Heavy equipment safety is important these days and as the title suggests, it does keep you employed. However, that can seen from a couple of different angles – the employers, the governments and from the employee’s perspective.

Employers and Heavy Equipment Safety

Employers are now recognizing many of the benefits of workplace safety, particularly when it comes to heavy equipment safety. Accidents cause stoppages and stoppages cost money. That’s the bottom line for big business – money. Of course, accidents cause damage, which is another cost and could result in fines from government agencies – more money. However, stoppages also affect a businesses reputation. If they cannot complete projects on time, they will soon find that contracts are hard to come by. Are employers interested in heavy equipment safety? If they care about their bottom line they most definitely do, so these days they only employ those that have had the training.

Governments and Heavy Equipment Safety

Governments have a particular interest in heavy equipment safety for a number of reasons. Pressure, particularly from lobby groups, always raises its head whenever there is a workplace incident that costs lives. Governments also see it as their duty to interfere wherever possible (in this case with positive results) so having employers work to certain regulations, and then fining them when they fail, is the result. I may sound a little cynical, but governments never seem to act until there is an incident. However, all that aside, there are strict regulations in place that do include safety training. Fail to meet those regulations and the fines can be huge. In some states, allowing a worker on site who hasn’t completed an accredited workplace safety training program is illegal.

Heavy Equipment Safety and the Operator

I could put this very simply – heavy equipment safety training helps to keep you safe and alive. If you’re injured or dead, you won’t be employed. It does go beyond this, however. If you enter a worksite with no workplace safety training and your negligence results in serious injury or death of another, there is no guarantee you won’t face criminal charges. Workplace health and safety is serious business these days so don’t ignore it if you want to keep your job.

The bottom line is very simple. When undertaking a heavy equipment training program, be sure it is accredited and includes workplace safety components. ATS has long been an advocate of safe workplaces. Our heavy equipment training programs all include workplace safety components designed to ensure you can not only secure a job, but also ensure you can keep your job.

Excavators used be rather boring machines. Their role predominantly was to dig trenches for pipelines and there is nothing worse than doing the same thing day after day. Today’s excavators are very different to those old machines and a career as an excavator operator can be rather interesting.

Don’t get me wrong, an excavator’s main job is still to dig trenches. However, with new tools that can be attached to an excavator, there can many different tasks. I recently saw video footage of an excavator with a grabber attached – these are like a three fingered hand that opens and shut. The excavator tore apart a recently retired war plane. Within an hour, that plane had been reduced to a pile of scrap. By the way, I am not talking about a small fighter, I am talking about a large reinforced army transporter.

That is the power that an excavator operator has at their disposal. Imagine what sort of damage it could do as part of a demolition team, or breaking up concrete or rock! The range off attachments is broad and includes augers and jack hammers, just to name a few.

To be a successful excavator operator you need two components. You need good solid training in the basics that then provides a platform to build on. You then need a job where you can develop those skills and learn the intricacies of some the attachments.

We at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools can help you to lay that solid platform to build on. Our heavy equipment training is comprehensive and undertaken over three weeks. This includes both in the cab and in the classroom training. As for a job, there is plenty of work available for heavy equipment operators at present. When you start your training, consult our career services department for advice on how and where to apply for that first job – we are all there to help you start your career.

A truck driving career offers one thing that many other careers can’t match – constant change. At least, a constant change in scenery. Truck driving covers a broad spectrum of jobs ranging from your local delivery driver to tractor-trailer drivers that transport heavy equipment and on to interstate transport drivers. You can find a career that really suits your personal situation.

For many family oriented people, being home each night to help tuck the kids into bed is important. Local delivery drivers often start early in the morning and finish early in the afternoon. You’re not only in time to tuck the kids into bed, you’re home in time to spend some quality time with them. Local delivery truck drivers transport everything. You could be driving a refrigerated truck carrying frozen foods, perhaps carrying timber to building sites, or delivering parcels from the local freight depot.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who are single, or whose children have grown up, or who feel the need to escape the bedlam at home. They drive the interstate transport trucks and can be away from home for several days at a time. Like local truck drivers, interstate drivers carry a wide range of products. You name a product and you can almost guarantee a truck has been involved with it somewhere along the line.

All these truck drivers have one thing in common – they had to undertake training in order to obtain their truck driving licenses. ATS Truck Driving Schools has been a leader in the field for over forty years, having trained thousands of drivers during that time. Our truck driver training program is comprehensive and includes both behind the wheel on the road training and classroom based training.

If you feel your career is going nowhere, why not consider a truck driving career? You can be sure it will take you somewhere.

Grader operators are amongst the best paid when it comes to heavy equipment operators. Their average pay checks are ahead of excavator operators with bulldozer operators coming in third. All three work in positions that demand a high level of precision when it comes to a finished job. Grader operators are probably recognized as having a tougher task when it comes to precision earth moving and that is reflected in their pay checks.

Wages for grader operators can be anything from $30,000 to $80,000 depending on the skills, years of experience, job requirements and job location. Excavator operators have an earning potential of between $30,000 and $70,000, again dependent on those attributes. However, excavator operators that advance to the giant mining excavators can earn even more.

For a career that starts with just three weeks of training, you have to admit those wages are a fairly good return on your investment. When looking at fees for career courses, that is how you should assess them – they are an investment (along with your time) and like all investments, you need to look at the return. I don’t know many investments that could return those dividends.

ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools provide heavy equipment training that encompasses graders, excavators and bulldozers along with several other units of heavy equipment. Our courses are conducted over a three week period and include behind the controls and classroom instruction. Our aim is to have you ready to enter the workforce at the end of that three week training period. With potential earnings of over 50k, you must admit the return on your investment could be well worth the effort.

Mention technology these days and most people automatically think about computers. While they do have an important role to play, new heavy equipment technology involves far more. If you were to compare today’s machinery with those from twenty or more years ago, the changes, while not so obvious from the outside, are huge when you get ‘under the bonnet’.

Hydraulic systems are one area that has gone through considerable change. The hydraulics on today’s equipment are more efficient, quieter and less prone to break down compared to older equipment. The engines are now far more fuel efficient, expel far less in the way of pollutants and are quickly reaching a point of being labeled ‘environmentally friendly’. Twenty years ago, you could smell a bulldozer in operation a mile away, if you couldn’t smell it, you could often see the plume of black smoke coming out of its stack. You could most definitely hear it at work.

Computers are of course making themselves felt when it comes to heavy equipment technology. Adding GPS locators has meant that stolen equipment is now retrieved, often within hours of going missing for weeks or months. GPS is also being used to help operators complete tasks more accurately and faster than those units not using GPS.

Heavy equipment technology improves because operators are constantly looking at ways to get more work done in far less time. Construction companies are paid by the completed project, with most projects having penalties for finishing late and bonuses for early completion. Being able to complete a project means getting paid more, early, and being free to start the next project. New heavy equipment technology is helping construction companies achieve this.

Despite all these changes, the operating basics haven’t changed that much. If anything, learning to operate heavy equipment has become a lot easier. If I can operate a bulldozer then you can as well – if not a bulldozer then a grader, backhoe or excavator. Why don’t you consider a career as a heavy equipment operator – heavy equipment technology is making the task easier everyday.

Bulldozers are fairly straightforward units of heavy equipment and an operator can be effective with fairly basic skill levels. However, being a competent operator goes beyond knowing which levers to push or pull and when – there are many others factors that are required. If you undertake a heavy equipment training program through ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools, you can expect to learn how to operate:

• backhoes
• wheel loaders
• scrapers
• excavators
• bulldozers
• road graders
• rock trucks
• Skid Steers, and
• All-Terrain Forklifts

As you can see, bulldozers are included in the range of heavy equipment that you can learn to operate. This gives you more variety when it comes to employment opportunities in the future. Operating skills are only one part of what is needed to become an effective operator. Other skills required include:

• the ability to read and assess grades
• ability to use laser levels
• knowledge of different soils and soil structures
• understand and work to safety guidelines
• ability to read and understand site layouts
• knowledge and ability to carry out basic heavy equipment maintenance

These complementary skills are what separates average operators and good operators. This is particularly true of bulldozer operators who are often required to work on a construction site when it is still virgin bushland. Reading plans, understanding the soil, and working to a site plan are essential to achieving a finish ready for construction. Good operators will get the job done on time and leave a ‘clean’ building site. Cowboy operators will tear the area up but often leave it ‘dirty’ – by ‘dirty’ I mean an uneven finish with huge gouge marks and little piles of dirt everywhere.

If you want to be a bulldozer operator, or any type of heavy equipment operator, make sure you undertake your heavy equipment training through an accredited training body like ATS – you are then assured of quality training that prepares you for the workplace.

Loaders come in all shapes and sizes ranging from the little skid steer type loaders up to giant earth moving machines – and I do mean giants. For many of us, the most common type of loader seen is the standard wheeled loader or front end loader. You typically see these on most building sites carrying dirt, sand or gravel to where it is needed. The second most common type would be the mini loaders or skid steer loaders. These are popular with landscape gardeners and hire yards.

While I wouldn’t belittle operators by saying that loaders were easy to operate, they are at least one of the easiest units of heavy equipment to learn to operate. As such they can be the easiest path into a career as a heavy equipment operator. This is the path that many operators take, starting with loaders and moving up to backhoes, excavators and bulldozers further down the track.

Most heavy equipment training programs include all of these units in their training repertoire. Once you graduate you will have some knowledge and experience on a range of equipment. Loaders may just be the least competitive field when it comes to job opportunities. The field of heavy equipment operations can have a career path – it’s just not so easy to map out as everyone has different attributes. Loaders can be seen as the start of that career path.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools provides training on a wide range of heavy equipment including loaders, backhoes, excavators and bulldozers. At the end of your three week training period, you are ready to enter the workforce as a trained and skilled heavy equipment operator. You can choose to specialize in any unit of heavy equipment, however, you may find that loaders are your easiest entry.

When you look at machinery like bulldozers, excavators and mobile cranes, they look very complex and hard to understand. Whilst the principles behind each machine is fairly basic, the components that go together to make, say, a mobile crane, are very complex. However, just like a car, you don’t need to know how it works under the hood, you just need to know how to operate from inside the cab. And that is fairly straightforward. Did you know that mobile crane operator training only takes three weeks? That’s all you need – three weeks.

Becoming a certified mobile crane operator does take a little longer. After all, you do have to be assessed before being certified. So let’s add another week for the certification process. In total, four weeks to become a certified mobile crane operator ready to start work. It may sound like a whirlwind training regime, however, it’s not. If it was, you would struggle to get through the certification process.

Actually, ATS Crane Operator Training Schools have one of the best reputations for delivering well trained graduates to industry. Our training is thorough and includes in-the-cab training and practice and classroom-based learning in areas such as workplace safety. Our training has been accredited through the National Center for Construction Education Research (NCCER) and our training schools are licensed in their respective states. Crane operator certification is provided through the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO).

In short, our mobile crane operator training provides skills that are required by industry along with certification of those skills for those who pass the assessment process. Are you looking for a career change? Consider a career as a mobile crane operator. The pay is good, the work conditions great, and you can start in less than a month.

When undertaking a heavy equipment training program it is helpful to have career services provided by the training company. However, there are some career services that are really nothing more than point and shoot offices – they point you at the vacancies and tell you to go and apply. Like ATS, some heavy equipment career services offer a little more. We offer a full range of career services including the most important of them all, soft skills training.

What are soft skills? These are the skills allied to a career. They don’t always help you out in the job itself, but they are essential if you want to land that job. Soft skills training includes teaching people how to put together a decent resume; how to write an effective application; and how to handle oneself when attending an interview. These skills are becoming more important, particularly now that many employers are college trained professionals.

Years ago, the person you applied to for a job as heavy equipment operator was probably either another operator or a former operator. I won’t say they were illiterate, but 20,30 or 40 years ago, having a resume and applying for a heavy equipment operator’s job was unheard of. The typical application back then went something like this:

“So you can drive a bulldozer, can ya?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, get in and show me.”

“That’s good enough for me; when can ya start?”

And that was it. Now, of course, prospective employers want to see proof of training, perhaps certificates or licenses (or both) and probably a couple of references or referees as well. At ATS, our career service can help you put together job applications that can at least help you get to the interview stage. From there, it’s up to you. Having said all that, don’t be surprised if a prospective employer says “Okay, get in and show me what you can do.” Some habits just never die!

One of the benefits of undergoing heavy equipment training for machinery like backhoes is that it doesn’t discriminate on age, gender or ethnicity. What determines a good operator is skill. Of course, like all jobs, there are other attributes such as commitment, punctuality and reliability that are important. But skill is the most important attribute of them all.

When it comes to age, there are few barriers. In the workplace, the minimum age is 18 to work as a heavy equipment operator and here at ATS, our minimum age to enroll in a heavy equipment training program is 18. Maximum age? So long as you can pass a medical test, have good eyesight and hearing and can operate all the pedals and levers – there is no upper limit. Employers may balk a little at employing a ninety year old, but then again, if the operator is healthy and good at his job then age shouldn’t factor into the equation.

Backhoes are a popular starting point for many new operators. They can be tricky to begin with but it doesn’t take long to become proficient. The real tricky situations arise when it comes time to use one of the many attachments that can be fitted. Over the years we have also seen many women entering the field as heavy equipment operators. Bulldozers, backhoes and excavators are always popular equipment to gain a start in.

If you have recently left school, or perhaps in mid life and just been made redundant, you could consider a career as a heavy equipment operator. The pay is reasonably good, the conditions are good and, at present, jobs are available. Whether it is backhoes, bulldozers or any other unit of heavy equipment, age is not a barrier to most people – and that most likely includes you!