DC Excavation go “Retro' with Cat Pac-Man Logo

Based in the glorious surroundings of Bozeman, in the state of Montana in the Northwestern United States, DC Excavation which is owned by Dane Cotton, is a dedicated Caterpillar equipment customer.

Proud American Dane, is one of the many great individuals on Instagram, that make it a great place to engage with likeminded people with a passion for the equipment, and if memory serves me right, I had the pleasure of meeting him briefly in person in one of the exhibition halls at Conexpo/Con Agg in Las Vegas earlier this year, one of my biggest regrets is that we didn’t have a good long chat on the day, due to the fact I was having to rush off to another stand for a meeting!

Dane has a long history in the excavation industry which led him to form his own business, DC Excavation early in 2016, originally starting out with a single Cat tracked skidsteer.

The fleet of machines has expanded significantly since then, and now includes a number of Cat dozers and a new Cat 323 Next Gen excavator which is equipped with Trimble Earthworks GPS and an Engcon tiltrotator and a new Next Gen 310 excavator with Engcon.

The company also run a new John Deere 245G LC hydraulic excavator which is also sporting an Engcon tiltrotator and Trimble Earthworks GPS system.

Most recently Dane has had his Cat D6XE touched up and opted to have her kitted out with the much loved, old school Caterpillar Pac-Man livery. Dane explained how it all came about, "When I was a young kid (3-4 years old) I remember always wanting to ride the dozer with my dad. I don’t remember the dozer exactly, but I know it had the old pac man logo on it. I also rode along while he ran the motor graders like 140s, 140g etc.  When Cat upgraded their logo to the next design in the late 80's early 90s, it was a cool move as it needed refreshing".

Dane continued "The D6XE is kind of the “cats meow” of dozers. I was fortunate enough to pick up this slightly used dozer earlier this summer, and it needed some new stickers. The previous owners had scratched a fair amount of the stickers so it was time to peel off and replace. Rather than just buying new “films” from the dealer, we decided to veer off from the norm and get some retro tones going! We always hear of the “block c” referred to as the Cat “Pac-Man” logo. Through tons of searching, I finally found a font that is very similar to the traditional Caterpillar font used in the block c era, and had some stickers mocked up to look very similar to the ones produced in the 70-80s for dozers and the rest of Cat machines.

A couple of tweaks here and there and we arrived at this design! After posting on Instagram and Linkedin, there has been an overwhelmingly positive response to the retro dozer look! There are already a few things that I want to do a little differently, so we may redo it when we have some free time this winter, but we already have stickers made for a few other machines to go retro! We love the positive feedback and can’t wait to get more of it once we “correct” a few other machines".

For many of us of a certain age the Pac-Man logo was what we grew up with and what we always related to the Cat product. It was first introduced in 1967 and remained until it was replaced by the “leading-edge” design in 1989.

I don’t know about you guys, but I still think the old logo looks awesome and for many it will always be the eternal logo for Cat.

Checkout this promtional video from SITECH which gives us a great insight into Dane's business and mindset.

The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Dane for the use of his photos and material in this post. Check out DC Excavation on Instagram.