Caterpillar 200 Series a Pocket History (#FlashbackFriday)

The Caterpillar 200-Series of excavators were groundbreaking machines for the American construction machinery giant, who were best known for their track type tractors, wheeled loaders, scrapers, motor graders and dumptrucks.

Caterpillar were late arrivals to the hydraulic excavator market and it was 1972 before they stunned the world with their first model the famous 225.

I remember it well as a young kid, and had a poster of the 225 on my bedroom wall that was an insert in the Construction News, that my late father was a regular subscriber too.

These machines were 100% built by Cat and had a rugged, strong and powerful look to them, it was an exciting time to be a Caterpillar customer or in my case a serious enthusiast and it was great to see these machines arriving on the market, and it wasn’t long before other larger models joined the range.

It certainly was the beginning of a great journey for Caterpillar, and those 200-Series machines are still held in high regard around the world to this day, with many still working on jobsites and more than capable of putting in a good shift, such was the simplicity and durability of them.

You can find out more on the history of the 200-Series in the video below from the Heavy Steel Marvels You Tube channel, interestingly enough, I notice at 2.41 in the video, they have actually used one of my original images of a 245 I shot at rest in Fuerteventura whilst on holiday many years ago, I have posted the image above, but in the video they have made it black and white. Further research reveals that they have also used quite a few more images from a previous blog post I done on these machines back in July last year! 

Anyway, enjoy the video, its an interesting watch.