2025 is the year that Caterpillar Inc., now universally referred to as CAT, celebrates its first 100 years in business.

Despite being the major name in construction equipment, the company has its roots seated deep in the farming community of the American western states where two pioneers in the mechanisation of agriculture were busy developing machinery to help with the wheat harvest.

The two men were Benjamin Holt and Daniel Best and they had both arrived in California in the late 1800s and got themselves into the combined harvester business, as they were then known.

Caterpillar handler — Although best known for construction equipment, Caterpillar has its roots in agriculture and still produces farm orientated machines

It is a little known feature of California’s history that the state played host to the birth and early development of today’s combine harvester.

Much of the action was based in and around Stockton, a town in which several early manufacturers had based themselves.

It was here that Benjamin Holt became a leading player in the machine’s development, adapting the machines to run on hillsides and building the first self-propelled combine powered by an internal combustion engine in 1910.

Over in San Leandro, Daniel Best had made his first batch of ‘traveling combined harvesters’ in 1885 and gradually built up the business via the introduction of a steam-powered unit in 1889.

Prairie tractors

Tractors were also produced by the two companies; at first these were steam powered but internal combustion engines were also used as the technology became available and both offered tracked machines guided by a tiller wheel at the front.

Holt Steamer — A Holt ‘steamer’ pauses for a photograph as it ploughs a western prairie

Hitherto they had been pulled by teams of up to 40 mules and animal power did not disappear completely until WW2, long after manufacturers had switched to engines for both threshing and locomotion.

Holt, which leaned towards combine production, and Best which orientated more towards tractors, were in fierce competition during the first few years of the 20th century, not just in the field, but also in the courts as they disputed various patent applications.

This antagonism between the two companies all came to an end, sort of, when upon his retirement, Daniel Best sold two thirds of his company to Holt in 1908 and gifted the remainder to his son, Clarence Leo Best.

Best Jnr starts again

However, that was not quite the end of it, because Clarence Leo, who had stayed on as plant manger for Holt, was restless in this new position where Holt had full say in the running of his father’s company, that he still owned a third of.

C.L Best, as he was known, eventually left to form his own company in 1910, focusing on the manufacture of engine-driven wheeled, and eventually, tracked tractors.

The company suffered after the First World War as sales dropped alarmingly and so it was restructured and renamed the C.L Best Tractor Company, refocusing on smaller farm scale tractors, whereas Holt was still wedded to the production of larger military machines.

The Holt Manufacturing Company had done well during the conflict, selling a large number of crawlers to the allied forces as tractors for the movement of guns and supplies across the otherwise impassable fields of France.

Debt burden forces consolidation

This success had led the company to invest heavily at home in production facilities for tractors that, come November 1918, were not needed by the armies.

Not only were new ones not needed, but older ones returned from Europe, further depressing demand and prices.

Best Jnr. had also carried on with his father’s passion in fighting over patents with Holt, one estimate putting the total legal expenditure of the two companies at $1.5 million, quite a sum in those days.

C.L. Best — Clarence Leo Best formed the C.L Best Tractor Company in 1910 to carry on in his fathers pioneering spirit

In the early 1920s, the companies found themselves weakened and struggling, and so the decision came about to merge them into one single entity in 1925.

It was Holt that was by far the the larger concern, but thanks to Best focusing on smaller farm tractors, it was in a stronger financial position and so they were merged rather than the one taking over the over.

The union of the two companies brought into existence what we now know as Caterpillar Inc., a company that adopted the trademark of Holt’s track-laying machines as its own corporate identity.

Caterpillar trademark

Despite Holt developing the track-laying vehicle into a commercial success, the mechanism was designed and patented by Richard Hornsby and Sons of Grantham in Lincolnshire.

David Roberts was the company’s chief engineer and managing director and it was he that patented the idea in 1904.

Hornsby Tracklayer — Richard Hornsby & Sons original track-layer was trialled by the British War Office in 1907 and 1908

After failing to interest the British Army in the design, the company sold the rights to Holt in 1911, the American company having already registered the name Caterpillar in 1910 after its photographer had observed that is what it looked like through the lens of his camera, which in those days would have inverted the image.

The idea was far from new but what Hornsby & Sons had done was include a separate drive to each track with its own clutch, thus enabling the machine to be steered without the use of a forward guide wheel.

Benjamin Holt had already started to steer his company towards the use of tracked machines in the construction industry as the American federal government started to create a road network across the country.

Holt grader — Holt had already started to steer his company towards construction equipment by the time of the merger

With the range of Caterpillar machines confined to large tracked models, there arose the problem of dealers not being able to offer both tracked and wheeled tractors.

This became ever more acute as both Allis-Chalmers and International Harvester added tracked models to their respective line-ups, meaning that their dealers could offer both, while Cat could only offer the one type.

John Deere deal

The answer came in the form of a partnership with John Deere by which the two would share the distribution of their machines, enabling a Deere or Cat dealer to sell both types of machine in America and abroad, particularly South America.

There were reservations on both sides. Deere wondered whether a Cat dealer would ever try to sell a wheeled tractor while Caterpillar, which had a large trade in vertical multi-cylinder engines, expressed doubt about the two-cylinder horizontal format still being used by John Deere.

The Caterpillar Challenger of the late 1980s was the company’s last foray into the agricultural tractor market

Despite these concerns, the deal lasted over 20 years, from 1935, all the way through the war until the late 1950s and early 1960s when the dealers themselves began to dissolve the joint venture as the focus and products of the two manufacturers drifted further apart.

There was one more foray by Caterpillar into the agricultural market in 1986 when it created the Challenger brand of rubber-tracked tractors.

This was eventually sold off to AGCO in 2002 which still produces tracked machines up to 673hp.

Prairie tractors

Best Jnr starts again

Debt burden forces consolidation

Caterpillar trademark

John Deere deal

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