Infrastructure
You enable transportation systems and infrastructure around the world. Roads connecting people across vast distances, stronger global supply chains and more: You empower customers to take on complex projects with precision and durability.
Stories of Impact
Bucyrus steam shovels in action.
The Challenge
Before the construction of the Panama Canal, ships traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans had to travel around the tip of South America, adding around two months to their journey.
By 1904, after several starts and stops, the construction of this critical route between East and West proceeded full steam ahead. Modern machinery was vital to the effort, with The Bucyrus Company winning the first steam shovel bid for the project.
A Cat D8T expanding the canal in 2007.
The Innovation
Bucyrus, acquired by Caterpillar in 2011, provided the majority of the steam shovels used to excavate the original canal. In the 1960s, Caterpillar machines were used to widen sections of the canal.
From 2007 to 2014, a Cat Financial customer used 75 Cat® machines to help build a new single-lane, three-step lock system to accommodate larger vessels.
A modern cargo ship in the Panama Canal.
The Impact
The Panama Canal now sees more than 14,000 vessels a year. Caterpillar’s more-than-100-year legacy of working on the canal has created cost and fuel savings by enabling faster delivery of goods.
The canal plays a vital role in the global supply chain and contributes to lowering the carbon emission environmental impact of maritime trade.
"The obligation to provide for the rapidly expanding
needs of this generation and for the still greater
needs of the next is here now."
Harmon S. Eberhard, former Caterpillar president, and Louis B. Neumiller, former chairman of Caterpillar's board (1959)
Dealer Magazine Cover
Panama Canal, 1963
Caterpillar and our acquired brands have been a part of all phases of building and expanding the Panama Canal since 1904.
