The off-highway equipment manufacturing giant said it is transferring its global base to the Dallas suburb of Irving, from Deerfield, outside Chicago.
Caterpillar had been based in Peoria, Illinois, for over 90 years before announcing a move to Deerfield in 2017. At the time, it touted Deerfield as meeting its goal of being more accessible to its global customers, dealers and employees.
Caterpillar already has an office in Irving and has been in the state since the 1960s.
"We believe it's in the best strategic interest of the company to make this move," CEO Jim Umpleby said. Caterpillar said it will begin transitioning its headquarters to Irving this year. The move is expected to affect the roughly 230 corporate employees at the company's headquarters, Caterpillar said, a fraction of its total workforce of nearly 108,000.
Caterpillar continues to have many salaried employees based in Peoria and other factories in the state that make some of the company's largest mining trucks and tracked bulldozers. The construction, quarrying and mining machine maker employs 17,000 employees in Illinois, including around 12,000 in the Peoria area, out of approximately 44,000 workers in the U.S.
It's the latest major corporation to ditch the Chicago area after Boeing Co. said last month that it was moving its headquarters to the Washington, D.C., area.
A handful of technology companies have also recently shifted their headquarters from California's Silicon Valley to Texas. Tesla and Oracle have moved to Austin, while Hewlett-Packard Packard Enterprises is now in Spring, Texas, outside Houston.
