October 26, 2026
Caterpillar’s autonomous mining machines have moved 11 billion tons without a single reported injury
Caterpillar’s Q3 earnings land Thursday morning, October 29, with the consensus sitting at about $7.04 a share on roughly $20.7 billion in revenue. Those are big numbers. They are also almost beside the point for anyone trying to understand where CAT trades in 2027.
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The real question in this report is whether the autonomous fleet is becoming a margin engine or just a technology talking point. The difference matters more than any single quarter.
What the Machines Are Already Doing
Caterpillar says it has nearly 700 autonomous mining trucks in operation around the world, and that they have safely hauled more than 11 billion tonnes of material. The company says those autonomous operations have been achieved without a single reported injury.
That record is commercially real, not a lab result. Caterpillar announced a deployment agreement with Carmeuse, a global lime and limestone producer, to run MineStar Command for hauling at its Drummond Island, Michigan quarry, alongside a renewed supply agreement with Fortescue to keep running the system across three mining operations in Western Australia.
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Caterpillar has set a 2030 target of 2 million connected assets and a separate goal to expand its autonomous mining fleet materially from today’s level. Expanding the fleet means expanding the recurring software and services revenue attached to it, which carries margins the iron itself never will.
The Excavator Problem and the NVIDIA Bet
Haul trucks were the easy case. Fixed routes, controlled environments, repeatable tasks. Excavators are harder. At CES 2026, Caterpillar unveiled an expanded partnership with NVIDIA to bring the Jetson Thor edge-AI platform to construction and mining machines beyond haul trucks, extending autonomous capability toward a broader set of equipment.
Machines equipped with these systems are designed to process large volumes of data quickly, which could prove crucial for mining equipment navigating variable pit conditions and underground environments where split-second decisions impact both safety and productivity.
Caterpillar has not provided a specific timeline for when autonomous versions of excavators and loaders would be commercially available. That gap between announcement and commercial shipment is where the bull case gets complicated. The fleet expansion story is real. The excavator revenue story is not yet.
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What the Numbers Say Going In
Second-quarter 2026 sales hit $20.5 billion, the first time in company history Caterpillar generated over $20 billion in revenue in a single quarter. Operating profit margin was 20.9% for the quarter, up from 17.3% a year earlier. The bar for Thursday is high.
CAT is not cheap at roughly 29 times trailing earnings. The stock closed Friday at $687, down from a 52-week high of $1,073.46 on June 30. That gap is partly tariff noise, partly earnings multiple compression. A strong Thursday report with autonomous fleet commentary that goes beyond the fleet count could close some of it.
What to Watch in the Call
- Any update on the autonomous haul truck count beyond “nearly 700” or a hard 2027 expansion target
- Services and software revenue as a percentage of total, which is where the fleet’s margin premium actually shows up
- Excavator autonomy timeline: a commercial date would move the stock more than EPS
- Progress against the $100 million, five-year workforce training commitment, which signals how seriously leadership is pacing the internal transition
CAT is not cheap at 29 times trailing earnings. But it is also not a cyclical equipment company anymore, and the market has not fully priced which one it is. Thursday’s call is the next data point in that argument.
