Page 151 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Together we do what we couldn’t do alone
In July 2013, the test machines arrived in Portland from LaGrange, Georgia. The pair of Cat 568 log loaders came minus their booms and sticks. After the initial prototypes were complete, the team headed back to Peoria. “We reported our results and laid out our plan for Cat. Then over the next year, they ran the numbers to make sure it would work for them. It was a long, long process, but in October 2014 we finally started our FTO project. And now we are the only Caterpillar dealer with a factory-designation code (12P),” says Corn- wall-Brady. “This is the first time Caterpillar has ever done anything like this.” The FTO project took over a year to achieve from con- cept to implementation. Peterson now orders all its forestry “swing” machines without the front end. Cornwall-Brady’s team then as- sembles them in a corner of the forestry shop, right next to Finning’s pre-deliveries.
Everything was going according to plan. And
then, in 2015, politics and economics collided
with the US energy market, causing a major
upheaval for Caterpillar. Coal, tar sands, oil,
and fracking were all severely hobbled in the
name of climate change. “Mining is one of
Caterpillar’s largest business segments,” ex-
plains Bill Doyle, Peterson’s owner and CEO
from 1977–95. “If oil costs are down, then oil
and tar sands production is down, which af-
fects the sale of Cat trucks. In some states, coal
is virtually shut down, so mining equipment
sales are way down.” That ripple effect took its
toll on Caterpillar. They lost billions of dollars, which sent their stock tumbling. Cat’s answer was to reorga- nize and consolidate some of its factories. And that threw the proverbial wrench into Peterson’s FTO project. “Cat decided to move production of our forestry machines to Texas,” says Duane Jr. “And that meant we had to start all over again with a new group of people.”
Unfortunately, it took the new factory in Texas over a year to get forestry machines online, and by September 2018, Caterpillar announced they were selling part of their purpose-built forestry line to Weiler. This brought on another reorganization for Cat’s forestry machines, which would now fall under Cat’s Excavation team, managed out of Japan. Subsequently, Peterson’s FTO concept is on-hold. Indefinitely.
Top to bottom: Pair of Cat 568 LL arrive from Finning by rail in August 2012; Cat 568 Log Loader proving its worth
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