My first Caterpillar ...

I've posted this a couple times before on here, but here it is again...pretty much where it started for me, along with riding on the fuel tank of the TD6...
Me in about 1951.

Me in the summer of 1967 , ok so it's not a Cat , but that didn't matter to me
at the time ...

[img]http://i1027.photobucket.com/albums/y334/reo6x6/1967%20meridian%20equipment_zps6rosvg55.jpg[/img]


Christmas 1967 , I remember asking my Dad for this way before Christmas,
man was I ever surprised when I opened that present !

[img]http://i1027.photobucket.com/albums/y334/reo6x6/christmas%201967_zps9wo6dy43.jpg[/img]

Wow! Thanks for sharing the pics. The first crawler that I remember our family owning was an Allis Chalmers HD-3, equipped with 3 point hitch and front check breakers. It was AC yellow also. I recall both of my brothers always cursing that tractor because they didn't like it. Last memory of it was in 1967? When the IH dealer delivered a new 544 wheel tractor, and they winched the AC onto the rollback truck. I think it got traded in at less than 1000 hrs. Even though I never got to drive or let alone sit on that tractor, I miss it. "Juiceman"

[attachment=32898]Ang D8.jpg[/attachment] Sitting with my dad in 1960 on his brand new D8

Hi, Folks.
'My' first 'Caterpillar' was ackshully a predecessor of Caterpillar, the company. I can still remember my father's Holt 2-ton, bought to pull a scrub roller for clearing on the family farm, when I was about 7 years old. It was bare tractor and was 'cashed' about 2 years later on a McCormick Deering T20 'bulldozer' that had a blade controlled by a hand windlass. I never got to drive or operate either.

The next one was a real Cat, a Twenty Two upon which I spent many happy hours rolling bracken fern and pushing (not very big) logs and trees into heaps for burning. It also had a hand-windlass controlled dozer blade.

Thank the Lord for CCUs and hydraulics. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos - - - except in my head and that 'hard drive' doesn't have a USB outlet, only what is sometimes called a 'VOCAL' oulet.

Just my 0.02.

That AC messed me up! Anyways, the first Cat we had was D4 7U7901; Dad bought that old girl from a friend named Raymond Casey; it was a tailseat tractor and I think my brothers made me drive "that death trap" as they called it. I was probably 12 years old then. That thing was well used up when we got it, but it was so reliable. My favorite job was to pull an old single shank ripper in the orchards in the Fall. I loved driving it at night doing that job; so slow I didn't care about not having lights; I couldn't even see where I was going during the day..... When it lugged down, there would be a one foot flame from the exhaust!:lever:

My dad recently sent these to me and I have never seen them before. Guess that was a sign because I would have never guessed I would be a Cat dealer for 31 years now and have antique Cats for a hobby.