked for Best, but each time they would go back
to being competitors.
The invention that Holt and Best built their company around is
the result of combining two separate products. Each inventor had
developed his own type of tractor. Holt developed the world's first
steam-track type in 1904, while in 1906 Best developed the world's
first gas-track type, which crawled along the ground like a certain
insect.
What type of insect did the movement resemble?
A caterpillar. As in the Caterpillar Tractor Company, the
business that Benjamin Holt and Daniel Best founded when they
merged. Headquartered in Peoria, Caterpillar does $30 billion in
sales each year.
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Why the name "Caterpillar"?
A photographer working for Holt was taking pictures of one of the
tractors one day when he noticed that the track rotating over its
rollers looked like a caterpillar. Holt agreed, and that's how the
Caterpillar brand was born.
During World War I, before Holt and Best merged to form
Caterpillar, Holt's company produced the Holt Crawler. While you've
probably never heard of the Holt Crawler unless you're a really
serious history buff, the Holt Crawler is what provided the
inspiration for the first tanks used in the war. To this day, tanks
use a crawler-type track.
Despite the fact that Caterpillar is No. 1 in sales of
crawler-type tractors, neither Benjamin Holt nor Daniel Best created
the machine's original design. Holt purchased two patents in the
early 1900s that represented the forerunner to Caterpillar's
earliest tractor.
While Caterpillar is famous for its bulldozers, it wasn't the
first company to attach the bulldozer blade to the machine that
powers it. No one knows which company pioneered that idea.
Caterpillar also didn't produce the first real bulldozers. In the
days before tractors, the original "bulldozers" were the pairs of
mules that would pull the blade into piles of dirt. That worked fine
until the operator tried to put the mules in reverse!
[Paul Niemann]
Paul Niemann may be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
Copyright Paul Niemann 2005 |
