With a lifelong passion for Cat equipment, Marty Turpin has operated a wide variety of models during his extensive career in the construction and mining industries. Now, as a key member of the Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owners Club Chapter 19, he promotes the history of heavy equipment to future generations through his own personal collection
For most heavy machinery enthusiasts, their passion has been deeply ingrained from a young age. It can often be attributed to childhood memories, such as sitting beside their father on a dozer, excavator or grader as they did their work.
Marty Turpin, a member of the Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owners Club (ACMOC) Chapter 19, is no different.
Growing up with his dad working in the earthmoving industry, Turpin can remember sitting beside him on a variety of Cat equipment on the weekends and during school holidays.
“Because of the dust, I’d have to wear these plastic goggles that hurt your face and it was freezing cold sitting beside him on a D6 bulldozer – no cab, no windows, just an open tractor,” he says.
“I got to go with him in trucks, front-end loaders, bulldozers and even graders. We’d load gravel onto a truck with the loader and then ride in the truck to tip it off.”
While these are common memories of an era with less stringent safety laws, Turpin says newer generations are not getting the same experiences, which he fears is causing them to not have an interest in heavy machinery.
“I had lots of fun sitting in bulldozers and loaders, that’s where I got my passion from, but that was back in the day when you could go to work with your father – you can’t do that anymore,” he says.
Turpin adds many machinery clubs have struggled or even discontinued because of this, with no ‘young blood’ coming through the doors and existing members getting too old to keep the organisations running by themselves.
Top fan
ACMOC Chapter 19 – which covers the southeastern part of Australia, including Victoria and Tasmania – aims to buck this trend by promoting the history of Caterpillar.
While the name of the club insinuates members must be a Cat machine owner, Turpin says that it’s not the case, and you only need an interest in the brand’s extensive history.
Formed in the USA more than two decades ago, ACMOC has since expanded with various chapters across the globe.
With Caterpillar having celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2025, ACMOC Chapter 19 contributed to a vintage Cat equipment display at Henty Machinery Field Days in late September.
The display by Turpin and his fellow Chapter 19 members ranged from a 1928 Cat two-ton crawler tractor up to a 1980 Cat 930 loader, showcasing the development of Cat equipment over the last century.
A 2025 Cat 950 wheel loader custom-painted in grey – brought to Henty by local Cat dealer WesTrac, sat alongside the vintage display as a nod to the original battleship grey of the first two-ton crawler tractor to roll off the production line in 1925.
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The grey Cat loader was just one of 10 models produced worldwide and one of only two in Australia.
A competition was also held by WesTrac to find the biggest Caterpillar fan at the event, in which participants were tested on their knowledge of the OEM.
Turpin says everyone’s knowledge was outstanding, and there was no clear cut ‘biggest fan’ among the contestants, so another avenue was explored by WesTrac.
“They couldn’t separate our knowledge of the brand, so it came down to our estimates of the price of the 100th anniversary grey front end loader,” he says.
“My guess was actually the closet.”
Crowned as the biggest Cat fan, Turpin received a limited-edition scale model of a 1927 Twenty tractor from WesTrac, and attributes his knowledge to his lifetime involvement with the brand.
“I was asked what association I have with Caterpillar, and that’s when I told them I went to work with my dad back in the day and ended up working my whole life on Cat machines,” he says.
Experienced operator
Growing up in the greater Brisbane area, Turpin never planned on finishing high school, having already learnt what he felt was essential.
He recalls looking out the window of the classroom and watching trucks all day long.
“I could name every truck brand that came past, and if I could hear them coming, sometimes I’d be able to name what engine was in it,” Turpin says.
“That was my fascination, because I’d grown up around trucks and machinery with my dad. I just wanted to operate them myself.”
Leaving school at just age 15, Turpin stumbled upon a local roadworks crew, and after explaining why he wasn’t in class, they asked him to get on a roller.
“That’s how my career started, I got on that roller, and they had to drag me off it at the end of the day,” he says.
“I think the next day was a weekend, because I went there and waited all day and no one turned up, and that’s when I realised they don’t work on weekends.”
By 16, Turpin was already operating excavators – a role he would continue for many years in Brisbane’s civil construction sector.
Many of his friends had moved to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, during that time – eventually convincing him to drive across the country in search for new work in the mining industry.
Landing a job quickly as a dump truck operator and later getting in the cabin of mining shovels, Turpin spent the next decade and a half in WA, working his way up in different machines, including a stint in the Kalgoorlie Super Pit where he operated a 500-tonne O&K face shovel and a 200-tonne excavator, loading 200-tonne dump trucks.
Turpin then spent two years working as an underground loader operator in South Australia’s Olympic Dam uranium and copper mine at Roxby Downs, but by that stage he was ready for a new path in his life.
Meeting his eventual wife in the Shepparton area of Victoria, Turpin has now lived there for around 25 years, but it has involved a slight career change for him.
Having always wanted to do his diesel apprenticeship but never getting the chance, Turpin pursued an advertised job for a diesel technician at a local truck dealership – even though he knew he wasn’t qualified.
“The service manager told me to come in and asked me why I had never done the apprenticeship – I explained that I had never been given the opportunity,” Turpin says.
“He offered me that opportunity through an adult apprenticeship, which I didn’t know existed, and I ended up doing that in my late 30s on an adult wage.”
Prized possessions
Once qualified, Turpin began servicing trucks, trailers and even small excavators, before his skills were required by an earthmoving business, in which Turpin maintained all their equipment.
Eventually getting the itch to work for himself, Turpin decided to start up his own diesel business – TDI mobile mechanical services – which he has since been running for the past two decades.
Owning a large workshop throughout this time, Turpin has been able to restore most of his historic Cat equipment collection, which includes 14 individual machines, ranging from a two-ton crawler tractor and 1937 Twenty-Two model to a 1938 D2 and 1957 D4 crawler tractor.
Many of these machines have been procured from either online listings or people offering them to Turpin, knowing their equipment will be in safe hands.
“People will tell me the history of the machine in terms of who owned it in their family and their memories sitting in it as a kid,” Turpin says.
“Often the family member has passed away and they want the machine to go to someone who’s going to look after it. If it has sentimental attachment, the last thing people want is a tractor that was their father’s or grandfather’s to be wrecked.”
The oldest machine in Turpin’s collection is a 1913 Russell Junior grader and while this isn’t a Cat machine, it is a significant part of the brand’s history, as the origins of Cat motor graders can be traced back to the establishment of the Russell Grader Manufacturing Company in 1903.
Russell blade graders were frequently paired with Caterpillar tractors, so both companies explored opportunities to expand product lines together, before Caterpillar Tractor Co. acquired the Russell Grader Manufacturing Company in 1928.
By doing so, it enabled Caterpillar Tractor Co. to establish a new ‘Road Machinery Division’ to handle blade grader production and motor grader development.
Turpin has showcased this piece of Caterpillar’s history in the form of the 1913 Russell Junior grader at various machinery shows over the years, towing it with his 1937 Cat Twenty-Two crawler tractor.
“I’ve got my own semi that I’ve restored that I cart my crawlers around for shows,” he says.
“I’ve got tractors dating back to 1928 as well that I haven’t restored yet because they are a lot of work. I get up at half past five in the morning every day including Saturday and Sunday and come over to my workshop to work on my truck and tractors.”
Word tour
Celebrating 100 years of Caterpillar, Turpin and six other members of ACMOC Chapter 19 took a two-week trip to the USA last year, touring Caterpillar’s manufacturing and assembly facilities.
Organised by the group itself, the members went to various locations, such as the Caterpillar Visitors Center & Museum in Peoria, Illinois, as well as the company’s local tractor manufacturing facility – producing D6 up to D11 dozers.
“I watched a D10 dozer being born and that was amazing,” Turpin says.
“We also did the global track solutions, which is where they make the tracks for D6 to D11 dozers.
“From casting their own steel, all the machining to assembling the tracks, painting them and putting them on the tractors – it’s all done in house at the facilities at Peoria.”
In addition, Turpin says the group visited another Caterpillar facility in Decatur, Illinois, that manufactures and assembles front-end loaders, scrapers, dump trucks up to the 793 model and 24H graders.
“We also went up to Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, to Caterpillar’s rope shovel and drag line factory,” he says.
“The trip was absolutely amazing, it’s been on my to do list, but to be able to get access to the places that we got to go to, I could never have done that myself – thank you ACMOC Chapter 19 for that experience.”
For more info about ACMOC Chapter 19, or other ACMOC Chapters near you, visit: acmoc.org
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