Housing is part of the deal when you come to ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School. Here’s why:

1. We have found that giving our students a safe, comfortable place to stay helps them do better in the program.
2. Housing is available for all students.
3. It frees your mind to focus on learning the information and skills you are paying for.

Once you enroll in your studies, we reserve a room at the school’s dormitory for the full length of your training. Your room is equipped with cable TV, air conditioning, refrigerators, and access to laundry facilities. It’s an easy walk to restaurants and grocery stores, and it’s about four miles from Associated Training Services (ATS). There are 62 rooms at the Inn and you will meet other ATS students there, at different points in their training since our classes start every three weeks.

We have found that this solution to the problem of housing has been part of what our graduates appreciated during their stay. Friendships were formed when groups went out to eat together after class, and studies were enhanced by not worrying about extra hotel bills and a place in the room to read, and it will be that way for you too. It’s nice to be able to kick back and relax instead of driving back and forth from a distant hotel you found on the internet and regret.

Technically, you do not need a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) to operate heavy equipment, it’s true. But if you have your CDL, you are going to be much more valuable to an employer, and it can make the difference between getting hired or getting a raise or staying home looking for work that pays the bills. Because of this, ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School includes short-term truck driver training for those who want to take their career to this higher level.

Driving a tractor-trailer to move heavy equipment to the next job site is necessary with anything that uses tracks instead of wheels. This equipment is slow, heavy, and often wide. To take it down the road would tie up traffic and probably mess up the surface. So a flatbed or lowboy trailer is used; the equipment is driven up a ramp, tied down, and moved by towing the trailer. If you can show a CDL and a training certificate from ATS (a respected school in this business), you are ahead of the rest.

In four weeks at the most, you will be prepared to take the CDL road test. You’ll know Department of Transportation rules & regulations, how to drive heavy equipment on roads, how to back heavy equipment, coupling, uncoupling, pre-trip inspections, and all the rest. ATS started out in truck driver training, so we know the value of this skill.

Employers know that value too and are willing to pay more for an employee who can operate heavy equipment plus drive any of the trucks that may be needed to transport it. The more skills you have, the more valuable you are as an employee. Check into our CDL Truck Driving Program and see how you can be the one who gets the job because you have the right training.

Heavy equipment moves mountains — and even though the bulldozers, scrapers, and other machines are made of strong metals, they use a network of hardfacing material, a wear-resistant layer of metal ridges, to protect the parts that contact the ground. It extends the life of the machine by adding a renewable surface.

Usually, hardfacing, or hard surfacing, is done by welders in patterns or ridges to reduce the weight, save money, and save time. Typically a welder lays down lines two beads wide and one bead high — about 0.25 inches by 0.125 inches. Covering the surface instead of these lines would certainly be good protection, but that would also be overkill. There’s a couple of different techniques, depending on the type of soil being worked.

Loamy soils, which are softer, generally will benefit from a grid pattern that traps the soil on the surface of the metal and protects it from abrasion. Usually, a good welder will lay down parallel ridges about 2 inches apart and at a ninety-degree angle. Rockier soils are different because you don’t want the rocks moving over the steel surface. In those cases, a welder will lay down a hardfacing that creates a flow of soil over the top of the pattern, like rails or even dots.

When you train at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School, you learn a lot about heavy equipment, including the maintenance that goes into keeping it in top working condition. As the industry changes, the technologies change, but the job stays the same: you are operating the machines that move mountains.

A Qualified Rigger is required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to be on the construction site during hoisting activities for assembly and disassembly work, when workers are in the fall zone and hooking, unhooking, or guiding loads. They are the ones doing the first connections of loads to components and structures.

Fact Number One: Riggers are essential members of the team and required to be part of the on-site crew.

In addition, qualified riggers are not automatically qualified to do every rigging job. They may have experience and training in certain types of rigging tasks, or hold certifications and degrees for specific types of rigging tasks, but they have to have shown they are capable of solving problems related to rigging loads.

Fact Number Two: It is the Employer’s responsibility to make sure the “qualified riggers” on their crew are qualified to do the specific job they are expected to fulfill with the proper equipment on the site.

Employers are not required to use a “certified” rigger; they are required to have evaluated the nature of the load, lift, and equipment used to hoist that load with the purpose of selecting the rigger who is qualified to do that particular job by reason of knowledge, training, and experience.

Fact Number Three: A rigger who has been trained in one of the ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School’s rigging/signalperson training programs has a good chance of being the Qualified Rigger needed for the job.

Take a look at the programs offered and you will see what I am talking about. There’s even an option for bringing ATS on the job site for customized training, letting the employer be positive the riggers meet the OSHA standards for Qualified Rigger.

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) was designed to get Americans trained and on the job. It’s one of many legislative efforts to give practical help to specific types of workers. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School has gone through the process to be considered a WIA Eligible Training Provider (twenty-two states recognize us) and we work with a number of agencies who provide help to job seekers.

Agencies ATS has worked with and will continue to work with include:

• Government employment offices
• Departments of workforce development
• Workforce Investment Act (WIA)
• Dislocated worker retraining programs
• Trade Readjustment Act (TAA)
• Vocational rehabilitation
• Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
• State Departments of Veterans Affairs
• Federal Veterans Administration
• Other agencies that help people find employment

We are licensed in seven states as a private vocational school and are an approved training program for veterans, too. If you are working with an agency to get a new start in a career, or seeking a training program for a client, Associated Training Services is a good place to start. We have built up our solid reputation as a training school for professionals over decades of service.

Labor market information can be given to agency counselors: employment outlooks for specific industries, wages and earning potential, job descriptions, working conditions, and whatever else may be needed for you to be able to get the funding you need for the training that will put you in the driver’s seat of a career as a heavy equipment operator.

If you are not sure which programs you qualify for, our Financial Assistance department can help you figure out the possibilities. We have the experience to guide you through the paperwork and on the way to a job.

I was speaking to a young man who recently accquired more training and hired at a company that has three branches of operations. I asked him what he’d be doing, and he told me he’d be working in the construction branch. I asked what he was certified in, and he said something interesting:

“I plan on getting as many certifications as I can because it will increase my usability. I want to be able to switch to other jobs in the company, even into one of the other branches when work is slow. I figure if I am able to receive more training any type of their heavy equipment, they will see me as essential and I won’t get laid off.”

I said that sounded like a good idea, and he modestly admitted it was advice from his brother-in-law. It is sound advice, too, because the more usable an employee is, particular in heavy equipment operating jobs, the easier it is to keep them around because they are able to fill so many positions when needed.

Associated Training Services provides the type of training that young man is interested in, because you learn to operate all kinds of heavy equipment when enrolled in the Heavy Equipment Operations Programs. You get a real grounding in the essentials of the industry and a clear understanding of the differences in the types of heavy equipment used today. The skills are carefully taught and you get practice in seat-of-the-pants operating so you are graduating as that “usable” type of employee who is seen as essential.

In a lot of ways, a graduate of ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School has got hard skills and soft skills. Knowing how to identify soil, read a grade, understand site layout management, etc. while competently maintaining and safely operating a wide variety of heavy equipment is the stuff you will be doing every day for the life of your job. That’s hard, but that’s why training is important. The “hard” skills are the ones you use on the job.

But in order to actually get that job, you need some “soft” skills. These are things you won’t necessarily be doing on the job so it is easy to overlook them in preparing for a career. But ATS doesn’t overlook those soft skills; they are included in your training. Our Career Services office starts working with students from the beginning, helping to create a plan for what happens after your training is complete. Part of that plan is going to involve these three “soft” skills:

• application procedures
• networking methods
• interviewing techniques

You will probably appreciate the value of the second, networking, throughout your career because it is always going to be important to stay connected to people. But in the job-search sense, it is a soft skill because you don’t use it all the time while doing your job. You won’t be applying for a job every day, either, or interviewing. But each of these skills can get you hired.

They get you hired because they help you get through the filters an employer uses to narrow down who will be interviewed, and then they help you give a good impression of your abilities when you interview. If your application isn’t submitted properly, the computer will reject it before a person ever sees it. If the references on your resume aren’t so great (networking), then you might not get called in for the interview. And if you are not able to show how you will be an asset to the company at the interview, you probably won’t get hired.

So our Career Services works with you as part of the training, helping you develop those soft skills while you are learning the hard skills that will keep you employed as a successful professional heavy equipment operator.

Do you remember the car-swallowing sinkhole that opened up inside the National Corvette Museum in February? Early one morning, the ground beneath the Skydome area started caving in. By the end, there was a cavern about 40 feet across and 20-30 feet deep with eight Corvettes inside. You can watch assorted footage of the whole timeline, from collapse to final recovery of the cars, here. There’s even a few with ‘crane-cam’ footage.

You know who the stars of the show are? Heavy equipment operators. The Corvettes just sat there needing to be rescued from the predicament they were in, but cranes and other heavy equipment saved the day. It was a tricky operation, too, because the situation had to be carefully evaluated and stabilized before any Corvette could be moved. The Museum is in the middle of a geological area known for developing sinkholes, so area crane operators probably have a lot of experience with this type of thing. Still, this particular rescue operation was pretty special.

It would be safe to assume that any heavy equipment operator brought in for this project was both skilled and certified. Those Corvettes are worth a good bit of money and the owners were not going to entrust them to someone who isn’t qualified to do the best job in a delicate situation that could change quickly. I’m pretty sure they were picky about finding the best crane operators for the job.

The best crane operators are trained at fully accredited schools like ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School. Our Certified Crane Operator Program gives students a lot of options in choosing the best program for their particular need but every one of those options is going to result in a graduate who is qualified for the job.

Finish graders apply the finicky final touches to a surface to get it perfect. That smooth runway and carefully cambered road is due to the skill of an experienced finish grader. The bulldozer started the job, but the grader will finish it and get it ready for asphalt or whatever comes next. It’s an important step in the construction process and you aren’t going to be able to do that job right out of training school because it takes more than a few weeks to get the skill to do it to the precise angles on the engineer’s plan.

It used to be harder for a finish grader to get it perfect but now there’s additional tools like GPS and laser leveling to help them do their job. It still takes that seat-of-the-pants skill, though, that no amount of tech tools can replace. Graders are in demand for roadwork, leveling ground at construction sites, and even snow removal, so the paycheck can go into the winter months.

If a grader operator has been poorly trained, the foundation is pretty shaky for their skill building. It isn’t that perfect, level surface that you need to do the next step. You could think of it this way; getting your heavy equipment training at ATS is like the final leveling of a finish grader clearing the way for the next process to be done on the project. You get the training and the certifications that prove you know your stuff, then an entry level job will allow you to build up those skills to become the grader operator the boss looks for when perfection is required.

A lot of our students come through the program with help from one of the many sources of financial aid. Since Associated Training Services (ATS) is accredited, our heavy equipment operator training is eligible for a number of programs, but you won’t know what will work for you until you contact our Financial Assistance service and talk to us.

Career Loans can be applied to training school tuition, rent, and other living expenses. Military benefits programs recognize ATS so you can use any of the GI Bills, TAP, or state military programs to get trained and start a new career. Vets get hiring preference, so a trained vet has the best chance out there to land a job.

If you are on unemployment, you could qualify for a state or federal grant. In fact, there’s a lot of state and federal programs that we work with: Workforce Investment Act (WIA), Department of Workforce Development, Trade Adjustment Act (TAA), Displaced Workers, Displaced Farmers, Vocational Rehabilitation, Tribal Education (BIA) and Veterans Benefits (VA) are all on the list.

One of the best things about using financial help to get heavy equipment operator training is the fact that you have so many job opportunities once you graduate. You get trained in a lot of different kinds of equipment, too, so you are going to be very valuable as a skilled professional. Talk to Financial Assistance and see what you qualify for, and what kind of a debt load you will graduate with. Then take a look at the job site and see what kind of a wage you can expect. We bet you will see the real possibility that you can pay off school quickly and have a good, solid career ahead of you.