See It, Drive It, Own It, with Caterpillar

Plant operator and enthusiast Ken Hatcher aka “Sprocket Man” took a day off work last week to attend the See It, Drive It, Own It, event organised by Finning UK & Ireland and hosted at Caterpillar’s Customer and Training Centre in Desford, Leicestershire, and he has shared some photos from his day out.

Situated at the rear of the extensive Caterpillar production facilities, the Customer and Training Centre in Desford is a dedicated area where visitors can see demonstrations of the latest Cat machines and most importantly, get “hands on” with them in a safe working environment, with equipment ranging from a 1-tonne mini excavator up to a 14/15-tonne class excavator, backhoe loaders, compact tracked loaders, wheeled loaders and ADT’s.

On arrival at the car park visitors are greeted by one of the original 428 backhoe loaders, which these days is located on a plinth in said car park, which was formerly home to another Caterpillar icon, a D8H dozer, it’s a nice touch and relates to the heritage of the adjoining factory which has been in existence since 1952.

For this event visitors were asked to register to attend, and according to Ken, there was a gathering of around 60 individuals on the day. It’s a fantastic facility, and one that I used to visit on a regular basis some years ago, but I have not been back up there since Covid finished.

There was plenty of kit to try out, and naturally with Ken being a backhoe loader operator for 30 years, he was drawn immediately to the flagship Cat backhoe loader the 444, Ken hasn’t said much about the machine except to say he was impressed with the cab layout and nice light joystick levers, which from my last visit up there I recall, are now electro hydraulic controls.

In the showroom area they presented the latest upgraded 1-tonne class 301 mini excavator, which was being shown ahead of its official launch in 2027.

Visitors also had the chance to spend tie on the 275 XE compact tracked loader, which was equipped with grader attachment and GPS control. Having test drove the 265 Next Gen model last year in Cannock, I have to say I was very impressed with these latest Cat CTL’s, in terms of speed, power, performance and controllability.

Ken also spent time in the 302.7 the compact radius 2-tonne class mini excavator, once again praising the light joystick controls describing it a s a joy to operate. He was also super impressed with the “Stick Steer” feature which enables the operator to travel and steer the tracks using the left-hand joystick lever, a very useful feature for sure. I recall having the pleasure of test driving this model at the launch event out in Malaga in 2019 for a report in Earthovers Magazine.

Ken also tried out Cat’s 8-tonne class midi excavator, the 308, a very popular machine class in the UK market, however, he found the seat to be too small for him. Anyone who has engaged with Ken on the social media platforms will already know he has the same issue with his current work mount, which is a Kubota 8-tonner, if there is one thing Ken likes to do, it’s finding a problem!

We can report that in the 13-tonne class 313 hydraulic excavator Ken was actually impressed with the seat and the machine in general.

Rounding off this report with a nice shot of a Cat 938 wheeled loader sporting the 100 years of Cat centennial grey paintwork.

We thank Ken for sharing his images from his day out with Caterpillar and Finning UK & Ireland.