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.

Many individuals balk at the cost of heavy equipment training without realizing there are avenues available to seek financial aid. More importantly, rather than seeing the cost of training as a financial impost, it should be seen as an investment on a career that is rewarding in terms of dollars and work satisfaction.

Most people borrow to buy cars and to buy houses. Some even borrow to buy shares through the stock markets. Borrowing to buy a car is an expense. You will never receive that money back, rather, year after year, that car will diminish in value. Houses on the other hand are investments. Under normal circumstances, the value of the house will slowly appreciate so when it comes time to sell, you should receive more back than what you paid for it.

Borrowing to finance a career is no different. Most professionals like doctors and lawyers all borrow to get through college. Many trades people have to borrow to pay their way through their training. Becoming a heavy equipment operator is no different. Borrowing to pay for your training is no different and the cost of borrowing can be recouped fairly quickly once you commence employment.

If you do need financial aid to get through your heavy equipment training, contact ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools to see what options are available for you. You can also complete an online application for financial assistance for heavy equipment training.

Don’t let the financial side of life interfere with your dream to become a heavy equipment operator. There is financial aid available for many individuals, particularly those that consider the cost an investment in their own future.

Generally speaking, heavy equipment training is well regarded with most training organizations taking the time to undertake accreditation. There are, however, some people who offer to deliver training without any training credentials at all. Gaining certification under those circumstances will almost result in an expensive yet worthless piece of paper.

If the training organization is accredited then you know that your certification is going to be recognized by potential employers nationwide. This is important, particularly in areas such as crane operator training where state legislation has made certification compulsory before you can work in that field.

So what is accreditation? This is a process where training organizations meet a set of minimum criteria. These standards include the material taught, the qualifications of the trainers, the type of equipment used in training, and a standardized set of assessments. In the latter, that is important since this means that all training organizations are assessing students for common skills.

If the organization meets the minimum standards set (and they are high standards) then that training organization can deliver training, undertake assessments, and issue national certification documents.

One accreditation body is The National Center for Construction Education and Research or NCCER. They have been accrediting training organizations since 1995 when it was established by 11 of the world’s largest and most progressive construction companies and several national construction associations.

Before you undertake any form of heavy equipment training, check the training provider to ensure they are accredited and that the certification they provide is recognized across the nation. This will ensure that on completion of your training, you will have a valuable document in your hands instead of a very expensive piece of scrap paper.

When looking at heavy equipment careers you may wonder which industries offer the best opportunities. Heavy equipment by definition is any heavy machinery, not just earth moving machinery. A crane could be considered heavy equipment as could a rock crusher and tree lopper so the breadth of industries is quite large. Below is a list of the more popular industries that provide career opportunities for heavy equipment operators.

Heavy equipment career in construction

The most popular career path for heavy equipment operators is through the field of construction. This in itself has a wide range of opportunities. You have the traditional road construction crews that spend their working lives building roads, tunnels and bridges. This sector is one of the largest employers of heavy equipment operators.

The second biggest sector is that of commercial construction. This is the building of office blocks, factories, shopping centers and housing projects to name just a few. Heavy equipment is used on some construction sites from start to finish and provides one of the most varied careers when it comes to heavy equipment operations.

Heavy equipment careers in mining

Mining is the second largest industry to offer heavy equipment careers and includes both above and under ground mining projects. Mining heavy equipment ranges from small excavators and front end loaders to massive, and I do mean massive, excavators. Since mining projects are generally in isolated areas and involve degrees of danger, these careers can be amongst the most lucrative.

Heavy equipment careers in agriculture

Heavy equipment in the form of bulldozers had their origins in agriculture with the first bulldozers being nothing more than a farm tractor with a blade attached to the front. The use of heavy equipment in agriculture waned for a while but it is being used far more frequently now. There are teams of operators that now work exclusively in the agricultural sector building dams and clearing scrub land.

Forestry is another sector that is starting to rely on heavy equipment. This is one sector where new technology is constantly being introduced to help control the growth of trees, perform pruning on a large scale, and of course to fell the trees in a controlled way.

Those are the three largest industries to use heavy equipment. Other industries that could offer heavy equipment careers include the military and waterfront. Smaller niches include snow plowing, landscape gardening, pipe laying and small constructions like in-ground swimming pools.

There are heavy equipment careers in almost all industry sectors in the country. It is really a case of thinking about what sort of work you would really like doing. Is it building roads, or building houses; perhaps working in the mines, or working on large landscape gardening projects. Find a sector that appeals to you, undertake the heavy equipment training required, and your career in heavy equipment awaits.

There is one skill that bulldozer operators need to acquire fairly quickly and that is the ability to read the earth. How hard is it; what sort of material is made up from; how long will it take to do the job; how much can I move at any one time? These questions may sound easy, but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

Everything that any heavy equipment has to move or dig into can be categorized. This categorization is done according type, eg, sand, gravel, clay, rock or loam to name a few. It can also be categorized by size. For example, sand can be screened through a series of mesh screens, each one getting progressively finer. The sand is referred to by mesh size, for example, a 4 mesh or 8 mesh.

Why is this important? When using a bulldozer, or any other type of heavy equipment for that matter, you need to know your material sizes. If the job calls for a particular grade of gravel, you need to be able to recognize that grade and complete the job. There will be times when you need to apply successive layers of material, each at different grades.

A bulldozer training program can teach you the fundamentals of reading the earth and reading the different grades of material used in construction. However, you will only develop the refined skills required to work effectively by working with the material – on the job.

It doesn’t take long. You already know the difference between sand and rock or gravel and clay. It is really just getting used to how your bulldozer actually reacts as you start to cut into each of those surfaces, or how each material reacts when you start spreading it over a given area. Get the fundamentals right during your initial training and you will be on the right track from day one.

Heavy equipment safety has become an important issue in the workplace. Operators who have been in the industry for decades still do a walk around to inspect their equipment before starting a day’s work. The operator who just jumps in without doing a check could be putting the machine, themselves and their work colleagues at risk.

A lot of operators have a check list they go through (generally a mental list) and it goes something like this. Check:

• tires for wear, cracks and correct inflation, or,
• tracks for any damage and for rocks caught in the mechanism, and
• fluid levels such as water, fuel, engine oil, hydraulic oil, transmission oil,
• windows for cracks and cleanliness,
• blades, buckets or scoops for cracks, broken teeth and correct linkages,
• inside cab for damage, cleanliness and the fire extinguisher.

If everything passes the walk around inspection, the operator then climbs into the cab and starts the engine. That is not the finish of the inspection. Once the machine has warmed up there is generally another walk around this time using their ears as well as their eyes. They are checking for:

• air leaks in the system,
• oil or water leaks,
• exhaust problems, and back in the cab,
• gauges for correct pressures.

It may sound time consuming yet to an experienced operator, the whole inspection is over within ten minutes. Failing to perform the inspection could result in the equipment being out of service for a substantially longer period than just ten minutes. That ten minutes is really an investment in protection – we just call it a heavy equipment safety and maintenance check.

A quality heavy equipment training program will take you through the steps needed to perform a daily heavy equipment safety and maintenance check. Some things require checking all the time. There are other components that you may only need to check daily or every couple of days. Get the right training and you will know what to do and when to do it – more importantly, you will know what you are actually doing, and why!

GPS is no longer ‘new’ technology – it’s been around for a long time with construction making use of the technology in heavy equipment like motor graders to increase productivity. The benefit to construction is through efficiencies, the motor grader can accurately perform its role first time – there is no longer the hit or miss that often occurs with non-GPS systems.

One of the problems the construction industry has faced in recent years is the changeover from old non-GPS equipped machinery to GPS equipped machinery. Motor grader operators that were trained more than five years ago have little knowledge of GPS and it is used on their new machinery. This has lead construction companies to either not use the technology, or to face the cost of training their operators in the technology.

Today’s heavy equipment students often have the option of adding GPS training to their course thus adding to their skills base. As these students enter the workforce the use of GPS has increased. We are approaching a point where motor grader operators without GPS skills will be passed over when it comes to recruitment.

It all comes back to economics. If a motor grader operator can have a job finished in 75% of the time using GPS then it makes sense to incorporate that technology. Employing individuals who don’t have those skills is only adding costs to a project that most businesses can no longer afford.

For any student contemplating a career as a motor grader operator, consider your options for including GPS training either in your training program, or as soon as possible after completing your training. Opportunities for motor grader operators with GPS skills will increase considerably over the next few years – be prepared and reap the rewards.

Heavy equipment can be divided into two distinct fields; machinery that can multi-task and machinery that is designed to do a specific task. Bulldozers, backhoes and loaders can all multi-task. Graders fit into the role of dedicated machinery and so too does a scraper.

Scrapers are cumbersome-looking machines but their ability to their dedicated job is by no means cumbersome. They only have the one task – to scrape the surface of the earth in preparation for a building project. The majority of these projects are road work related.

The scraper slices across the top of the earth like a knife across butter. Once the scraper has completed the task of leveling out the surface, a grader is then applied to do the fine tuning of the construction bed. Without the scraper, a construction crew would need to rely on a bulldozer or similar to scrape away the surface.

Most heavy equipment machinery like bulldozers do more than just scrape the earth. They can tear big gashes in the work area, gashes that need more work to repair before the site is considered ready to work on.

As you can see from the photo, scrapers are reasonably large and certainly look cumbersome. Learning to operate a scraper is not that difficult and is often included as part of a heavy equipment training program. If you are able to undertake scraper operator training then I suggest you do. With the millions of miles of roads and highways being built as part of the economic stimulus package, gaining a qualification that includes scrapers makes a lot of sense.

As heavy equipment technology develops, the types of equipment available to operate grows. In the beginning there was the humble dozer, and that was just a tractor with a blade attached. Over time we have developed graders, backhoes, excavators, I could go on. If you like at road and rail construction, some of the equipment used is simply mind boggling.

One good example is the huge machines used to cut holes through mountains. We drive through these road tunnels and think nothing of them. The machine used virtually eats its way through the rock, no matter how tough it is.

Other heavy equipment that looks quite different are some of the specialist fork lifts like the all terrain fork lifts and the store picker fork lifts. As the name suggests, store picker fork lifts move up and down the aisles of warehouses picking items that are required. Picture a standard forklift. Now raise the upright arms 10 to 15 feet and extend the forks by a few feet. To counter balance the forks at f feet or more, the rear end of the fork lift can be huge. To navigate the warehouse aisles, it needs to be narrow. So you end up with a huge grass hopper like creature. A large heavy rear with these two arms sticking out way above your head.

All terrain forklifts on the other hand at least look a little more normal. The heavy equipment technology that ensures their safe use comes in the form of suspension, four wheel drive and a heavy counterweight to ensure the load doesn’t rock dangerously going over rough terrain.

Undertaking all-terrain fork lift training is a must if you want to successfully operate one. This training is sometimes offered as part of a heavy equipment training program. If you get the opportunity to have fork lift training included as part of your heavy equipment training, grab it. They are skills that always in demand across a wide range of industries and as heavy equipment technology expands, the ability to acquire skills across a range of equipment may become harder.

You can see mobile cranes traveling the highways all the time and some of them really do look like toys – just bigger than ones we had as children. A casual inspection would leave one with the feeling that anyone could operate a mobile crane.

If you think about, what is there to learn? The crane is mobile and sits on the back of a truck so a truck license would be necessary. Otherwise, there must be a lever to raise and lower the hook; another lever to extend or retract the boom; and pedals to turn the crane. Too easy surely? Lower the hook, attach the load; raise the load; swing around to where you want the load placed and lower it back to ground.

I am not trying to be flippant either. In a nutshell, that is the basics of operating a crane. Of course, if the load is a little heavy then you may just tip the crane on its side. If you don’t quite raise the load high enough you might take the top of the truck, or someone’s head.

The reality is that mobile cranes are not difficult to operate. The skills that do need to be developed are not those related to pushing levers or pedals. What is important is knowing how to set up the crane for safe use. How to handle loads safely and how to counter or work around environmental factors. Anyone can raise and lower a hook but I challenge anyone to lift a load and place it perfectly at its destination, first time, every time.

Mobile cranes may look like toys and may seem easy to operate. A highly skilled operator can work in confined areas perfectly judging distances irrespective of any environmental factors (wind for example), and place a load exactly where it is required.

Watch a crane operator lowering a large steel girder into place – the girder is a deadly weapon in itself – yet the operator can perfectly place the girder so that ground crews can fix it into place. That requires a lot of skill and that skill is based on the mobile crane operator training they received at the start of their career. Mobile cranes – they are not toys, they are precision tools that help build our nation.