Heavy equipment job descriptions used to include terms such as ‘working in hot and dusty conditions’ or ‘prepared to work in weather extremes’. That is far from the situation today.

If you are fortunate to operate some of the latest heavy equipment models you would think you are in a control room. They now come fitted with air conditioning, filtered air, two-way radios, cd/radios with stereo speakers. I have seen one model that came fully equipped with a mini refrigerator to keep your drinks cool.

The days of freezing your butt off early in the morning then cooking in the afternoon are on their way out. No more breathing dust or getting soaked to the skin in an open cab. Today’s heavy equipment cabs are fully enclosed and weather proofed.

In the past, the controls were, at best, hydraulic assisted. Now you have the benefit of not just power steering, but also power assisted controls to operate the various devices. Heavy equipment operators from fifty years ago would not recognize these machines.

If this sounds like the career for you, perhaps you should look into training to enable you to get your foot in the door. ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools have a variety of training programs – check them out to assess your options.

Construction is one of the largest service industries in the United States. The opportunities in this field for properly trained and ambitious individuals is virtually endless particularly in the area of skilled heavy equipment operators.

However, when a single tire on a piece of heavy equipment costs $50,000 and the machine itself around the million dollar mark, who do you want sitting behind the controls? You have a choice, a complete novice who is going to learn ‘on-the-job’, or someone who has had all the basic training and knows the stop lever from the go, the up from the down and the various safety requirements when operating the equipment.

We spend billions of dollars every year repairing roads, clearing land and preparing construction sites. These tasks are not left to amateurs. Heavy equipment operators that are skilled and competent are able to start and finish a job on time and generally under budget. Not only that, the job is DONE. It doesn’t need more money to do the job again.

As a heavy equipment operator, you bear a heavy responsibility. You it your job to ensure that this work is carried effectively and efficiently so that deadlines and budgets are met. It is the skills you have acquired that help you to achieve this – skills that should be acquired through accredited training at an accredited heavy equipment training school.

We all live in a lucky country. We tend to take our roads for granted, along with water supplies, sewerage, gas and electricity. We look at new building estates, the land cleared and ready to build on. With out our heavy equipment operators we would have very little of this. It would all have to be done by hand or using horse drawn vehicles. The heavy equipment industry provides a career on which the nation is built – who would you trust with this task? Someone trained and qualified to do the job – or someone who thinks they can drive ‘anything’?

Heavy Equipment operators need to develop a range of skills before they are considered competent to operate vehicles and equipment for construction or engineering. Training for these jobs often begins at a heavy equipment training school where they start with the basic maintenance and repair of their equipment before operating machinery or vehicles.

Training will also include safety aspects before moving on to the actual operation of heavy equipment. Once you have completed your training it is time to move into the workplace. Here your education will ramp up a few degrees as you start to understand how terrain, geography, weather and the conditions of the construction site surface affects your equipment.

This knowledge helps in the future when you will be required to prepare a site before beginning work. Dirt isn’t dirt. Every piece of ground you work on will be slightly different to any other. Understanding the soil quality and its composition, how much sand, clay or other materials and the grade of the sand, gravel or rock of a particular area can be of particular importance

Most construction sites require excavation as part of the preparation of the site. This generally requires more than one vehicle so operators with more than one specialty are in great demand. Being able to operate a bulldozer, backhoe and frontend loader, for example, could mean your skills are in greater demand.

Acquiring these skills is not difficult. Attending a heavy equipment training school such as ATS can get your career started. Gaining as much experience on the job in a variety of terrains on a variety of heavy equipment is just as important. You just need to acquire those foundation skills first.

Heavy equipment comes in all shapes and sizes. The bigger pieces of equipment can really pack some punch. A bulldozer is capable of pushing large amounts of material around. The grader can also push huge amounts of dirt around. So, in the world of heavy equipment, who is the brute?

Most people would opt for the bulldozer and why not, they can certainly push a lot of dirt around. Graders, however can also push the same amount of dirt.

When it comes to brute strength, they both have what it takes. Bulldozers are a little like a meat cleaver. They get stuck in and use their brute strength to carve up the earth and push it to one side.

Graders, on the other hand, use the same brute strength to push dirt around, but they are more like a fine slicing knife, using force to sculpt the land pushing the dirt out to the side while the blades dig in and peel the earth away.

They both use brute force, one in a brutal way, the other in gentler carving motion. The end result, the bulldozer has cleaned the rubbish and top dirt away. The grader can now come in and start to the shape the earth for the final steps of construction.

You cannot compare them. They both use brute strength for different jobs and different outcomes. To learn how to operate either one or both of these, check out ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools for more information.

The term ‘formal training’ can be applied to a lot of situations. Is on the job training formal training? Some would argue, yes! However, formal training is generally accepted as being the type of training that is accredited and that follows a defined path – if you like, it has a start, assessment points along the way and a conclusion.

Do you need this formal training to operate heavy equipment? The answer could often be no. However, when you receive on-the-job training your training is only as good as the operator who is training you. If they have poor habits then they are likely to be passed on to your.

More importantly, on-the-job training really only teaches you how to push buttons, use levers and turn a key. You don’t always learn important aspects such as safety or basic maintenance. These are important areas, particularly when working in tricky or unusual situations.

If an accident occurs and you haven’t had proper training, there may be serious ramifications. Undertaking provides a peace of mind in the knowledge that you have the complete range of skills required to operate a unit of heavy equipment safely and competently.

ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools prides itself on the provision of accredited training that includes safety and basic aspects of machine maintenance. You also learn how to push buttons, work levers and how to operate that piece of heavy equipment to get a job done properly.

ATS will soon celebrate its 50th birthday – that is 50 years of dedicated service to training. ATS has grown to 10 locations nationwide and further expansion is planned in the future.

Our service doesn’t just stop at training. We also provide employment assistance and with 10 locations, there are plenty of employers to choose from when it comes to time to get your career of the ground. Our lifetime job placement service is recognized by employers due to the skill levels of those we train.

The training that ATS provides is accredited through the National Center of Construction and Research Education (NCCER) which is a not-for-profit education foundation. Our training has stood the test of time and continues to improve and maintain current industry standards.

What is the ATS advantage? We provide quality, accredited and industry endorsed training in the heavy equipment field. Our aim is to help you get started in your chosen career.

When you were growing up, did you like playing in the dirt with toy trucks, perhaps a bulldozer or toy front end loader? I did and it was a lot fun. When I was finished I could just tip my toys upside down, whack them a couple of times on the ground to remove the dirt or sand, then pack them away in my toy box (when I remembered that is is 🙂 ). It is such a pity you cannot do that to the real ones.

Real dump trucks, front end loaders and the myriad of heavy equipment that is in use today requires a little more than just removing a little loose dirt or sand. Anyway, you cannot pick them up and empty them like a toy.

The real heavy equipment that big boys (and girls) play with need much more, they need fuel, oil, grease in the right places and working areas that require constant attention. Heavy equipment often relies on hydraulics. Hydraulics is a system where a fluid, under pressure, is used to perform certain acts. For example, to raise or a lower a bucket, hydraulics may be used. Since fluid, pressure and often flexible piping is used, these need to be inspected regularly to ensure there no leaks or problems that could cause a loss of pressure.

Digging equipment often comes fitted with teeth or tines. These need to be inspected regularly to ensure there are no breakages and that they retain some form of pointed or sharpness to enable easy digging.

Caterpillar or track vehicles need to have their tracks regularly inspected to ensure there no foreign objects such as rocks or plant material caught in them that could cause damage. The tracks themselves should also be inspected for breakages or weaknesses that could lead to breakages whilst in use.

Darn, I wish I could just pick them up and shake the dirt out like a toy. Then again, this is heavy equipment, the big boys toy.

Building a simple farm dam sound like an easy task. Dig a hole. Make sure the walls are secure and at the right angle to channel run off into the dam proper. Easy. Perhaps not, especially if I give you a shovel and pick and tell you to dig it by hand. Time for the heavy equipment.

One piece of heavy equipment may not be enough. A bulldozer can do a lot of the muscle work. You may also need an excavator if the ground is rocky or packed solid. A front end loader can make short work of lifting the excess material out,

Whilst all this is happening, you need to be referencing plans to ensure the dam is built correctly, and safely. Building a dam is not an easy task. It takes a lot of muscle, muscle that only heavy equipment can provide, along with a lot skill in how to use that heavy equipment to get the job done.

Today’s farms no longer rely on just a simple tractor. In fact some tractors have all the attachments to make them into smaller versions of much of the heavy equipment used in construction. Tractors don’t quite have that real muscle power of a bulldozer or motor grader. In the hands of an expert, a dam can be constructed in a matter of days. Do it by hand and your looking at months with blisters to match.

Training is one of key components to using heavy equipment effectively when building a dam. Knowing how to operate a bulldozer or an front end loader means the job can be done quickly and effectively with little hassle.

The mining sector is a large employer of heavy equipment operators particularly those with experience in equipment that used in the mines. Mines fall into two segments, open cut or above ground and underground.

Above ground heavy equipment operators use excavating, loading machines and draglines equipped with scoops, shovels, or buckets to dig and load sand, gravel, earth, or similar materials into trucks or onto conveyors. This is a job that is open to the extremes of weather. Most workers are employed on 8 hour shifts, sometimes around the clock, seven days per week.

Underground heavy equipment operators use underground loading machines to load coal, ore, or rock into shuttles and mine cars or onto conveyors. Loading equipment may include power shovels, hoisting engines equipped with cable-drawn scrapers or scoops, and machines equipped with gathering arms and conveyors. Whilst underground miners are protected from weather extremes, there is added danger being underground. As with above ground workers, most shifts are 8 hours although it is not uncommon to work rotating seven day shifts around the clock.

These are challenging jobs and whilst the remuneration is not terrific, the wages are reasonable. There is a constant need for heavy equipment operators in the mining industry, particularly underground due to the transient nature of many of the workers.

ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools can help you gain the skills required to operate heavy equipment in the mining sector.

There are many training establishments around that offer training for heavy equipment. You can also learn to operate the machinery on the job. Some of this training is accredited, some isn’t. How important is this accreditation?

It doesn’t matter what sort of training you undertake, whether it is heavy equipment, car driving or any other skill. Accredited training is training that has been assessed as meeting an agreed set of standards. For heavy equipment, training is not limited to how you operate a piece of machinery. Training also includes important areas such as safety, basic maintenance including safety checks to identify problems before they cause problems and associated skills.

For heavy equipment, some of the associated skills include dealing with different types of materials, for example, dirt behaves differently to sand or gravel. In fact, different grades of material will react differently to the machine working on it. Training could also involve working with slopes and working around other objects, obstacles and services such as water and electricity.

Accredited training allows for an agreed standard of training, training resources and the personnel delivering the training. If you seek out accredited training you know you will receive training that at least meets the minimum standards.

ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools delivers accredited training to strict standards laid down by The National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER). You can be assured your training meets or exceeds these standards.