RIVAL FORCES: BEST and HOLT

PART TWO:

In a two-part series, author Robert Pripps drills deep to uncover the entrepreneurial and fiercely competitive spirit that propelled Daniel Best and Benjamin Holt to an eventual consolidation launching Caterpillar. In the second and final part presented in this issue, Pripps takes us into the spiral of competitive and innovative developments that led to a remarkable consolidation.

In the latter part of the 19th century, two driven and ambitious young men launched successful companies in California. Over the years, diverse product offerings from each man’s company eventually funneled into a singular focus: creation of the tracked tractor that the world knows today as the Caterpillar.

In part two of Rival Forces: Best and Holt, we trace the evolution of the tracked tractor and the convergence of Holt and Best into Caterpillar Tractor Co.

Making tracks in the woods

The sheer weight of early steam engines required some means of spreading that weight over a large area. Naturally, wheels were first used, some as large as 9 feet in diameter and 5 feet wide. No matter how large, a circle has a single point of contact with a flat plane. The use of tracks to spread the weight over a larger area (reducing footprint pressure) was not, at the turn of the last century, a new idea.

The logging industry, which mainly operated