Date/Time
Date(s) - 02/06/2026
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Location
Finning UK Ltd. (Caterpillar)
Visit: Finning UK Ltd. Tuesday 2nd June 2026 at 18.30
Venue: Gelderd Road, Gildersome, Leeds LS27 7JS (200 yards on the Leeds side of the Gelderd Road roundabout)
LAE Member Neil Cobbold has kindly arranged a summer visit to Finning UK Ltd. the Caterpillar dealer formerly known as H. Leverton & Co. Neil tells us that he started his working career at Leverton at the Leeds branch in 1971 and retired after 45 years service in 2016. He suggests that sturdy footwear is recommended for the visit.
Here Neil offers a brief history of the company and a notes about the visit:-
“Formerly H. Leverton & Co., the Leeds branch covered an area generally from the Pennines in the West, over to the East Coast, Thirsk to the North, and Sheffield to the South. Other depots were in Wigan, Spalding (which included the training centre), Birtley (near Gateshead), Halstead, Ashford in Kent and Windsor which was the Head Office. Leverton covered the whole Caterpillar range which included Dump trucks, Wheel loaders and Dozers, Track loaders and Dozers, Excavators, Motor Scrapers, Marine engines, Gas fuelled engines, Generator Sets, Engines for other equipment manufacturers, i.e. Crushers, Pump sets etc. Engines also were fitted in Road trucks such as Foden in the UK.
The visit will start with gathering in the meeting room, followed by a tour of the site, which will hopefully include the heavy plant repair shop, disassembly shop, parts shop, paint shop, component rebuild shop and engine and transmission test cells. Finning UK (a Canadian based Caterpillar dealer) took over the business of Leverton on 1st October 1997. The product range is much greater since I retired due to Caterpillar taking over other brands.”
As is the custom we will retire to a local hostelry for refreshments and socialising…
Come along to this extra summer event… Our thanks go to Neil for arranging this interesting visit…
.