Caterpillar: Great American Legend

If Henry Ford gave us automobiles and Boeing gave us airliners then Caterpillar gave us ... Caterpillars. The generic term for bulldozer a crawler a tracked earth-moving tractor is Caterpillar. Caterpillar as a brand name of tracked vehicle was first used in 1904 on a vehicle manufactured by Holt Brothers. In 1910 a competitor in the Tracklayer from Daniel Bests company started fifteen years of heavy competition between the two companies until both began to suffer. The year 1925 saw Holt and Best merge and the name they jointly chose was Caterpillar. Thus for more than sixty years these yellow beasts of burden have worked construction sites and tilled the land. Today these very giants are monuments to the worlds industrial growth a household word. Here is a photographic documentary of these "animal" wonders upon whose very strength the world relies as they creak and rumble their way through a days work. Henry Rasmussen in seven chapters looks at the very early examples as they are both lovingly restored and allowed to rot in the graveyard. Rasmussen tells something of their development history pictorially and then shows them working even being made in a variety of locations. He is content that they are what they are - old worn rusty dirty new yellow big heavy huge gigantic useful efficient nd of neat fun to watch fun to operate exciting just a machine just a tool to get the job done ... and a damn nuisance when they will not start. His work is a stunning picture of great nostalgia great color of a great legend.