Carpentry certification is a great way to improve your prospects in your construction career. If you are an unskilled labor, chances are that you have experienced working at a few different places. It is a fact that most companies offer unskilled laborers very little in the way of security, and the pay, while a little better than some other unskilled jobs, is not that great. When you add a carpentry certification to the mix, however, things take on a different light. For one thing, you will get paid a little more at the end of each month; always a nice thing, you will also get to experience some job security. Workers with carpentry certification are less likely to be let go at the end of a big project.

Carpentry certification differs a great deal from a carpentry apprenticeship. A carpentry apprenticeship takes several years to complete, carpentry certifications, however, can be obtained in a relatively short space of time. A full-blown carpenter will likely get paid more, but not everyone has the luxury of being able to survive for years on apprentice wages. Carpentry certification gives you a more focused set of skills. You get certified for tasks that you are likely to be required to perform on a daily basis. While a carpentry apprentice will train in a much broader skill set, in the day to day operations of a construction site, you are not going to need most of them.

If you are interested in gaining carpentry certification, please do not hesitate to contact us at Associated Training Services.

Job placement can help you make the jump from training to being employed. Sometimes it can be very difficult to make that transition. Many new graduates lack the confidence and some just don’t know where to look. Heavy equipment is an enormous industry and there are plenty of opportunities, but how can you break into it for the first time and how can you get the opportunity to get the experience that you need to make your own way? The answer is, of course, with job placement.

Job placement gets your foot in the door

At Associated Training Services we feel that it is of the utmost importance to offer job placement to our students. It gives our students an opportunity to put their skills to use in a work environment as soon as they graduate from our school. In the time that follows your training it is absolutely crucial to get into a job as quickly as possible. The longer you delay, the more you will forget. Job placement puts you in work as quickly as possible.

We can offer job placement because of our extensive industry connections. Over the years, many people have passed through the doors of Associated Training Services. Construction companies recognize the fact that our graduates are competent and able to handle real life construction situations. Our job placement program can put you in a company just about anywhere in the country. Talk to us and give us some indication of what you want from your job placement and we might be able to help. Our job placement connections spread throughout the United States, so if you wanted a change of scenery, we just might be able to make it happen. Of course, if you want to stay closer to home, we can do that too.

If you are interested in learning more about our job placement program, please contact us.

heavy equipment safety is something that we care a great deal about here at Associated Training Services. If you have been in and around heavy equipment for a while, chances are you will have seen a few accidents. Accidents happen, but it is our view that most accidents are entirely avoidable. Statistics tell us a great deal, but many people become so focused on them that they lose sight of the big picture. People tend to focus on the fatalities and forget that people do experience injuries that can make getting back to work difficult to do. Our training doesn’t just teach you how to use equipment, it teaches you how to use equipment safely. We want our graduates to take heavy equipment safety very seriously.

If you are already working in construction, whether or not you are an operator of heavy equipment, heavy equipment safety is something that you should have in your mind at all times. When you are working around equipment, make sure that you are doing so without putting yourself at unnecessary risk. If you are operating heavy equipment, do your best to ensure that your co-workers are working safely around your machine. There is nothing worse than being at the controls when a machine injures one of your workmates.

How can we improve heavy equipment safety around the workplace? It is easy, spread awareness about it. Most of the heavy equipment safety errors that people make have to do with saving time. Get in the mindset that it is better to be late than dead on time. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to do things safely, but if you consider the possible consequences that come with cutting corners, it really is the only way that makes sense.

If you have any questions or comments regarding heavy equipment safety, please do not hesitate to contact us at Associated Training Services.

There are literally hundreds of reasons why you should get certification, today we are not going to go into those so much as we are going to look at some of the steps that you will need to take to ensure that you can get certified. The focus will be on the technical aspects of getting certified more than the positives of getting certification.

Step 1. Financing – Your certification will need to be financed; many students finance themselves, however, if you are not in a position to do so, you will need to consider financial aid. The process for applying for financial aid is relatively straightforward. As long as you have a good credit rating or a guarantor, you should be accepted.

Step 2. Training – Training takes time, you will not be able to work the same hours if you are training full time for your certification. You will need to decide whether it is in your interests to work full time and study part time or study full time and work part time.

Step 3. Going to Class – Just paying for your certification training does not mean that you will necessarily pass. Attaining your certification can be a lot of hard work. The pay off is at the end when you can get a better job and live a more comfortable life.

If you have any questions about any of our certification programs, please contact us at Associated Training Services.

While just about every construction site has its heavy jobs for which full blown excavators are required, there is no shortage of smaller jobs that backhoes can be used for. In fact, for smaller applications, backhoes are much more versatile than their larger cousin. What is the reason for the versatility of small backhoes? It is of course, their compact size.

Think about landscaping applications, where there is an enormous need for earthmoving. The average backyard does not have an entrance that would permit an excavator to enter. You can get them in there, but it often involves a great deal of disruption. Unless the job is really big, it might not be necessary. Small backhoes can fit into much tighter spaces and perform the same work on a smaller scale. It might take longer, but the disruption that this saves might make the additional job time worth the expense.

Of course, backhoes get a lot bigger than the small backyard landscaping models, and these can compete with excavators for some of the larger jobs. The excavator’s strength is that it is a mobile powerhouse. It can perform very heavy excavation jobs and demolition jobs. It is designed and built with these purposes in mind. There is and always will be a place for both types of equipment, but consider training in backhoes if you want to work outside of industries that tend to employ excavators.

If you are interested in learning more about either excavators or backhoes, please do not hesitate to contact us at Associated Training Services.

For those that do it, Truck Driving appeals on many different levels. If you look at what truck driving is, at its most basic, it is easy to understand why so many people love it. It is a career that just about anyone can get into at almost any stage of their life. Truck driving can be a lot of fun and it pays well. Even if you are driving someone else’s truck, you are left to your own devices for much of the day. These are all things that give truck driving its appeal, which we will elaborate on in today’s article.

Truck Driving – Easy to Get Into

Don’t mistake me, truck driving is not an easy job. Truck driving requires a certain amount of training that not everyone will complete. There are skills that not everyone can master. Getting into the training and from training into a job, however, is relatively easy. It does not take a great deal of time to meet your licensing requirements. From there, with a little help from a job placement program, you will be able to go from training to working in no time. It is a profession that does not require much in the way of an educational background, the training period is relatively short and, if you are prepared to work, the payoff is fantastic.

Truck Driving Pays Well

A lot of people don’t realize just how financially rewarding truck driving can be. Truck driving has the potential to pay extremely well, it all depends on how hard you are prepared to work. If you are prepared to drive over some of the long-haul trucking routes, where you may be away from home for days or even weeks at a time, you can find yourself earning enormous sums of money. Of course, the trade off is time; still if you enjoy the open road, long-haul truck driving can be a fantastic experience.

Truck Driving Offers Freedom

Regardless of whether you are an owner operator or working for a company, when you are doing your job it is just you and your equipment. Some big rigs might have a second driver so that you can drive around the clock, but for the most part your time is your own. This, for some people, is one of the most exciting aspects of truck driving.

If you are interested in a career in truck driving, please contact us at Associated Training Services.

Do you need certification to be able to operate a piece of machinery? The answer to this question is no. If you go to a lot of farming areas, you will see people operating equipment without certification. Chances are that they have spent their lives around heavy equipment and know a great deal about its operation. Were they to train, they would learn a thing or two, but basically they would have a very good understanding of the workings of the heavy equipment that they have been using. If you are operating equipment on your own property, then you don’t really need certification, but it is always good to have. If, however, you want to operate heavy equipment off your property, then you absolutely must have certification.

You need certification if you want to use heavy equipment anywhere else. All the skills in the world will not help you get a heavy equipment job without certification. It doesn’t matter if you have been operating equipment for many years, without that piece of paper, you have less claim to the salary and benefits from your years of training than someone who graduated from a training center yesterday. Their certification makes them legally qualified to operate the equipment; not having it relegates you to unskilled labor. Now, if there were ever to be a shortage of skilled workers in your company, you might be in line for training, but there is no predicting if or when that would ever happen. So why not get that certification?

A lot of people put off getting their certification because of the cost and time that are involved. There is no way around it, certification costs money. Look at it from a business point of view. Here at Associated Training Services we need to hire teachers, we need to purchase and maintain equipment, we need land for our training centers and we need an administrative staff to help everything run smoothly. If you go to any training school around the country, it is the same story. Training for heavy equipment is going to cost. On the other hand, it does not take all that long for the training to pay for itself. Once you bite the bullet and actually do the training, you can then start moving on and earning a lot more money. The sooner you train for your certification the sooner you can earn a higher wage.

If you are interested in training with us to obtain your certification here at Associated Training Services, please feel free to contact us. We look forward to helping you take the first steps towards your certification and entering more rewarding employment.

Heavy equipment careers can be extremely rewarding, but it does take some commitment and the right sort of character to really succeed as a heavy equipment operator. There are plenty of jobs to go around, the thing that you need to ensure is that you are right for the job. Some people do not enjoy the responsibility that comes along with any of the various heavy equipment careers. What responsibilities are these?

• Being an integral part of your work unit. People in heavy equipment careers must be dependable, end of story. Depending on the size of your company, there may not be too many people around that are capable of replacing you if you take a day off. This is something about heavy equipment careers that some people have difficulty comprehending. You really need to have a strong work ethic to make the best of your heavy equipment career.
• You are responsible for the safety of your fellow workers. Accidents happen, but imagine how terrible you would feel if, as a heavy equipment operator, the accident was your fault. Safety of fellow workers is a great concern to all who work in heavy equipment careers. You need to drive your equipment safely and you need to promote safety around your equipment. Even if you are not the boss, you need to show a little leadership, that is a big part of many heavy equipment careers.
• You are the face of your company. Whenever you drive your heavy equipment in public places, you are an ambassador for your company. You are representing your company; because of the equipment that you drive, you will be much more noticeable to the general public.

There are many more responsibilities that are a part of heavy equipment careers. For some, this is part of what they like about the job; for others it can be quite stressful. If you know what you are getting in for, however, things do tend to go more smoothly. If you are interested in heavy equipment careers, please feel free to contact us at Associated Training Services.

Life can be tough without certification. If you have been living without certification, it is a fact that you will know about all too well. Sure, some people manage to get by and some even do very well, but for the bulk of the population that has no training, life is very difficult. If you don’t have certification, then chances are that you will have experienced what it is like to live from paycheck to paycheck. What can certification give you?

• Peace of mind! This might seem like a somewhat abstract concept, but it isn’t. All jobs are stressful to a certain extent, certification won’t change that, but it will make life a lot easier and that goes a long way to making people happy. Imagine if you could wake up every morning and feel confident that you will have a job to go to next week. Not everyone has that luxury, but people with certification often do.
• Stability – Certification will allow you to stay in one job long enough to work your way up through the ranks. You can enjoy a career as opposed to an endless string of jobs.
• A sense of achievement – It takes guts to get out there and do the training that you need for your certification. After you go through the process, you will have a wonderful sense that you have accomplished something that not everyone can do.

If you are interested in obtaining some heavy equipment certification, please feel free to contact us at Associated Training Services

For many people, big front loaders are special pieces of heavy equipment. They are impressive to look at, as they tend to dwarf a lot of other machinery. Many people confuse front loaders with bulldozers, but they are a very different piece of equipment that performs an entirely different function. First lets look at the similarities between the two and see why they are so commonly mistaken for one another.

Bulldozers and front loaders are both available in a range of sizes. The tractor part of the equipment looks almost identical. You can find closed cabin and open cabin configurations of each, so here they are almost the same. Front Loaders can sometimes be fitted with bulldozer blades to allow them to do light dozing. They are not as good at dozing as bulldozers but they can do an acceptable job when the requirements are not too heavy. Seeing front loaders with bulldozer blades only deepens the confusion for most people. The attachment that is regularly used for front loaders is a bucket. It is designed to scoop and carry loads from one place to another. It looks a bit like a bulldozer blade, but is actually very different. Yes, bulldozers can also be fitted with a bucket.

The difference is a little closer to the ground. If you look at comparatively sized bulldozers and front loaders, the bulldozer will always sit lower to the ground. Front loaders tower over everything because of the enormous wheels that are attached to them. Bulldozers run on tracks. Wheels mean that you can use front loaders almost anywhere. The tracks of a bulldozer can damage paved surfaces, but they give great traction and allow them to drive over very rough terrain.

If you are interested in learning more about front loaders or bulldozers, please feel free to contact us at Associated Training Services.