Caterpillar Quietly Turned 100 Last Year: The Century That Built the Equipment You Finance Today

In 2025, Caterpillar passed its 100th year as a company, and it happened without much fanfare outside of Peoria. That's a little strange, because a 100-year run in heavy equipment manufacturing isn't a marketing claim, it's a track record that directly affects why financing a CAT machine is a different risk conversation than financing a brand that's been around for a decade. The history is worth knowing in actual detail, not just as trivia, because most of it still shows up on your jobsite today.

1925: Two Rival Tractor Companies Merge Into One

Caterpillar Tractor Co. didn't start as a single inventor's garage story. It formed in 1925 when the Holt Manufacturing Company and the C. L. Best Tractor Co., two competing California-rooted track-tractor makers, merged into one company, with C. L. Best appointed as its first Chairman. Both predecessor companies had already been building crawler tractors for agriculture for years before the merger; combining them is what created the company as it exists today. Two years later, in 1927, the newly merged company designed its first genuinely new product, the Model Twenty Tractor, rather than simply continuing to build the two predecessor companies' separate lineups side by side.

The 1930s: Diesel, the Yellow Paint, and Two Famous Bridges

A lot of what defines a CAT machine today traces back to one decade. In 1931, Caterpillar began producing its first diesel engine, the D9900, an industry first that set the company's engines apart for the rest of the century. That same year, Caterpillar swapped its original gray-with-red-trim color scheme for "Hi-Way Yellow" with black trim, the direct ancestor of the "Caterpillar Yellow" every contractor recognizes instantly on a jobsite today. CAT track-type tractors helped build the Hoover Dam in 1936 and helped complete the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937, two of the most recognizable infrastructure projects in American history, built in part with equipment from a company not even 15 years old at the time.

Wartime, the First Dozer Blade, and Going Multinational

Caterpillar equipment supported the Allies throughout World War II starting in 1941, and by 1944 the company's machines had helped build more than 70,000 miles of highway across the United States. In 1945, Caterpillar introduced the first dozer blade it designed and built in-house, the direct ancestor of every dozer blade on every CAT machine since. The company went multinational for real in 1950, forming its first overseas subsidiary in England, the same year it introduced its first self-propelled wheel tractor-scraper. By 1955, CAT equipment specially built for Operation Deep Freeze was working in Antarctica, meaning Caterpillar equipment had, for the first time, worked on every continent on Earth.

The Machines That Defined the Equipment You Actually Run

The product lines that BFC finances today trace directly to specific launch years. Caterpillar's first construction dump truck, the 769 Off-Highway Truck, arrived in 1962, the same year CAT machines helped widen the Panama Canal. CAT engines powered the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969. The company launched its first hydraulic excavator, the 225, in 1972, and introduced the D10 track-type tractor in 1977, followed by the D11 in 1986. Caterpillar didn't build its first backhoe loader, the 416, until 1985, decades after it was already a dominant name in dozers and excavators, which is a reminder that even a century-old company adds whole equipment categories well after its reputation was already made. The first Caterpillar remanufacturing plant began production in Bettendorf, Iowa in 1973, the origin point of the CAT Reman program running today.

The Last Three Decades: Electronics, Acquisitions, and Electric Drive

The modern Caterpillar started taking shape in 1998 and 2001: the launch of the massive 797 mining truck, the launch of a dedicated compact construction equipment line, the acquisition of Perkins Engines, and the introduction of ACERT engine technology that still names the engine family in half of our equipment spotlights. Caterpillar acquired Progress Rail in 2006, built the first one-of-a-kind electrically driven track-type tractor, the D7E, in 2008, acquired China's Shandong SEM Machinery that same year, then added Electro-Motive Diesel in 2010 and Bucyrus International in 2011. The D6 XE, the world's first high-drive electric drive dozer, arrived in 2018, and by 2022 Caterpillar had successfully demonstrated a battery-electric 793 large mining truck. None of that reads like a company coasting on a 1925 merger; it reads like one that kept building the next thing every decade, right up to the year it turned 100.

Why a Century of History Actually Matters to a Financing Decision

A hundred years of continuous operation isn't nostalgia, it's the reason CAT's dealer network, parts supply, and resale market are as deep as they are, which is exactly the infrastructure that makes financing a CAT machine lower-risk than financing an unproven brand. We've written about how that resale strength actually plays out in third-party data in our CAT vs. Bobcat resale value breakdown, and in our honest comparison of CAT Financial vs. independent equipment financing, which gets into exactly where a captive lender helps and where it runs into limits on a mixed fleet.

Financing the Next Century's Worth of Equipment

Whatever brand your fleet runs, BFC finances the full range of Caterpillar excavators and the rest of CAT's current lineup, for startups and established businesses, nationwide, with good credit or credit that's taken a hit. A century of dealer infrastructure and resale strength is exactly the kind of thing that makes a financing decision easier, not harder.

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