Empire Cat (legally operating as Empire Southwest, LLC) is a prominent, fourth-generation family-owned heavy equipment dealership and industrial solutions provider headquartered in Mesa, Arizona, USA. Founded in 1950 by Jack Whiteman as Empire Machinery in Eastern Oregon, the company re-established its corporate footprint by moving to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1959 after being awarded the regional territory by the Caterpillar Inc. factory.
Today, Empire Cat stands as one of the largest authorized Caterpillar (Cat?) dealerships in the world. Following its landmark strategic acquisition of Nevada-based Cashman Equipment, Empire Cat significantly expanded its geographic operational boundary. The company's contiguous service territory encompasses the entire states of Arizona and Nevada, alongside Southeastern California and the Eastern Sierras. Employing a workforce of over 4,000 personnel across more than 30 regional service branches, parts hubs, and specialized maintenance facilities, the company generates robust revenue spanning construction, mining, agriculture, and defense industrial sectors.
Core Business Model and Scope
Empire Cat operates a full-lifecycle infrastructure model for heavy machinery, specialized transport, and industrial power infrastructure. The company?s primary mandate centers on sales, rentals, component rebuilds, distribution logistics, and precision field-servicing of heavy yellow-iron fleets, multi-brand agricultural machinery, and microgrid power plants.
The company operates under its registered corporate motto, More Than Great Machines?, utilizing a highly structured distribution network that guarantees parts delivery within 24 hours for nearly 98.5% of standard logistics inquiries. It operates an internal ecosystem of industrial affiliates, allowing the company to function as a singular vehicle for site engineering, equipment transport, predictive wear analytics, and commercial-scale solar/renewable energy microgrid installation.
Strategic Affiliate Ecosystem
Empire Cat extends its specialized market reach and operational capabilities through several wholly owned or integrated corporate affiliate divisions:
- Empire Truck & Trailer: A dedicated business division supplying commercial highway transport solutions. It offers sales, parts, and heavy maintenance for on-highway commercial semi-trucks, dump trailers, vocational bodies, and freight haulers across the Southwest.
- Empire Renewable Energy: Focuses on clean-energy transitions for commercial and industrial clients. It provides engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services for massive SunPower industrial solar fields, peak-shaving energy storage installations, and localized distributed energy resources.
- SITECH Southwest: An authorized distribution technology partner for Trimble construction hardware and software. This collective implements advanced 3D machine control infrastructure, automated grading guidance setups, and high-accuracy payload mapping across heavy excavation fleets.
- Take-off Professionals (TOPS): Specialized data engineering consulting division that transforms standard engineer blueprints into high-precision, 3D digital terrain models (DTMs) utilized by modern GPS-guided autonomous excavation machinery.
- Empire Precision Machining (EPM): Originating in 1979 as the Tractor Machining Company, EPM operates as a heavy-scale machining facility specializing in structural welding, complex metal fabrications, hydraulic rod chroming, and automated line boring for massive mining and industrial configurations.
Heavy Equipment & Product Lines
Empire Cat acts as the master distributor for high-durability infrastructure hardware across the Southwest, managing extensive single-unit sales, tiered volume purchasing, and factory-certified used programs:
1. Caterpillar Construction & Mining Fleet
The center of Empire?s product portfolio is the full industrial machinery line produced by Caterpillar, categorizing assets by application tier:
* General Construction Equipment: Deploying small-to-medium workhorses including skid steers, compact track loaders, backhoe loaders, mini-excavators, and telehandlers optimized for residential, commercial, and utility building tasks.
* Heavy Construction Infrastructure: Supplying heavy-tonnage machinery such as large track-type tractors (dozers), wheel loaders, articulated dump trucks, motor graders, scrapers, and cold planers constructed for massive highway, civil engineering, and subdivision development layouts.
* Surface and Underground Mining Machinery: Directly supporting over 15 world-class, active mine sites throughout the region. Product lines comprise ultra-class mining trucks, hydraulic mining shovels, electric rope shovels, rotary blasthole drills, wheel tractor-scrapers, and underground loaders optimized to decrease cost-per-ton throughput.
2. AGCO Agricultural Machinery
Catering to the high-output cultivation sectors across the Colorado River basin and regional farm valleys, Empire Cat serves as an authorized dealer for AGCO and allied tier-1 farm lines, including:
* Challenger track tractors and high-horsepower articulation rigs.
* Massey Ferguson row-crop tractors, hay balers, and precision planters.
* Fendt advanced high-efficiency tractors and combines.
3. Cat Power Systems & Generation Infrastructure
Empire?s Power Systems division builds independent mobile and stationary primary power generation architecture:
* Diesel and natural gas-fueled industrial generator sets (ranging from 10 kW to over 5,000 kW outputs).
* Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) topologies, automatic transfer switches (ATS), and parallel switchgear.
* Marine propulsion engines, locomotive power blocks, and industrial pump power setups.
Commercial Services and Asset Management Solutions
Empire Cat deploys a massive equipment maintenance architecture, employing hundreds of advanced field-service technicians backed by a specialized fleet of over 220 fully equipped field-service trucks operating 24/7/365.
1. The Empire Fluids Lab (S?O?S℠ Services)
Established in 1971, the specialized Empire Fluids Lab analyzes over 142,000 physical fluid samples annually. Operating as a state-of-the-art diagnostic center, the lab uses inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectroscopy and chromatography to evaluate oil, coolant, and fuel samples taken from active heavy machinery. By measuring over 30 physical and chemical characteristics per sample, the lab detects microscopic internal metallic wear, identifying component degradation patterns before catastrophic field failure occurs.
2. Component Rebuild Center (CRC) & Certified Rebuilds
Housed on its massive 50-acre corporate headquarters campus in Mesa, Arizona, Empire Cat?s award-winning Component Rebuild Center executes complex macro-rebuild overhauls. The facility performs structural engine machining, precision hydraulic pump calibrations, and complete heavy machine frame teardowns. Through the Cat Certified Rebuild (CCR) protocol, Empire strips aged, high-hour heavy mining and construction machinery down to the bare metal frame and rebuilds them using over 35,000 new or remanufactured parts, returning a zero-hour machine lifecycle rating to fleet owners at a fraction of the cost of buying new equipment.
3. Empire Transport & Heavy Hauling
Operating a proprietary fleet of over 100 specialized trucks including multi-axle heavy transport rigs, Empire Transport provides nationwide heavy, oversized, super-wide, and overweight machinery logistics across a 48-state authority. The division manages specialized route permitting, escort sequencing, and custom transport planning for massive single payloads scaling up to 350,000 lbs.
4. Fleet Rental Services (The Cat Rental Store)
Operating through localized branches, Empire?s rental program supplies flexible fleet scaling solutions:
* Short-term, long-term, and rent-to-own equipment structures.
* Comprehensive asset supply including work-tool attachments, air compressors, industrial light towers, dewatering pumps, and climate control configurations.
5. Advanced Digital Telematics (Digital Toolbox)
Empire integrates direct remote asset tracking via a suite of advanced digital industrial management software:
* VisionLink?: A cloud-based fleet monitoring platform that translates raw machine telematics into real-time health data, idle-time tracking, payload efficiency metrics, and GPS location mappings.
* Cat Central & SIS2GO: Providing immediate digital access to 24/7 parts ordering channels, mechanical assembly schematics, and interactive field maintenance manuals.
