Cat Dealers Ready for Service and Support for New Cat Vocational Trucks

In the lead up to the launch of its commercial trucking line, Caterpillar recently announced that its North American Cat dealer network will be fully prepared to offer whole-truck service and sales support for the company’s first ever Cat Vocational Truck, the Cat CT660. Since announcing the new line of on-highway Class 8 Cat Trucks in 2008, personnel at all 54 U.S. and Canadian dealerships, including their over 400 service locations and 2,300 service bays, have been engaged in intense training to ensure they are ready to meet customers’ product support needs for the trucks.

The capabilities dealers have been adding to provide customers with bumper-to-bumper support for the CT660 are a natural expansion of their existing truck capabilities and expertise, according to the director of the On-Highway Truck Group, George Taylor, who leads the design, development and launch of the new trucks.

“Caterpillar and Cat dealers already had extensive experience supporting on-highway customers from our 40-plus-year history of serving the truck industry, especially with powertrains,” Taylor said. “Cat dealers are excited about the new Cat trucks and thrilled to make them available to customers. Dealers have also shown extraordinary dedication to ramping up their facilities and expanding sales and service support capabilities to meet truck customer needs.”

Manager of strategy and dealer development, Ed Cullen has been working closely with Cat dealers as they’ve been gearing up to spec, sell and service the new trucks.

“Customers can count on exceptional product support for the CT660,” Cullen said. “That means service support at dealer facilities and in the field from Caterpillar, dealer mobile service teams and the 24/7 Cat Truck Call Center. It also means expert consulting assistance from dealers when it comes to spec’ing truck options, so customers order exactly the trucks they want and need for their specific job application and work environment.”

According to Kerry Miller, truck business manager at Cat Dealership Carter Machinery, which serves Virginia and southern West Virginia, their dealership has taken an inter-departmental approach to ensure they have the processes in place to drive efficiencies.

“From sales to parts to service to any group impacted by the truck — and that’s everyone,” Miller said, “we’re all involved and engaged, and working hard to prepare, including our training department that has really stepped up to make sure our sales team and technicians are ready.” He also said training and support provided by Caterpillar is helping all Cat dealerships be prepared and ready to go.

“Our preparation plan has been focused on truck uptime and preventive maintenance,” Miller explained. “We also have the infrastructure in place to support these trucks bumper-to-bumper through on-site service, with 120 bays in over a dozen shops and from our field service trucks. So we’ll be more than prepared to offer a whole-truck solution for customers.”

Cat Vocational Trucks will be sold and serviced exclusively through the Cat North American dealer network, with production beginning after CONEXPO for customer delivery later in the year. The Class 8 vocational trucks will offer custom solutions, including many different body types like dump, refuse, hauler and mixer, for a large variety of job applications.