Almost 100 years in business, Mystic Seaport (Mystic) is known as the museum of America and the sea. A major U.S. tourist attraction, Mystic is America’s largest maritime museum, having successfully restored and preserved historic watercrafts since 1929. For more than 60 years, the museum has relied on Cat lift trucks to restore and move ships in and around their large facility. When it was time to expand its fleet – Mystic choose a new 15,500 lb. Cat forklift to work alongside its’ vintage 1954 Cat lift truck – still in operation today.

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Video Transcript:

Quentin Snediker, Shipyard Director: Mystic Seaport is the largest maritime museum in the United States. The mission is to inspire an enduring connection with the American maritime experience.

We have about 300,000 visitors every year, and our responsibility here is to maintain a fleet of historic watercraft, ranging from small canoes like you see behind us here, to the whale ship Charles W. Morgan – a ship that weighs 450 tons.

We basically start with trees and those trees can weigh several tons.

Nathan Adams, Shipwright: It might be a 7ton live oak log from a trailer into our sawmill – we’re moving those cut pieces of wood from the sawmill into big machinery that we’re using to cut it up and form the boat parts. Then we’re taking those parts from the machinery and moving them onto the boat, like the Mayflower II.

Snediker: There are many steps involved, starting from the tree and finishing with the ship – and a Cat® forklift is absolutely vital to every movement along the way. We’ve had a tradition of Cat machinery here, we’ve got a 1954 Cat forklift and our familiarity with the reliability with Cat equipment, the great service we’ve had through the decades…literally…led us to focus on Cat machinery.

Scott Noseworthy, General Maintenance Supervisor: The reason we picked the DP70N is that it was a direct replacement for the machine that we currently use, both in its footprint and maneuverability around the shipyard.

Adams: It’s been a good 20 plus years since we’ve had a replacement machine. So getting a brand new forklift was pretty exciting.

Snediker: Our shipyard is not just a working shipyard, but it is a visitor’s space. We need to integrate the use of our heavy equipment with visitors actually walking through the work areas.

Adams: Our new Cat (lift truck) allows us a full range of visibility and great maneuverability so that we can safely work around our visitors and our colleagues.

Greg See, Shipwright: We are moving 30 ft. logs with the public standing 20 ft. away, and so every nook of space gets used. And therefore, being able to get in and out of all of those tight corners is unparalleled.

Snediker: The visibility I think is great; with the windows open communication is easy.

See: The side view mirrors are also quite helpful.

Noseworthy: The moving forks are a great help for us. Not having to climb on and off the machine to adjust it – could have been at least 2 hours a day jumping off the machine just to readjust the forks.

Adams: Our old forklift we had to do that by hand, but the new forklift allows us to control all of that from the cab. It’s really been a time saving feature.

See: I would absolutely recommend Cat (lift trucks) to others.

Snediker: Our experience has shown us that this machine is durable, reliable and we have great confidence in it.

Adams: Mystic seaport is the museum of America and the sea. We have vessels that were built here dating back hundreds of years, and carrying on that tradition of American made machinery is fantastic for us.

Noseworthy: I wouldn’t go with anything else.