U.S. Contractor Wins Cat's Best Equipment Operator in the World Title (Video)
The Maine contractor took the top honor for his operating skills. The top Cat dealer technician was also crowned after a global...
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At ConExpo 2026 in Las Vegas, Caterpillar named the winners of its two contests to find the world's best equipment technician and operator.
For footage of the finalists competing in both challenges, scroll to the end of this article.
U.S. Contractor Wins Top Operator Honor
Brian Hayden with Hayden Excavating and Welding Inc. of Wells, Maine, won the Global Operator Challenge.
Hayden will receive either a $10,000 cash prize or an expense-paid trip of equivalent value. His representing dealer is Milton Cat.
Having won the Eastern Region Championship last year, Hayden faced off against the contest’s Western Region Champion – Brock Leclerc with Quattro Constructors of British Columbia, Canada – and seven other global competitors in a final test of skill at Caterpillar’s 70,000-square-foot ConExpo 2026 outdoor exhibit.
Since Spring 2025, thousands of operators from over 40 countries have competed in the Global Operator Challenge. The various competitions included:
- The Over-the-Top Challenge — a multi-phase course operators navigated over rugged terrain with a bar carriage, swapped to a bucket for high-speed loading and used a material handling arm to life objects to a staged platform.
- City Streets — a precision-based challenge in which operators used a Caterpillar excavator to place a manhole lid into a cast frame, retrieved and inserted a 30-inch pipe into a vertical culvert, and filled an articulated dump truck with 15-20 tons of material.
- The Load ‘N Loader Challenge — a dual-phase course that had operators loading and hauling material along a marked path before dumping into an articulated hauler, then swapping to forks and moving a pipe along a route and placing it on a flatbed trailer. Operators then had to return the pipe to its original spot, swap back to the bucket and race to the finish.
Top Technician Crowned
Tom March (right) holds his championship belt after being named the top global Caterpillar technician.Caterpillar
Hailing from the United Kingdom, March works as a technical engineer with Caterpillar dealer Finning UK & Ireland. He was one of 10 techs who took part in the competition’s final round at Caterpillar’s Edwards Demonstration and Learning Center in Peoria, Illinois.
Those finalists were among the thousands of Caterpillar technicians across the world entered in the challenge, competing in dealer-level and regional events before making it to the semifinals held in California and Spain.
During every round along the way, competing Caterpillar technicians were given deliberately broken Cat machines by Caterpillar engineers and tasked with diagnosing and fixing any issues within a time limit. The specific machine issues could be mechanical, hydraulic, electrical, and sometimes a combination of the three, and technicians were also required to speak with simulated customers to figure out problems.
Second place went to Leon Archibald with Australian Cat dealer WesTrac, and third place was awarded to Rhys Bishop, with Australian Cat dealer Hastings Deering.
Caterpillar says the two competitions were designed to draw attention to the industry’s growing need for technicians and operators and attract the attention of potential candidates.
In addition to these two competitions, Caterpillar announced a five-year, $25 million innovation challenge at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show to identify and scale solutions to help workers develop the skills needed to thrive in an increasingly digital and autonomous environment.
