If you’ve been thinking about learning how to operate a lattice or mobile crane, then I can’t think of a better time than now. Christmas is coming up and you can start the new year on a good note. There are several good reasons why you might want to get your crane operator training through Associated Training Services (ATS) and get crane certified.

Here are 5 good reasons to choose ATS:

1. In-the-seat mobile crane training – We actually let you get in the operator’s seat. It’s okay to learn how to operate a crane from a book or by sitting in a classroom, but you’ll learn a lot more by actually doing it – under the care of an experienced operator, or course.
2. Fixed-cab instruction – You’ll learn how to operate a fixed-cab mobile hydraulic crane.
3. Swing-cab instruction – Our professional and experienced crane operators will teach you everything you need to know to operate a swing-cab mobile hydraulic crane.
4. Financial and housing assistance – We don’t just invite you to our training facility and make you pay out the ying-yang. We’ll provide you with housing assistance and financial assistance, if you qualify.
5. Career services – ATS also helps you get your first crane operator job. What more could you ask for?

There is no crane operator training school that takes more of an interest in our students’ future success. You can get your national crane certification from ATS and get your career off the ground in a matter of weeks.

You know you’re ready for your next career move. You’ve heard that heavy equipment jobs are opening left and right. They are! But what you aren’t sure about is where to start. Let me offer you five ways to get trained for the heavy equipment career you deserve and want. Here is to the future operators.

Here are five career training programs for future heavy equipment operators:

1. Crane training – In crane training, you’ll learn all about the various types of cranes and how to operate them. Each type of crane has its own unique features and ATS trains you on all of them. Learn more about heavy equipment crane training today.
2. Heavy equipment training – Technically, cranes are heavy equipment too. But when we say “heavy equipment,” we’re talking about a broader scope. This class will teach you all about scrapers, bulldozers, graders, backhoes, loaders, and a lot of other types of heavy equipment.
3. Rigging training – Riggers have a very important job on the work site. We’ll teach you how rigging fits in and show you how to safely carry out the duties and responsibilities of this important job.
4. Signalperson training – Signalpersons are the controllers of the work site traffic circle. We’ll show you how to maneuver vehicles using ground controls and how to do it safely according to OSHA standards.
5. Truck driver training – Truck drivers are integral to the work site. Heavy equipment must be transported from the construction company motor pool to the work site. No one is qualified to do that better than the CDL truck driver.

Now is the time to get your career in heavy equipment off the ground. Enroll in the training you need and start today.

The job of a signalperson is an old and ancient custom. Before electronic communications, signal people or a signalperson, used flags and lights for communication. Some still do depend on the circumstances. In fact, the military still uses lights and flags, especially in combat situations.

You’ve likely seen people on construction sites who stand around with flags and direct traffic. They don’t just direct cars and trucks on the road. They also direct heavy equipment such as cranes.

The signalperson must understand how every piece of equipment maneuvers and have a thorough understanding of their limitations. That includes how the boom swings, how buckets raise and lower, clearances, and a whole bunch of safety factors. These safety factors are the reason signal people must be OSHA certified.

Other things signal people must understand well are weather and terrain circumstances that can affect equipment maneuverability.

For instance, if it has rained within the last day or so, will the ground be too soft for tracked vehicles? What about wheeled vehicles? How will clay beneath the surface affect turning on the job site? Will vehicles move faster or slower as a result of weather and ground conditions?

These are all important considerations and the signalperson must be able to account for them as they direct heavy equipment on the work site. It is imperative for the safety of the entire work crew and any civilians in the area. That’s why it is important to get the best signalperson training you can get prior to taking a job in this specialty.

Robert Klabacka, in 1963, had a vision and followed it. He founded the Diesel Truck Driver Training School in 1963 near Madison, Wisconsin.

In 1996, Associated Training Services was born out of the same values that inspired the truck driving school. Those values are Quality, Integrity, and Pride.

This is not just some empty phrase or a string of words thrown together. Robert believed in them and so do we.

For years, the Klabacka family has been committed to providing quality truck driving and heavy equipment training for individuals wishing to seek a career in the backbone services of the country. There isn’t a thing all across America that hasn’t been touched by a truck driver or heavy equipment operator. Roads, bridges, stores, high rises, virtually every bit of infrastructure in the land at some point had to be transported or moved by an industry worker. Our job is to train them for their careers, and we do that well.

It takes integrity to maintain a business like ours. We believe in treating people right. If we help others succeed, then we’ll succeed. We believe it and we live it.

On these two pillars stands the element of pride. We don’t just have family pride. We also have professional pride. We believe in the power of people at a fundamental level. We believe that if you give people the tools to succeed, then they’ll outpace your expectations. Our students have proven it time and time again.

When you enroll in ATS, you aren’t just starting a career. You’re also joining a family. And that’s something to be proud of.

One of the most important tasks on the work site is grade reading. If you are going to be working on an incline, or smoothing sloped roads and such, then you’ll need to learn how to read grades. There are two ways to calculate a slope. You can use a gradient measure communicated as a percentage or express it as an angle of the slope.

Grades, or slopes, can be measured for any type of terrain: roads, canyons, hillsides, river banks, railroads, or any terrain feature with a slope.

You should imagine the terrain feature as a triangle. You have a distance, called the run, and an angle, called the rise. To figure the percentage of the grade for a road, railroad, or other motorway, you calculate the percentage of the rise over the run multiplied by 100.

So if your run is 100 feet and your rise is 2 feet over the course of that 100 feet, then your slope is 2%.

You’ll learn all about grade reading in heavy equipment school. Your instructor will break it down for you and give you plenty of practical experience in reading and calculating grades so that when you get your first job you are so practiced you can do it without thinking about it. You’ll have no problem getting your first heavy equipment job if you learn the skills necessary to keep you employed once you get there.

There are different types of loaders. A loader is a handy piece of equipment to have on a construction site.

You’ll often come into contact with these types of loaders on the work site:

• Bucket Loader
• Front end loader
• Front loader
• Payloader
• Skip Loader
• Wheel Loader
• Track Loader
• Swingloader

All loaders are tractors – some have wheels and some have tracks – that have a bucket on one end so the driver can scoop up loose material and move it around. Loaders come in various sizes. Most of them are wheeled, but sometimes a tracked loader comes in handy.

On construction sites where gravel or loose sand needs to be moved, a loader is a useful piece of equipment. But you need a qualified operator to make good use of it.

You can always find employment as a loader if you have a few construction companies in your area. In northern states, many municipalities use loaders to move snow off of streets or parking lots. Business owners or landlords at large apartments or business complexes may use them too.

The most common type of loader is the front-end loader, although skid steer loaders are fairly popular as well. Compared to industrial loaders, however, they’re both quite small.

If you can learn to operate a large loader, such as a front loader like the John Deere 944K or the LeTourneau L-2350, then you should be able to operate smaller loaders just fine. Backhoe loaders not only have a bucket on one end but also a backhoe on the opposite, giving this small tractor an extra measure of mojo for the operator.

Graders come in handy in a lot of ways. They are those big machines with a blade on the front that is often used to level roads and other areas so that they aren’t so rough and bumpy. I’ve seen farmers use them to grade their gravel lanes so that getting in and out of the farm isn’t so difficult for their sedans and pick up trucks. But for industrial uses, graders are often one of the most important pieces of heavy equipment on the work site.

Construction companies often use graders to level out areas where a building will take place. If a home is going to be built, an apartment complex constructed, or a large commercial building even, then the ground where it will stand will need to be flattened. That’s a good use for a grader.

In colder areas, especially in northern states and Canada, graders are used to push snow off the streets in winter months.

Cities, municipalities, states, and even the federal government all use graders when building roads. From city streets and county roads to federal highways and interstates, road surfaces need to be leveled and smoothed before concrete or asphalt can be laid. In the northwest, logging companies need to smooth out pathways for logging trucks. Graders come in handy for that task.

Rural areas in all parts of the country use graders for improving gravel and dirt roads. Over time, and through harsh weather conditions, such roads can get rough.

There are a lot of uses for graders and a lot of opportunities for grader operators to earn a wage. This is the perfect time to start looking into training so that you can find the right opportunities in your area.

Like a lot of other types of heavy equipment, there isn’t just one type of bulldozer. There are a variety of bulldozers and they all have different purposes on the job site.

In general, all bulldozers have a blade and a ripper.

The blade is the big metal plate on the front of the tracked vehicle, which is used to push materials into a pile. Blades can either be straight, curved (called universal), or a combination. The ripper is a long claw on the back of the dozer. For heavy ripping, a single shank is best, but there are rippers that are multi-shanked.

Small bulldozers are often called calfdozers. They are useful working in mines and other small areas.

An angledozer is a bulldozer whose blade is pushed forward on one end, or angled, so that it can push materials off to the side. These are handy in northern states where cities and municipalities are required to push snow off the streets for public safety purposes.

The military uses armored bulldozers, which allow them to fortify defenses in combat operations.

If you want to be a bulldozer operator, you’ll need to seek training. Heavy Equipment School will teach you how to operate a bulldozer safely in any working environment.

Driving your dump truck is one of the greatest pleasures of the construction work site. These guys carry heavy loads short distances, and without them, the work site’s efficiency would plummet through the ground.

If you’ve ever driven a standard transmission vehicle, then you already understand one of the most important things about dump trucks.

You have a clutch.

Something else that is important to remember about dump trucks is that you need to keep the bed lowered while driving – even if you aren’t carrying a load. The bed has a lip that hangs over the cab. When it is raised, the lip could get caught on low hanging wires or short clearances. The last thing in the world you want while driving a dump truck is an accident.

In the cab, there is a lever next to the gear shift that locks the bed. A button on the dash raises and lowers the bed. You’ll have to get well practiced in using it. Excellent dump truck drivers can move the vehicle and dump a load at the same time to keep the load smooth and even, relatively speaking.

Driving a dump truck isn’t difficult, but you do need to be trained by a safety-conscious guide with experience.

If you are wondering whether you should seek training from a heavy equipment training school, let me make it easier for you to decide. Here are seven reasons why I believe you should seek training from a heavy equipment training school today.

1. You can apply online – It’s never been easier to initiate the career training you need to move ahead professionally. You can apply online with no commitment and no out of pocket expenses right now. There is no obligation just for applying.
2. A new class every month – You don’t have to wait long to start your training. A new class starts every two to four weeks.
3. Get your national certification – You can be nationally certified to operate a crane or any heavy equipment. It doesn’t matter which state you get your training in, you’ll be able to work anywhere in the U.S.
4. Get help finding a job – Associated Training Services (ATS) will help you land your first job through our Career Services Department.
5. Financial assistance – You don’t have to delay or put off your training due to your financial circumstances. You can get financial aid to start and complete your heavy equipment training. Military personnel can use their veterans benefits. With loans and grants, you can get your training and start your career in just a few weeks.
6. Train on more equipment – ATS will train you on more equipment than any other training school. You’ll be trained to operate a backhoe, bulldozer, scraper, crane, grader, loader, forklift, rock truck, excavator, and much more.
7. OSHA-compliant – All ATS training is OSHA-compliant.

There is no reason not to start your heavy equipment training. Start your training today.