As an avid Caterpillar collector, Erik Christenbury had the “Sugar Baby” Cat on his wish list.
He had heard about the D6s that got their nickname after U.S. Sugar had converted them from tracks to rubber tires in the 1950s and 1960s. The company used those “DW6s” for hauling wagons filled with 30 tons of sugar cane from the fields to the company’s sugar mills.
When one of the converted D6s popped up on eBay, Christenbury thought he’d finally scored. Another bidder, however, captured the prize.
In 2011, he got a second chance.
A friend who owns a scrapyard in southwest Virginia called to say one just showed up and asked if he were interested. He drove from his home in Liberty, North Carolina, to have a look.
“I didn't realize he had two of them,” Christenbury recalls. “And before our conversation ended, I bought both of them.”
The transaction yielded a 1957 DW6 9U and a 1962 DW6 B.
