For the past couple of years, the Internet has been abuzz with a rumor that Caterpillar, the big yellow construction equipment company, was working on its own pickup truck. Sites that spread the rumor used terrible AI images of trucks with CAT logos on them, annoying basically everyone. Yet, at least part of the rumor was true. Caterpillar has been tinkering with a pickup truck, and now, for the first time since the rumors started, a real CAT pickup truck exists. The Cat Truck concept is a rebadged Ford Super Duty, and the people of Cat decided to soup it up with a built-in drone and AI.
This news comes to us from our friends at the Drive, and I did a double-take upon reading it. I also had to check the date to make sure it wasn’t March 32st. If your online news feeds are tuned to scoop you non-stop car news like mine are, you might have remembered that time in 2024 when every single website and YouTuber you’ve never heard of was talking about the new Caterpillar pickup truck.
All of it was so exhausting because these stories and videos were so obviously created by AI from top to bottom. Half of the time, the AIs used to produce this slop couldn’t even correctly spell “Caterpillar” and sometimes couldn’t even get “CAT” right. As for the trucks themselves, AI, or the people prompting the AIs, chose existing General Motors, Ford, Ram, or Toyota trucks and just lazily slapped CAT badges on them. Of course, since it was all AI, all of these images had a sort of uncanny look to them – like so:
Yet, clearly, the subject was clicky, and lots of people were interested in the subject. If you go on YouTube, you’ll notice that the obviously fake AI videos about the truck have hundreds of thousands of views. It’s honestly mind-blowing how many people consume entirely fake content.
But I also cannot blame these people for being so interested in this. Caterpillar is an iconic name in the heavy equipment world. Some of the largest mining trucks in the world have that familiar yellow paint scheme and “CAT” in bold white letters. CAT also makes all kinds of common construction equipment, from skid steers and wheel loaders to excavators and dozers. The company’s portfolio is so staggering that, even if you’ve never stepped onto a construction site in your life, you’ve almost certainly seen a CAT. Team yellow even used to make highway engines, which found homes in everything from semi-tractors to school buses.
Anyway, some publications debunked the AI slop, and life continued on. Caterpillar itself never talked about making a pickup truck, and there was no reason to think CAT was working on one. The company clearly deals in heavy equipment, not towing your camper trailer. Then, something funny happened. An anonymous Caterpillar employee reached out to the Drive and confirmed that there was some sort of truck in development, and CAT was already making the engine liners for it. Allegedly, CAT was working on two options, from the Drive: A V6 for $59,000-$69,000 and a V8 starting at $89,000.
Then, the trail went cold again. Almost two years went by without a peep from Caterpillar. If you searched for the truck online, you either got articles debunking the AI or just more AI slop.
A Ford With A Cat Face
That was until this week and the huge trade show going on in Las Vegas. CONEXPO–CON/AGG 2026 is the place for equipment producers to show off their latest tech and concepts. Caterpillar is using this show to finally come out of the shadows about its rumored truck.
What’s interesting is that, in its press release, CAT seems to credit the AI slop for convincing it to make a real pickup truck. From the release:
In late 2024, something unexpected happened. The internet was buzzing with rumors about Caterpillar building a pickup truck. AI-generated images of a Cat pickup were getting everyone excited. You couldn’t look away, and we couldn’t either. Thousands of inquiries flooded in from customers, contractors, and equipment owners with one simple question: “What would a Cat Truck really be like?”
They dreamed of torque and towing power. Those were the easy parts for Caterpillar, so we went further to see how we could help them even more. We dreamed of a tech-forward system that would transform every jobsite.
So, we did something bold. We built it.
The truck that Caterpillar built isn’t nearly as ambitious as the AI guesses or previous reports suggested. In the video accompanying the press release, a jobsite manager approaches a Ford F-450 Super Duty with a 6.7-liter Power Stroke High-Output V8 diesel parked out front of a home. CAT made no effort to disguise the truck. Even the Ford badge is still on the grille, albeit whited out.
The manager touches the truck, and then it suddenly transforms into the same truck, but with a CAT face on it. Reportedly, the Ford logo still pops up in the OEM truck screens, too. When you watch the video, it appears that the rear end of the truck is largely unchanged from the base Ford.
From here, the video turns into a bit of an advertisement for Caterpillar’s AI-enabled tech. Apparently, the Cat Truck (yes, CAT capitalizes the abbreviation of its name, but not for this truck) has something called an Integrated Display Hub, which is an infotainment-style display with a built-in AI assistant, a productivity monitoring program, and a camera system that detects when workers are getting too close to dangerous equipment. The truck also has a driver fatigue monitoring system and a built-in drone launch platform. How many truck owners actually want a drone on their truck’s roof?
What’s interesting is that, immediately after listing out these techy things, Caterpillar says, “Now you can equip your own truck with this same Cat Technology, giving you complete visibility and control of your entire job site at your fingertips.”
The press release is adamant that Caterpillar actually built this truck. The release is only 464 words long, yet Caterpillar says “We built it” four different ways. Weirdly, the release also mentions the truck’s AI inspiration three times. I guess CAT really wants you to know that it took an AI slop truck and made it real.
So Many Questions
The big question is whether this is just a one-off concept truck to advertise CAT’s AI platform, or if this is Caterpillar hinting that it wants to enter the heavy-duty pickup truck market. If it’s the former, this news is sort of a nothingburger. If it’s the latter, well, that leaves us with so many questions.
What I want to know is what happened with the engines that Caterpillar was reportedly developing in 2024? CAT left the highway diesel market in 2010 following the company’s struggles with meeting more stringent emissions standards. As Transport Topics wrote in 2008, CAT’s 2007 engines suffered from performance issues and breakdowns. In 2003, Caterpillar shelled out $128 million in fines to the Environmental Protection Agency for non-compliant engines. Caterpillar was once the market leader in highway diesels, but the events of the 2000s and then the financial crisis wore away at the brand.
So then, is the Cat Truck signaling a return to the road? I suppose it could be easier for Caterpillar if it sold a pickup truck that uses a rebranded Ford 6.7 Power Stroke. But then, if the Cat Truck is just a rebadged Super Duty, what would CAT offer that Ford already doesn’t through itself or its upfitters? What market would there be for a Caterpillar pickup that’s just a rebadged something else?
With that said, it wouldn’t even be the first time that one brand’s trucks were rebadged into another brand’s. Remember Sterling Trucks? In its final years, it sold the Bullet, which was little more than a Dodge Ram HD chassis cab with a new grille.
There are so many questions here, and the easiest, perhaps most likely answer is CAT just made this truck as a publicity stunt. I have reached out to CAT to get clarification on this, and will update this story if I get any meaningful news back.
Even if this is just a publicity stunt, at least it’s a fun one. I have grown tired of seeing AI slop trucks, so seeing this one is honestly refreshing, even if it is just a Super Duty with resting CAT face. If anything, I’m not even sure what I expected, but it wasn’t the truck that Caterpillar made.
A part of me hopes that this is a teaser for a production pickup truck. Is there a market for it? Eh, maybe, maybe not. But the inner child in me wants to see a gigantic yellow diesel pickup truck with a huge Caterpillar logo on it. I already have a mental picture of one of these things hauling a camper, and I can’t help but smile.
Update: Caterpillar responded, saying this:
Caterpillar is showing a one-off concept vehicle that brings the Cat design DNA and Cat jobsite technology into a familiar pickup truck. This isn’t a product, and it’s not tied to a Ford collaboration—it’s simply a vision piece to spark ideas about how work trucks could become mobile command centers in the future.
Top graphic image: Caterpillar
There is a very odd cross thing here. Long ago I and a friend had a very half assed 2CV busuiness. They were very cheapand being in the UK very rotten, I was possible to aquire galvanised chassis (not all of these had them) but mainly it was two stoned guys and an old airfield. Yes there was a nanger full of 2CVses, another hanger had a four bed brick built house in it.
The Caterpillar connection? Not a one, JCB! Met a chap in a pub who worked in a paint factory. After a late night delevery of what is technically known as a shitload of stolen paint everyone went to bed, luckilly at hame ad not in a police station.
The paint factory only made paint for two customers. One was JCB (very yellow) and the other was the fire brigade (very very red and cloggs up cheap paint sprayers really quickly ‘cos it has sparkly stuff in it),
If you own a very yellow 2CV in the UK that looks like a digger, I am sorry.
Yo! I heard you like to cosplay so I got you a cosplaying truck for your cosplay!
The ai slop looked better. That grill is terrible.
Just add a Yeti sticker
Oof. This is as goofy and cringe as the Tonka Edition F150s made by Tuscany a decade or so back. Just because someone has an idea doesn’t make it a good one.
Then again, like others have said, CAT has licenses their name out for an awful lot of things over the year. My favorite is their cell phones with the built-in FLIR cameras – an absolute garbage phone only made valuable by licensing the name of a company other than CAT (though the FLIR cameras actually work pretty well, when the phone lets them, anyway).
I have a really tiny penis, but even my snack wiener is too big for this thing.
OOOOOO!!! Good idea fairy just visited! CAT could bring back the Nissan Titan! Let’s be real here, Ford doesn’t need any help selling Super Duties, but I’d love to see Nissan (or Toyota, or anyone else, really) have a competitive entry in the full-size pickup market. Nissan needs customers, and CAT wants a platform… Seems mutually beneficial to me, and I know CAT’s not too proud to work with foreign companies.
stuff a c9 in there
So the CAT truck’s evolution so far has been from AI slop to a delivery mechanism for AI slop? No thanks.
Omg that’s so harsh, and not entirely wrong.
Okay, while this is a silly way for CAT to enter the game, the drone aspect is adjacent to a use I’ve always wanted to see — deploy one on the highway to enable high speed navigation through dense traffic. Always felt sci-fi films miss the opportunity to do something cool like this – Aggressive Navigation Pathing via AI Follow Drone.
I wonder how would you feel as a NPC being forced to make way for Ms. Entitled Karen’s latte run?
Problem is if this tech is available to you, it’s available to everyone else too. Giant swarms of drones everywhere. Yes I know they have collision avoidance which works really great (almost all the time).
I look at this and I just know it’s gonna mainly be driven by Douche Bros.
And thus, I hope it DOESN’T go into production.
We have enough douchemobiles already.
And this being AI-enabled douchemobile with a drone makes me hate it even more.
You just know the Douche using the drone is gonna use it in a way to piss someone off.
Work truck? That size and everything?
Can they make a lite version which is basically a 2-seat Ford Maverick?
Should include a pair of CAT work boots.
And a CAT cell phone.
And a CAT jacket.
And… Whatever other bullshit they license their name to.
The yellow and black paint package is pretty cool.
My Harley Ford is my weekend truck. The CAT truck is for the workweek over in the cubicle mines.
I remember working for Toyota when CAT was going to do the diesel engine for the Tundra. Even showed us the concept photos (way before AI slop)…
Then the great recession hit and diesel shot to the moon, and obviously the project died.
No, Cat.
Stay in your lane.
I have a stupid soft spot for tractor manufacturers (poorly) trying to enter a new niche. My other favorite is the (forgotten) John Deere Buck atv.
Don’t forget their snowmobiles too!
That was a LONG time ago when everyone made sleds .
And don’t forget the monstrosity that International made
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_XT
This is incredibly stupid, pretty fucking lazy, and anything involving AI is just an immediate “fuck no” from me. It’s dangerous, unethical, and an objective scourge on humanity.
…but I’ll also admit that my inner child is kind of entertained here because this looks like something I’d play with when I was a wee lad. Can we maybe get a mid sized truck with a Tonka appearance package? I just might be stupid and nostalgic enough to buy one….
…I think there used to be a Tonka edition Ford of some kind. Or maybe that was a display vehicle for the Tonka Bigfoot…
Yeah there was a Tonka Ford, a friend bought one. It was a F-150 in Tonka yellow, with a lift, wheels, Tonka badging, and some interior and exterior tweaks. I can’t remember the company that modified them, they did other special versions of trucks.
Maybe they can sell them at Ford, Lincoln, Mercury* dealers and Ford can revive it’s “At the sign of the cat” slogan.
*RIP
I remember semi truck drivers bragging that they had a caterpillar engine. Whats the point of this truck if they’re not powering it?