Caterpillar on the Rails

14. 08. 2019

Do you know what excavators, track loaders and bulldozers have in common? Exactly. All products made by Caterpillar, the world's largest manufacturer of construction machinery, which has been transporting its machines on the environmentally friendly railways since May 2019.

The heavyweights come all the way across the Atlantic from plants in the US and Mexico to Estonia by ship, some already fully assembled and some in partly disassembled form.

Directly at the Port of Paldiski in Estonia, RCG uses their unique, self-developed technological innovation to load ten Caterpillar construction machines, weighing a total of 410 tonnes, on to eight platform trucks. This is close to the total weight of four Boeing 787 long-haul jets!

The heavyweights are bound for Astana Railway Station in Kazakhstan, which is almost 4,000km away.

The intermodal transportation of tonnes of "Caterpillars"

We combine the advantages of rail and road as well as water and air transport into one supply chain. We bring backhoe loaders from Great Britain across the North and Baltic Seas to Astana Station in Kazakhstan by means of our intermodal transport, for instance.

Since May 2019, Caterpillar construction machinery and disassembled dump trucks have been regularly travelling on broad gauge wagons from Estonia on their way through Europe to Astana, which is almost 4,000km away.

Kazakhstan as a pioneer

Kazakhstan was the granary and the raw material supplier of the former Soviet Union. It is still among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of the volume of freight it transports by rail, thus having enormous potential for the RCG.

Thinking about the environment

Transporting these machines the 4,000km stretch between the Paldiski port in Estonia and the Astana in Kazakhstan saves the environment 23.5 tons of CO2.

Caterpillar has reduced CO2 emissions from its production facilities by almost 40 % and energy consumption by one-third within eight years.

This is great news for not only the environment, but for us as well!