Caterpillar

For this book, Frank Raczon has dug up the dirt and constructed the only modern history of the world's heaviest machinery. 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. Filled with excavators, backhoe loaders, motor-graders, off-highway trucks, and more, this book is sure to capture the imagination of anyone who has ever passed a construction site and wondered just how the machines work the way they do and what they're truly capable of.

About the Author

Frank Raczon (Carpentersville, IL), senior editor of Construction Equipment magazine, has had a writing career spanning nearly 25 years across magazine publishing and public relations work with some of the industry's major equipment manufacturers. He has won numerous awards for his work, including nods from the Construction Writers Association, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, and BtoB magazine, where he is responsible for the publication's Buying Files feature.

Raczon is the author of Motorbooks' Caterpillar: Modern Earth-Moving Marvels (2014). Keith Haddock (Edmonton, Alberta), a professional engineer, has enjoyed a lifelong involvement with earthmoving and heavy equipment. Haddock co-founded the Historical Construction Equipment Association (HCEA) some over 25 years ago and the organization now boasts over 5,000 members. He has written several books on heavy equipment and has been featured on numerous TV programs, including Monster Machines and Mega Excavators. He specializes in providing information, research, and freelance writing for earthmoving and surface mining publications.