“We test for regulation purposes, for diagnostic purposes,” said test engineer Colin Mitchell, firing up a 67,000-pound 980 XE wheel loader, its roar dampened by the sound tiles lining the walls. “We can test individual components in the machine to figure out if they are making noises that they shouldn’t.”

In another building, engineers wire up sensors to a Cat D5 bulldozer to take transmitted readings as it operates in the field, a sort of tractor electrocardiogram. Nearby sits the pride of Peoria, a hulking D11XE, a prototype of the first electric drive mining tractor.

The D11 mining tractor, the largest bulldozer Caterpillar makes, is built exclusively at its East Peoria factory. Launched in 1986, the 230,000-pound behemoth is a mainstay in mining and large construction projects. In October, the 6,000th D11 rolled off the production line, bound for an Australian customer site.

Founded nearly a century ago in Peoria with the 1925 merger of the Holt and Best tractor companies, Caterpillar and its bright yellow machines became an international powerhouse, building roads, bridges and dams around the world.

Long one of the largest companies in Illinois, Caterpillar generated $67 billion in revenues last year, up 13% over 2022, according to its annual report. The company has more than 113,000 employees worldwide, including nearly 18,000 in Illinois. In addition to East Peoria, Caterpillar has a major factory in Decatur that builds its large mining trucks, among other products.

While Caterpillar equipment has been everywhere from Antarctica to the moon, the company has always been inextricably linked with its Peoria home. But in 2017, citing proximity to O’Hare International Airport and Chicago, Caterpillar relocated its corporate headquarters to north suburban Deerfield, taking over the vacated offices of premium spirits maker Beam Suntory, which moved to Chicago.

Caterpillar also opened a digital office in Chicago in 2016, now located in the West Loop, where a team of software developers, data analysts and computer engineers work on everything from e-commerce solutions to apps used for equipment maintenance and monitoring.

In 2022, as companies began downsizing offices and shedding massive campuses in the wake of the pandemic, Caterpillar moved its corporate headquarters again, consolidating operations at an existing office in Irving, Texas, near an electric power division it established the previous year.

At the time, Caterpillar Chairman and CEO Jim Umpleby said the decision to relocate the C-suite and several hundred employees to Texas was “in the best strategic interest of the company,” but offered few reasons publicly to support it.

The company declined further comment on the corporate relocation for this story. But Peoria and the Proving Ground remain central to Caterpillar’s future.

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