On the job, the most versatile person is apt to be the one who stays on the payroll, right? It doesn’t matter what kind of job you are talking about either, because the principle applies to every industry, white or blue collar. In the heavy equipment field, that versatility looks like an operator who is familiar with many kinds of machines and able to figure out what to do with them to get the job done.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School has the goal of equipping graduates to be versatile operators able to do what has to be done and do it professionally. That means our students get hands-on training on different types of machinery and become familiar with the big picture of heavy equipment. It also means they learn how to learn, because there will be new stuff thrown at us on the job.

The chance to get a CDL license is offered, too, so you can drive trucks — that is something most heavy equipment operators find they need when they enter the workforce. A lot of heavy equipment gets loaded and moved on a flatbed, so if the operator can be the truck driver, too, that operator is the person who gets hired.

If an employer is trying to decide who to hire, or who to keep on the payroll, the person with the safety certifications, CDL, ability to learn, and versatility is going to be the more valuable employee every time. That’s the goal of ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training, and that’s why our graduates get hired.

You’ve put in a lot of hard work, received the best training from some of the best instructors in the heavy equipment industry, and now you’re ready to look for your first job. What do you do?

First, don’t panic. It’s a scary thing for a young person to be looking for his or her first job. If you are making a career change from one career to another and are beginning your job search in the heavy equipment field, relax. Job hunting takes time. It’s not going to fall together in one day.

Nevertheless, you don’t have to let the fear of looking for work pin you down. There are jobs available and you can land one.

Use ATS’s Free Employment Assistance

Graduates of the ATS Heavy Equipment School receive free job assistance after graduation. In fact, we start working on finding your first job long before graduation.

We want all our graduates to be gainfully employed. That’s why we provide soft skills training, resume preparation, personal career counseling, an employment search website, and free job leads. Employers will be looking for you before you have your certificate in your hand. We do all the legwork up front so you don’t have to do it after graduation.

It’s great that your well-trained and ready for work, but until you land your first job, you aren’t a heavy equipment operator. Take advantage of our career services and land your first heavy equipment job today.

According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook for the US Department of Labor, construction equipment operators have a good chance to stay employed. They project a 19% increase in construction equipment operator jobs from 2012 to 2022, and that is faster than other categories. Of course, they hedge their statement by saying it all depends on the economy, but everything depends on stuff like that.

The thing is, there are a lot of types of work in this industry. Roads, bridges, water & sewer systems, power grids, and such, all are part of the mix. People always need a place to live, too. But I like this quote:

Workers with the ability to operate multiple types of equipment should have the best job opportunities.

This is exactly why it’s a good idea to get certified with ATS. You don’t just learn one kind of machine, you get in-the-seat training on all kinds. Multiple types of equipment, with a real understanding of what each one can or can not do. Our graduates have the best job opportunities because we think that quote is obvious. We have been training students to operate multiple types of equipment for years.

Backhoe? Check. Scraper? Check. Forklift? Check. Dozer, grader, loaders, rock trucks, excavators? Check, check, check, check, check. Anything else? Yep, we stay on top of the industry so the training is current. There’s also training in skills like grade reading, soil identification, laser levels, safety, maintenance, and more.

Associated Training Services works hard to keep the Heavy Equipment Operation Programs relevant to the job search our graduates will be facing. The need for highly trained operators will always be here, no matter what.

Heavy equipment is a good field to get into; the operation of heavy equipment is essential for laying the foundation of everything that is built on top of it. Without a good foundation, it really doesn’t matter how well a bridge or building is constructed because the shifting base will counteract that construction. Your career should be like that well-built bridge, built on a good foundation. For heavy equipment operation, training is the base of everything.

Build your career on the best foundation in the business, one that has a history you can research and results you can see. Associated Training Services (ATS) has that history and those results. Since 1959, we’ve been family-owned and operated with the motto of Quality, Integrity, & Pride – and that motto is taken seriously. It shows in the results, too — our graduates have been successful operators throughout the years. We have one customer base, our students, and that is who we focus on.

As the industry has changed, the type of operator needed for running the equipment has changed, and so has the training. We’ve kept up with the changes in our curriculum and equipment so our graduates continue to start their careers from the solid foundation they need. Green construction jobs require a workforce trained in new equipment, new initiatives, and new practices. With ATS, we’ve got that covered.

But the foundation is laid with more than hands-on training and knowledge standards. We provide career assistance. Our Career Services Department gives personal career counseling, soft skills training like resume and interview skills, and job leads with an exclusive website our graduates can always come back to.

The ATS foundation is solid – one your heavy equipment career can be built on to last a lifetime.

There are all sorts of heavy equipment careers. What kind of career you want if you’re willing to work hard for it. The first step is training, and you want to be trained by the best, I’m sure.

Have you done a career outlook study yet? If not, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes an annual outlook on careers in the U.S. A quick look at the construction industry shows that the median income for construction equipment operators in 2010 was $39,460.

That’s the median, which means half the salaries were above that.

Tractor-trailer truck drivers made slightly less than that. But if you look at the number of jobs in 2010, there were over 1 million. Growth expectation is 21%, higher than average.

The BLS website is a wealth of information on all sorts of careers. You should check it out and chart the kind of career in heavy equipment you want to have. What the information doesn’t show is a specialization within these fields. If you have your crane certification, for instance, you can command more income. If you have crane certification and a commercial drivers license, then you can earn more.

Talk to a few heavy equipment operators in your area and find out how much they earn. Different parts of the country have different costs of living and therefore different salary expectations.

One thing is clear. You can have the career you want with the proper planning.

When it comes to salaries and highest paid, heavy equipment jobs are a lot like many other career paths. You start at the bottom and work your way up. Still, your career salary will depend on a lot of factors, including

• Location
• Your skill level
• Your employer
• Your training and credentials
• Employment longevity
• Experience
• State of the economy
• Union vs. non-union

These are just some of the factors that can influence your heavy equipment career salary.

If you live in Hawaii, the median salary for heavy equipment operators is $68,120. New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey aren’t far behind. The median wage in the U.S. is $41,870. Operators trained on the backhoe, crane, bulldozer, and grading equipment can make a little more.

This is why training is so important. If you seek crane operator training, for instance, from a highly respected training school, then you can start off with a better-than-expected salary. Just being trained by one of the best heavy equipment training schools in the U.S. can increase your salary expectations right off the bat. If you stay on the job, and stay with the same employer for a few years, you can expect salary increases.

The heavy equipment industry is one industry that will always need qualified employees. Get the proper training and have the proper employee mindset then you can earn good money.

Building a new road is a fairly complex job, more so if the ground is covered with vegetation. If you were to take some time to watch a new road being built, you would be surprised at the equipment that is used to undertake the job from start to finish. The heavy equipment used includes:

• Bulldozer – the bulldozer is the first piece of machinery used in most construction work. The bulldozer’s job is to clear the land to be built on. When it comes to new roads, the bulldozer clears a strip of all vegetation and rocks and begins the levelling process.
• Loaders – loaders are used throughout the project to move earth and rocks. They are predominantly used initially to load excess earth into dump trucks for removal.
• Dump Trucks – whilst not really heavy equipment, dump trucks play an integral role as they are used to cart waste away and to cart in loads of road base used to build up the new road.
• Graders – graders perform the finishing work, ensuring the new road is smooth and has the right gradient to allow for water run-off.

Other equoipment used include water trucks that damp down the road base, rollers that are used to compress the road base, and specialist heavy equipment that lays the sealant to the prepared base. Like most modern production lines, each part plays their role to a timetable, ensuring a smooth completion of the job.

With new roads being constantly built around the nation, there is always plenty of work for those who operate heavy equipment. If you’re looking for a career as a heavy equipment operator, building new roads is rewarding in many ways, including financial and job satisfaction. You can become a part of one of these teams with as little as three weeks heavy equipment operator training.

Whilst some heavy equipment operators work by themselves, most are part of a team, and being a team player is of vital importance. Employers are really interested in one thing – getting the job done on time. If possible, they want the job to finish ahead of schedule, more so if there are contract bonuses for early completion. What they don’t want is to get behind schedule since this could lead to contract penalties. Construction companies generally engage project managers, and it is their job to work with everyone else to ensure that a project is completed as quickly as possible. As a heavy equipment operator, your role in any project is to work as part of the team to meet anytime goals.

Construction projects are quite complex. There are a lot of factors that go into scheduling each goal – for example, costs, location (how far the construction site is from raw materials such as cement suppliers, bitumen suppliers and quarries), and how much time is required to complete each step.

As a heavy equipment operator, you will need to work in conjunction with other heavy equipment operators, truck drivers, and other factors such as weather. If you’re not a team player, then the project could grind to a halt whilst they are waiting for you to complete your role. Having idle workers is dead money for any employer and will often result in a project falling behind time.

Employers then are looking for heavy equipment operators who are skilled in what they do, can get it right first time (every time), and who can work as part of that overall team. There is no longer a place for mavericks who want to do things their way, especially if safety factors are also ignored. Your work ethic in this regard starts with your heavy equipment operator training. Ideally, your heavy equipment training should be in a class environment where other students are also learning to operate heavy equipment. By learning to work together, you are laying the foundation for a successful career in heavy equipment operations.

If you’re interested in a career as a heavy equipment operator, you have a number of choices. You can learn to operate heavy equipment through friends or family, or you can learn as a part of a group – today’s successful operators learn their craft through recognized schools as part of a group of students since they also gain those all important team player skills.

You may think that big cities are done with construction, however, in truth, big cities arguably have the biggest concentration of construction projects. In fact, you could argue that big cities spend as much time in destruction as they do in construction, especially those cities that are fairly old. Because there is a lot of construction (and destruction) work being carried out in large cities, the demand for heavy equipment operators is quite large.

I know there are many people who live in large cities who have brushed aside thoughts of a career in heavy equipment operations simply because they feel there is little to offer in their city. Cities are continually evolving, and the larger the city the more it evolves. Schools become too small and need to be demolished to make way for larger schools. The same can be said for hospitals, apartment blocks, office buildings and shopping malls.

This means there is a constant need for construction workers in cities, and this includes heavy equipment operators, crane operators and truck drivers, particularly dump truck drivers. If you live in a city and don’t feel there’s the need for heavy equipment operators, check the employment section of your city newspaper. You can also drop into our heavy equipment operator training school and talk to someone from our career services section – you’ll be surprised with how much work there really is in some big cities.

Careers in heavy equipment operations are very rewarding, especially those that involve the demolition of old buildings and the construction of new buildings. The pay rates are good, especially when you consider you only require three weeks of heavy equipment operator training. If you live in a big city, don’t brush aside a career in heavy equipment operations. Rather, take a closer look.

Operating heavy equipment is the dream of many children, yet there is only a small percentage of the adult workforce who actually go to the trouble of training to become an operator. It was a satisfying play toy as a child, and for many, it’s a very satisfying career – the dreams of their childhood being fully realized. Whilst the thought of training may seem daunting, it shouldn’t. It doesn’t take months to learn to be a heavy equipment operator – it takes weeks, and only a few of them as well.

So what can you expect from a career as a heavy equipment operator apart from realizing your dreams? Operators nominate the following as some of the key benefits:

• Secure employment – even when times are tough, heavy equipment operators remain in demand, especially when governments decide to boost the economy by building roads and bridges. Of course, when times are good, the construction industry booms and so there’s never enough heavy equipment operators to go around.
• Great salary and benefits – compared to many other professions, heavy equipment operators are very well paid, and they receive a wide range of benefits, including pension schemes, health and disability insurance, and ongoing training.
• Sense of achievement – there’s nothing more satisfying than to drive on a road, cross a bridge, or travel past a building that you have helped construct.
• Not physically demanding – and this has opened the door to operators from all walks of life, including women. You don’t have to be a rough and tough male to work as a heavy equipment operator, even those with slight builds succeed.
• Short training period – it only takes three weeks to learn the skills and knowledge to start a career as a heavy equipment operator. Compare that time period and the benefits already listed to many other careers and heavy equipment operations comes out on top.

If you’re looking for a career that’s challenging, exciting and well paid, then talk to one of the experts at Associated Training Services (ATS). They can help you take the first steps to achieving that goal, and once you have taken those steps, continue to help you until you are working happily as a heavy equipment operator.