One of the biggest problems with heavy equipment in the past has been accuracy. These machines do a great job of moving, digging, scrapping and grading. However there is often a need for either smaller equipment or hand tools to finish of the job.

Enter science and the role of the computer, or at least the computer chip. These days, new heavy equipment come complete with small on board computers and laser levels to help with the fine details of a job.

Take a bulldozer is equipped with lasers. This enable the operator to undertake very accurate grading. The more accurate the operation can be, the more productive the job. If the bulldozer can complete more of the grading fine touches, less manual labor will be needed to complete the job. This is of course a cost saving which is extremely important in this modern age.

The bulldozer’s laser works by emitting a beam of laser light that rotates around the work area. It is generally mounted just above the bulldozer tractor to avoid any obstructions. The bulldozer’s blade is also equipped with a receiver so as the bulldozer blade moves, the receiver sends information back to the operator with corrections to keep the blade as accurate as possible.

Increasing the bulldozer’s accuracy is a great help on many job sites. The work is faster, the grading levels are more precise and less manual labor is needed. Of course, the heavy equipment is only as good as the operator and the operator is only as good as the training and experience received.

Gain the right sort of training through an organization like ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools and you could find yourself in the driving seat operating a laser guided bulldozer.

How long does it take to train a bulldozer operator. In fact, how long does it take to train any type of heavy equipment operator?

Believe it or not, two hours. Yes 2 hours. If, that is, the person wants to be trained. If they have their heart and soul into learning how to operate a piece of heavy equipment like a bulldozer.

After 2 hours you should have the basics down pat and able to do simple jobs. Don’t get me wrong, it takes a lot more hours than that to become a competent operator of heavy equipment. You need to learn safety issues, pre startup inspections, minor maintenance jobs and a variety of other topics.

However, the basics can be taught in two hours. If at the end of two hours of intensive one-to-one in the drivers seat training you cannot undertake simple tasks, then heavy equipment operation may not be for you. I say may not, rather than ‘is not’ because everyone is different and some people just require more practice.

You can help your own cause by learning or at least assessing your own abilities at tasks like assessing distances, assessing levels, angles or slopes and assessing size. These are all attributes that help to speed up the learning curve of new operators.

If you think your heart and soul is into heavy equipment operation and your comfortable with some of the other associated skills then heavy equipment operation could be your ideal career option. Check us out at ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools where you can start your training at no cost through our online training system.

One of the most valuable jobs that a bulldozer operator can be called in to do is to help with fires, bush fires that is.

It’s summer and with summer come the wild bush fires that sweep many areas of North American continent. When ever these fires break out bulldozer operators are called in to create huge fire breaks, fire breaks wide enough to prevent the inferno jumping and restarting its deadly march.

As a skilled bulldozer operator you could be placed in this position at some time in your life. For once, accuracy in gouging out a nice neat section is thrown out the window. Instead, moving as much of the flammable material as possible in the shortest period of time is the order of the day.

It is not as easy as it sounds. The fire can often be seen in the distance as it makes it way towards you. Your life is often at risk, but then so too are the lives of many others if you don’t get the job done quickly and effectively.

It’s not just fire season that you could be asked to create a fire break. Late spring and early autumn are often good times to create fire breaks – before the fires start and before the undergrowth becomes to thick to remove.

If this sounds like an interesting and perhaps exciting aspect of heavy equipment operation, then you should check out ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools to get yourself into a career as a heavy equipment operator.

To most casual observers, a bulldozer looks like a huge machine with a blade at the front that is used to push dirt around. They are partly correct. A bulldozer is used to push dirt around and it does a mighty good job too. But that isn’t the only job for a bulldozer.

With many bulldozers, have a look at the rear end. There you will find a massive pick. This is used to scrape the ground and loosen up the dirt. There is a real skill to using the pick – actually called a ‘ripper’.

The tool gets it name from the job it does – ripping up the ground to make it easier for the blade to get in and push away the dirt. Rippers are used when the ground is particularly hard. I can also be used to break up and drag out concrete and hard road surfaces.

Bulldozers that have a ripper attached are often duel controlled. Face the front to operate the blade and swing your seat around to face the rear and there you will find the rippers controls.

If you have a slightly destructive nature and like tearing things up, getting a job as a bulldozer operator may just the right career for you. You can break up the ground using the ripper then dozer out all the loose material.

ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools can provide all the training required to get you started as bulldozer operator.

Bulldozer’s have been around since the early 1920’s and were one of the concepts behind the design of the first military tank.

The first bulldozer was a modified Holt farm tractor. Once their versatility and ability to move earth (as against plowing) they grew quickly in popularity. The design transformed from that farm tractor into what we see today, bulldozers with caterpillar traction and a variety of blades and tools for moving earth, shifting boulders and removing tree stumps.

Originally known as bull graders, the term bulldozer came into effect in the early 1930’s – one of the early definitions was “bulldozing” which meant using a big force to push over or through any obstacle – hence the name bulldozer.

To quote from Wikipedia:

By the 1920s, tracked vehicles became common, particularly the Caterpillar 60. To dig canals, raise earth dams, and do other earthmoving jobs, these tractors were equipped with a large thick metal plate in front. This metal plate (it got its curved shape later) is called a “blade”. The blade peels layers of soil and pushes it forward as the tractor advances. Several specialized blades have been developed: for high volume loads such as coal, rakes to remove only larger boulders, or blades with razor sharp edges to cut tree stumps. In some early models the driver sat on top in the open without a cabin.

From the humble farm tractor grew the mighty bulldozer and where would we be today without them. The millions of man hours they have saved by doing mechanically in one day what often took weeks for a team of laborers to achieve.

A career as a bulldozer operator is a satisfying one, particularly as you drive down a highway and say to your children, ‘I helped build this road’. ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools can help you achieve a career as bulldozer operator.

Okay, so your have put your head down, studied hard and now have the operation of a bulldozer down pat. Now what? Having a bulldozer qualification is great and you will find there are plenty of well paid jobs on offer. You can improve your pay check and have more job opportunities!

How are you going to get your dozer out to the job? Wait for someone to truck it out for you? Why not truck it out yourself? I know – you don’t have a license to drive a truck. So get one.

Getting your Class A CDL license opens up a lot options. This license enables you to drive the flatbeds that transport heavy equipment required on new projects. Some jobs could see you driving your own dozer out to the work site, clearing the area using the dozer then loading it back up and driving back to base.

You may prefer job where you spend your days transferring heavy equipment from point A to point B. You load the equipment onto the truck, transport it to its destination, then offload it. The Class A CDL license also allows you to drive dump trucks on the open road.

These can all be well paid jobs and there is plenty of demand for people with these skills and qualifications. To get your Class A CDL license, you can either include the training program with your heavy equipment course or do it as a separate training program, both can be done through ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools.

Bulldozers have a wide variety of tracks.

Except for the small ones you see in the city with rubber pads on their treads, they all rely on the shape of their tracks to keep them moving, to give them manueverability, and/or to give them flotation.

Assuming that you’re not working in a soft bog, the most important of these is probably traction, or the ability to keep going even when the blade is piled high with material. You can imagine how much force it takes to move tons of rock – it’s a tremendous amount, and sometimes the tracks just spin.

A good operator doesn’t let this happen to much, but a certain amount of it is inevitable. However, every time a track moves and the machine doesn’t, it means the track is rubbing across the ground. In hard rock, this can actually create enough heat to crack the rocks, and create smoke.

This will reduce wear in the dozer track, and if it’s not taken care of, the raised part of the tread will wear down smooth.

That’s where grouser bar comes in. Grouser tends to come in a vartiety of shapes and composiitions, but they all serve the same purpose: to build the track back up to where it can bite into the Earth again. It’s a tedious job, done by welders. It can be done on the machine, or when the tracks are taken off and laid out flat. Portable welding trucks can go right to the job site and have them done for you before the weekend shut-down is over.

Most times, it requires gouging out the previous grousers, and shaping the metal for the msot effective weld. Gouging is done with carbon rods and a lot of high-pressure air – it literally carves grooves in the metal by making it heating it, then blowing it out with a shaped blast of air.

The grouser bar is then stood up in this groove, and welded in with a rod that is more tough than it is hard. 7018 is the usual rod of choice, as it resists forces from all sides. That’s something that the grouser will face as the machine twists and turns over all sorts of rock.

While learning to run heavy equipment generally doesn’t teach you how to weld as well, it will give you enough knowledge about what’s required to keep your machine running well, and with enough traction that you can get the job done.

One of the more onorous jobs of running heavy equipment is keeping them clean. I’m not talking about taking it to the car wash or polishing it up in the driveway. I mean the cleaning that is required to keep the drive train from self-destructing.

It’s not all fun and games out there, folks. There are parts of this world where the dirt you move may turn into the dirt that stops you cold. Like thick Red River gumbo that squeezes into every cavity of your undercarriage, then freezes into something resembling concrete. Even what you thought was friendly loamy soil, coupled with a bit of moisture and a few degrees of frost, can mean the difference between working that day or spending hours and hours chipping away with a pick and shovel.

Conditions like that can turn even a D10 Cat into nothing more than a very large paper weight. That’s not a good thing. In order to avoid that, you need to plan the end of your day as well as you follow your lube procedures. If the crummy is heading down the mountain at five o’clock, then you need to have taken care of anything in your tracks that could stop you from getting going the next day, before it’s time to get on board.

Leave yourself enough time to dig out the mud, or whatever else is in the undercarriage. Anything near the drive train is usually warm enough after a day of running that it can be scraped off or dug out. Whatever is already frozen will still chip off. Believe me, it won’t be like that after a hard night’s freezing though.

When you’re sure there’s not enough crud left in the tracks that can things up, do your end-of-day lube (mor eon that in a later blog), and run the dozer’s tracks up on a fallen log. It makes a world of difference to have some air under a third or more of the track if there’s a hard freeze. Snowmobilers have the luxury of rocking their machines back and forth to break the track free. A Komatsu Komatsu D575A (largest dozer in the world!)…, not so much!

In the 21st century, you don’t have be a boy or drag your knuckles to want to play with dump trucks, bulldozers, and loaders. Girls can play too.

The ATS Heavy Equipment Training School has been known to certify female bulldozer and heavy equipment operators and it’s likely that we will continue to turn out the best equipment operators of either gender.

When it comes to training, you definitely want the best. And if you expect to excel in your career and have the best advancement opportunities then you want the best education. ATS schools are certified by by National Certification Programs that give heavy equipment operators a leg up everywhere. Our students are recognized as some of the best equipment operators in the world. Even our female operators do better in their careers because of the expert training they receive at ATS.

If you are serious about being a heavy equipment operator then try ATS.

Training in heavy equipment, such as bulldozers and backhoes is much easier than you may have thought. You may have asked yourself the question what the age requirement is in order to attend your training schools. In order to train to operate backhoes and bulldozers with Associated Training Services, you have to be at least 18 years of age. The age limit is endless and as long as you are able to pass a DOT (Department of Transportation) physical, you’re able to attend our classes and learn. This means that even if you’re 80 years old and you’re able to pass the Department of Transportation physical, then you can attend our courses and classes and get the valuable training necessary to operate backhoes and bulldozers.

Why is the tuition for training to operate backhoes and bulldozers not listed on the site?

There are two different reasons:

1. The first reason is that the tuition is going to be different for each particular course and program
2. The second reasons is that the tuition for the program changes depending on the location. If you have any questions on the tuition for training in backhoes and bulldozers then call us at 800 383 7364.

How can you apply to start training in operating backhoes and bulldozes? the first step is to fill out our free application online. You can also call us and we can mail an application out to you that will include a free brochure as well. You’re never obligated to apply or sign up. You also don’t have to deal with pushy recruiters. It’s easy and it’s fast, so if you want to fill ouot an application you can.

Our schools are located all throughout the United States, and that includes New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, California and Texas.

Being able to operate heavy equipment, such as backhoes and bulldozers can be very lucrative. The wages vary depending on your location and the company you work with. The average is around $15 or more for entry level employment. We offer job placement services that help you find a job fast. Experienced operators can make as much as $30 an hour or more. The demand for people to operate backhoes and bulldozers is high and your opportunities are endless.

Don’t delay and contact us today to find out how you can enhance and build upon your existing skill base. Learning to operate backhoes and bulldozers is going to be the key element to being able to find work year round. You don’t even need a GED or a high school diploma in order to attend our heavy equipment and backhoes and bulldozer training programs.