Going blue for a good cause (2019)

Photo by Monique Manson from Capture This Photography

Over the last decade there has been an increase in progressive companies painting Cat equipment in eye-catching colours to raise funds and awareness for charities. Why do these colourful machines make jaws drop around the country? It’s because the Cat yellow colour is so iconic and known that when a Cat machine is painted a different colour, people immediately notice it. If you walked by a fridge with a pink Coke can in it, you’d do a double take – same thing.

In 2014, Coopers Grader Hire (CG) had a Cat 12M Motor Grader painted bright pink to support the McGrath Foundation. This was more than just a paint job to turn heads, CGH went one step further and pledged $5 to the foundation for every hour the pink grader was hired out for an entire year! The pink grader represented the start of a long-term association between CGH and the McGrath Foundation, whilst clearly communicating to potential customers the kind of business CGH was – a good one.

Corporate social responsibility

There’s a reason companies are doing this and it’s not just to own machines that look cool – even though they do – it’s about corporate social responsibility (CSR), i.e. conducting your business in an ethical way that results in a positive social, economic and environmental impact, with an ongoing consideration of human rights.

To put it simply it’s about doing “good” and “giving back”.

Why bother with CSR? Aside from all the obvious benefits to society and the world if your business operates in an ethical manner, there are three main reasons why you should consider investing in a CSR strategy if you aren’t already:

• Retention – CSR has been proven to be an important factor in retaining both employees and customers. This is especially true for millennials after a Deloitte study found 86 percent of them are concerned about CSR.
• Reputation – CSR safeguards your reputation, cultivating loyalty in the process. A 2017 global study confirmed that 77 percent of customers would pay more to purchase from companies demonstrating CSR.
• Regulation – CSR, in some capacity, is often mandated by Government regulations that are in place to ensure companies are operating in an ethical manner. Thus, practicing CSR can protect you from breaching regulations. For example, there are regulations in place in most countries to eliminate modern slavery.

The bottom line is that if a customer is forced to choose between two companies who both offer a similar product/service offering at close prices, they’ll choose the one who does the most “good”.

If you want to differentiate your company from competitors and stand out when a customer is making a purchase decision, CSR is a no-brainer.

BHP’s blue Cat D11T dozer

A quick look at the ‘Community’ section of BHP’s website tells you that they take CSR very seriously. So, we weren’t surprised when WesTrac's Mining Account Manager Claude Letizia was approached to paint a new Cat D11T Dozer bright blue, with the goal of raising awareness for men’s health.

The impressive 105,000 tone dozer, nicknamed Big Blue, has already been delivered to a BHP iron ore mine site in the Pilbara and is currently hard at work - #LetsDoTheWork

The Cat D11T Dozer is one of our most popular large mining products, comes with a powerful Cat® C32 ACERT™ engine and is built to have many life cycles.

The WesTrac paint shop

Our paint shop is one of the largest in Australia, capable of painting any machine (regardless of make), any colour. With years of experience, and the latest facilities, our highly skilled technicians regularly paint both new and used machines for all kinds of customers, all for different reasons. We painted a Cat Motor Grader black for FTX to help them with brand awareness.

We painted a whole fleet of Cat machines white for REMONDIS to help them with brand recognition by unifying their fleet in one colour. We’ve painted several Cat machines for CGH as part of their CSR strategy.

Whatever your goal is, WesTrac can support you with a custom paint job.