We constantly focus on what ATS has to offer anyone looking at heavy equipment operations as a career. On the other side of the equation are the employers, so today I want to focus on the services that we offer you. ATS has a long and successful history of training heavy equipment operators, crane operators, and truck drivers. We have also built a strong network of employers who have successfully employed our graduates and helped them to achieve their goal of being successful operators or drivers.

For employers, we offer a number of services. As a training organization, our aim is to see our graduates successfully employed. To help us achieve that goal, we have a dedicated web site designed to connect employers with graduates from our schools. The-Job-Site.com is a website that lists all of our graduates since 1995. Graduates seeking employment have put together pre-application resumes that list their work history, experience and contact details. Employers can search through this database to find potential employees for their business. Businesses can also list job vacancies that graduates can apply for.

Our services to employers doesn’t end there. We also offer training programs that are customized to meet your needs. This training can be delivered in one of our schools or in the workplace using either our equipment or your own. There are many benefits to being trained on the equipment you are going to use, especially in situations where specialized skills are required.

ATS has a long and proud history when it comes to training truck drivers, crane operators, and heavy equipment operators. We have a steady stream of new graduates available for hire, all trained and eager to find the right employer. If you are looking for skilled operators, then feel free to check out what we have to offer for employers.

Career Education or career training loans are offered by many different lending institutions. While many have specific criteria for lending, the purpose of these loans remains the same – to help students get through their training. One criteria that is fairly common is that your training has to be undertaken through an accredited training organization. Heavy equipment training through Associated Training Services fits that criteria, so prospective students do at least qualify to apply for a loan.

Why should you choose a career loan? There are number of reasons, and while each lending institution will differ, some of the benefits include:

• Generally lower interest rates
• You can often apply online or by phone and sometimes receive instant pre-approval
• If your credit score is good you won’t need a cosigner
• Some loans offer repayment terms of up to 15 years
• Some loans allow you to borrow to pay your tuition plus any other school-related expenses
• Some career loans offer a six or twelve month deferral before you have to start making payments

Financial aid for heavy equipment training can be difficult, however, career loans are often a little more relaxed in their lending criteria compared to buying a home or a car. If you are going into full time study, then having a full time income is not generally practical – this is taken into account. One of the pluses when studying through ATS is that our training courses are only three weeks in duration. This means you could potentially be employed a month after starting your training. This can be an important factor when your financial institution is considering your application.

If you feel that a career loan is not for you, contact us at ATS and we may be able to help you find alternative financial aid. You never know, you may be entitled to assistance through the many programs being run by state and federal governments.

Winter brings many difficulties, especially in areas that receive heavy frosts and icy overnight conditions. The ground can freeze, water can freeze and rupture water tanks, and equipment can be damaged, making it dangerous. Before starting work each day, a heavy equipment operator’s first task is to give his equipment a full inspection, especially in areas where icy temperatures may cause damages.

We’re pretty smart these days. We put antifreeze in products that may be affected by cold temperatures, however, it is the hoses and pipes that often suffer the most. Start a vehicle and send hot liquids through hoses or pipes that are still very cold and you run the risk of having them rupture. Icy temperatures also cause materials to shrink. This constant shrinking and expanding over winter can create stress fractures in some materials, again causing problems during operations.

While heavy equipment safety is centered on the equipment’s safe use, maintenance does also play a serious role. Start-up and shut-down inspections are important at all times of the year, however, winter does bring its own hazards. Many years ago, operators learned their craft by watching their father or a friend operate their equipment. If they were lucky, they also got to ‘have a play’ during lunch breaks or at the end of the day. That taught people how to operate their equipment, but it failed to teach many of the important safety aspects.

Today, if you want to work as a heavy equipment operator, you require professional training that includes heavy equipment safety training. Heavy equipment in the wrong hands can be very dangerous and we have seen over the years a lot of accidents that have caused serious harm. If you are looking for a career as a heavy equipment operator, make sure your training has the proper focus on heavy equipment safety.

Scenes coming out of the UK and Europe do not bode well for a pleasant winter for us. It was mildly amusing to watch the various equipment that had been modified as snow plows. Old tractors with dozer blades, bulldozers themselves, graders, and what looked like a modified beetle with a blade attached to the front – how that generated the horsepower required has got me. What it has done is remind me of how many operators are required when heavy snow falls do set in.

One news story showed a small village almost lost in seven or eight feet of snow. There were at least six units of machinery working to try and clear the roads of snow, and that, like I said, was one small village. I don’t know if we are better organized here, although that was unusually heavy and early snow. However, we do organize operators and equipment early with most areas already equipped and ready to roll.

The most popular heavy equipment used to clear snow, apart from dedicated snow plows, are bulldozers, graders, and loaders (either wheel loaders of backhoes). The only real requirement to operate this heavy equipment to clear snow is experience. If you have had a lot of experience working with various soils and terrains, it is a simple transition to clearing snow.

To gain experience as a heavy equipment operator, you need to gain employment and, in today’s working environment, that means being trained by respected trainers. One of the most respected training organizations around today is ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training. While operators are busy clearing snow, that means there are opportunities elsewhere for new operators. Opportunities that will give you the experience that will one day enable you to work in areas where the community relies on you to clear the snow.

What are some of the most common reasons for a person to choose a particular profession? Interest is normally the starting point; that’s why you study in particular areas as you go through high school and college. Other factors include stability, income, community standing and family expectations. The latter is one of the most common reasons, and one that have so many people making career changes in their mid to late twenties – they finally break away from those family expectations. Here are eight good reasons to consider training for a Class A commercial drivers license (CDL):

• Well paid – truck drivers are well paid in comparison to many other jobs.
• In Demand – trucks are the life blood of our economy. For this reason, good drivers are always in demand.
• Stable employment – because good drivers are in demand, employers are not going to let you go.
• There are drivers around that have spent 30-40 years working for one employer.
• Work location – you can elect to just drive locally or you can elect to drive the big interstate rigs. The choice is up to you.
• Flexibility – one of the forgotten components to holding a CDL is that you’re not restricted to driving trucks. The CDL may make you employable as a heavy equipment operator, for example, (if you’re trained) simply because your license means you can cart the equipment out to a job yourself.
• Training – it only takes three weeks to learn to drive a truck. Pass your test and you’re ready to start.
• Variety – you never know what you’re going to cart from one day to the next. You may also find you are driving to different locations every day.
• Freedom – the biggest bonus of them all when it comes to truck driving. There’s nothing like the freedom of the open road.

A commercial drivers license opens a door to a career that’s busy and never boring. There are few careers that offer as many options as truck driving does so if you’re interested, contact ATS, the nation’s most experienced truck driver training organization in the country.

Almost anyone can undertake training to become a heavy equipment operator. It takes a little determination to make a lifelong career of it. However, that doesn’t mean it’s hard, you just need to look for opportunities wherever they present themselves and to then make valuable use of them. The most successful operators are those that have a lot of experience, and those that can operate heavy equipment in a variety of sizes and configurations.

A good example is the backhoe and excavator. They are traditionally used to dig trenches, however, there are a wide variety of attachments that can be added. Having experience in changing and using these attachments will be important if you want a broader range of employment options. The same is true when it comes to size. Heavy equipment ranges in size from the small backyard skid steer loaders to the giant equipment used in mining – and when I say giant, I do mean giant. Heavy equipment operators don’t quite need that breadth of experience, however, having experience on a range of different-sized equipment does increase your employment options and it will make you more attractive to employers.

Gaining this experience is not necessarily that difficult. There are many construction companies in business that use equipment of different sizes – let’s face it, why send a full size loader if a skid steer can do a better job? Your role then is to make it known that you’re interested in gaining experience across that range of equipment – and most employers are willing to oblige since it suits their interests as well.

It all starts with effective training and gaining those base skills. Look for training that includes both in-the-seat experience along with safety and basic maintenance training. Better yet, look for an industry leader in heavy equipment training. They will have a reputation that goes along with the certificate thus making you even more employable.

If you think excavator operators get to put their feet up during winter, then you may want to rethink those thoughts. In some areas, excavators are just as active in winter, and in some situations, could be classified as an essential service. Just to make life more interesting, there are times when they have to work under the most trying conditions.

Consider the location of many of the services running into your home. Underground. When incidents happen, and they do when the weather turns extremely cold, underground pipes can rupture, leading to a loss or reduction to supply of some services and dangerous situations such as gas leaks. With the ground partially frozen, using hand tools can be difficult – dangerous even. This is where excavators come in to their own. They can break through hard ground and dig a trench right down to almost pipe level. This means the hand tools are only required for the last few inches.

Experienced and well-trained operators are obviously in high demand in these circumstances – the last thing you want is a rank amateur trying to do the job. There’s only one way to become an experienced and well-trained excavator operator – that’s by getting the best training possible and then building on that training in the workplace. The industry no longer accepts operators who ‘learned by sitting on dad’s knee’. The industry now insists on formal training that includes safety aspects, maintenance procedures, and plenty of hands on experience.

Excavator training that is highly respected by industry is an essential first step. If your training is not through a recognized body, then most employers won’t even give you a second look. Often, the first thing that employers will ask is “who did you do your training through?” Be sure the answer you give is the one attached to the oldest and most respected heavy equipment training school in the business – ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools.

Heavy equipment technology has come a long way over the last twenty years. Gone are the days of heavy equipment that took brute strength to operate. Now you can almost operate equipment with one finger. What is becoming apparent is that those kids who have had a lot of experience playing console games are finding that learning to operate new heavy equipment quite easy. It’s almost like there is a convergence of the two technologies.

There is sound logic to this. First, there is the obvious. Console games involve the use of small joysticks and steering wheels (and sometimes foot pedals as well) while watching the outcome on screens several feet away. Modern heavy equipment technology is quite similar although there may be more than one joystick to control. The second observation I can make is that related to coordination. Being able to manipulate the console games while watching the game on monitor is fairly similar to the coordination needed to operate heavy equipment.

What students do need to learn is that tactile feel that operating equipment delivers. This is something that game makers have not yet been able to achieve. Being able to feel what your equipment is doing is an important part of heavy equipment operations. However, this is something that comes with experience in the operator’s cab.

For young adults who have had a lot of experience playing console games, a career as a heavy equipment operator is a natural progression. They can put their console gaming experience and coordination to good use learning to become heavy equipment operators. Three weeks hands on heavy equipment training will help to provide those tactile skills that are missing, and prepare them well for a great career as a heavy equipment operator. If you were told your hours playing games where a complete waste of time, prove them wrong and put those skills to good use.

At this time of year local authorities are busy ensuring their snow removal equipment is up to scratch and ready to roll. They will also be looking to ensure they have an adequate supply of trained operators for their equipment. Motor graders are becoming a popular choice for this job for a number of reasons. First, the equipment itself is not just for snow removal. In the spring, summer, and fall they can be employed doing a range of jobs. The second reason is related – they don’t require operators that specialize in snow removal equipment – if you can operate a grader, you can move snow.

For operators, of course, this is a real bonus. When winter closes in and general construction starts to close down for the winter, grader operators will find that their services are still in demand. This means they get to stay home for the winter; they don’t need to travel to warmer regions looking for work. Of course, for many areas, snow removal is essential or the whole region grinds to halt – this makes these positions highly important and well respected.

Grader operator training is a three-week course that combines both in the operator’s seat training and classroom training. Training in safety, maintenance, laser levels, and site plans is also included, however, it’s the in-the-seat training that makes you a real operator, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities for that if you undertake your training through ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools.

Winter may be on our doorstep, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t work around for grader operators. If there’s snow, then there will most likely be graders out there shifting that snow – you could operate one of them!

Crane operator training has become an important part of any workplace that employs cranes. Today, it is compulsory in most states to be certified as a crane operator before you can step foot anywhere near a crane. One of the problems with crane operator training is that one size does not fit all and there are many different types of crane in use today.

ATS Crane Operator Schools conduct regular training programs for those wanting to enter the mobile crane sector. For those employers looking for specialized operators, we offer training in:

• Large Telescopic Boom Cranes (swing cab/rough terrain)
• Small Telescopic Boom Cranes (fixed cab/boom truck)
• Lattice Crane (Crawler or Truck)
• Articulated (knuckleboom) Cranes

We also provide training in for OSHA Compliant Rigging & Signal Person and offer NCCCO Written & Practical Exams for those ready for certification. ATS is approved by the NCCCO as a test site for both the NCCCO written and NCCCO practical exams so we provide the complete pathway from training through to certification.

Whilst most of our training is undertaken at one of our campuses, we are happy to set up a training and testing room on your site if that is more convenient. This can be beneficial for those businesses that are located, or who are working in remote locations. Because we come to you, there is a less impact on your day-to-day business. Employees are also then trained on the equipment that will be using.

If you want more information on specialized crane operator training, feel free to call us on 800-678-8149.