Caterpillar

"Given the odour surrounding the name of Alan Bond, it isn’t surprising that when Bond took over Bell Group, and with it the Caterpillar dealership, the parent company in the United States announced that it would withdraw the franchise. Moving with characteristic ruthlessness, Caterpillar gave Bond only three months’ notice to come to an agreement with the newly anointed dealer: a US company, Morgan Equipment. The federal government was far from pleased. The treasurer, Paul Keating, issued a statement saying that the replacement of an Australian-owned with a foreign-owned company was ‘inconsistent with foreign investment guidelines’.20 Meanwhile, the Bell Group managing director, David Aspinall, described Caterpillar’s actions as ‘tantamount to rape’, and Bond announced his intention to challenge the validity of the termination notice in the Victorian Supreme Court.21 Stokes was at the time the majority owner and a director of a public company called Austrim, which was associated with the Nylex Group – manufacturers of clothes, fabrics, hoses and that Australian iconic brand, the Esky. While Morgan Equipment and Bond scrapped over the price for the dealership, Stokes and his fellow director and svengali Ken Parker manoeuvred for position. When the dust settled over the fight between Morgan Equipment and Bond, Austrim emerged owning 30 per cent of the franchise, with Morgan owning the other 70 per cent. Then, in the final weeks of the greedy decade it was announced that Austrim would sell its 30 per cent share in the dealership to Stokes’ ACE. Three weeks later, on 16 January 1990, the news was released that Stokes had bought the lot. He had paid Morgan Equipment’s owner Harold Morgan $50 million for the whole company, including the Caterpillar dealership. The Caterpillar head office clearly smiled on the deal: there was no suggestion of their revisiting the ownership of the franchise. Stokes smoothly slipped in."

"Stokes had managed to ingratiate himself with Caterpillar management in Illinois, convincing them that he was the kind of ethical, principled businessman their company required. The relationship has only deepened over the years, making WesTrac, the Stokes company that owns the Caterpillar franchises, the most reliable contributor to his wealth."

"consent. The value of WesTrac rested on its keeping the Caterpillar dealerships,"

"In April 1974, Michelin sent Louis-Noël Repoux, the former head of its personnel services and former member of the management, to Lyon to get Berliet back on track and find it a partner. Discussions with Volvo failed: the people from Clermont did not want to let the Swedish group run the business (which was demanding some six thousand job cuts). And the conversations Paul Berliet subsequently had with International Harvester, John Deere, Mack, and Caterpillar also led nowhere. The Lyon-based company found itself with its chronic underinvestment and overstaffing."

"Trøim is unstoppable, John Fredriksen has given him the nickname D8, after the legendary Caterpillar bulldozer that came on the market around the time Fredriksen was born. Others have given him the nickname "Troiminator." One should not stand in the way of Tor Olav Trøim."

"‘It’s the best business since the shopping centres,’ Bill Rayner would say later. Neville Owen agrees. ‘Caterpillar is one of the world’s great survivor US brands — better than Boeing, Harley or Levis,’ he declares. Stokes had picked up what would become one of the best Cat franchises in the world, and would eventually add two more. He would be far better known for media ventures, but the union with Caterpillar would be his greatest business move."

"Wigmores had taken on agricultural implements from chaff cutters to stump-jump ploughs, seeders and harrows: the sort of horse-drawn machinery Matt Stokes had grown up with in the Mallee. In 1922 the firm had taken on tractors — and in 1925 it became the Western Australian dealer for Caterpillar, the American firm that made ‘crawler’ tractors, the peacetime cousins of the primitive World War I tanks that were the forerunners of bulldozers. Wigmores was only the second Caterpillar agent appointed outside the United States and its dealership flourished in the west as farming and mining grew. The big yellow ‘Cats’ were ideal for clearing bush and moving mountains of ore."

"Stokes was in the United States regularly, having set up an Australian Capital Equity branch in Texas, largely to oversee the campaign to lease or sell the Dallas skyscraper. On one trip he invited Caterpillar decision makers ‘to have a heart-to-heart’ in his splendid office in the refurbished tower, by now called Fountain Place and winning international architecture awards but not enough high-paying tenants. Whatever Stokes said worked: Caterpillar agreed to take the franchise from Morgan and give it to him."

"Caterpillar imposed ‘five-star’ standards on its dealer workshops — a difficult level to meet in many parts of China. One problem was that Chinese machinery operators tried to save on labour costs by attempting their own repairs and maintenance rather than taking machines back to the dealerships. Even if used machines came back for repair, it was hard to find or train locals with the skill to do the job to the makers’ standards. The system that worked so well in Australia was floundering."