It may sound strange, but soil type knowledge is one of the most important skills an excavator operator can acquire. Soils are not the same – that’s fairly obvious, but what I mean by that statement is that soils react very differently when being excavated. Knowing how they are going to act is an essential skill for an excavator operator.

Digging a trench in sandy soil is very different to digging in clay-based soils. Most clay-based soils tend to stick so it is fairly easy to dig trenches with walls. Sandy soils don’t stick so the walls will tend to fall back into the trench. This often means the trench needs to be wider thus creating more work.

You have the many soil types in between, each reacting slightly different to each other. And that’s not the end of the story. Soil can be made in layers and can include rock, which, in itself, is another set of knowledge. You can learn a lot about soil when you first undertake excavator training. However, it is experience that fine tunes that initial knowledge.

The next time you look at any heavy equipment operator, look beyond the basic skill of working levers and pedals. There is a set of skills based on understanding soils, rock types and often a variety of attachments for their equipment to deal with differing soils. Add to that the knowledge of safety and heavy equipment maintenance and you have highly skilled operators.

Excavators are only one type of heavy equipment, but they have become essential tools to our construction industry. As tools, they require highly skilled operators that have received their excavator training through a professional and accredited training provider.

Excavators of course do one job extremely well, they excavate. However, that term can be applied quite loosely. For example, mining is one area where excavators perform quite well yet we may not consider it excavating. The same could be said for quarrying and a range of other tasks. Technically, any job that entails digging is excavating – so why not use an excavator?

With that in mind, it is a good thing that this excavator has such a long reach. As the photo shows, the excavator is reaching into the middle of the river. Excavators are used a lot around waterways. They help to keep the bottom clean of debris, silt and rocks, allowing the river to flow cleanly. Some excavators are employed full time, working from one point on a river to another. Once it gets to the end point, it is time to go back to the start again.

There are some areas around the world where excavators are used to ‘mine’ river beds. The floor of the river is dug up and any minerals, particularly gold, are removed before being placed back into the river.

Other rivers use excavators as land based dredges. they can be quite effective in removing silt deposits from the floor of the river. This is often necessary to ensure boats and leisure craft are able to negotiate the river freely.

Working as a heavy equipment operator is not always going to be in a traditional area like construction or road building. There are a lot of unusual or different uses for heavy equipment – some more demanding on skills than others. If you’re looking for a demanding job in heavy equipment, you may want to consider excavator training. You could be working at a mine, in a quarry, on a building site or perhaps in a river – you just never no.

Every piece of heavy equipment has a role in building our country. You can thank the humble excavator for helping to connect our nation. If you can imagine the millions of miles of water pipes, sewage pipes and communications pipes that have been laid from coast to coast – that is a lot of pipe line.

Sure, the whole lot could have been laid by hand. But imagine the cost, the time, and how many people would be required to do that job – if you could get anyone to do it in this day and age that is. What takes ten men a day to do – an excavator can do in half the time using one man. More importantly, where you have ten men swearing and cursing and hating every minute of their job, excavator operators not only love their work, they are proud of it.

Check the photo and tell me how many people it would take to dig that hole, lower that huge pipe into the hole, then back fill it all – by hand! The excavator makes light work of the job no matter how hard the ground is.

Working as an excavator operator could see you digging trenches for those large pipes, or digging smaller trenches for communications lines. If you can think of a need for a trench, then I can find an excavator to do the job. It doesn’t matter how wide or how deep the trench is, the skills required are the same and can be gained by undertaking a heavy equipment training program that includes excavator training.

I recently wrote on how to Become An Excavator Operator And Learn To Control A Real Monster – today I could almost eat my words. Over the last ten days or so I have watched with interest an excavator, admittedly one of the smaller variety, working away each day on a new pipeline. Although we have been in the industry for decades, I can still watch them at work with a certain amount of awe.

What caught my attention with this job? The excavator operator’s ‘fine’ skills. The excavator wasn’t being used as a ‘monster’, at least not all the time. Let me give you a run down on the job.

Day one – the excavator operator used the bucket like a butter knife to gently peel away the turf from the surface. This was neatly piled to one side of the job.

Day two and three – the excavator became the monster and dug a fairly deep and fairly wide trench ready for the pipes to be laid.

Day four – each pipe was rigged to the excavator bucket and gently lowered into the trench. One by one they all went in.

Day five – the trench was back-filled. I thought that was it – job done and I won’t see them again. Wrong.

Day six – back again – this time, as gentle as a baby, the excavator operator carefully scraped and combed the sides of the filled-in trench pulling in all the loose debris. Behind him his fellow workers were relaying the turf that had been pulled up on day one.

Now they are gone. I couldn’t resist it; I had to go and look at the worksite. You can see where the turf has been put down. However, that is all you can see. You would never know there had been a deep trench there a couple of days earlier. That excavator operator had cleaned the area to perfection – that takes skills – skills that are acquired first through quality excavator operator training, and secondly through years of practice.

I know his face looked familiar. I may have seen him on another work site – but then again, I wonder if he was one of ours and had undertaken his training through ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools. I should have asked.

Take on training to become an excavator operator and you have the potential to get into the control cab of one of the best machines around. Heavy equipment that is used in mining and construction come in many different configurations but nothing that beats the brute power of a giant excavator.

Most of the excavators you see working on building sites, on the side of the road excavating channels, or scarping a new road bed range in size of 5-60 tons. Their buckets can carry as much as a ton or two and their digging power is immense.

Take that image and multiply it a little – alright – multiply it a lot. Imagine a machine that weighs around 800 tons and the amount of material collected in a bucket is around the 75 ton mark. In fact, with those statistics, imagine a beast with a bucket and the strength to lift two or more of its little brothers.

Most excavator operators only get to dream of operating a huge monster like that. They do exist, though, predominantly in the mining industry, but also on some construction sites where excavating large holes is called for. A good example is where they include a multi-level underground car park. The excavator’s job is to dig that hole and it needs to be dug exactly to specifications.

One of the benefits of excavator operator training is that you are taught to operate a wide variety of machines. Once you have completed your training you can then go on to specialize on a particular type of machine ranging from backhoe to bulldozer and on to an excavator. Get a few years experience on an excavator and you can try to find your way through to one of those giants. Can you imagine the power that sits in that engine room? Many of those giants have not one, but two large diesel powered engines, each delivering as much as 2000HP – now that is what I call a monster machine.

When you stop to think about it, excavators are one of the most important machines that contribute to the construction experience. Without the right excavator digging the hole to start the process, none of the projects that you see would even get started. And that means that you need to have someone who has had heavy equipment training running the machine and with the right training from Associated Training Services that person could be you.

These are the people that have known American needs the best equipment operators since 1959 when the first opened their doors to supply the best in vocational training. And these are serious people who are committed to getting you the best in all manner of heavy equipment training from crane operator training to truck driver training.

Once you see what these people offer, you’ll quickly realize that you don’t need to go anywhere else to get the most complete package. See, this is the professional organization that can take you through every step of the process from getting you involved with their onlnie sign up process to supplying you with the very best in saftey training so that you’ll be a responsible operator that can work well around others on the site.

When you need the get the right kind of excavator training, you need to get involved with the people that have the best facilities and people to train you on the spot. And those are the folks at Associated Training Services. They have what it takes to start you off in a new career in excavators.

Excavator training has been a growth area for many years particularly as equipment manufacturers broaden the range of their models. Businesses can now buy excavators that range in size from small units suited to tight work spaces to huge machines that work in the mining industry.

It is not just size that has changed over the years. Like many of the different heavy equipment types, excavators come with a wide range of attachments designed to do a variety of jobs. Excavator training is no longer about digging trenches. Excavators can come with jack hammer type attachments, demolition attachments and a variety of bucket types. There are plenty of other attachments that I haven’t mentioned as well.

In today’s workplace, having a machine like an excavator that can do a variety of jobs is a big bonus. Having an operator that can work with each of those attachments is a must. Quality excavator training will introduce you to the various attachments, and, just as importantly, how to actually attach them. You would be surprised how many people will teach you how to use an attachment without teaching you how to attach it.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools are accredited to train individuals on a range of heavy equipment including excavators. Their excavator training component includes basic skill requirements like walk-around inspections, workplace safety requirements and of course, how to the various attachments are fitted.

Being accredited training means that upon successful completion of the course you will be issued with a nationally recognized certificate – as you can see – there is more to excavator training than just digging holes.

One popular misconception when it comes to heavy equipment is that excavators simply dig trenches. In fact, you could almost say the opposite was the case. Excavators do dig trenches, however there are other machines such as back hoes that can also do the job.

Excavators have a wide range of tasks that they can perform and they are not just restricted to the construction industry. Excavators often play a huge role in the transport of large trees. The excavator may be involved in digging out the root ball, helping to lift the tree onto a truck and, at the other end, digging the hole to take the root ball, then helping to lift the tree into that hole, The complete all around performance.

They can also be employed as part of a demolition team. Their role is varies ranging from helping to knock down walls to helping with the clean up and loading large sections of rubble onto trucks.

Excavators may also be involved with general grading and landscaping; heavy lift, particularly the lifting and placing of pipes; they have also been used in river dredging, open-pit mining and, using special hydraulic attachments, brush cutting.

The role of an excavator operator is a varied one. You can work in just about any environment from the concrete jungle of the city to the wide open spaces of the desert and everything in between. You could be digging holes today, planting trees tomorrow and involved with the precise laying of pipes the following day.

Fancy yourself as an excavator operator? The first thing you need is training, the second, a secure job. We can deliver the first and if you successfully complete your training, we may be able to help with the second. Contact ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools for more details.

Excavator or excavators are one of the pieces of heavy equipment that you may hear talk about but rarely actually see – unless you are specifically looking for them. They don’t do a lot of driving around like a bulldozer or loader, they tend to sit in one place and do a lot of work before being moved a small distance to continue on with the job.

The excavator consists of a cab, an engine, dual bulldozer-like tracks or treads, a boom arm, and an attachment.

• The cab is where the operator sits. It can generally pivot 360° on top of the tracks and act as enclosed rollover protection work areas.
• The engine provides power for the tracks and powers the hydraulic systems that run the arm and its attachments.
• The undercarriage includes the tracks that move the machine around, along with the sprockets and rollers that guide and propel the tracks.
• The boom is like an arm that extends from the body of the vehicle. It connects at an elbow to the stick that holds the attachment.
• It is the attachment that does the actual work – generally a bucket with teeth designed to dig an remove the loosened material.

Some excavators use a quick coupler that makes it a lot easier to switch between attachments. Some common attachments include augers for boring holes and thumbs for pinching or gripping, as well as hydraulic hammers, rakes, rippers, and mulchers.

Learning to operate an excavator is not that difficult. It just takes a little attention to detail and plenty of practice. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools include excavators in their training program. Check us out for details on our next heavy equipment operator course.

One area where heavy equipment operators may see a rise in job vacancies is in the field of demolition. There are a lot of projects planned that will require the demolition of old buildings and the clearing of sites before work can commence. Since heavy equipment is often involved in the clearing of these sites it may open the door for new operators.

There are many different uses for heavy equipment when it comes to demolition. Most involve the use of specialized attachments such as grapples that are attached to excavators. These act like a hand to grab walls and other parts of buildings and, using brute strength, pull them down.

Bulldozers and front end loaders are brought in to clear the site. The bulldozer again uses muscle to push everything into pile. The loader is used to load the debris into dump trucks so it can be carted away from the site.

A demolition site can be a busy and dangerous place to work, however with appropriate safety training there can be few if any serious injuries.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools can prepare you for a career as a heavy equipment operator. This includes safety training in all courses. Whether it is a career as a bulldozer, loader or excavator operator, we can provide the training. In fact you are trained in the workings of three with graders and other equipment added to ensure you leaved the school at the end of your training with well rounded skills on a variety of equipment.