Finding employment as a heavy equipment operator is not that difficult these days. There is strong demand for workers in most areas on all types of equipment. You can almost pick your area of specialty; construction, road construction, forestry, mining or one of a dozen different areas.

If you are really keen to get started, you could also check out the Job Placement service at ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools. We don’t just train you, we also help you to find employment. Our success rate is around 80% and continues on indefinitely.

We have a job placement database that you can access to help find the right employer in the right location, and with ten heavy equipment training schools spread around the country, there is bound to be the best job for your situation.

The key to employment success through our job placement service is to register as soon as you start your training. That provides us with plenty of time to match your skills and requirements with employers. As heavy equipment positions are being made available daily, we are constantly on the lookout for a job that suits you.

Employers keep coming back to us for one reason. We provide well trained candidates that are carefully matched to their requirements. That is how we achieve that employment rate of 80%. Check out the training and job placement service and get your career in heavy equipment of to a flying start.

There are many different types of heavy equipment and for machine, there are a variety of manufacturers, models, shapes, sizes and attachments. It is not feasible to learn how to operate every different type of machinery. You can however fain an understanding of the basics of many of them.

At ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools, we provide training for a variety of different heavy equipment machines. This machinery includes:

• Loaders,
• Backhoes,
• Tractors,
• Scrappers,
• Rollers,
• Bulldozers,
• Excavators, and
• Motor Graders.

Training also includes safety aspects, soil types and some advanced operational techniques. Gaining a basic understanding of how to operate a range of heavy equipment places you in a position to specialize in one that you are comfortable with.

Large scale building constructions sites are a hive of activity. Heavy equipment is more pronounced on these sites than any other building site.

From bare ground, bulldozers go to work and strip it back, clearly all vegetation and loose material. If the ground is soft enough, the bulldozer together with a front end loader will continue to cut away at the surface digging deeper and deeper.

Once the hole is deep enough, cranes go to work lowering construction materials into place. Cranes are often used to lower either completed concrete slabs or huge buckets of ready mix concrete ready for pouring. Steel girders and beams are also lowered.

Pylon drivers may be used to drive pylons into the ground as part of the buildings shell. Cranes continue to work lowering materials as required. Some cranes are able to lift themselves floor by floor as the new building rises from the ground. Once the building has been completed, the cranes are often dis-assembled and brought back to the ground.

Large high rise buildings would not exist if it wasn’t for heavy equipment. If a career as a heavy equipment operator on a construction site appeals to you, check out ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools for a course that may suit you.

As a heavy equipment operator, one of your daily tasks is the maintenance and upkeep of your machine. There is a lot an operator can do each day then ensure their equipment is always ready for action. Daily maintenance also helps to prevent any long term breakdowns that require large dollars to repair.

One important resource that all operators should have is a maintenance handbook and log. The handbook describes the various maintenance tasks that should be performed. The log is a written record of maintenance has been carried and by whom. Obviously the type of heavy equipment you operate will determine what type of maintenance is required.

There are fairly obvious heavy equipment maintenance inspections that should be carried each day. These include checking tires or tracks for wear and tear, checking for any fluid leaks such as oil and hydraulic lines, checking buckets and other attachments for any broken components, particularly teeth on units that have them, and checking electricals such as lights, indicators and horns or sirens.

Other regular maintenance activities may including changing engine oil, topping up brake or hydraulic fluids and changing tires. Simple activities like keeping your heavy equipment relatively clean also plays an important role in the ongoing well being of your equipment.

Learning to operate a piece of heavy equipment does not end with learning the controls. Basic maintenance should also be a part of your ongoing training, first off the job and later on the job. If you ever get into a position where you own your own unit, you quickly come to understand the benefits of regular maintenance and the amount of money it can save you over the long term.

ATS heavy Equipment Training Schools provides a comprehensive training program for all major pieces of heavy equipment.

Being a mobile crane operator is an interesting and varied career. You just never know what sort of tasks you are going to be asked to perform.

Most building sites use a mobile crane at some stage of the construction process. Whether it is simply unloading vehicles or careful placement of girders, pylons or complete building pieces, the mobile crane is there to do the job.

It’s not only construction that uses mobile cranes. Some manufacturing industries use them to load trucks and rail carts. They are used to place power poles, they may even be called upon to right vehicles, particularly trucks, after accidents.

Training consists of three levels with each level building on the previous. The first level concentrates on the basic principles of cranes, rigging, safety and operation. These are the foundation skills without which you would find it difficult to understand the following levels.

The second level delves into communication including official hand signals, maintenance, wire rope theories and the use of computer aids. You also gain an understanding of the movement of cranes particularly how they move from one area to another.

The third and final level deals with boom attachments, advanced operational techniques, planning lifts and emergency procedures. This final level provides many of the finer skills to operating a mobile crane.

Whilst it may all look theoretical in nature, everything is designed to turn you into a highly skilled mobile crane operator ready to commence a long and interesting career. If a career in this field interests you then perhaps you should check out the full mobile crane operator training program at ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools.

Backhoes used to be considered toys and many of them still are. However, some of the latest models no longer fit the toy class, they are real heavy equipment machines.

A simple machine, generally with a hoe at one end and a bucket at the other, they were often seen around residential building sites digging trenches for water and other services. The big boys can now be seen digging wide and deep trenches for main water pipes, major oil and gas pipelines and sewerage pipes. This new breed of heavy equipment which, because of its versatility, is slowly replacing trench diggers on some construction sites.

While their little cousins run around residential areas, larger machines can also be found in open cut mines where they help to remove scree other lose material that the larger buckets cannot access. Heavy equipment has done a complete circle with renewed interest in this type of equipment.

Operating the larger heavy equipment range of backhoes is not to different to the smaller versions you see everyday. The major difference is simply in size with the larger machines often three or four times bigger.

Learning to operate heavy equipment is far easier than most people imagine. You can acquire basic skills in a matter of weeks, the fine tuning of those skills developed on the job. ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools can provide that basic training and get you started on your career as an operator of heavy equipment such as bulldozers, graders, cranes, trucks and of course, backhoes.

Heavy equipment job descriptions used to include terms such as ‘working in hot and dusty conditions’ or ‘prepared to work in weather extremes’. That is far from the situation today.

If you are fortunate to operate some of the latest heavy equipment models you would think you are in a control room. They now come fitted with air conditioning, filtered air, two-way radios, cd/radios with stereo speakers. I have seen one model that came fully equipped with a mini refrigerator to keep your drinks cool.

The days of freezing your butt off early in the morning then cooking in the afternoon are on their way out. No more breathing dust or getting soaked to the skin in an open cab. Today’s heavy equipment cabs are fully enclosed and weather proofed.

In the past, the controls were, at best, hydraulic assisted. Now you have the benefit of not just power steering, but also power assisted controls to operate the various devices. Heavy equipment operators from fifty years ago would not recognize these machines.

If this sounds like the career for you, perhaps you should look into training to enable you to get your foot in the door. ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools have a variety of training programs – check them out to assess your options.

Construction is one of the largest service industries in the United States. The opportunities in this field for properly trained and ambitious individuals is virtually endless particularly in the area of skilled heavy equipment operators.

However, when a single tire on a piece of heavy equipment costs $50,000 and the machine itself around the million dollar mark, who do you want sitting behind the controls? You have a choice, a complete novice who is going to learn ‘on-the-job’, or someone who has had all the basic training and knows the stop lever from the go, the up from the down and the various safety requirements when operating the equipment.

We spend billions of dollars every year repairing roads, clearing land and preparing construction sites. These tasks are not left to amateurs. Heavy equipment operators that are skilled and competent are able to start and finish a job on time and generally under budget. Not only that, the job is DONE. It doesn’t need more money to do the job again.

As a heavy equipment operator, you bear a heavy responsibility. You it your job to ensure that this work is carried effectively and efficiently so that deadlines and budgets are met. It is the skills you have acquired that help you to achieve this – skills that should be acquired through accredited training at an accredited heavy equipment training school.

We all live in a lucky country. We tend to take our roads for granted, along with water supplies, sewerage, gas and electricity. We look at new building estates, the land cleared and ready to build on. With out our heavy equipment operators we would have very little of this. It would all have to be done by hand or using horse drawn vehicles. The heavy equipment industry provides a career on which the nation is built – who would you trust with this task? Someone trained and qualified to do the job – or someone who thinks they can drive ‘anything’?

Heavy Equipment operators need to develop a range of skills before they are considered competent to operate vehicles and equipment for construction or engineering. Training for these jobs often begins at a heavy equipment training school where they start with the basic maintenance and repair of their equipment before operating machinery or vehicles.

Training will also include safety aspects before moving on to the actual operation of heavy equipment. Once you have completed your training it is time to move into the workplace. Here your education will ramp up a few degrees as you start to understand how terrain, geography, weather and the conditions of the construction site surface affects your equipment.

This knowledge helps in the future when you will be required to prepare a site before beginning work. Dirt isn’t dirt. Every piece of ground you work on will be slightly different to any other. Understanding the soil quality and its composition, how much sand, clay or other materials and the grade of the sand, gravel or rock of a particular area can be of particular importance

Most construction sites require excavation as part of the preparation of the site. This generally requires more than one vehicle so operators with more than one specialty are in great demand. Being able to operate a bulldozer, backhoe and frontend loader, for example, could mean your skills are in greater demand.

Acquiring these skills is not difficult. Attending a heavy equipment training school such as ATS can get your career started. Gaining as much experience on the job in a variety of terrains on a variety of heavy equipment is just as important. You just need to acquire those foundation skills first.

Heavy equipment comes in all shapes and sizes. The bigger pieces of equipment can really pack some punch. A bulldozer is capable of pushing large amounts of material around. The grader can also push huge amounts of dirt around. So, in the world of heavy equipment, who is the brute?

Most people would opt for the bulldozer and why not, they can certainly push a lot of dirt around. Graders, however can also push the same amount of dirt.

When it comes to brute strength, they both have what it takes. Bulldozers are a little like a meat cleaver. They get stuck in and use their brute strength to carve up the earth and push it to one side.

Graders, on the other hand, use the same brute strength to push dirt around, but they are more like a fine slicing knife, using force to sculpt the land pushing the dirt out to the side while the blades dig in and peel the earth away.

They both use brute force, one in a brutal way, the other in gentler carving motion. The end result, the bulldozer has cleaned the rubbish and top dirt away. The grader can now come in and start to the shape the earth for the final steps of construction.

You cannot compare them. They both use brute strength for different jobs and different outcomes. To learn how to operate either one or both of these, check out ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools for more information.