When your transmission, turbo or other major component reaches the end of its life, did you know replacing it with a new product or a “will-fit” offering may not be your most sustainable or cost-effective choice? You’re probably familiar with rebuilds, where your local Cat® dealer takes your old iron, inspects it, rebuilds it to specifications and returns it to you to put back to work. But there’s another option that delivers big environmental and economic benefits: Cat Reman.

Cat Reman, defined

Different companies use the term “remanufacturing” to mean different things, leading to varying levels of quality and performance. If you’ve had a bad experience with another company’s remanufactured products, you’re not alone — but it pays to give Cat Reman a closer look.

Caterpillar is known for top-notch engineering, high-quality materials and robust manufacturing processes. That’s why our products last longer and why they’re the perfect candidates for remanufacturing — because they’re designed and built with a second life in mind.

Our remanufacturing process begins when our dealers send your used iron to us. We employ state-of-the-art salvage techniques, strict reuse guidelines, advanced remanufacturing processes and unequalled quality control to clean it, inspect it, salvage it, remanufacture it to original factory specifications and put it into dealer inventory.

The result is a Cat Reman product that delivers like-news performance and operating capability. In some cases, it may perform even better because our process also includes incorporating the latest engineering and technology updates. We’re so confident in that level of performance that we back every Cat Reman product with a same-as-new warranty.

Good for the environment

Take a look at one of your existing engines and imagine how much material went into producing it. Iron was melted down in a foundry, poured into a cast and cooled with water to make the block, which then went through a series of manufacturing and machining processes to create the final product. If you scrap that engine, all the material, water and energy that went into making it are lost.

If you return that engine block to your Cat dealer and accept a Cat Reman product in return, you’re choosing a more sustainable option. On average, a Cat Reman product reduces water use by 86%, new material use by 85% and greenhouse gas emissions by 61%. These sustainability numbers — combined with the bottom-line savings you get when you choose Cat Reman — are ones you can feel good about sharing with your stakeholders.

Good for your bottom line, too

"Like-new" doesn’t mean priced like new. That’s where you see the real economic value of choosing Cat Reman. Because it requires much less raw material, water and energy to remanufacture a product than to manufacture a new one, Cat Reman engines and components are priced at a fraction of the cost of new. You pay less but don’t run the risk of quality or durability problems found with inexpensive will-fit components.

When you buy a Cat Reman product, you return your used iron to your dealer, and your dealer gives you a lower-priced, off-the-shelf Cat Reman product in exchange — plus credit for your “core.” Most times, you pay about 50-65% of the cost of new to get a product that looks like new, performs like new and is warrantied like new. The best part? The rest of your equipment can’t tell the difference. You can pair a Cat Reman transmission with a brand-new Cat 3512E Tier 4 Final DGB engine, for example, with no performance issues.

Cat Reman for oil and gas

Cat Reman got its start in the truck engine business in the 1970s and quickly grew to support customers in construction and mining as well. Today, there are about 8,000 different types of Cat Reman products available across industries. For oil and gas equipment, that includes Cat Reman transmissions as well as a number of major components for both diesel and gas engines — turbochargers, cylinder blocks, cylinder heads, fuel injectors, oil coolers, oil pumps, pistons, rocker arms and more. Check out the coverage chart for a look at what’s available for your engine model or talk to your Cat dealer for specifics.