Caterpillar has not made industrial forklifts since the early 1990's. When Caterpillar bought Towmotor it was because the CEO of CAT wanted to get into the forklift business. The truth is that they never made money selling forklifts. The initial idea of having the CAT construction equipment dealers sell forklifts did not work very well as the dealers made a lot more money on the construction equipment than forklifts. The construction equipment dealers started telling CAT that they no longer wanted the lift truck franchise in the mis to late 1980"s. As they slowly lost dealers Caterpillar realized that their future in the lift truck business was not very bright. Their share of market never was very good either. The entered into an agreement with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries forming MCFA in 1992 that basically said that MCFA could manufacture forklifts and use the CAT logo not the Caterpillar name though just the CAT logo and market the trucks as CAT's. The trucks marketed under that name have been Mitsubishi trucks with different paint jobs and some limited cosmetic differences. The CAT branded trucks have still not commanded a strong market share compared to the leaders in the market.

They still have a problem with their distribution network as well. They have some strong dealers but have lost many good ones over the past years such as Pape', LiftOne and Gregory Poole among others.

Caterpillar has sold off more of their stake in MCFA to Mitsubishi and currently is a minority partner in that venture.

So the answer to the question as to when Caterpillar will get out of the lift truck market is they are already pretty much out of it and anyone who buys a CAT branded lift truck thinking it is a Caterpillar product is only fooling themselves.