WESTRAC 20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

On April 15 1925, Holt Manufacturing Company and C.L. Best Tractor Co. merged to create Caterpillar Tractor Company, starting a legacy that will turn 100 years old next year. While William Adams started out on April 16 1926 as the NSW Cat dealer for the first 9 years, Waugh and Josephson became the Caterpillar Dealer for NSW and ACT on June 18 1934 and looked after the Caterpillar needs of those in NSW for over 55 years, before signing over to Gough and Gilmour on Feb 20 1989.

“I used to drive by the field service build pad at Newcrest Cadia (assembling 793C, 994 etc) and thought you would have to be so smart and talented to work for the Caterpillar Dealer” – Rodney Mudford"

Photo: Taken 1996 at Gough and Gilmour; "I was working for DML at the Cumnock & Mt Owen mines." - Chris Carpenter

In the early years, the mining team were busy winning the underground hard rock mining customers at Cobar (which was then being serviced by Cavpower / Cavill Mining Services), selling and delivered the 789 and ancillary fleet to Barrick at Lake Cowal (a fleet which is still operating today) and was winning opportunities that arose in the Hunter Valley.

In the period between 2006 – 2013, WesTrac sold and delivered over 500 machines to customers such as BHP, Rio Tinto, Coal and Allied, Xstrata Coal, Vale, Peabody, Whitehaven, The Bloomfield Group and others that effectively doubled the installed Caterpillar equipment as our customers brought on line greenfield projects and/or brownfield expansions of their mine assets. It was during this period that WesTrac delivered their first 797F (largest mining truck in the world at that time); 795F (largest Cat electric drive truck at that time); and through the Bucyrus acquisition the first 6090 Hydraulic Mining Shovel (largest hydraulic mining shovel in the world).

Photo: The Hunter Valley team, showing off their first delivery of a Cat D9R Track Type Tractor, delivered to Hunter Valley Earthmoving for the Liddell Open Cut operation.

Over the years, WesTrac has relocated and opened new offices to ensure we are best placed to service our customers. A notable change occurred in late 2009 when we re-located our head office to Holroyd in Paramatta, a move that allowed us to continue to grow while we planned our next move. Prior to 2012, we had four locations around the Hunter Valley that each handled separate business functions, including our Thornton location which was the Parts hub for the state.

After years of planning, we built the state-of-the-art facilities at Tomago that houses multiple branches which were previously spread across the region. Without this investment, we would not be the business we are today. Over the years, many new branches have opened or relocated to allow for the expansion of our operations. In 2018, we relocated from Parramatta to Casula to be in a more convenient location for our customers with modern facilities for our team members. Last year we welcomed Coffs Harbor and celebrated as Tweed Head moved to new facilities.

There’s been plenty of success over the last twenty years that we are immensely proud of. Despite setbacks along the way, WesTrac has always been able to come back stronger than ever and invest in the future of the business. Over the last twenty years, we’ve grown to become the #2 dealer as measured by performance in the Asia Pacific region, and our base of 1,500 team members across 25 branches, mines, and stores over NSW and ACT serve over 6,500 customers each year.

“The past 20 years has seen so many changes in the way that we do business, the work platforms that we use, improvements in team culture, a huge reduction in use of paper and physical record keeping, huge leaps in technology.” – Tracey Fardell

Photo: Our Tomago headquarters for NSW/ACT. Image by Daniel Cousins